BERKELEY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 V 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIPOflNIA 
 

 
MEN WORTHY TO LEAD: 
 
 BEING LIVES OF 
 
 John Howard j Thomas Arnold 
 
 William Wilberforce | Samuel Budgett 
 Thomas cji ai.mkks ' John Foster 
 
 HY PETER BAYNE, M.A., LL.D. 
 
 Author of *Lessotis from my Master* Etc, 
 
 LONDON : 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & Co., Ltd. 
 1890. 
 
GIFT 
 
85 
 
 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 There is no fair and adequate, in one word, satisfactory, bio- 
 graphy of Howard in the hands of his countrymen, — no esti- 
 mate of his character and work which can or ought to be 
 iinal. Aiken's work is mainly a lengthened mental analysis, 
 by no means void of value, and written with clearness and 
 spirit ; but it admits of doubt whether Howard was of that 
 order of men in whose case such analysis can be considered 
 useful or admissible. Brown's life contains a true image of 
 Howard; but it rests there in nide outline, too much as the 
 statue lies in the half-cut block. The work wants unity, is 
 fatally dull, and is not free from the generic taints of bio- 
 graphy, exaggeration and daubing. Mr Dixon's book is in 
 some respects the best, and in some the worst I have seen 
 on Howard. The account it gives of his journeys is spirited 
 and clear, and no charge of dullness can be brought against 
 its general style. Yet it may be pronounced, as a whole, and 
 in one word, wrong. It is set on a false key. It is brisk, 
 sparkling, continually pointed ; if it does not directly share 
 the characteristics of either, it seems to belong to a debateable 
 region between flippancy and bombast ; in fatal measure, it 
 wants chasteness and repose. No man can be named in 
 whose delineation these characteristics are so totally out of 
 
 B 
 
 239 
 
15 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 place, and these wants so plainly irreparable, as in that of 
 Howard. The main attribute of his nature, the universal 
 aspect of his life, was calmness : he ever reminds one of a 
 solemn hymn, sung with no instrumental accompaniment, 
 with little musical power, but with the earnest melody of the 
 heart, in an old Hebrew household. Mr Dixon gives his 
 readers a wrong idea of the man : more profoundly wrong 
 than could have arisen from any single mistake, — and such, of 
 a serious nature, there are in his work, — for it results from the 
 whole tone and manner of the work. A Madonna, in the 
 pure colour and somewhat rigid grace of Francia, stuck round 
 with gumflowers. by a Belgian populace ; a Greek statue de- 
 scribed by a young American fine writer ; — such are the ano- 
 malies suggested by this Life of Howard. There were one or 
 two memoii-s published in magazines at the time of his death, 
 but these are now quite unknown. On the whole, the right 
 estimate and proper representation of the founder of Modern 
 Pliilanthropy have still to be looked for. And at the present 
 moment such are specially required. Since the publication 
 of Mr Carlyle's pamphlets, opinion regarding him has been 
 of one of two sorts : either it is thought that his true place 
 has at length been fixed, that Mr Carlyle's sneers are reason- 
 able ; or unmeasured and undistinguishing indignation has 
 been felt against that writer, and the old rapturous applause 
 of Howard has been prolonged. Neither view of the case is 
 correct. To submit that applause to a calm examination, 
 and discover wherein, and how far, it is and has been just ; 
 to estimate the power of Mr Carlyle's attack, and determine 
 in how far it settles the deserts of its object ; and to ofier a 
 brief, yet essentially adequate representation of the life of 
 Howard in its wholeness : such is the attempt made in the 
 following paragraphs. 
 
 John Howard was born in London, or its vicinity, about 
 the year 1727 ; the precise locality and the precise date 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 6 
 
 have been matter of dispute. His ni other, of whom we have 
 no information, died in his infancy. His father was a dealer 
 in npholsterv wares in London, and realized a considerable 
 fortune. He had a cliaracter for pai-simony. We are not, 
 indeed) furnished with any instances of remarkable closeness 
 or illiberality, and his conduct to his son affords no marks 
 of such. That the allegation, however, had certain grounds 
 in truth cannot be doubted ; and the circumstance is not a 
 little singular in the father of one who must be allowed, 
 whether with censure or applause, to have found, from the 
 days of his boyhood, a keen delight in giving. But what- 
 ever the nature or force of this foible, the character of the 
 elder Howard was, on the whole, worthy and substantial. 
 He was a man of quiet, methodic habits, deeply imbued 
 with religious sentiment ; his views were Calvinistic, and 
 he was member of a denomination unconnected with the 
 English establishment — probably the Independent. He was 
 specially characterized by a rigid obser^^ance of the Sabbath. 
 We find in him, indeed, unmistakeable traces of the devout 
 earnestness of an earlier age ; and it admits of little doubt 
 that his religion was a lingering ray of the light which buraed 
 so conspicuously in England in the preceding century. While 
 the bacchanal rout of the Restoration made hideous the night 
 of England's departed glory, there were a few, perhaps many, 
 who retired into hidden places, to nurse on household altars 
 the flame which seemed erewhile about to illumine the world ; 
 and in the next century such could not have altogether died 
 away. That deep godliness whose sacred influence, like a 
 resting gleam of dewy light, was shed over the whole career 
 of John Howard, accompanied him from his father's house. 
 Were it not somewhat strange, if it proved to have been a 
 dying ray of the old Puritanism which brightened into Mo- 
 dem Philanthropy ! 
 
 The boy Howard made no figure in his classes. He v«& 
 
4 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 beyond question, what is generally known as a dull boy, I[e 
 never acquired a perfect grammatical knowledge, or a ready 
 command, even of his native language. Yet he appears, in 
 his early years, to have given indications of a chai-acter dif- 
 ferent from that of ordinary dull boys. His schoolfellows 
 seem to have discerned him, despite his slowness, to possess 
 qualities deserving honourable regard ; they saw that he was 
 unobtrusive, self-respecting, unostentatiously but warmly ge- 
 nerous. Price, doubtless one of the quickest of boys, and 
 Howard, slow as he w^as, were drawn towards each other at 
 school, and formed a friendship broken only by death. He 
 succeeded also, and with no conscious effort, in inspiring his 
 older friends and relatives with a sense of the general worth, 
 the substantial, reliable value, of his character. He was 
 known to be sedate, ser'ous, discreet ; his word could be de- 
 pended upon ; his sagacity was true ; above all, he was sim- 
 ple, quiet, modest. 
 
 It being manifest that he had no vocation to letters, his 
 father very sensibly removed him from school, and bound 
 him apprentice to Messrs Newnham & Shipley, grocers in 
 the city of London. A premium of ^£^700 was paid with 
 him ; he was furnished with separate apartments, and a 
 couple of saddle-horses. There is no mark of parsimony here. 
 
 In 1742, his father died, leaving him heir to considerable 
 property, and seven thousand pounds in money. By the pro- 
 visions of the will, he was not to enter on his inheritance ere 
 reaching his twenty-fourth year. But his guardians permit- 
 ted him at once to undertake the principal management of 
 his affairs. As he w^as still a mere boy, seventeen or eighteen 
 at most, this must be regarded as a decisive proof of the high 
 estimation in which he was held by those who had been in 
 a position to form an estimate of his character. He speedily 
 quitted the establishment in the city j his apprenticeship was 
 never oomploted. 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 5 
 
 Not long after his father's death, he travelled for some 
 time on the Continent, and, on his return, went into lodg- 
 ings at Stoke-Newington. Here he continued for several 
 years. His existence was quiet, even, in no way remarkable, 
 broken only by visits to the west of England on account of 
 his health. This last was quite imsettled. It is indeed to 
 be borne in mind, in the contemplation of his whole career, 
 that he had to sustain a life-long struggle with ill health, 
 that all the influences, to sour the temper, to close the heart, 
 to dim the intellect, to enfeeble the will, which are included 
 in that one word, bore perpetually on Howard. His consti- 
 tution was by no means sound, and had a strong determina- 
 tion towards consumption. In his unnoticed retirement at 
 Stoke-Newington it is easy to picture him ; his pale, tran- 
 quil countenance, marked, perhaps, with somewhat of the 
 weary and oppressed look that comes of constant acquaintance 
 with weakness and pain, but vmclouded by any repining, and 
 mildly lighted by modest self-respect, by inborn kindness, by 
 deep, habitual piety. He derived some pleasure from a slight 
 intermeddling with certain of the simplest parts of natural 
 philosophy and medical science : of the latter he seems to 
 have obtained a somewhat considerable knowledge. 
 
 This quiet existence was, after a time, rather interestingly 
 and unexpectedly enlivened. Howard, in one set of apart- 
 ments which he occupied, met with less attention than he 
 deemed his due ; probably it was thought his mild nature 
 could be imposed upon with impunity : he quitted the place. 
 Entering lodgings kept by a widow named Loidore, he found 
 himself waited upon to his absolute satisfaction. In his new 
 abode illness overtook him, or rather his perpetual ill health 
 reached a crisis. Mrs Loidore tended him with all possible 
 kindness ; and the result on his part was not only gratitude, 
 but, as we believe, sincere attachment. On his recovery, he 
 offered her his hand. She was above fifty j he was now 
 
b JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 about twenty-five. Her liealtli, too, was delicate ; bub Howard 
 was resolute, and, after of course objecting, she of course con- 
 sented. The circumstance indicates Howard's extreme sim- 
 plicity of nature, and power to do, in tlie face of talk and 
 laughter, what he thought right and desirable : it may also 
 be regarded as one proof among many of a naturally affection- 
 ate nature : it reveals nothing further, 
 
 For two or three years, the man^ied pair resided at Stoke- 
 Newington, much in the same manner, we presume, as for- 
 merly. Howard had a real, though by no means ardent, af- 
 fection for his wife ; it was a sincere affliction he experienced 
 when, after the above period, she died. 
 
 Such was the youthful period of Howard's life. The ex- 
 tent of information which the few incidents it embraces af- 
 fords us regarding him may be summed up by saying, that 
 they show him to have been methodic, gentle, and, above all, 
 considerately kind. He seems never to have allowed the 
 pleasure of making a fellow-creature happier to have escaped 
 him. 
 
 He was now about twenty-eight years of age. Unbound 
 by any tie to England, he determined again to travel. The 
 excitement arising from the occurrence of the great earthquake 
 at Lisbon was still fresh, and he was attracted to Portugal. 
 He sailed for Lisbon, in a vessel called the Hanover. His 
 voyage, however, was not destined to have a peaceful termi- 
 nation ; and the circumstances into which he was about to 
 be thrown exercised a perceptible influence on his future ca- 
 reer. The ship was taken by a French privateer ; Howard 
 was made prisoner. The treatment he met with was inhu- 
 man. For forty hours he was kept with the other prisoners 
 on board the French vessel, without water, and with " hardly 
 a morsel of food." They were then carried into Brest, and 
 committed to the castle. They were flung into a dungeon; 
 and, after a further penod of starvation, " a joint of mutton 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 7 
 
 was at leDgfch tlirown into the midst of them, which, for 
 want of the accommodation of so much as a solitary knife, 
 they were obliged to tear to pieces, and gnaw like dogs.'* 
 There was nothing in the dungeon to sleep on, except some 
 stra w ; and in such a place, and with such treatment, Howard 
 and his fellow-prisoners remained for nearly a week. He was 
 then removed to Carpaix, and afterwards to Morlaix, where 
 he impressed his jailer with such a favoumble opinion of his 
 character, that he was permitted to enjoy an amount of liberty 
 not usually accorded to prisoners in his situation. 
 
 At Morlaix Howard had inditcement and apology enough 
 for remaining idle, or, at least, for occupying himself solely 
 in negotiations for his own release, and in gathering up his 
 strength after his hardships. But he did not remain idle, 
 nor did he abandon himself to the above occupations. The 
 sufferings he had witnessed while inmate of a French prison 
 would not let him rest. He had seen something amiss, 
 something unjust, something which pained his heart as a feel- 
 ing man ; his English instinct of order and of work was out- 
 raged ; there was something to be done; and he set him- 
 self to do it. He collected information respecting the state 
 of English prisoners of war in France. He found that his 
 own treatment was part, and nowise a remarkable part, of 
 a system ; that many hundreds of these prisoners had pe- 
 rished through sheer ill usage; and that thirty-six liad been 
 buried in a hole at Dinan in one day. In fact, he discovered 
 that he had come upon an abomination and iniquity on the 
 face of the earth, which, strangely enough, had been permit- 
 ted to go on unheeded until it had reached this frightful ex- 
 cess. He learned its extent, and departed with his informa- 
 tion for England. He was permitted to cross the Channel, 
 on pledging his word to return, if a French officer was not 
 exchanged for him. He secured his own liberation, and at 
 once set to work on behalf of his oppressed countrymen. His 
 
O JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 representations were effectual. Those pnsoners of w^ar who 
 were confined in the three prisons which had been the prin- 
 cipal scene of the mischief, returned to England in the first 
 cartel ships that arrived. Howard modestly remarks, that 
 perhaps his suiFerings on this occasion increased his sympathy 
 with the inhabitants of prisons. There is not much to be 
 said of these simple and nnimposing circumstances. They 
 merely show that he, on coming into a position to do a piece 
 of work, did it at once and thoroughly ; that his feelings were 
 not of the sentimental sort, which issue in tears or words, 
 but of the substantial and silent sort, which issue in deeds; 
 that what had doubtless been seen by many a dapper officer, 
 and perhaps by prisoners not military, in full health and with 
 ample leisure, had not been righted until seen by Howard, 
 sickly and slow of speech. It was nothing great or wonder- 
 ful that he did : in the circumstances, nine out of ten would 
 have done nothing at all. He was thanked by the commis- 
 sioners for the relief of sick and wounded seamen ; but his 
 real reward was the intense pleasure with which he must 
 have hailed the arrival of those cartel ships, and felt that at 
 least so much of iniquity and cruelty was ended. For the 
 first time in his life, dull Howard was at the top of his class. 
 Abandoning, for the present, all thoughts of foreign travel, 
 Howard now retired to Bedfordshire, where he possessed an 
 estate. It was situated at the village of Cardington, and had 
 been the scene of his childhood : it was his principal residence 
 during life. We come to contemplate him in what he him- 
 self declared to have been the only period of his life in which 
 he enjoyed real pleasure. Though quiet and unobserved, that 
 pleasure was indeed real and deep. 
 
 He had reached the prime of life ; his years were about 
 thirty. His character, in its main features, was matured. 
 He was quiet, circumspect, considemte ; he knew himself, and 
 was guarded by a noble modesty from obtruding into any 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 9 
 
 sphere for wliich lie was not fitted by nature ; tlie ground- 
 work of his character was laid in method^ kindness, and deep, 
 unquestioning godliness. The time had arrived when he was 
 to experience a profound and well- placed affection, and to have 
 it amply returned. Henrietta Leeds was the daughter of 
 Edward Leeds of Croxton, in Cambridgeshire : she was about 
 the same age with Howard, and seemed formed by nature 
 precisely for his wife. She resembled him in deep and simple 
 piety. She had drawn up a covenant in which she consigned 
 herself, for time and eternity, to her Father in heaven, and 
 signed it with her own hand. She resembled him in general 
 simplicity of nature : she had no taste or liking for aught be- 
 yond what was plain and neat. Most of all, she resembled 
 him in kindness of disposition : the bestowal of happiness 
 was the source of her keenest joy. Her features were regu- 
 lar ; their expression mild, somew^hat pensiv^e, and not with- 
 out intelligence : a little gilding from love might make her 
 face seem beautiful. Where she and Howard first met does 
 not appear ; but meet they did, and thought it might be ad- 
 visable to make arrangements to obviate the necessity of fu- 
 ture parting. His love was in no sense i-apturous. It w^as 
 sincere and deep, but chai-acteristic : it retained, at a period 
 when such is usually dispensed with, the noble human faculty 
 of looking before and after. Love has a thousand modes and 
 forms, all of which may be consistent with reality and truth. 
 It may come like the burst of morning light, kindling the 
 whole soul into new life and radiance : it may grow, inaudi- 
 bly and unknown, until its roots are found to be through and 
 through the heart, entwined with its every fibre : it is unreal 
 and false only when it is a name for some form of selfishness. 
 Howard's was a quiet, earnest, undemonstrative afiection. He 
 was draw^n by a thousand symj)athies to Harriet ; never did 
 nature say more clearly to man, that here was the one who 
 had been created to be his helpmeet : he heard nature's voice, 
 
10 .yOHN HOWARD* 
 
 and loved. But he was quite calm. He even looked over 
 the wall of the future into the paradise which he was to enter, 
 and remarked the possibility of difference arising between the 
 happy pair whom he saw walking in the distance. Accord- 
 ingly, he went to Harriet, and proposed a stipulation that, in 
 oase of diversity of opinion, his voice sliould be decisive. 
 Harriet assented. They were married in 1758, and took up 
 their residence at Cardington. Here, with the exception of 
 a few years spent at a small property which Howard pur- 
 chased in Hampshire, they continued until the deatli of Mrs 
 Howard. 
 
 One is tempted to linger for a brief space on the sole plea- 
 sant spot in Howard's earthly journey. Ere he met Harriet, 
 he had turned to the right hand and to the left, scarce know- 
 ing or caring whither he went, and dogged always by pain. 
 ]N"ot long after her death, he heard the call which made him 
 a name for ever, and which bade him leave the wells and the 
 palm-trees of rest, to take his road along the burning sand of 
 duty. ]S"ot only may the spectacle of a truly happy English 
 home be pleasing, but we may gather from the prospect cer- 
 tain hints touching the actual nature and precise value of 
 Howard's character. 
 
 The pleasures of the new pair were somewhat varied. The 
 embellishment of the house and grounds went so far. This 
 was a business of particular interest with Howard. He built 
 additions to his house, and laid out three acres in pleasure- 
 grounds, erecting an arbour, and cutting and planting accord- 
 ing to his simple taste ; the approving smile of Harriet al- 
 ways sped the work. A visit to London was proposed and 
 carried into effect ; but the enjoyment obtained was nowise 
 gi'eat, for neither was adapted for town life, and Harriet in 
 particular longed for the green fields. Natural philosophy, 
 in a very small way, was put under contribution. Then 
 there was occasional visiting and entertaining of the country 
 
JOHN nOWARD. 11 
 
 gentlemen of Bedfordsliire. Howard always exercised a warm 
 and dignified hospitality, and, tliongli remarkably abstemious 
 himself, kept ever a good table and excellent wines for his 
 guests. But of all the joys of this Bedfordshire home, by far 
 the priiicipal arose out of the fact that Howard and his wife 
 were botli "by nature admirers of happy human faces." 
 Around Cardington there was soon di^awn a circle of such ; 
 gradually widening, still brightening, and, by nature's happy 
 law, ever shedding a stronger radiance of reflected joy on the 
 centre whence their own gladness came. Shortly after the 
 marriage, we find Harriet disposing of certain jewels, and 
 putting tlie price into what they called the charity-purse ; 
 its contents went to procure this crowning luxury, happy 
 human faces. Since this pleasure may be supposed to inte- 
 rest us more than any of the others, it is worth while to in- 
 quire how the money was disposed of. 
 
 The village of Cardington had been the abode of povei*ty 
 and wretchedness. Its situation was low and marshy ; the 
 inhabitants were imhealthy ; ague, that haunts the fen and 
 cowei-s under the mantle of the mist, especially abounded. 
 Altogether, this little English village had the discontented, 
 imeasy look of a sick child. And the intellectual state of 
 its people coiTesponded to their physical ; no effort had been 
 made to impart to them aught of instruction. Part of this 
 village was on the estate of John Howard. Unnoticed by 
 any, and not deeming himself noteworthy, but having in his 
 bosom a ti*ue, kind heart, and loyally anxious to approve him- 
 self to his God, he came to reside upon it with his wife. No 
 bright talents were his ; and his partner was a simple crea- 
 ture, of mild womanly ways, made to love rather than to 
 think. Yet the fact was, account for it as you will, that, 
 year by year, the village of Cardington showed a brighter face 
 to the morning sun ; year by year, the number of damp, un- 
 wholesome cottages grew less ; year by year, you might see 
 
12 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 new and different cottages spring np, little kitchen-gardens 
 behind, little flower-gardens before, neat pailings fronting the 
 road, roses and creepers looking in at the windows, well- 
 washed, strong-lunged, sunny-faced children frolicking round 
 the doors. These cottages were so placed that they could 
 see the sunlight ; the mist and the ague were driven back. 
 Their inhabitants paid an easy rent, sent their children to 
 school, were a contented, orderly, sober people. Cardington 
 became " one of the neatest villages in the kingdom." If 
 you asked one of the villagers to what or whom it owed all 
 this, the answer would have been — John Howard. 
 
 Kind-hearted, conscientious, shrewd, and accumte, he had 
 lost no time in acquainting himself with the evils with which 
 he had to contend, and addressing himself to the contest. 
 The damp, unhealthy cottages on his own estate were by de- 
 grees removed, and such as we have described built in their 
 stead ; those not on his own estate, requiring a similar treat- 
 ment, were purchased. He let the new cottages at an ad- 
 vantageous rate, annexing certain conditions to their occu- 
 pancy. He became the centre of quite a patriarchal system. 
 His tenants were, to a certain extent, under his authority ; 
 they were removable at will, they were bound over to sobriety 
 and industry, they were required to abstain from such amuse- 
 ments as he deemed of immoral tendency, and attendance at 
 public worship was enjoined. Besides the customary ordi- 
 nances, there was Divine service in a cottage set apart for 
 the purpose, the villagers, we are told, gladly availing them- 
 selves of the additional oppoi-tunity. Schools also were estab- 
 lished, not in Cardington alone, but in the neighbouring ham- 
 lets. He ruled a little realm of his own ; a realm which, in 
 the eighteenth century, was very favourably distinguished from 
 the surrounding regions ; an unmarked patriarchal domain, 
 whose government was, on the whole, beneficent. 
 
 When we contemplate the phenomenon of Howard's in- 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 13 
 
 fluence at Cardington, do we not experience a strong impulse 
 to question the fact of his having been, even intellectually, 
 the ordinaiy, unoriginal man he has been called 1 It is fair 
 to recollect that he was of that class which, perhaps pre-emi- 
 nently, does nothing ; of that class whose epitaph Mr Car- 
 lyle has written in Sartor Resartus. His task was not per- 
 haps very diJQicult ; but just think of the effect, if every Eng- 
 lish landlord perfonned his duty so conscientiously and so 
 well. A biographer of Howard, wilting when the present 
 century was well advanced, has recorded that Cardington 
 still retained, among English villages, a look of " order, neat- 
 ness, and regularity." If mere common sense did this, it 
 was common sense under some new motive and guidance ; we 
 can only regret that it so rarely follows the higher light of 
 godliness. And if Howard's claim to positive applause is 
 slight, what are we to say of his exculpation from the posi- 
 tive sin which, during that century, accumulated so fearfully 
 on the head of certain classes and coii)o rations in England ? 
 Different had been the prospect now, had England, in that 
 century, been covered with such schools as Howard's. Surely 
 one may ask, without arrogance, why did not the Church of 
 England accomplish at least so much then ? 
 
 In his own household, there reigned calmness and cheer- 
 ful content. The whole air and aspect of the place was such 
 as might have suggested that perfect little picture by Ten- 
 nyson, — 
 
 "An Englinh home- grey twilight ^oiir'd 
 On dewy pastures, dewy trees, 
 Softer than sleep — all things in order stored, 
 
 A haunt of ancieut Peace." 
 
 He lived much in the consideration of Old Testament 
 times and worthies, shaping his life after that of the Hebrew 
 Patriarchs. His Bible was to him a treasury of truth, which 
 he never even dreamed exhaustible. As he looked over the 
 
14 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 brightening scene of his humble endeavours, and the pleasant 
 bowers around his own dwelling, and felt all his tranquil joy 
 represented and consummated in his Harriet, we may imagine 
 those words breathing through his heart — " I w411 be as the 
 dew unto Israel :" as the dew, stealing noiselessly down in 
 an evening stillness, unseen by any eye, yet refreshing the 
 very heart of nature. Harriet, with all her simplicity, was 
 a perfect wife ; she could hear the beating of her husband's 
 heai-t. Once there was somewhat over from the yearly ex- 
 penditure. Howard, thinking his wife might derive enjoy- 
 ment from a trip, proposed that they should spend it in a 
 visit to London. Harriet looked quietly into his eyes, and 
 answered, " What a pretty cottage it would build !" Con- 
 ceive the smile of silent unspeakable satisfaction, of deep 
 unbounded love, that would spread over the placid features of 
 Howard as he heard these words. 
 
 The part taken by the kind and gentle Harriet in the dis- 
 semination of blessing over Howard's neighbourhood was no- 
 wise unimportant. In the hour of sickness and distress, she 
 was to be seen by the bed or the fireside, supplying little 
 wants, whispering words of consolation. She made it also a 
 peculiar part of her duty to see that the female portion of 
 the community was employed, and to supply them with work 
 when threatened with destitution. 
 
 Thus was Howard, cheered and assisted by his wife, an 
 unassuming, godly English landlord, doing his work, and 
 never imaginiitg that he was a profitable servant. His te- 
 nantry, and specially his domestics, loved him ; although, as 
 we are happy to find, since it is an almost conclusive, and 
 certainly indispensable proof of decision and discrimination, 
 there was not a complete absence of murmuring and insinua- 
 tion against him in the village. He engaged in constant and 
 intimate converse with his dependants, interesting himself in 
 tlieir affe-irs, and giving little pieces of advice. He might be 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 15 
 
 seen entering their cottages, and sitting down to chat and 
 eat an apple. We can figure him, too, as he walked along 
 the road, 
 
 ** "With measured footfall, 6rm and mild," 
 stopping the children he met, giving each of them a half- 
 penny, and imparting the valuable and comprehensive ad- 
 vice, to "be good children, and wash their hands and faces.'* 
 Can we not discern, as he utters the w^ords, a still smile of 
 peace and satisfaction on his really noble English counte- 
 nance "^ There was no sign of creative power in his eye ; 
 there were no lines of deep thought on his brow ; but deci- 
 sion, and shrewdness, and intense though governed kindness, 
 were written on that face. Above all, it was cloudless in it^ 
 clearness. It was the calm, open countenance of a man who 
 could look the whole world in the face, which was darkened 
 by no stain of guile, or guilt, or self-contempt, and on which, 
 through habitual looking upwards, there was a glow of the 
 mild light of heaven. Nor was it destitute of a certain re- 
 posing strength, a look of complete self-knowledge and self- 
 mastery, gently shaded, as it was, by a deep but manly huma- 
 nity, which told again of the bended knee and the secret walk 
 with God. When we look at Howard's portrait, we cease 
 to wonder that his face was always received as an unques- 
 tionable pledge of perfect honour and substantial character. 
 
 There was one drop by which the cup of happiness in the 
 home at Cardington might still have been augmented. How- 
 ard and his wife had no child. Harriet seems to have been 
 peculiarly adapted to perform the duties of a mother : so 
 gentle, so full of quiet sense, so w^ell able to read a want ere 
 it reached the tongue. At length, after seven years of mar- 
 ried life, on Wednesday, the 27th of March 1765, she had a 
 son. On the ensuing Sabbath, Howard went to church as 
 usual ; all seemed to be going well After his return she 
 was suddenly taken ill, and died in his arms. She had just 
 
16 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 seen her boy, just felt the unuttered happiness of a new loyc, 
 just discerned that a fresh brightness rested on the face of 
 the world, and then she had to close her eyes, and lie down 
 in the silent grave. 
 
 Howard's feelings, it is scarce requisite to say, were not of 
 the sort which commonly reach the surface. There was no- 
 thing sudden or impulsive in his nature ; his very kindness 
 and affection were ever so tempered, ever rendered so equable, 
 by considemtion, that they might at times wear the mask of 
 austerity. But the sorrow he felt for his Harriet reached 
 the innermost deeps of his soul. A light had passed from 
 the "revolving year ;" the flowers which Love may strew in 
 the path of tlie " stern daughter of the voice of God" — for 
 Duty herself strews no flowers — had withered away ; until 
 he again clasped the hand of Harriet, his enjoyment had 
 ceased. He laid her in her grave, and a simple tablet in 
 Cardington Church told the simple truth, that she had " open- 
 ed her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue was the law 
 of kindness.'' A good many years afterwards, on the eve of 
 a departure for the Continent^ from which he might never re- 
 turn, Howard was walking with his son in his gi-ounds, and 
 mentioning some improvements which he had contemplated : 
 — "These, however. Jack," he said, "in case I should not 
 come back, you will pursue or not as you may think proper ; 
 but remember, this walk was planted by your mother ; and 
 if ever you touch a twig of it, may blessing never rest upon 
 you !" 
 
 His infant son was now all that was left on earth to How- 
 ard. He loved him with the whole force of his nature. Two 
 strong feelings, having, reference to this earth, and two alone, 
 were, in the years of his long journeyings, to be found in his 
 bosom : the one was the memory of Harriet, the other the 
 love of his boy. 
 
 But it is not unimportant to a perfect comprehension of 
 
JOHN HOWAllD. 17 
 
 tlie character of Howard to know that there was, in his ge- 
 neral deportment as husband and father, a gravity, decision, 
 and authority, which wore the aspect of austereness. The 
 founder of philanthropy was as free as ever man from any 
 form of sentimentalism ; it was for real affliction, for sub- 
 stantial pain, he felt and acted ; a tender, winning, soothing 
 manner was never his. Whatever may be said of modern 
 philanthropists, he certainly was not one whose feelings car- 
 ried him away, who saw distress and injustice, and, bursting 
 into tears, rushed, half-blinded with his sympathy, to make 
 bad worse. He has been spoken of by some as if he re- 
 sembled one who, perceiving a child drowning in a reservoir, 
 and being moved to pity by its cries, casts down an embank- 
 ment to save it, and floods a country. He was no such man. 
 Since the world began, until he appeared, no one had done 
 so much for the relief of distress, simply as such ; and yet 
 it is probable that few men have lived who could look upon 
 pain with calmer countenance than he. Nineteen men in 
 twenty would have been weeping, and either blundering or 
 leaving the distress alone ; Howard remained quite cool, looked 
 at it, measured it, mastered it. 
 
 For about a year after the death of his wife, he continued 
 to reside at Cardington. Towards the end of the year 1766 
 he visited Bath ; ill health had again, in new extremity, re- 
 turned upon him. In the spring of the following year he 
 travelled to Holland, and, quickly returning home, remained 
 at Cardington until it was time to send his son to school 
 In the interval, nothing worthy of notice occurred ; he pur- 
 sued his old plans for the improvement of his neighbour- 
 hood, deriving his principal comfort from his boy. 
 
 At length it became proper to send his son to school ; and 
 Howard prepared again to visit the Continent Cardington 
 had become sad to him. He in great measure broke up his 
 establishment there, providing, with considerate kindness, for 
 
 c 
 
18 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 his domestics ; tliese, as has been elsewhere remarked, loved 
 him with an affection worthy of the servants of an old pa- 
 triarch. He departed in the autumn of 1769 ; his intention 
 was to visit the south of Italy, and probably remain there 
 for the winter : he went by Calais, the south of France, and 
 Geneva. 
 
 We arriv^e now at the most important epoch in Howard's 
 life. The reader has been informed of the pervasion, from 
 a period too early to be precisely fixed, of his whole charac- 
 ter by godliness ; and we saw how the fact influenced his 
 benevolent exertions in Bedfordshire. We have not yet 
 however looked, so to speak, into the heart of Howard's re- 
 ligion ; we have only noted it incidentally, and from afar. It 
 is necessary to view it more closely ; it will be of great im- 
 portance to ascertain the weight and nature of its influ- 
 ence. His spiritual life now reached a crisis, which deter- 
 mined, in certain important respects, his future character and 
 career. 
 
 Howard had intentions of spending the winter of 1769-70 
 either in the south of Italy or in Geneva. On arriving at 
 Turin he abandoned the project. He had been pondering 
 seriously the object and nature of his journey. He accused 
 himself of mis-spending the " talent" committed to him, of 
 gratifying a mere curiosity with those pecuniary means which 
 might be turned in some way to God's gloiy, and which were 
 necessarily withdrawn from works of mercy ; he thought of 
 the loss of so many English Sabbaths ; he thought of " a 
 retrospective view on a death-bed ;'' he thought also of " dis- 
 tance from his dear boy." He determined to return. He 
 concludes the memorandum from which these facts are ga- 
 tliered in the following words :* — " Look forward, oh my 
 «oiil I How low, how mean, how little, is everything but 
 
 * Howard did Dot write English grammatically ; the spelling and punc- 
 tuation are therefore altered. 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 19 
 
 what has a view to that glorious world of light, life, and love. 
 The pi'e])aration of the heart is of God. Prepare the heart, 
 oh God ! of thy unworthy creature, and unto Thee be all the 
 glory, through the boundless ages of eternity." 
 
 " This night my trembling soul almost longs to take its 
 flight to see and know the wonders of redeeming love, — join 
 the triumphant choir ; sin and sorrow fled away, God, my 
 Redeemer, all in all. Oh ! happy spirits that are safe in 
 those mansions." 
 
 He turned homewards, and in February 1770 was at the 
 Hague. "We have here a further record of his spiritual life. 
 ** Hague, Sunday Evening, February 11. 
 
 " I would record the goodness of God to the unworthiest 
 of his creatures : for some days past a habitual serious frame, 
 relenting for my sin and folly, applying to the blood of Jesus 
 Christ, solemnly surrendering myself and babe to Him, begging 
 the conduct of his Holy Spirit ; I hope, a more tender con- 
 science," evinced " by a greater fear of oflending God, a tem- 
 per more abstracted from this world, more resigned to death 
 or life, thirsting for union and communion with God, as my 
 Lord and my God. Oh ! the wonders of redeeming love ! 
 Some faint hope," that " even I ! through redeeming mercy 
 in the perfect righteousness, the full atoning sacrifice, shall 
 ere long be made the monument of the rich, free gi-ace and 
 mercy of God, through the Divine Redeemer. Oh, shout my 
 soul ! Grace, grace, free, sovereign, rich and unbounded grace ! 
 Not I, not I, an ill-deserving, hell-deserving creature ! But, 
 where sin has abounded, I trust grace superabounds. Some 
 hope ! — what joy in that hope ! — that nothing shall separate 
 my soul from the love of God in Christ Jesus ; and, my soul, 
 as such a frame is thy delight, pray frequently and fervently 
 to the Father of spirits, to bless His word and your retired 
 moments to your serious conduct in life. 
 
 " Let not, my soul, the interests of a moment engross thy 
 
 m 
 
20 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 thouglits, or be preferred to my eternal interests. Look for- 
 ward to that glory which will be revealed to those who are 
 faithful to death. My soul, walk thou with God ; be faith- 
 ful ; hold on, hold out ; and then, — what words can utter ! 
 
 "J. H.'^ 
 
 I anxiously desire to avoid presumption here, and would 
 leave every reader to his own judgment and conclusion in the 
 matter ; but I think the w^orkings of Howard's mind through 
 this portion of his history may be traced. 
 
 It appears that, on leaving Cardington, his mind had en- 
 gaged in deep reflection. His boy had gone away from him ; 
 his Harriet was sleeping silently, her tender ways to cheer 
 him no more ; he looked over his past life, from which the 
 last rays of joy's sunlight were departing ; he looked forward 
 to an old age, embittered by perpetual ill health. His mind 
 awoke, in the discipline of sorrow, to a deeper earnestness. 
 He felt, with sterner realization than heretofore, that the 
 world was a desert, and time a dream ; with a new and tre- 
 mendous energy his soul rose towards the eternal kingdoms. 
 He looked with earnest scrutiny within, he closed his eye 
 more to all around, and gazed upwards from his knees for the 
 smiling of one countenance upon him. The intensity of his 
 feelings would not comport with the prosecution of his jour- 
 ney to Italy. He mused upon it in the strain that has been 
 indicated. He concluded that it was his duty to return home ; 
 in a state of mind not a little agitated, he proceeded in the 
 direction of England. He did not, however, proceed further 
 for the present than the Hague. His mind appeai-s here to 
 have become calmer ; the second of the extracts just given 
 reveals an almost rapturous frame of spirit. It is a detail of 
 God's goodness towards him ; and, let it be remarked, that 
 this goodness consists in work wrought in him, in his closer 
 approximation to the requirements of God's law. The man 
 who can feel ecstatic joy for that, and give God all the glory, 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 21 
 
 lias nothing higher to attain to in this world ; and on him no 
 essential change will be wrought by passing through the gates 
 of heaven. 
 
 He again turned southwards. At Lyons hd writes thus : 
 
 ** Lyons, April 4, 1770. 
 
 " Repeated instances of the unwearied mercy and goodness 
 of God : preseiwed hitherto in health and safety ! Blessed 
 be the name of the Lord ! Endeavour, oh my soul ! to culti- 
 vate and maintain a thankful, serious, humble, and resigned 
 frame and temper of mind. May it be thy chief desire that 
 the honour of God, the spread of the Redeemer's name and 
 gospel, may be promoted. Oh, consider the everlasting worth 
 of spiritual and Divine enjoyments ; then thou wilt see the 
 vanity and nothingness of worldly pleasures. Remember, oh 
 my soul ! St Paul, who was determined to know nothing in 
 comparison of Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. A tender- 
 ness of conscience I would ever cultivate ; no step would I 
 take without acknowledging God. I hope my present jour- 
 ney, though again into Italy, is no way wrong, rejoicing if in 
 any respect I could bring the least improvement that might 
 be of use to my own country. But, oh my soul ! stand in 
 awe, and sin not ; daily, fervently pray for restraining grace ; 
 remember, if thou desirest the death of the righteous, and thy 
 latter end like his, thy life must be so also. In a little while 
 thy course will be run, thy sands finished ; a parting fare- 
 well with my ever dear boy, and then, oh my soul ! be weighed 
 in the balance, — wanting, wanting ! but oh, the glorious hope 
 of an interest in the blood and righteousness of my Redeemer 
 and my God ! In the most solemn manner I commit my 
 spirit into thy hand, oh Lord God of my salvation ! 
 
 " My hope in time ! my trust through the boundless ages 
 of eternity ! John Howard." 
 
 The last quotation which it is necessary to make is one of 
 very gi-cat importance. It commences with a slight retro- 
 
22 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 spcct and self-examination ; it passes into a deliberate dedi- 
 cation of himself and his all to God : — 
 
 " iSTaples, May 27, 1770. 
 " When I left Italy last year, it then appeared most pru- 
 dent and proper ; my return, I hope, is under the best di- 
 rection, not presumptuous, being left to the folly of a foolish 
 heart. Not having the strongest spirits or constitution, my 
 continuing long in Holland or any place lowers my spirits; 
 so I thought returning would be no uneasiness on the review, 
 as sinful and vain diversions are not my object, but the ho- 
 nour and glory of God my highest ambition. Did I now see 
 it wrong by being the cause of pride, I would go back ; but 
 being deeply sensible it is the presence of God that makes 
 the happiness of every place, so, oh my soul ! keep close to 
 Him in the amiable light of redeeming love ; and, amidst the 
 snares thou art particularly exposed to in a country of such 
 wickedness and folly, stand thou in awe, and sin not. Com- 
 mune with thine own heart ; see what progress thou makest 
 in ihj religioiis journey ! Art thou nearer the heavenly Ca- 
 naan, — the vital flame burning clearer and clearer ? or are 
 the concerns of a moment engrossing thy foolish heart ? Stop ; 
 remember thou art a candidate for eternity : daily, fervently 
 pray for wisdom ; lift up your eyes to the Rock of Ages, and 
 then look down on the glory of this world. A little while, 
 and thy journey will be ended ; be thou faithful unto death. 
 Duty is thine, though the power is God's ; pray to Him to 
 give thee a heart to hate sin more, uniting thy heart in his 
 fear. Oh, magnify the Lord, my soul ; and, my spirit, re- 
 joice in God my Saviour ! His free gi^ace, unbounded mercy, 
 love unparalleled, goodness unlimited. And oh, this mercy, 
 this love, this goodness, exerted for me ! Lord God, why me? 
 When I consider, and look into my heart, I doubt, I tremble. 
 Such a vile creature ; sin, folly, and imperfection in every 
 action ! Oh, dreadful thought ! — a body of sin and death 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 23 
 
 I carry about me, ever ready to depart from God ; and with 
 all the dreadful catalogue of sins committed, my heart faints 
 within me, and almost despairs. But yet, oh my soul ! why 
 art thou cast down ? — why art thou disquieted 1 Hope in 
 God ! His free grace in Jesus Christ 1 Lord, I believe ; 
 help my unbelief. Shall I limit the grace of God 1 Can I 
 fathom His goodness 1 Here, on His sacred day, I, once more 
 in the dust before the Eternal God, acknowledge my sins 
 heinous and aggravated in His sight. I would have the deep- 
 est sorrow and contrition of heart, and cast my guilty and pol- 
 luted soul on thy sovereigu mercy in the Kedeemer. Oh, 
 compassionate and divine Redeemer, save me from the dread- 
 ful guilt and power of sin, and accept of my solemn, free, and, 
 I trust, unreserved, full surrender of my soul, my spirit, my 
 dear child, all I am and have, into thy hands ! Unworthy 
 of thy acceptance ! Yet, oh Lord God of mercy ! spurn me 
 not from thy presence ; accept of me, vile as I am, — I hope 
 a repenting, returning prodigal. I glory in my choice, ac- 
 knowledge my obligations as a sei'vant of the Most High God; 
 and now, may the Eternal God be my refuge, and thou, my 
 soul, faithful to that God that will never leave nor forsake 
 thee! 
 
 " Thus, oh my Lord and my God ! is humbly bold, even a 
 worm, to covenant with Thee. Do Thou ratify and confirm 
 it, and make me the everlasting monument of Thy imbounded 
 mercy. Amen, amen, amen. Glory to God the Father, God 
 the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever, amen ! 
 
 " Hoping my heart deceives me not, and trusting in His 
 mercy for restraining and preventing grace, though rejoicing 
 in returning what I have received of Him into his hands, 
 yet with fear and trembling, I sign my unworthy name, 
 
 "John Howard." 
 
 Howard was not a man who found any special delight in 
 using his pen : the deep modesty of his nature, the deficiency 
 
24 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 of his education, liis consequent want of affluence in expres- 
 sion, and the whole structure of his character as universally 
 recognised, put this beyond dispute. It was only when his 
 heart was very full, and the emotions with which it burned 
 were as mounting lava, that they overflowed through that 
 channel. The expressions quoted may be confidently regarded 
 as pulses of his spiritual life, proceeding as truly from the 
 centre of his spiritual nature as the blood which at fever 
 heat might gush from his heart, the centre of his physical 
 frame. And consider the earnestness, the stammering, gasp- 
 ing intensity, with which they start ruggedly forth ; mark 
 the awe-struck humility with which he bows down before the 
 Infinite God, and, as it were, the mute amazement of grati- 
 tude which, when the smile of God falls out of heaven upon 
 his head, forces him to exclaim, " Lord God, why me ?" Sure- 
 ly this last is a remarkable passage of feeling. Will it not 
 be with such an emotion that the redeemed of God, when the 
 eternal inheritance, so far surpassing expectation and desert, 
 at last and suddenly bursts upon their sight, will shrink from 
 asserting their right, aud exclaim, " Lord, when did we merit 
 this T Observe, finally, here, respecting Howard, the com- 
 pleteness of the result, — the unwavering, unexcepting abdi- 
 cation of the throne of the soul to God. This formed the 
 conclusion of that crisis in his spiritual history to which re- 
 ference has been made. 
 
 One other remark must be made respecting these docu- 
 ments. In those awful moments, when Howard was alone 
 with God, and his eyes, looking to the Rock of Ages, were 
 so solemnly raised above every concern of time, there was one 
 earthly visitant that entered the secret places of his heart j 
 that visitant was his boy. 
 
 The time was now near when Howard was to find his pe- 
 culiar work. It may be said, though with reverence and hesi- 
 tation, that he was specially fitted for it by God. Implanted 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 25 
 
 by nature in his bosom, be exhibited from his earliest years 
 a deep and a notably cosmopolitan compassion for the afflicted 
 as such. In early years his nature was stilled, hallowed, and 
 strengthened by religious principle. As he advanced in years, 
 the gi'eat truths of Calvinism, or rather that one great truth 
 of Calvinism, The Lord reigneth, — the Lord, just, sovereign, 
 incomprehensible, in whose presence no finite being can speak, 
 — formed a basis, as it were of adamant, for his whole cha- 
 racter. He was sorely tried by physical ailments ; and, at 
 the risk of his life, was compelled to pursue rigidly abstemious 
 habits, being thus also debarred from all the pleasures of the 
 great world. He was brought soon into actual experience of 
 the distresses sufiered by the inhabitants of prisons, and his 
 first piece of positive work in the world was the relief of such. 
 His character was next matured, confirmed, and mellowed, 
 in the soft summer light of a quiet English home, where he 
 loved and was loved by a time wife ; and where, in such tasks 
 as we have seen, a mild apprenticeship was served to thorough- 
 ness and accuracy. He was then suddenly and awfully struck 
 with affliction ; she who was so very beautiful in his eyes, — 
 
 ** Fair as a star, when only one 
 Is shining in the sky,"— 
 
 was taken away from him. And then, after a little time, 
 came that crisis in his spiritual history which his own words 
 so vividly delineate. Whatever were his natural abilities, he 
 awoke from that crisis with a moral strength which no force 
 of temptation could overcome, and a calm dauntlessness which 
 nothing earthly could turn aside. Then he found his work. 
 Howard's history thus seems to suggest the idea that God 
 intended by him to bring prominently before the world some 
 truth not hitherto duly regarded, to accomplish some work 
 not hitherto adequately done : that the time had arrived 
 when some gospel — shall we call it the gospel of love 1 — was 
 to be more specially and explicitly imfolded than it had been 
 
26 JOHN HOWAllD. 
 
 heretofore. Witli deliberate and immoveable faith, he him- 
 self entertained this belief, and has put it on record in humble 
 yet sublime words, written when it was well-nigh finished : — 
 " I am not at all angry with the reflections that some pei-sons 
 make, as they think to my disparagement, because all they say 
 of this kind gives God the greater honour ; in whose Almighty 
 hand no instrument is weak, in whose presence no flesh must 
 glory ; but the whole conduct of this matter must be ascribed 
 to Providence alone, and God hy me intimates to the world, 
 however weak and unworthy / am, that He espouses the 
 cause* and to Him^ to Him alone, he all the praised 
 
 Returning from the Continent, Howard remained for a 
 certain period at Cardington : we hear of nothing remark- 
 able in his life for some time. The state of his health in 
 1772 rendered it advisable to make a tour in the Channel 
 Islands ; but he speedily returned to Bedfordshire. Here, 
 in 1773, he was called to the office of sherifi* of the county. 
 He considered it his duty to comply with the invitation. Pru- 
 dence might have whispered another decision. He was a 
 Dissenter, and by becoming sherifl* incurred the liability of 
 very severe penalties. His danger might not be very great ; 
 but it was real. He was not without enemies ; and his act 
 put it in the power of any one of them, with profit to him- 
 self, to inflict very serious injury on him. It is, besides, the 
 part of prudence to guard against possibilities : there was at 
 least the possibility that he might sufler. Howard, however, 
 with all his calmness, was too brave to be distinctively pru- 
 dent. It might astonish some to find this among his adopt- 
 ed maxims, — " A fearless temper and an open heart are sel- 
 dom strictly allied to prudence." It is the maxim of a truly 
 brave man. In this afiair of the sheriffdom he kept prudence 
 in its proper place : when the voice of duty was clear, its 
 mouth was shut. 
 
 * The italics arc Howard's, 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 27 
 
 The office of sheriff had been hitherto but a dignifying ap- 
 pendage ; its duties mainly those of show. Howard could 
 not regard or treat it thus. He went to his work as usual, 
 quietly, accurately, thoroughly. From time immemorial 
 abuses had prevailed ; safely wrapped in the mantle of cus- 
 tom, they had lived, and moved, and done their measure of 
 evil, unregarded as smoke. The cool, clear eye of Howard, 
 looking straight to the heart of everything, could not but re- 
 gard them. He had not acted long in the capacity of sheriff, 
 when his attention was arrested by something which struck 
 him as strange and anomalous : something which had its ex- 
 istence amid the light of a brilliant and boasted civilization, 
 but which was fitted rather to cower, snake-like and slimy, 
 in the jungles of barbarism. He fixed his attention upon 
 certain persons who were declared not guilty by the voice of 
 their countrymen, who were acquitted of everything laid to 
 their charge, and thus proved to have endured the hard afflic- 
 tion of confinement and temporary disgi-ace, when their coun- 
 try had nothing whatever to say against them. He saw that 
 these, on their acquittal, did not immediately return to their 
 welcoming and consoling friends ; that their chains were not 
 at once struck off, with urgent haste and self-accusing regret : 
 they were conveyed back to prison until they should pay cer- 
 tain fees to functionaries connected with the jail and court. 
 Others, who also might have suffered months of confinement, 
 and against whom, from the non-appearance of their prose- 
 cutors, not even a charge was preferred, were similarly treated. 
 Others still, regarding whom the Grand Jury could not find 
 such evidence of guilt as rendered it reasonable to try them, 
 went the same way : — all, without semblance of accusation, 
 were haled back to prison. This cruel and glaring outrage 
 on justice and feeling was quietly taking its course, and was 
 likely for some time to do so, in the county of Bedford, when 
 it fixed the gaze of John Howard. Its days were numbered. 
 
28 JOUN HOWARD. 
 
 His proceedings were quick : observation, decision, and action, 
 seem almost to have been united. Tiie abuse was undeni- 
 able and indefensible ; its mode of cure was by paying, in 
 some other manner, the functionaries interested. The jus- 
 tices of the county were the men to be applied to ; the ap- 
 plication was made. But it now became apparent that the 
 days of an abuse, though numbered, may continue for some 
 time to run. A new thing this in the experience of the 
 sedate magistrates ; it was proper to proceed with caution, 
 deliberation, and prudence. The good, formal, drowsy jus- 
 tices looked up through their spectacles, and — found it ne- 
 cessary — to satisfy their minds — ^by seeing a precedent. Here, 
 then, perhaps, the matter would stop, and the justices be 
 troubled in their dozing no fui-ther. Howard did not stop. 
 A precedent must be found : he takes horse at once, and pro- 
 ceeds to seek it in the neighbouring counties. 
 
 In those counties Howard met on all hands with injustice 
 and disorder, but found no precedent for his proposed remedy. 
 He saw more than he expected, and more than he came to 
 seek. In his own simple words, he " beheld scenes of cala- 
 mity." Such he could not see without a desire to alleviate ; 
 and a desire with Howard passed, of necessity, into action. 
 Gradually it became plain to him that he had discovered a 
 great work to be done, and that he was the man intended by 
 God to do it. In the pei-formance of this work the rest of 
 his life was spent, and his name became known and reverenced 
 in every land under heaven. There are three questions to 
 put and to answer respecting it. What was it ] By what 
 motives was Howard impelled to undertake it 1 How did 
 he perform it "? It will be important also to consider, as we 
 proceed, whether it had become necessary. 
 
 What was this work of Howard's 1 
 
 Correspondent to, and resulting from, the sad discordance 
 and rent in the individual human soul, there has been, in all 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 29 
 
 ages, a great severance in the human family. A part of that 
 family has been put aside by the rest, and subjected to penal 
 inflictions. Sorrowful, truly, is the prospect thus opened up. 
 In the many-chambered dwelling framed for them by their 
 •Father, men could not live together and at peace. The roof 
 and spires of that dwelling seem to rest in sunshine ; in the 
 higher apartments is the voice of mirth and gladness ; lower 
 down the darkness of sorrow begins to thicken ; and, beneath 
 all, there are lightless dungeons, from which, through the 
 whole course of human histoiy, have arisen the broken groans 
 of agony, or the lone wailings of despair. By a stern and 
 awful necessity, these dungeons were never empty ; men were 
 compelled to chain down their brothers in the darkness, lest, 
 like maniacs, they should plunge their knives in the hearts 
 that pitied them, or, like fiends, bring on all the destruction 
 of Sodom : never out of the ears of humanity could pass that 
 doleful voice of lamentation, crying, like the conscience of the 
 race, "Fallen, fallen, fallen." 
 
 Respecting these dungeons and their inhabitants, three 
 methods lay open to those who had been bold to take their 
 fellow-men and fling them in fetters out of their sight. They 
 might look down upon them with the fierce glare of indig- 
 nation, hate, and " revenge ;" they might say, " Caitifls, we 
 hate you ;" ye have passed beyond the range of law and of 
 pity ; our duty towards you now is to load the whip, and to 
 whet the axe. Or they might adopt a milder, but perhaps 
 still more cruel mode of procedure. They might turn in 
 sickened horror from the sight of the anguish whose existence 
 they would forget ; they might carefully deafen the walls, and 
 stop up every avenue through which the sounds of woe could 
 ascend ; they might thou urge the dance, and laugh, and sing; 
 they might sweep on in the glad pageantry of coronation and 
 victory; they might listen to the chan tings of solemn organs 
 or the light tremblings of bridal music, unsaddened by any 
 
30 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 cloud that floated up from below. Meanwhile, calamity might 
 be waxing greater and greater there, writing its pale emblems 
 on many faces ; famine, pestilence, torture, might enter un- 
 seen ; a groan of agony might go up to heaven, yet pass un- 
 heard by men on earth. Or, lastly, they might say, Be these 
 tenants of the dungeon what they may, they are the children 
 of our Father, the creatures of our God ; we dare do to them 
 23recisely what He commands, and has rendered necessary. 
 "VYe shall avoid the demoniac fury of the first method, and 
 the cruel cowardice, the inhuman indolence, of the second. 
 We shall do what law ordains, and that alone : we shall light 
 the lamp of Justice, and commit it to the hand of Love. 
 
 At the time when Howard appeared, the second of these 
 methods was widely and sadly prevalent ; and the work he 
 did may be briefly but compendiously indicated in these 
 words : — He penetrated into the dungeons of the world, and 
 compelled men to hear the voice of the agony beneatli their 
 feet. The result of this work was, that a voice of pity was 
 heard over the world, saying that the method of blind and 
 revengeful cruelty had gone too far, and that the third method 
 must now be attempted. 
 
 In what light did Howard regard his work, and what mo- 
 tives impelled him to undertake it ? Ignorant as a child 
 of metaphysical speculation, his simple theory of the world 
 was, that all men are alike devoid of merit before God, and 
 that there is no reason, by possibility, to be alleged why we 
 should not love every member of the human family. To one 
 expressing surprise at his deep love and pity for the depraved, 
 he made answer thus : — " I consider that, if it had not been 
 for divine grace, I might have been as abandoned as they are.'* 
 In these words is contained, not only an exposition and de- 
 fence of Howard's views as a philanthropist, but the whole 
 philosophy of Christian Philanthropy. The subordinate mo- 
 tives which urged Howard on his enterprise, and supported 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 31 
 
 him in its acliievement, are easily discoverable. It is certain 
 that the precise position into which he was brought by the 
 death of his wife rendered his home a place of small com- 
 fort. It is true, also, that he had travelled much during his 
 life, and that travelling was by no means disagreeable to 
 him. But the motive which beyond all others impelled him 
 to the work was a conviction that the voice of Grod bade 
 him go forth. ISTo man in this world acts on a single or sim- 
 ple motive ; and persistent, courageous work extorts the ad- 
 miration and honour of men, though its motive is not of the 
 noblest. To say that no lower motive than the approbation 
 of God influenced Howard, would be to say that he was no 
 mere man ; but few, or perhaps none, have acted more pure- 
 ly on the highest motive. " Howard is a beautiful philan- 
 thropist, eulogized by Burke, and, in most men s minds, a 
 sort of beatified individual. How glorious, having finished 
 off one's afiairs in Bedfordshire, or, in fact, finding them 
 very dull, inane, and worthy of being quitted and got away 
 from, to set out on a cruise over the jails, first of Britain, 
 then, finding that answer, over the jails of the habitable 
 globe ! * A voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of cha- 
 rity ; to collate distresses, to gauge wi-etchedness, to take 
 the dimensions of human misery :' — really, it is very fine." 
 These keen and sarcastic words are manifestly intended to 
 convey an impression that in choosing his work Howard had 
 some thought of the " glorious" aspect it would bear in the 
 eyes of men, how gi-and it would look, how much men would 
 talk about it. The testimony of bare and unassailable facts 
 renders it plain that in few instances recorded in human his- 
 tory, perhaps hardly in any, could such an impression be 
 more profoundly incorrect. Howard's eye was closed as 
 scarce ever human eye was closed, to every influence within 
 the atmosphere of earth. He looked, with a silent earnest^ 
 ness whose intensity was sublime, for recognition and reward, 
 
32 JOHN HOWARD. ^ 
 
 riglit into the eye of God. In this highest of all regards he 
 may be mentioned with the holiest of men, with Moses, Da- 
 niel, and John. 
 
 Our third question, how did Howard perform his work, 
 must be answered at somewhat gi'eater length. We come 
 to look upon him in his actual operations. To detail his 
 several journeys in Great Britain and on the Continent, is 
 indeed impossible here ; nor is the attempt in any respect 
 called for ; the outline of his work can be sketched, and its 
 general spirit displayed, in a few comprehensive glances. 
 
 About the close of the year 1773, there might have been 
 seen, on the high roads of the counties adjoining Bedford, a 
 gentleman on horseback, followed by his servant, travelling 
 at the rate of forty miles a-day. At every town where he 
 rested, he visited the jail. There was no fuss or hurry in 
 his motions, he never lost a moment, he never gave a mo- 
 ment too little to the business in hand, nothing escaped his 
 eye, and there was no spot into which he did not penetrate. 
 He went into places where the noisome and pestilential air 
 compelled him to draw his breath short, where deadly con- 
 tagion lurked, where physicians refused to follow him. Un- 
 agitated yet earnest, he measured every dungeon, explored 
 every particular respecting fare, accommodation, and fees, 
 inquired after the prevalence of disease and the means adopt • 
 ed for its prevention, and learned in every instance the re- 
 lation which the criminals held to those who superintended 
 and kept the jail. He rested not until he had gone east and 
 west, until he had carried his researches over the jails of Bri- 
 tain and of Europe, until he could credibly declare what was 
 the state of the prisons of the world. That gentleman was 
 John Howard. Was the scene which discovered itself to 
 his eye such as confirms the idea that the time had arrived 
 when an oiFence against God and man was no longer to be 
 endured, and when rays of light, as just as beneficent, were 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 33 
 
 to be cast into dungeons that had long been seen only by- 
 Heaven 1 
 
 A few facts, illustrative of Howard's mode of working, 
 will form the best reply. 
 
 He saw prevailing far and wide in England, that palpable 
 and cruel injustice which first set him on his journeying : 
 men declared guiltless were still laid in the dungeon. He 
 found that in the same land it was possible for one whose 
 neighbour owed him a paltry sum, to deprive that neighbour 
 of his liberty, and subject himself and his family to every- 
 thing short of absolute starvation ; nay, to starvation itself, 
 if it was spread over months instead of days. He found, 
 still under the kindly skies of that free, enlightened, and re- 
 ligious country, that it was possible for men to be farmed by 
 a fellow-man, and fed from so miserable a j)ittiince that they 
 must have suffered the perpetual gnawings of hunger. He 
 found dens or holes under gi^ound, of dimensions such as might 
 have held one wild animal, where several human beings were 
 flung, to gasp and groan the night long. In some, the heat 
 and closeness must have been stifling; in some, the floors 
 were wet and the walls dripping ; in some, open and reeking 
 sewers poisoned the air ; all that is noisome and revolting to 
 the human sense lay bare to his sickened but unflinching 
 gaze. Death, he discovered, had here a realm of his own, 
 where he escaped the eye of justice and humanity. From 
 time immemorial, uncured and uncared for, a virulent fever 
 dwelt in those dreary abodes ; it had a character of its own ; 
 it was the progeny and it seemed the genius of the place ; 
 it was called the jail-fever. There, in darkness, famine, and 
 loathsome horrors, it preyed on those victims.who were band- 
 ed over to it, and whose life-strength was broken by shame, 
 sorrow, and despair ; like a cruel and insatiate vulture, which 
 men permitted to tear out the hearts of their brethren, chain- 
 ed in the depths of dungeons. Year by year, its victims 
 
 D 
 
34 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 were counted by tlic score and the hundred ; many of them 
 mere debtors, and few of them proved guilty ; a grave and 
 notable fact, slight it who will, if nations are answerable to 
 God for the blood they shed ! Nor was the jail-fever alone ; 
 the small-pox raged fiercely, and the malignity of eveiy other 
 form of disease was heightened ; the want of air, the damp 
 vapoui^, the insufficient food, and other causes too many to 
 recount, exaggerated every tendency to consumption, rheu- 
 matism, palsy, and other nameless ailments. He found that 
 not only the body was delivered over, bound hand and foot, 
 to pestilence and famine, but that every soul which entered 
 those dens seemed literally committed for custody to the evil 
 power. All the maladies which can infect a mind still par- 
 tially pure, when villany recounts and gloats over its crimes, 
 finding its only recreation in the exercise, spread their con- 
 tagion there ; while drinking, swearing, gambling, and inde- 
 cency, were the appropriate accompaniments and aids in the 
 work. The jail-fever was not the worst enemy men encoun- 
 tered in a prison ! 
 
 The cashes of individual woe which Howard saw may be 
 imagined, but cannot be detailed. They were such as might 
 have wrung forth tears of blood. Pale and haggard faces on 
 which the light had not looked until its glare pained the 
 glazed and hollow eye, spirits broken, hearts hopeless, ghastly 
 beings who had, long years ago, left all the paths where com- 
 fort encourages, and better prospects smile, however faintly, 
 in the distance, and who now stood fronting mankind with 
 fiendish scowl, in the gaunt defiance of despair ; men who, 
 for small debts, after long years, died in prison ; fathers sus- 
 tained in the^r dreary confinement by the families whose 
 main support they had hitherto been, and several of whose 
 younger members dropp^ed at the time significantly into the 
 grave ; women lying desolate, far from every friendly eye, 
 from every cheering w^ord, and dying of incurable disease ; 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 35 
 
 brother mortals driven mad by anguish, whose cries in their 
 places of confinement attracted the passer-by. Such were 
 the sights which, in the course of his various journeys over 
 England and the world, John Howard saw. Had the time 
 come for philanthropy ^ 
 
 Howard had not been long engaged in his work, ere the 
 report of it reached the House of Commons. The House had 
 been lately concerning itself with such things, and Howard 
 was called to give evidence regarding what he had seen. His 
 answers were deemed clear and satisfactory, and he formally 
 received the thanks of the House. One Honourable Mem- 
 ber, however, hearing of his long and expensive circuits, and 
 finding the idea new to him that such things should be done 
 without cash payment, begged to be informed whether he had 
 travelled at his own expense. The man to whom the ques- 
 tion was put was no sentimentalist, but that question touched 
 him in the heart ; indignation, and contempt, and the tears 
 of outraged modesty, seem to have blended with scorn, as he 
 spurned the unconscious compliment of Mammon. 
 
 In the course of the year 1774 two bills were passed : one 
 abolished tJie injustice relating to the fees, the other had re- 
 ference to the health of prisoners. Howard said nothing ; 
 but, in his own way, had them both printed at his expense, 
 and sent one to every jailor in the kingdom. 
 
 About the close of the same year, he was requested to stand 
 candidate for the borough of Bedford. He acceded to the 
 request, and very narrowly missed his seat. He imputed his 
 failure to Government influence ; and, however this may have 
 been, w^e learn from his words on the occasion, that he was 
 by no means a man who concerned himself alone with village 
 politics, or was harnessed to one idea. He had cast his eyes 
 on the awakening motions of the gi'eat western giant, and 
 boldly avowed his opposition to part of the policy adopted 
 towards America. He also openly and emphatically declared 
 
36 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 that, if elected, lie would never accept of five sliilliugs of 
 emolument. He felt the loss of his seat somewhat deeply, 
 but, as usual, resigned himself with calmness to the disposal 
 of Providence. 
 
 Meanwhile, his peculiar work had not been abandoned. 
 He set out for Scotland and Ireland, and prosecuted still far- 
 ther his researches in England. He was just a month at 
 home about the election business ; in noting his method of 
 going about his work here, one hardly sees wherein his 
 " energy" was specially " slow." 
 
 Having looked with his own eyes into the prisons of Eng- 
 land, Scotland, and Ireland, he sat down, in the beginning of 
 1775, in his house at Cardington, to arrange his materials for 
 the press, and offer to the world such suggestions as he now 
 felt himself in a position to offer. But a thought struck him. 
 There were other prisons in the world besides those of Bri- 
 tain ; on the Continent of Europe might not new miseries 
 be seen, and might not valuable hints be obtained I The fact 
 was palpable ; but then it delayed the work, and was so te- 
 dious. Howard calmly laid aside his papers, got ready his 
 travelling gear, and set out for the Continent. There was 
 " slow" energy here ; and of a particularly valuable sort. 
 
 Howard's first journey in the inspection of Continental 
 prisons lay through France, Holland, part of Flanders, Ger- 
 many, and Switzerland. His researches were conducted in 
 his usual way — quietly, quickly, thoroughly ; his sense of 
 justice marking every abuse, his sagacity noting every excel- 
 lence. He did not travel so far without seeing miser}'-, and 
 here again comfort and hope went along with him into many 
 a dreary dungeon ; but the general glance at Continental 
 prisons afforded revelations which redounded to the honour 
 of the Continent, and to the shame of Britain. It is true 
 that he did not gain access to the severest form of confine- 
 ment in France ; his daring attempt to enter the Bastile was 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 37 
 
 foiled. It is true, likewise, tha the did discover traces of tor- 
 ture such as were not known in England. But in clean- 
 liness, order, and the general characteristic of being cared for, 
 the Continental jails had the clear superiority. In Holland, 
 — at that time, to all appearance, the most orderly and in- 
 ternally prosperous kingdom of Europe, — he saw in opera- 
 tion a system of management of criminals, in its main out- 
 lines, wise and humane. And the jail-fever existed only in 
 Britain ! 
 
 On returning from the Continent, he applied himself to 
 the publication of his work on Prisons. His friends Aiken 
 and Price assisted him in aiTanging his matter and securing 
 literary correctness. The book was printed at Warrington. 
 It was severe winter weather, yet Howard was always up by 
 two in the morning, revising proof-sheets ; at eight, he was 
 at the printing-office, having just dressed for the day and 
 breakfasted ; here he remained till one, when the men went 
 to dinner ; he then retired to his adjoining lodgings, and tak- 
 ing in his hand some bread and raisins, or other dried fruit, 
 generally walked for a little in the outskirts of the town, 
 calling probably on a friend. The printers by this time had 
 returned, and, proceeding to the printing-office, he continued 
 there until work was over. Still untired, he went then to 
 look over, with Aiken, the sheets put together by the latter 
 during the day. His supper consisted of a cup of tea or cof- 
 fee, and he retired to rest at ten or half-past ten. 
 
 The book published by Howard requires no comment. It 
 is a type of his work ; accurate, substantial, valuable, but de- 
 void of everything allied, even most distantly, to adornment 
 It is rather a book of statistics than anything else, and as 
 such there can be no doubt it was mainly regarded by him- 
 self : the facts of the case were wanted, and these he gave. 
 It was published in 1777, and additions were made at seve- 
 ral subsequent periods. 
 
38 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 In the course of the same year, by the death of his sister, 
 he inherited L. 15,000. This addition to the means at hi» 
 command he resolved to devote entirely to the prosecution 
 of that task which he believed to have been appointed hint 
 l)y God. He knew his son to be amply provided for, even 
 though his patrimonial estate was encroached upon ; but this 
 enabled him to leave that estate untouched. Howard did 
 his work not merely without cash payment ; he devoted to it 
 every farthing he could conscientiously expend. 
 
 For several years now his course does not demand a de- 
 tailed account. He went on calmly and indefatigably, ever 
 widening the range of his excureions, and ever rendering 
 more perfect what he had already done. Again and again 
 he visited the prisons of England, Scotland, and Ireland ; 
 again and again he swept over the Continent, the speed of 
 his journeys equalled only by the thoroughness of his work. 
 He had in every respect attained perfect adaptation to this 
 last. By long and vigorous temperance, entire abstinence 
 from animal food and intoxicating liquors, and a constant use 
 of the bath, his early weakness of frame seems to have been 
 exchanged for a considerable hardiness ; he iniu^ed himself to 
 do without sleep to such an extent, that, on his journeys, one 
 night in three, and that taken sometimes in his carriage, suf- 
 ficed ; so simple was his fare, that he could, without boasting, 
 profess himself able to subsist wherever men were to be found, 
 wherever the earth yielded bread and water. The tourist in 
 the Highlands of Scotland might have seen him stopping at 
 the cabin by the wayside to obtain a little milk ; among the 
 mountains of Sweden he pushed on, undaunted and tireless, 
 living on sour bread and sour milk ; on the bleak plains of 
 Russia, his lean and somewhat sallow face, and small spare 
 figure, might have been marked as he dashed past in his light 
 carriage ; he was on the high roads of France, in the moun- 
 tain gorges of Switzerland, tossing on the Mediterranean or 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 39 
 
 tlie Adriatic. Never did he tarry, never did lie haste, never 
 was he moved from his deliberate and wakeful calmness. No 
 personal duty was neglected. His son he always carefully 
 remembered, having him near him at all needful and proper 
 seasons, and diligently inquiring after the best instructors and 
 guardians, to whose care to commit him. The little cottages 
 of Cardington were not forgotten. These grew ever more 
 numerous, and their inmates were well remembered : the 
 work of alleviating the soitow of the world did not prevent 
 the little drops of comfort which had gladdened them while 
 their kind landlord dwelt beside, from falling within them 
 still. And wherever Howard was, it was impossible for men 
 not to discern wherein lay the secret of his indefatigable per 
 severance, his unwavering valour, his perpetual calm. In 
 whatever land he was, and amid whatever observers, he 
 never forgot or hesitated to join in evening prayer with his 
 attendant ; the door was shut, and the master and servant 
 knelt down together, as if at home in quiet Cardington. For 
 his own exertions, his one reason was, that he believed him- 
 self doing the will of God ; for the disposal of all events he 
 trusted, with the simplicity of a little child, and the faith of 
 a Hebrew patriarch, to the immediate power of Jehovah. He 
 passes by contending armies ; we mark a shudder thrilling 
 through his frame, bvit we see him also lift his eye upwards, 
 and comfort himself with the knowledge that God is sitting 
 King over the floods. He enters dungeons where others 
 shrink back from the tainted air ; duty, he says, has sent 
 him there, and Providence can preserve him. He is cast on 
 a bed of pain and languor ; he bows submissive to the chas- 
 tening hand of his Father, or bends his head, and asks where- 
 fore He contendeth with him. Men look upon him with 
 various feelings. The cold, the hard, the cruel, scorn his 
 whole enterprise ; the worshippers of Mammon look on 
 amazed, scarce finding heart to sneer ; gradually, from all 
 
40 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 lands, there begins to rise a deep, earnest sound of approba- 
 tion and acclaim. Howard hears neither sneers nor accla- 
 mations : he listens for the voice which seems to the world 
 to be altogether silent. 
 
 As the eye follows him during these years, it is impossible 
 not to discern a remarkable dexterity and adroitness in car- 
 rying through whatever business presents itself-^a quick per- 
 ception of what the case demands — a sure sagacity in pro- 
 viding against it — a ready adaptation to circumstances, and 
 swift assumption of the character necessary for the occasion : 
 all which it seems really difficult to reconcile with dulness. 
 
 Look at him, for instance, in that visit to Kussia, in which 
 he excited the interest, and was invited to the court, of Ca- 
 tharine. 
 
 Unbroken by the toils and hardships undergone in Sweden, 
 where not even tolerable milk could be obtained to put into 
 his unfailing tea, he arrives in the neighbourhood of St Peters- 
 burg. Forgetful of nothing, and conscious that his fame now 
 goes before him, and is apt to interfere with his work, lie 
 leaves his carriage in the neighbourhood, and enters the town 
 privately. The Empress, howeyer, has her eye upon him, and 
 sends a messenger to invite him to the palace. Here is clearly 
 a call to the highest distinction and applause, — to become the 
 observed of all observers, — in the smile of one whose smile 
 secures that of all others. If there is observable weakness, 
 even pardonable weakness, in his nature, — if the appearance 
 of his work, in the eyes of men, does sensibly affect him, — ^here 
 is a case for the quiet gratification of the hidden feeling, with- 
 out the likelihood, nay, the possibility, of its being ever called 
 in question. There are positive arguments, too, which seem 
 plausible enough. The Empress may be won to a special in- 
 terest in prisons ; philanthropy may kindle itself in the court; 
 what unconceived good may shape itself out therefrom is not 
 to be measured. Howard looks into the invitation with his 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 41 
 
 cool, piercing English eye, flashing at once through all plausi- 
 bilities into the heart of the matter ; he feels instinctively 
 til at his work is in the dungeon, and not the palace, and that 
 to encircle it with a blaze of publicity will probably inter- 
 fere with the positive rugged task he has appointed himself: 
 he refuses the invitation. 
 
 Once in St Petersburg, he is soon at his work. 
 
 He has heard much of the humanity of the Kussian cri- 
 minal arrangements ; and, for one thing, it has been boasted to 
 him that capital punishment is here abolished. His strong 
 instinctive sagacity doubts the fact. But how attain a know- 
 ledge of the truth 1 All authorities simply give the bland 
 assurance that it is so ; the published codes bear witness to 
 the same ; how can one get past what is said and seen, to be 
 assured there is no discordance between that and the actual 
 inner fact ? Howard hires a hackney coach, and drives to 
 the house of the man who inflicts the knout. This first pre- 
 caution is necessary to remove all appearance of being a 
 stranger. He enters quickly, wearing a purpose-like, busi- 
 ness-like look, as of one who is in the simple discharge of his 
 duty. The man eyes him with astonishment, and somewhat 
 of fear. Howard addresses him, soothingly but firmly ; no 
 evil is intended towards him; he has but to answer, clearly 
 and at once, the questions about to be put. Howard's look 
 is cool and adroit ; the Russian is all submission and com- 
 plaisance : the colloquy commences : — " Can you inflict the 
 knout in such a manner as to occasion death in a short time '?" 
 — " Yes, I can." " In how short a time V — " In a day 
 or two." " Have you ever so inflicted it 1" — " I have." 
 " Have you lately ?" — " Yes ; the last man who was punished 
 with my hands by the knout died of the punishment." " In 
 what manner do you thus render it mortal ?" — "By one or 
 more strokes on the sides, which carry ofl* large pieces of 
 flesh." " Do you receive orders thus to inflict the punish- 
 
42 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 mentf' — "I do." The brief, soldier-like inquiry is com- 
 pleted ; not a point has been omitted ; Howard is satisfied, 
 and departs. The elaborate cloaking of Russian policy, the 
 infernal cruelty masked under the diabolic smile, has been 
 ])enetrated by the simple, plain-looking Englishman, now ap- 
 l)roaching his sixtieth year. 
 
 While prosecuting his researches in St Petersburg, over- 
 come by his exertions in Sweden, and affected probably by 
 the climate, Howard is seized with the ague. He has no 
 time to spare ; his work waits at Moscow ; he procures a 
 light caniage, and sets out. The ague is still on him, but 
 his strong spirit shakes it away ; he travels it off. The 
 journey to Moscow is ^ve hundred miles ; in less than five 
 days he is there, his clothes having never been off since 
 starting. He enters Moscow as calmly as if returning from 
 a drive in the suburbs, and is instantly at his work. Such 
 is the old man's way — " the dull, solid Howard." 
 
 Consider, again, that tour in France, when he was forbid- 
 den to pass the frontiers. The interdict is strict. He has 
 seriously offended the French Court by plain tmths, and re- 
 searches not to be baulked. He ponders the circumstances 
 with his usual calmness ; duty seems to speak clearly ; he 
 resolves to enter France. He assumes the disguise of a phy- 
 sician — having formerly acquired some knowledge of medi- 
 cine ; adroitly escapes arrest in Paris; and on the streets of 
 Toulon foots it trippingly as a French exquisite. He attains 
 his object, and leaves France by sea. In the face of the 
 French Government he has crossed the country, and made 
 what observ^ations seemed to him good. Whatever may be 
 said of the achievement, it surely does not look like that of 
 the mere shiftless mechanical workman. 
 
 In more private instances the case was similar. He visits 
 the Justitia hulk. The captain brings him a biscuit as sample 
 of the provisions : it is as wholesome as could be wished. 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 43 
 
 Howard puts it in his pocket. All necessary information 
 seems to have been obtained, yet he lingers ; there is one on 
 board who wishes he would take himself off. He has, in 
 fact, been making observations in his own way ; his eyes are 
 open as well as his ears. He remarks that things have a 
 tawdry, disordered look, that the prisoners are sickly and 
 tattered, that there are several things liere which the captaiu's 
 relation, so frankly given, does not embrace. Accordingly 
 he waits. At length the messes are weighed out, Howard 
 looking on quite calm, but with something of expectation in 
 his face. Here come the biscuits ; they are in broken bits, 
 green and mouldy ; there is no longer any mysteiy in the 
 pallid looks of the crew. It is now Howard's turn to speak. 
 Oat starts the wholesome biscuit from his pocket; it is held 
 up, before captain and crew, beside the gi-ecn loathsome frag- 
 ments; and Howard indignantly rebukes the former for his 
 cruelty and falsehood. One can conceive the brightening of 
 tlie eyes of the crew as they stand by in amazement. If you 
 say Howard was slow and heavy, it might be well to mention 
 how he could have done his work better : if it appears that 
 he was a quick, indefatigable, effective worker, it might be 
 well to consider to what extent biographic veils of dust and 
 cobweb may hide the clear strong lines in the face of a man. 
 Howard was endowed with no very remarkable intellectual 
 power. That in every mental exertion connected with words, 
 that in everything relating to expression of thought or nar- 
 ration of action, he was naturally devoid of uncommon, per- 
 haps even of ordinary, faculty, must be conceded : the only 
 question which admits of discussion is, whether, in that power 
 of action, that faculty of perceiving and doing the thing need- 
 ful, with closed or stuttering lips, which has been recognised 
 as characteristically English, he was not so far superior to 
 the common run of men, that his title can be vindicated to 
 a really high endowment; whether, with what difference 
 
44 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 soever, he was not cut from tliat same hard stratum of the 
 Erzgebirge rock from which have come the silent Saxon 
 Olives and Wellingtons. He himself estimated his powers 
 very low. " I am the plodder," he said, ^^ who goes about 
 to collect material for men of genius to make use of." 
 " How often,'' to use again his own humble words, " have 
 we seen that important events have arisen from weak instru- 
 ments !" Perhaps, for once, it was right in the human race 
 to set among its honoured and immortal heroes one whose 
 highest glory was his humility, whose greatest strength was 
 his weakness. Yet it were a difficult thing to prove that he 
 did not possess a high talent of the working order. Thurlow 
 was much struck with the sagacity he displayed in an inter- 
 view he had with him ; when clearly set before the eye as 
 they were done, and not as they have been narrated, his 
 actions do not wear an aspect of slowness, dulness, or mere 
 mechanical gyration ; the work he had to do required not 
 high intellectual power, but what it did require he fully dis- 
 played. Once only does he seem to have failed, or at least 
 to have abandoned an attempt ere effecting the work pro- 
 posed : he was appointed supervisor of certain penitentiary 
 establishments which were to be erected, and after a time re- 
 signed the post. But here he was both hampered by inter- 
 ference, and restrained from the work which he deemed spe- 
 cially his own ; perhaps resignation was the most decided, 
 manly, and appropriate course open in the circumstances. 
 What Howard might have been in action, had he in early 
 life been placed in a conspicuous professional or political 
 situation, it is bootless to inquire ; yet, considering the long- 
 sustained activity, the inevitable observation, the ii'on deci- 
 sion, the quick adroitness, which a survey of his career dis- 
 covers, it is surely no safe assertion that he possessed by 
 nature no power of work, define it as you will, which 
 made him remarkable among men, and would have secured 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 45 
 
 liim credit, if not fame, in whatever situation lie had been 
 placed. 
 
 Howard's last two journeys to the Continent claim a more 
 particular notice than the others. 
 
 When he had been long engaged in the work of investiga- 
 ting the state of prisons, and that task had been approxi- 
 mately accomplished all over Europe, it became apparent to 
 him that yet another service was appointed him. He had 
 looked upon one great portion of the human race, which most 
 men forget and despise ; he now turned to look upon another, 
 whose claim upon their brethren is also negative rather than 
 positive, who are held to their hearts solely by the chains of 
 pity, — the sick and diseased of the human family. This other 
 great dumb class was to find an advocate in Howard ; he 
 aspired to perform the twofold angelic office of bringing hope 
 to the prisoner and healing to the sick. 
 
 About this time, menacing Europe from the East, lying 
 along its bordei^ like the purple cloud which wraps the Sa- 
 miel, the destroying pestilence, named by distinction the 
 Plague, seems to have attracted special attention. That slight 
 and sallow man, who had struggled his life-long with sickness, 
 whose face was as that of a hermit in a wilderness, who was 
 slow of speech, and upon whose head had now fallen the 
 snows of nearly threescore winters, marked that Samiel -cloud 
 from afar. He saw it coming slowly, resistlessly on, strew- 
 ing its way with pallid corpses, taking the smile from off the 
 faces of the nations. He thought it possible that, by enter- 
 ing its shade, he might learn the secret of its baneful energy, 
 and save some of his fellow-creatures from its power. He 
 thought he heard the voice of his God bidding him go ; he 
 looked calmly from his quiet island-home towards Asia and 
 the ^gean, and Avent. Other diseases were to meet him on 
 the way, — the lazar-houses of Europe were embraced in his 
 enterprise ; but the Plague, like the monarch of the baleful 
 
46 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 host, was tlie iiltimute, and gradually tlie principal foe with 
 which the weak Howard was to contend. 
 
 Passing over the previous stages of his journey, we find 
 him, in the summer of 178G, in Constantinople. Here he 
 visited the hospitals and lazarettos, every den and stronghold 
 of the plague. As he entered, a pain smote him across the 
 forehead, continuing for an hour after he left ; his conduc- 
 tors drew back in fear ; he saw what was oppressive to soul 
 and sense ; yet he never flinched, — never abandoned that 
 calm, heaven-lit look, which nought on earth could darken or 
 abash, — never stopped till his task was done. 
 
 This once accomplished, he prepared to return to Vienna. 
 But he paused ; a thought had struck him, — he could not 
 proceed. The prison- world he had entered solely as a visitor ; 
 in no other capacity was there a possibility of his doing so. 
 But was not the case altered here 1 Was there not a way 
 of learning the secrets of lazarettos more thorough than that 
 of mere inspection and hearsay ? There was, and Howard 
 saw it. Yet the condition was stern. It w^as, that he should 
 enter a lazaretto, and, confined himself, learn, beyond possi- 
 bility of deception, the state and feelings of its inmates. The 
 old man deliberately accepted the condition, and proceeded to 
 enter a lazaretto. From Constantinople he sailed for Smyrna, 
 chose there a vessel with a foul bill of health, and departed 
 for Venice. On leaving the Morea, where the vessel took in 
 water, tliey were borne down upon by a Tunisian pii*ate, and 
 a fight ensued. To the astonishment of the crew, How^ard 
 stood by perfectly calm. At length the pirate seemed about 
 to prevail. As a last resort, the Turks loaded their largest 
 cannon to the muzzle with nails, spikes, and what destructiA^e 
 missiles could l)e found. Howard stepped forward, seeing 
 probably that the men mismanaged the matter, and coolly 
 pointed the gun on the enemy's deck ; the volley burst forth, 
 carrying death among their crew; as the smoke rolled along 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 47 
 
 the sea, tlie pirate was seen lioisting sail, and bearing away. 
 The voyage proved long and stormy. For two months How- 
 ard was tossed about alone in wild, dangerous weather; yet 
 he bore a brave heart through it all. " I well remember," he 
 says, " I had a good night, when, one evening, my cabin- 
 liscuits, &c., were floated with water ; and, thinking I should 
 be some hours in drying it up, I went to bed to forget it." 
 
 Arriving at Yenice, he found he had to spend two months 
 in the lazaretto. He was first put into a loathsome room, 
 " without table, chair, or bed," and swarming with vermin. 
 He hired a pei^on to cleanse it, and the operation occupied 
 two days, yet it remained offensive ; headache, caused by the 
 tainted air and infected walls, pei*petually tormented him. 
 From his first apai*tment he was, after some time, removed 
 to another as bad as the former. Here, in the division of 
 the apartment where he was to sleep, he was " almost sur- 
 rounded with water," and found a dry spot on which to fix 
 his bed only by kindliug a large fire on the flags. Six days 
 he remained in the new quarter. Once more he was removed, 
 and this time there a})peared at least a possibility of improve- 
 ment. His new a]:)artment was, indeed, unfurnished, filthy, 
 and " as offensive as the sick- wards of the worst hospitals." 
 Bat the water and the vermin seem to liave disappeared. 
 The rooms, however, were full of contagion, for they had 
 not been cleaned from time immemorial ; and though Howard 
 had them washed again and again with warm water, he found 
 his appetite failing, and a slow fever beginning to fasten upon 
 liim. But he w^as on no theatrical mission, and w^ould die 
 at his post only when all remedy failed him. Here, again, 
 \ve meet the difficulties of the theory touching his slow and 
 shiftless dulness. With the aid of the English consul, he 
 obtained brushes and lime ; his attendant — for a considera- 
 tion — assisted him in manufacturing whitewash ; despite the 
 prejudices of the observers, he rose up thr 3e hours before his 
 
48 JOHN HOWAKD, 
 
 guard, and commenced, along with liis former assistant, to 
 whitewash his apartment. He resolved to lock up his guard 
 if he interfered : one is almost sorry the man did not, for 
 Howard would have kept to his determination. All who 
 passed by looked with astonishment at the whitened and 
 wholesome walls, where so many had been contented to pine 
 and repine, with no attempt at cure. 
 
 The days in the Venice lazaretto rolled slowly on, weari- 
 some, dismal, unvarying ; Howard watched everything, knew 
 everything, and felt the weariness he longed to relieve. His 
 faith failed not ; with calm and easy feelings he looked for- 
 ward to the term of his confinement. But suddenly there 
 came a change : darker clouds than had ever yet cast their 
 shadow over him took their course towards that dreary laza- 
 retto. On the 11th of October 1786, he received letters 
 from England, with two pieces of information. The one was, 
 that his son was following evil courses, and dashing wildly 
 on in a path whose end, dimly indicated to the father, must 
 be one of the deepest darkness : the other, that a movement 
 was proceeding in England, under high and promising aus 
 pices, for the erection of a monument to himself N^ot hear- 
 ing, at first, the worst concerning his son, he wrote home 
 with deep soitow, yet in hope. The proposal for a monu- 
 ment next required his attention. An English gentleman 
 had formerly had an interview with Howard at Rome of an 
 hour's length, and the result was an admiration on the part 
 of the former which knew no bounds. On hi^ return to Eng- 
 land, he had proposed, through the columns of the Gentle- 
 Tiiaris Magazine, that a public monument should be erected 
 to one whom he styled " the most truly glorious of human 
 beings." The wide-spread and profound admiration for 
 Howard which, ere this time, had sunk into the British 
 mind, had thus found vent ; the proposal had at once taken 
 effect, and the movement was headed by certain noblemen. 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 49 
 
 With astonishment it was heard that Howard wrote abso- 
 lutely refusing the honour, and alleging that the idea of it 
 gave him exquisite pain. At first this was thought a grace- 
 ful mode of acceptance, or at least a struggle of excessive 
 modesty, easily to be overborne ; but the fact was soon put 
 beyond dispute. Even after long arguing and urging by in- 
 timate and honoured friends, he decidedly and unaltei-ably 
 refused. From the lazaretto of Venice he wrote to his friend 
 Mr Smith of Bedford, rehearsing the directions he had given, 
 ere quitting Cardington, respecting his obsequies ; his words 
 were these, copied now with no alteration, and with no com- 
 ment : — 
 
 " (a) As to my burial, not to exceed ten pounds. 
 
 ** (6) My tomb to be a plain slip of marble, placed under that of my dear 
 Henrietta's in Cardington Church, with this inscription : — 
 
 ** * John Howard, died , aged — -. 
 
 My hope is in Christ.' " 
 
 Some time after, in grateful and courteous terms, he sig- 
 nified to his well-wishers in England that his resolution was 
 fixed, and that he would accept no public mark of appro- 
 bation. 
 
 Let this fact be candidly weighed ; and let it then be said 
 whether what has been alleged regarding Howard's grand 
 motive in his work is other than the bare and faintly-ex- 
 pressed truth. For himself he would have no glory. He 
 accept honour from men, who was the weakest of instru- 
 ments, and whose highest honour it was that he was worthy 
 to be made an instrument at all in the hand of God ! He 
 stop to be crowned by men, whom the Almighty had honoured 
 with His high command, and permitted to give strength and 
 comfort for Him ! He listen to the applause of the nations, 
 whom his inmost heai-t knew to be weak and unworthy, and 
 whose inspiring and indestructible hope it was, that he might 
 be numbered even among the least in the kingdom of heaven ! 
 The people seemed in loud acclaim to say. Thou hast brought 
 
 E 
 
50 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 US water out of the rock : Howard, with eager face, and out- 
 stretched hand, and heart pained to the quick, cried out, I 
 jiave done nothing, I deserve nothing ; God has done all. 
 
 Released from the lazaretto, and after spending a week in 
 Venice, Howard proceeded by sea to Trieste, and thence to 
 "Vienna. During this time, the fever he had escaped for a 
 time continued to creej) over him, the whole air of the laza- 
 retto having been infected : it greatly impaired his strength ; 
 und the accounts, deepening in sadness, which reached him 
 respecting his son, made his affliction almost too heavy to 
 bear : — " I am reduced by fatigue of body and mind ; I have 
 gi'eat reason to bless God my resolution does not forsake me 
 in so many solitary hours." It did not forsake him ; it re- 
 mained firm as a rock in vexed surge, that could ever raise 
 its head into the pure light of God's smile ; but human faith 
 has not often been so sorely tried. In the letter written from 
 Vienna, from which the above words are taken, he referred 
 in approving terms to the conduct towards his son of several 
 domestics whom he had left at Cardington, expressed his per- 
 suasion that it arose out of regard to his mother, and con- 
 cluded the paragraph in these words : — "Who, I rejoice, is 
 deadr He often thought of Harriet ; and we may conceive 
 that now, in his extreme soitow, the old days would flit past 
 him robed in the still and melancholy light of memory ; that 
 tender, and to him beautiful wife, seemed to return to lean 
 over him in his loneliness and sickness of heart ; but bethought 
 of his son, and the tear which started to his own eye was 
 transferred by imagination to that of his Harriet, w^here i)er- 
 chance he had never seen one before ; then love arose and 
 triumphed over anguish, and he blessed God that his best be- 
 loved was lying still Has art ever surpassed the pathos of 
 those words % 
 
 Early in 1787 Howard was again in England, proceeding 
 to make arrangements respecting his son. The latter was a 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 51 
 
 hopeless maniac. He appears to have been of that common 
 class of young men whom strong passions, weak judgment, 
 and good-natured, silly facility, render a prey to those who 
 combine artfulness with vice. A servant in whom Howard 
 placed absolute confidence betrayed his trust infamously, al- 
 lured his charge into evil, and excited in his breast contempt 
 for his father. That father, ever most anxious to provide 
 him the best and safest superintendence and tuition, had sent 
 him to prosecute his education at Edinburgh, where he re- 
 sided with Dr Black. There it was that prolonged habits 
 of vice fatally impaired his constitution, and after a period 
 he became deranged. In this condition, watched over with 
 all the care and kindness which his father's efforts could se- 
 cure, he lingered for a considerable number of years, and died. 
 It was a touching case ; for he seems not to have been with- 
 out that gleam of nobleness which so often accompanies and 
 adorns a character not intellectually strong. In Edinburgh 
 once, when some one spoke disrespectfully of his father, and 
 basely hinted that his philanthropic expenses might impair 
 the fortunes of his son, young Howard indignantly resented 
 the insinuation, and asked how he could ever do so much 
 good with the money as his father. 
 
 Howard now remained in England for about two yeai-s, 
 seeing his son provided for as well as was possible, and pre- 
 paring the result of his travels for the press. His religion 
 still continued to deepen and to grow more fervent; the feel- 
 ing of the littleness of his efforts and powers to increase. The 
 few private memoranda that remain of the period breathe an 
 earnest and habitual devotion ; there is in them an occasional 
 fla^h of clear intellectual insight and moral ardour ; but, 
 most of all, they are characterized by humility. " Examples 
 of tremendous wrath will be held up, and what if I should be 
 among these examples!" " Behold, I am vile; what shall T 
 answer Thee, oh my God ! I have no claim on Thy bounty 
 
52 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 but what springs from the benignity of Thy nature. God 
 forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Jesus Christ." 
 " A few of God's people that met in an upper room appear, 
 in my eye, gi-eater than all the Roman empire. God kept 
 them." "Where there is most holiness, there is most humi- 
 lity. Never does our understanding shine more than when 
 it is employed in religion. In certain circumstances retire- 
 ment is criminal ; with a holy fire I would proceed." " Ease, 
 affluence, and honours, are temptations which the world holds 
 out ; but, remember, ' the fashion, of this world passeth away :' 
 on the other hand, fatigue, poverty, sufferings, and dangera, 
 with an approving conscience. Oh God ! my heart is fixed, 
 trusting in Thee ! My God ! Oh glorious words ! there is 
 a treasure, in comparison of which all things in this world 
 are dross." 
 
 England was now for Howard all hung as it were in weeds 
 of mourning. The hope to which he had clung that his son 
 might cheer him in his old age had vanished utterly ; or at 
 least the term when such might be possible could not be fixed. 
 Tliere were probably in this world few sadder hearts at that 
 time than John Howard's. But he had not yet discovered 
 the secret of the plague ; there was still work for mercy to 
 do : it was now perhaps the greatest happiness of which he 
 was capable to go upon that work. And he went ; the 
 -v^eaiy heart, to soothe and heal the weary-hearted ; one of the 
 saddest men in England, to meet the plague. 
 
 On the 27th of September 1789, he was at Moscow. He 
 seemed now to feel that his end was not far; and we find him 
 engaged in solemn transactions with his God. He brought 
 out that old dedication of himself to his Maker, which we saw 
 him subscribe in the days when his life had first been dark- 
 ened, and when the terrors of the Almighty, which had rolled 
 like low cloudy masses over his soul, were becoming suffused 
 with celestial radiance in the full beaming out of the Sun of 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 53 
 
 Kighteousness. Again he owned his entire unworthiness and 
 his entire weakness ; again he looked up to the Rock of Ages ; 
 again he gave himself up, soul, spirit, and body, for ever and 
 ever, to God. As we gather, too, from the pages of Brown, 
 he looked again on that covenant which his wife had made 
 with her Father in heaven : one can see the old and weary- 
 man gazing over its lines, while a tear steals from his eye, a 
 tear of lonely sadness, yet touched with one gleam of light, 
 from the thought that it will not now be long ere he again 
 meet his Harriet. This was in the September of 1789 : it 
 was his last pause on his hard life-journey, his last draught 
 of living waters from those fountains which Divine Love never 
 permits to diy up in the desert of the world : again he arose 
 and went on his way ; but now the pearly gates and the golden 
 walls stood before the eye of faith, calm, beautiful, eternal, 
 on the near horizon. 
 
 In the beginning of January 1790, he was residing at 
 Kherson, a village on the Dnieper, near the Crimea, still, as 
 of old, with indefatigable resolution and kindness pursuing 
 his work In visiting a young lady dying of a fever the in- 
 fection seized him, and he soon felt that death was upon him. 
 On his death -bed he was what we have always known him. 
 We hear the voice of prayer for his son, of inextinguishable 
 pity for the afflicted, and, concerning himself, these words, 
 addressed to his friend Admiral Priestman — " Let me beg of 
 you, as you value your old friend, not to suffer any pomp to 
 be used at my fimeral, nor any monument nor monumental 
 inscription whatsoever, to mark where I am laid : but lay 
 me quietly in the earth, place a sun-dial over my grave, and 
 let me be forgotten." Thus, with the same calm, saintly 
 smile, so still but so immoveable, which he had worn during 
 life, he passed away. 
 
 All nations had now heard of Howard, and all nations 
 honoured him. England, in silent pride, placed his statue in 
 
54 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 St Paul's Cathedral. There he remained unmoved, and his 
 name more and more became a word of love and of admira- 
 tion in the households of the world. Burke spoke of him 
 in his own burning and majestic terms ; Foster pointed to 
 him as one cased in an iron mail of resolution such as made 
 him a wonder among the sons of men ; Chalmers responded 
 to his nobleness with the tameless enthusiasm of that royal 
 heart. But in our day a mighty hand has been stretched 
 foi-th to drag him from his seat among the immortal ones of 
 time : one, of perhaps more wondrous genius, and in some 
 sense of more penetrating intellectual glance, than either 
 Chalmers, Burke, or Foster, has flung quiet but remorseless 
 scorn on Howard. That one is Thomas Carlyle. It is un- 
 necessary to quote his words : those which seem to approach 
 nearest to positive misconception and injustice have been al- 
 ready set before the reader. They are well known, occur- 
 ring in the celebrated pamphlet on Model Prisons. It can 
 be stated in a word or two what Mr Carlyle has seen, and 
 what, making appeal to readers, it may without presumption 
 be said that he has not seen, in Howard. He has seen re- 
 garding him that of which he appears, in all cases, to possess 
 a more vivid perception than any writer of past or present 
 times — the intellectual type and calibre. Doubts may be 
 entertained whether a strong case might not be made out in 
 defence even here, if the difference between working and talk- 
 ing talent were accurately defined, and the dulness of bio- 
 gi-aphers taken fully into account. But I care not to urge 
 this consideration on behalf of Howard. I claim for him no 
 intellectual glory. I concede that, if Mr Carlyle does not 
 impute to him any vulgar motive, of desire to make an ap- 
 peai'ance, or the like, — and I leave readers to judge whether 
 such an impression is, or is not, conveyed by the words cited, 
 — there is nothing which he says concerning him demon- 
 strably false. Say that his highest talents were " English ve- 
 
JOHN IIOW.UID. 55 
 
 racily, solidity, sinQplicity ;" believe him even to have been 
 (if you can, for I positively cannot) " dull, and even dreary /' 
 still, I ask, is his highest praise the words, so severely qua- 
 lified by the spirit of the context, " the modest, noble How- 
 ard ]" Let any one look along that life, calmly figuring i{ 
 to himself, pondering it till he knows its real meaning and 
 vital j)rinciple, and say whether there burns not through it, 
 however veiled from the general eye, a sublime, an immortal 
 radiance. Let him say whether we cannot utter, with pecu- 
 liar emphasis and venei-ation, these words, " The Holy How- 
 ard.'* It is in this that his claim to be honoured by men 
 consists ; — that he was honoured by God to live nearer to 
 Himself tlian any but a chosen few of the human race. 
 
 And is it not a reasonable and equitable claim ] Is it 
 for ever to be impossible for a man to be honoured of men 
 unless his intellectual power is great ? That Avere surely 
 hard ; surely essential equality were thus denied me as a 
 man ; surely I could not so be calmly content under this 
 sun. If our relation to the Infinite is of that nature which 
 Christ has unfolded, it cannot be so. If, from the seraphim 
 who receive the light of the throne on their white robes, to 
 the poor widow who kneels by her husband's corpse, and 
 bows her head to the God who has given and taken away, 
 we are but servants of one Master, soldiers of one host, mem- 
 bers of one family, it cannot be so. For then the highest 
 honour of the archangel and of the child is, tliat he does, 
 well and gladly, and giving God the glory, what Gods bids 
 liim do. And methinks it is best even so. We will honour 
 the old soldier, whose name we have never heard, but who 
 at eventide contentedly wound the colours round his heart 
 and died for the good cause, as much as we honour the Crom- 
 well who led that cause to the pinnacles of the world ; ay. 
 and without refusing to obey Cromwell either, without 
 losing one atom of the real worth and value of 30-cal^ed 
 
56 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 " hero-worsliip." The angel who ministers to a dying beggar 
 may hold himself as highly honoured as he who keeps the 
 gate of heaven. 
 
 Howard showed to all men how the weakest do their work 
 in God's army ; he exhibited, with a strange revealing power, 
 how, were men unfallen, every order of intellectual faculty 
 might be employed to its full extent, but with equal merit, 
 that is, with none, and with equal reward, that is, the free 
 smiling of God's countenance. Despise him who will on 
 earth, in heaven Isaac Newton does not look with scorn on 
 John Howard ! Is not the special honouring of intellectual 
 greatness, nay, the special honouring of any human being, 
 an effect of the fall 1 Is it not the true attitude of all the 
 finite to look around with love on their brethren, but with 
 undivided gaze to look upwards to God ? It would seem as- 
 suredly to be so j and that we now rightly honour our great 
 ones merely because we must fix our poor eyes so steadfastly 
 on them, while, commissioned by God, they lead us onwards 
 towards the eternal light. 
 
 Howard is almost alone among those whom men have 
 agreed to honour. They are the intellectually mighty who, 
 by that necessity of our position just glanced at, become best 
 known. Thousands there may be, and there always are, 
 whose lives are " faithful prayers," who would, with grate- 
 ful joy, suffer anything for the sake of Christ. But Howard 
 was sepai-ated by God for a work which could not but attract 
 attention ; an arduous and a heroic work, for which the time 
 had fully come in the history of the world. For that work 
 he was qualified, and it, with absolute thoroughness, he did. 
 Money was as nothing in his estimation in comparison of it ; 
 but he was as far above fame as money, and no danger or 
 toil could daunt him : " cholera doctors" Mr Carlyle com- 
 pares to him, but he went where hired doctors would not 
 go; and what cholera doctor, what man among men, ever 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 57 
 
 went for two months into solitary confinement, amid infec- 
 tion and all discomfort, if perchance he might bring thence 
 one drop of balm for the sorrowful 1 Then consider his hu- 
 mility : Ah ! surely Howard was one of the men who might 
 liave been left on his pedestal. Think how he would himself 
 have met Mr Carlyle's scorn. " It is true," he would have 
 said; "such I was, if so good; I was nothing. Go into 
 your great cathedral, and from the midst of your venerated 
 dead cast forth the statue of John Howard ; let a white ta- 
 blet alone recall my memory, and place it beside that of my 
 Henrietta." Howard never asked his fame ; in his life he 
 would accept no votive wreath : whatever had been said of 
 his followers, regarding him one might have expected silence. 
 In a very extended sense, his fame was unsolicited. Not 
 only was himself slow of speech, but his biographei^s were 
 such as has been said. Yet the inarticulate human instinct 
 discerned that there was around him that beauty of holiness 
 which, in the eyes of God and of angels, is alone honourable, 
 and which it is well for men to honour, and placed him in 
 the pantheon of the world. That human instinct was right ; 
 there surely he will remain. Look not for him among the 
 high intellectual thrones, among earth's sages or poets, among 
 eai-th's kings or conquerors. But yonder, among the few 
 lowly yet immortal ones whose fame has been endorsed in 
 heaven, see John Howard. His image is formed of marble, 
 pure as the everlasting snow : away from it, as if desecrating 
 its whiteness, fall the robes of false adornment in which men 
 have sought to envelop it ; away also fall all dimming, de- 
 facing, distorting veils of misconception; and there beams 
 out clearly the face of a simple, humble man, earnest of pur- 
 pose, celestially calm, and with one tear of inexpressible love 
 on the cheek ; from the heavens comes a viewless hand, en- 
 circling the head with a serene and saintly halo, its mild ra- 
 diance falling over the face, and blending with its speechless 
 
58 JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 human pity ; the eye is fixed on the eternal mansions, and 
 the lips seem ever, in humble and tremulous gratitude, to say, 
 " Lord God, why me T The outline and features of that 
 face Mr Carlyle saw, but that halo, and the fixedness of that 
 heavenward gaze, he did not see. 
 
WILLIAM WILBEKIORCE. 59 
 
 WILLIAM WILBERFOKCE. 
 
 William Wilberforce was born in Hull, in August 1759. 
 The auspices of liis birth were in important respects favour- 
 able : a fii-st glance reveals no exception or abatement to their 
 benignity. Of a wealthy and ancient family, he opened his 
 eyes on a life-path paved by affluence, and thick-strewn with 
 the flowers of indulgence. Every influence around him was 
 of comfort and kindness ; wherever his young eye fell, it met 
 a smile. And his own nature was such as to make him 
 peculiarly susceptive of the delights around. He was, it is 
 true, a tender and delicate child, small for his age, and in no 
 respect of promising appearance ; but there was in his heart 
 an irrepressible fountain of kind and guileless vivacity; his 
 voice was of sweet silvery tone; he was gentle and considerate 
 in his ways : altogether, he was a brisk, mildly-spirited, fas- 
 cinating little thing, who could centre in himself every rdv 
 of encircling kindness and comfort, and enhance his enjoy- 
 ment by radiating out smiles of happy contentment on those 
 around him. All this was well ; perhaps a happier sphere 
 could scarce be imagined ; yet it cannot be pronounced in the 
 highest sense auspicious, because there was wanting in it any 
 high presiding influence of character. The boy's eye could 
 rest on no clear, earnest light of godliness, burning in hia 
 
60 - WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 father's house ; his parents were conveiitionally excellent 
 people, respectable, cheerful, hospitable, gay; nothing better 
 or worse. 
 
 In 1768, the father of Wilberforce died : the latter in- 
 herited a rich patrimony, which was afterwards increased. 
 The child, now nine years old, was sent to reside with an 
 uncle, living by turns at Wimbledon and St James's Place. 
 Under his roof he came within the sphere of earnest piety. 
 His aunt was one of those unnoticed witnesses to the inextin- 
 guishable power of vital Christianity, whose light, kindled 
 by the instrumentality of Whitefield, spread a gentle but 
 precious radiance through the spiritual haze of last century. 
 Under her influence his mind was roused to a new earnest- 
 ness, and turned with great force in a religious direction. 
 At the age of twelve he wrote such letters on religious sub- 
 jects as were afterwards deemed by some worthy of publica- 
 tion ; and, though this was wisely prevented, the fact is a . 
 proof that his boyish intellect was brought into earnest and 
 protracted consideration of religious truth. 
 
 This state of matters was abruptly changed. His mother 
 took the alarm. The prospect that her son should become a 
 canting Methodist was appalling. She immediately recalled 
 him to Yorkshire, and commenced the process of erasing 
 every mark of individual character, of softening down into 
 mere insipidity and commonplace every trait of personal god- 
 liness which had appeared. He was at once inaugurated in 
 a course of systematic triviality, not to end until it was fatally 
 too late, whose grand object was to clothe him in the garb of 
 harmless, respectable frivolity, and leave him at last converted 
 into that aimless worshipper of the hour, that lukewarm 
 trimmer between all — in religion, literature, philosophy, and 
 feeling — which is either cold or hot ; that weathercock of 
 vacant mode; that all-embracing cypher of the conventional 
 — a man of the world. 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 61 
 
 His name threw open to him, on his return from London, 
 every circle of fashion in Hull. Though still so young, he 
 was introduced into all sorts of gay society. At first his 
 lately-gained principles offered a firm opposition. The loud, 
 half-animal existence of the hearty, hospitable magnates of 
 Hull, contrasted boldly and unfavourably with the religious 
 earnestness of his aunt's life. The fashion was to have dinner 
 parties at two and sumptuous suppers at six, the enjoyment 
 having evidently a close and important connection with the 
 eating and drinking. Of card-parties, dancing, and theatre- 
 going, there was no end. In all this he fovmd at fii-st no 
 pleasure : he turned in aversion from the coarse stimulants of 
 sense, and sighed for the pure and loffcy region he had left. 
 But he was still a mere boy. The kindness universally shower- 
 ed on him could not be received with indifference by his warm 
 and impressible nature ; his was the age when new habits can 
 yet be formed, and the process still result in charm ; worst of 
 all, he perceived that his sprightliness and musical powers 
 enabled him already to diffuse joy around him. The man 
 who can fascinate society is he who of all others is most sub- 
 ject to its fascination. The boy Wilbei-force soon partici- 
 pated with joyous sympathy in all the merry-making of Hull. 
 
 All this is deeply to be regretted. There is, of course, no 
 harm in the healthful gaiety of youth. The exuberant strength 
 of boyhood rightly prefei*s the open field to the close school- 
 room, the athletic sport or joyous dance to the demure and 
 measured walk. A strong mental endowment will, it is true, 
 in most, if not in all cases, evince itself by an element of 
 though tfulness in early youth ; but it is ever a circumstance 
 of evil omen, boding intellectual disease, when the thoughtful- 
 ness of boyhood is of power sufficient to overbear its animal 
 vivacity and sportive strength. One thing, however, is ever 
 to be borne in mind touching amusement and its connection 
 with education ; it cannot be the whole, but a part ; it must 
 
62 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 derive its zest from being the unstringing of the bow. in 
 the case of Wilberforce, it cannot be doubted that it usurped 
 a place by no means its due, — a place where its influence was 
 one of almost unmixed evil. And his natural temper and 
 disposition were precisely sucli as rendered this circumstance 
 dangerous. His mind was of a sensitive, impulsive, lively 
 cast, taking quickly the hue of its environment, and perhaps 
 originally deficient in self-determining strength. To discip- 
 line his restless energy, to concentrate his volatile faculties, 
 a firm though kind, a calm and methodic though genial ti*ain- 
 ing, was required. Instead of this, he was, from early boy- 
 hood, the pet of gay circles, where no serious word was spoken, 
 and found himself reaping most abundantly the approbation 
 of his mother, when he flung all earnest thought aside, gave 
 the odds and ends of his time to study, and made it the busi- 
 ness of his life to be a dashing, lively, engaging member of 
 fashionable society. That which occupied the fonnal place 
 of instruction was the tuition of a clerical gentleman who 
 kept an academy. While residing with him, the main part 
 of Wilberforce's education was what intellectual aliment he 
 could gather at the tables of fox-hunting squires and jovial 
 county gentlemen ; and we can conceive the effect upon the 
 now faint religious impressions of the boy, of the spectacle of 
 a man set apart to preach the gospel, whose whole life was a 
 gentlemanly sneer at the spirituality of his office. Ere he 
 proceeded to enter the university, which he did when seven- 
 teen years of age, every trace of his early earnestness had 
 been effaced. In all that related to the external qualities of 
 a young man of fashion, his training had been amply success- 
 ful. His manners were the happy union of sprightliness^ 
 ease, and unaffected kindness ; his faculties were acute, his 
 sympathy warm and vivacious, his wit ready and genial ; he 
 sung with grace and sweetness. 
 
 Furnished thus upon entering the university, it is scarce 
 
>^'ILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 63 
 
 to he wondered at that his sojourn there was well-nigh barren 
 of good ; it were perhaps more correct to say, that it was 
 fei-tile in evil. His character was not, indeed, contaminated 
 by any taint of downright vice : the nature of Wilberforce 
 was always too healthful, too open, free, and sunny for that 
 But the volatility which naturally characterized him, and 
 whose final triumph, promoted by the studied frivohty of his 
 boyhood, might yet have been averted, was now pampered 
 to fresh luxuriance, and left to spread itself over his mind. 
 The acquisition of the power of sustained and earnest study 
 was neglected. The oi)portunity of that first introduction to 
 the treasuries of the knowledge of the world, which so gene- 
 I'ally determines the extent to which these treasuries are after- 
 wards availed of, was lost. At St John s College, Cambridge, 
 he fell among a set of the most pleasant, good-humoured, 
 hearty fellows in the world. He had lots of money, of tem- 
 per, of briskness, of Avit ; they had free, jovial ways, — didn't 
 mind telling a good fellow what were his good points, — could 
 study themselves, but could not perceive why a man of fo^*- 
 tune should work, — could probably tell a good story, give and 
 take a repai-tee, appreciate a song, or sing one, — ^last of all, 
 and without any question, had the best appetite for good 
 wine and Yorkshire pie. And so Wilberforce, whose natu- 
 lal quickness enabled him to figure to sufficient advantage 
 at examinations, left study to the poor and the dull : enough 
 for liim to be the centre of a joyous and boisterous throng, 
 every good thing he said telling capitally, eveiy face around 
 the board raying forth on him smiles and thankful compla- 
 cency, the hours dancing cheerfully by, and casting no look 
 behind to remind him that they were gone for ever. 
 
 ** The sick in body call for aid ; the sick 
 In mind are covetous of more disease." 
 
 Those men of St John's College, Cambridge, had the best 
 feelingj? towards Wilberforce, and seemed to him his tniest 
 
64 WILLIAM WILBERFOECE. 
 
 friends. If you had spoken of him to any of them, you 
 would have heard nothing but affectionate praise, with pos- 
 sibly just the slightest caustic mixture of contemptuous pity ; 
 if in their presence you had called him a fool, or struck him 
 on the face, a score of tongues or arras would have moved to 
 defend him. Yet how well had it been for Wilberforce if 
 some rough but kind-hearted class-fellow had turned upon him, 
 like that class-fellow who saved Paley to British literature, 
 and told him roundly he was a trifling fool ! How well for him 
 had his dancing-boots been exchanged for Johnson's gaping 
 shoes, his Yorkshire pie for Heyne's boiled pease-cods ! With 
 bitter emphasis would he have assented to this in latter days, 
 when he looked back on this time with keen anguish, and 
 said that those who should have seen to his instruction, acted 
 towards him unlike Christian, or even honest men. But such 
 reflections were now in the distance. Fanned by soft adula- 
 tion, his heart told him he was a clever fellow, who would 
 carry all before him : for the present, he would sing his song, 
 and shuffle the cards, and enjoy all the pleasure he imparted. 
 So it continued until he approached the season of his majo- 
 rity, and it became pi'oper to chopse a vocation for life. 
 
 Disinclined to mercantile pursuits, he withdrew from the 
 business of which he was at his majority to have become a 
 partner, and turned to another profession ; one which may be 
 deemed of some importance, — that of member of the British 
 House of Commons. To be one of the governing council of 
 the British empire, to adjudicate on the affairs of that con- 
 siderable assemblage of millions, to lend a helping voice and 
 hand to steer the British monarchy in such an era as ours, 
 that it may ever have its head forward, avoiding collisions, 
 and sunken rocks, and quicksands, may be thought a task of 
 some difficulty and solemnity. The instinct of British ho- 
 nour revolts at the idea of its being made a trade : no sa- 
 laried Members, were your legislators for ever confined to a 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 65 
 
 class in consequence ; but there is no such prevailing abhor- 
 rence against its being made an amusement. Accordingly, 
 it is one of what may be styled the hereditary recreations of 
 the British opulent and aristocratic classes ; perhaps of a 
 somewhat higher and more imposing order than fox-hunting 
 and grouse-shooting ; having, in particular, the advantage of 
 serving as a background to these, giving them a look of re- 
 laxation in the eyes of the world, imparting to their enjoy- 
 ment a fine zest, and freeing them of all ennui or monotony. 
 Young "Wilberforce, whom we have been observing, and of 
 whose education for this profession we can judge, thought that; 
 to be an honourable Member would just suit him. He had, 
 indeed, received a good average training for the business. 
 Quick to acquire, he had secured a fair amount of classical 
 knowledge, and in those vital particulars, suavity of manners, 
 happy fluency of speech, engaging deportment, he was sur- 
 passed by none ; the old gaieties of Hull, the Olympian sup- 
 pers of St John's, and an excellent musical talent, would pro- 
 bably set him high among young honoui-able Members. Be- 
 sides, he would spend the last year of his minority in Lon- 
 don ; in feasting and addressing a number of Hull freemen 
 who lived there, he might make advances in the stiff old art 
 of ruling men ; while his evenings would be spent in actual 
 apprenticeship to his business by attending the gallery of the 
 House. All this was done ; the Member of the British Par- 
 liament deemed himself fully equipped. Immediately on be- 
 coming of age, Wilberforce was elected by an overwhelming 
 majority for the city of Hull. His seat cost him between 
 L.8000 and L.9000. 
 
 Returned by such a constituency, and in such a manner, 
 and on terms of personal intimacy with Pitt, who had been 
 a Cambridge acquaintance, and whom he had met in the gal- 
 lery of the House, Wilberforce found honourable membership 
 a most easy and animated affair. Acting as background, in 
 
66 WILLIAM WILBEKFORCE, 
 
 tlie way that lias been indicated, it threw out finely the fore- 
 ground of fim and frolic, of sport and light joyance, of feast, 
 and dance, and merriment, which formed the principal por- 
 tion of his existence. At the clubs he was received with 
 cheerful welcome ; there, with the men in whose hands were, 
 or were soon to be, the destinies of the British nation, he 
 laughed, and chatted, and sung, and gambled. His win- 
 nings were once or twice a hundred pounds, and, happening, 
 on one occasion, from an unforeseen circumstance, to keep 
 the bank, he cleared six hundred. But here, as always on 
 the verge of sheer vice, his better natvire checked him ; what 
 would have stamped a man of radical baseness an irretrievable 
 gambler, pained and shocked Wilberforce : he played no 
 more. There was no abatement of any of the other plea- 
 sures. " Fox, Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, and all your leading 
 men," frequented those clubs ; Pitt showed himself there as 
 the wittiest of the witty ; altogether, the spectacle presented 
 by British statesmen behind the scenes was one of mirth and 
 exhilaration. Gay, boisterous, frivolous they were ; not de- 
 void of a certain earnestness and business-like expertness when 
 at their work, yet sportive and light of heart, as men whose 
 places were safe, and who, for the rest, had only the matters 
 of a British empire to think of Wilberforce was by no means 
 a technically inactive member ; he presented to the eye of 
 the world an unimpeachable aspect, and kept his conscience 
 quiet. Seeming, to himself and others, to be doing his whole 
 duty, he was satisfied and happy. Glancing, with his quick, 
 clear eye, into circle after circle — lighting up all faces by the 
 gentle might of his wit, if not with uncontrollable mirth, 
 yet with soft, comfortable smiles — suiting himself, by a tact 
 swift and sudden as magic, to the society or subject of the 
 moment — gesticulating and mimicking with rare histrionic 
 art — pouring forth, in unbroken stream, a warm and glowing 
 eloquence — or gliding softly into one of those songs to which 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 67 
 
 his ricli voice lent witching charms — he was the life and soul 
 of supper parties, the caressed of fashionable circles, the dar- 
 ling of the clubs. The Prince of Wales praised his singing ; 
 could human ambition look higher than that ] 
 
 After some more Parliamentary work of this nature, Wil- 
 berforce flits gaily across the Channel ; we find him in the 
 autumn of 1783, with his friends Pitt and Elliot, in the 
 French capital. It is strangely interesting to mark him as 
 he flutters among the Yauxhall luminaries of the old French 
 court ; light and frivolous almost as they, yet with an open 
 eye, and an English shrewdness, which note well the salient 
 points of the dream-like scene. His jottings are brief but 
 suggestive : — " Supped at Count Donson's. Kound table : 
 all English but Donson. Noailles, Dupont. Queen came 
 ^afber supper. Cards, tric-trac, and backgammon, which Ar- 
 tois, Lauzun, and Chartres played extremely well." This 
 was that Artois who goes down to a fool's immortality as the 
 inventor or possessor of those " breeches of a kind new in 
 this world," into which, and from which, his four tall lackeys 
 lifted him every morning and evening ; and this Chartres, 
 who distinguished himself at tric-trac, became Egalite, and 
 found it more difficult to play another game. Had the cur- 
 tain of the future been drawn aside for a moment before the 
 eyes of the group, and Philip of Orleans seen himself at that 
 moment when he stopped before his own palace on his way 
 to the guillotine, what astonishment, and trembling, and dis- 
 may would have sunk over that gay company ! He sees 
 La Fayette, too, and styles him " a pleasing, enthusiastical 
 man," surely with happy shrewdness and accuracy. The 
 latter is already a patriot of the most highflown description, 
 on the model of Addison's Cato. The ladies of the court 
 try to induce him to join in cards ; but will the classic hero 
 compromise the austere dignity of freedom ? The ladies have 
 to glide away in admiring respect, almost in reverence, and 
 
68 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 the heart of the patriot is strengthened. " The king is so 
 strange a being (of the hog kind), that it is worth going a 
 hundred miles for the sight of him, especially a boar-hunt- 
 ing." This was poor Louis, whose contribution to human 
 knowledge was of so decidedly negative a character; who bore 
 testimony to this one doctrine; whose worth, however, de- 
 served to be written in blood ; that nature, in this world, 
 grants painfully little to good intentions. He sees Marie 
 Antoinette frequently, and bears witness to the gentle witch- 
 ery of her manner, queenly dignity blended with feminine 
 kindness. Seen against the darkness which we know lay in 
 the background, all tliis gaily-tinted picture, of which Wil- 
 berforce for a short space formed an appropriate figure, has a 
 strange and fascinating look. " Light mortals, how ye walk 
 your light life-minuet, over bottomless abysses, divided from 
 you by a film !" 
 
 In the spring of 1784 Wilberforce was elected to repre- 
 sent Yorkshire. His popularity in his native county was 
 extreme ; and when, after the prorogation of Parliament, he 
 went down to spend his birth-day there, and appeared at the 
 races, the whole era of his history which we now contem- 
 pilate may be said to have reached its highest manifestation 
 and climax. A running chorus of applauding shouts follow- 
 ed his path ; he was the cynosure of all eyes ; if vacant stare 
 and noise could make one happy, he were the man. 
 
 In October 1784 he left England on a journey to the Con- 
 tinent, in the company of Isaac Milner, brother of the Church 
 historian, and, though unapt to show them, of thoroughly 
 evangelical views. A few serious words which dropped from 
 Milner's lips on the journey, and the eflfect of a perusal of 
 Doddridge's " Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," did 
 not altogether pass away from the mind of Wilberforce ; in- 
 visibly, perhaps intermittently, yet indestructibly, the disturK>- 
 ing influence acted within. On his return to London, he again 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 69 
 
 rushed into the lialls of fasliion and frivolity ; now and then 
 a monition of other things flickered momentarily, like the 
 glance of an angel's eye, across his sphere of vision ; but he 
 still continued, with reckless determination, to drain the chalice 
 of wild, unmeasured mirth. No change was seen in the ex- 
 ternal aspect of his life ; he frisked about at Almack's, danced 
 till five in the morning, charmed and fascinated as before ; 
 yet the monitory glance was at intervals upon him, the per- 
 fect peace of death was broken. 
 
 In the summer of 1785 he had another Continental tour 
 with Milner. They now conversed more earnestly on the 
 subject of religion, and commenced together the study of the 
 New Testament. The time at length had come from which 
 Wilberforce was to date a new era in his life : the time when 
 he was, whether in delusion or not, to believe himself savingly 
 influenced by the Spirit of the Almighty, and to prepare to 
 walk onwards to eternity under that guidance. 
 
 The manner of the change wrought in Wilberforce is of 
 less importance to us than its efiects ; but its general as- 
 pect must be briefly indicated. It appears highly probable 
 that the religious influence by which we saw him impressed 
 in boyhood never totally lost its effect. Like an inefface- 
 able writing, it lay in his heart during all those years when 
 the desert sands of vanity swept over it, hidden, perhaps 
 forgotten, but imperishably there : it required but a calm 
 hour and a strong skilful hand, putting aside the sand and 
 revealing the golden characters, to bring the soul of Wilber- 
 force to acknowledge their sacred authority. On this point, 
 however, it is unnecessary to insist ; the matter is, in fact, 
 beyond the reach of positive evidence. He did, at all events, 
 now pause in startled earnestness ; the fleeting monitions 
 could no longer be put aside. The truths of God's Word 
 first forced an intellectual assent ; conscience, after long slum- 
 ber, then awoke in the might of its divine commission, and, 
 
70 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 like a heavenly messenger with a sword of iire in the hand, 
 defied him to advance another step. His trouble of soul was 
 long and ten-ible. He asserted in after years that he had 
 never read of mental agonies more acute than his own ; and 
 it were difficult to over-estimate the weight of this testimony. 
 Yet it was not terror that chiefly dismayed him. " It was 
 not so much," these are his own words, " the fear of punish- 
 ment by which I was affected, as a sense of my great sinful- 
 ness in having so long neglected the unspeakable mercies of 
 my God and Saviour." His soul was not altogether a stranger 
 to fear. The finite being who begins to have a fixed assur- 
 ance that there is not a relation of perfect concord between 
 himself and the Infinite One, may well experience a feeling 
 of awe ; the man who hears conscience, with iron tongue, 
 proclaiming that sin and misery are as substance and shadow, 
 who has any conception of the deep, drear, moaning affirma- 
 tive of this, which goes, like a melancholy Arctic wind, over 
 all the centuries of the life of mankind, and who begins to 
 feel that sin lies too deep in his own bosom to be eradicated 
 by mortal hand, may well be afraid. The instinct of the 
 human race echoes the Scripture words, "The fear of the 
 Lord is the beginning of wisdom." But it was no slavish 
 dread which urged him on. His was no longer the reckless 
 bearing of a man of the world, arising from vacancy of thought 
 or sheer imbecility ; nor did he change his attitude for that 
 of shrinking and selfish terror; nor did he, with haughty 
 recklessness, assert himself against the infinitude of power, 
 a position suiting only the maniac or demon : it was the light 
 of celestial holiness burning eternally around the throne of 
 God in the far deeps of heaven, that caught and fixed his eye; 
 it was an awakening consciousness of deep moral wants, that 
 filled his heart with yearning sorrow ; it was a conviction that 
 the name Christian had been hitherto, in his case, a vague 
 sound or hypocritic deception, that touched him with hallow- 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 71 
 
 ed shame; and it was dumb amazement at the fact that the 
 most sublime instance of love ever exhibited in this universe 
 had been unknown and unheeded by him, which brought him 
 at last, a weeping suppliant, to the Mount of Calvary. 
 
 The work he had to accomplish was one of stern difficulty. 
 That long course of noisy vanity had, as it were, deafened and 
 distracted his spiritual nature ; fixed thought he found in it- 
 self difficult ; and now he had to stop and think as with his 
 soul in his hand. Had escape been possible, he would have 
 escaped ; for he put himself at first in a firmly defensive at- 
 titude, and turned again for a time to the charmers whose 
 spells had hitherto held him. Consider what an outlook was 
 his. By a thousand viewless chains he was bound to the 
 world. Known and adulated in all the clubs and London 
 fashionable circles, rejoicing in a rising fame for eloquence, 
 and having long enjoyed the still more delicious fame of wit, 
 keenly sensitive to every shaft of ridicule, and intensely relish- 
 ing applause, the strings of his very heart would be rent if 
 he tore himself away ; while, hardest of all, he saw cleanly 
 that friendships, to his tender nature very dear, must either 
 be cast away altogether, or an-ange themselves on new sym- 
 pathies of a comparatively shallow order. But it was to be 
 done ; further he could not go ; that flaming sword of God's 
 angel, conscience, barred his way. 
 
 In deep trouble of mind, he returned to London. He had 
 abandoned the defensive attitude ; he no longer stood as one 
 who could put a face on the matter, and, as it were, prove 
 to God that all was right ; he had flung away the armour in 
 which he trusted, — he had exchanged complacency for repent- 
 ance, defence or apology for earnest prayer. It was not yet 
 light within ; but outward duty became plain, and with it 
 he proceeded at once. He wrote to his principal friends, in- 
 forming them that he was not what he had been ; he with- 
 drew his steps from every haunt of worldly mirth ; despite a 
 
72 WILLIAM WILBERFOKCE. 
 
 rising feeling of shame, lie commenced the worship of God as 
 a householder. He brought himself also, after a severe strug- 
 gle, to introduce himself to John Newton ; and thus com- 
 menced the formation of a new circle of friendship. 
 
 At length he began to reap his reward. That peace which 
 has arisen after toil and darkness in so many Christian souls, 
 and which is essentially the same in all, — ^that peace which 
 came with returning light over the prostrate and trembling 
 soul of Paul, — which brought healing to the agonized heart 
 of Luther, — which was devoutly treasured alike by Cromwell, 
 Edwards, and so far different men as Brainerd and M^Cheyne, 
 — diffused itself at last through the breast of Wilberforce. His 
 testimony was soon decisive that he had reached a higher and 
 more exqviisite joy than he had ever known in the saloons of 
 fashion; — " never so happy in my life as this whole evening," 
 are words from his diary of the period. His correspondence 
 began to breathe the earnestness of Christian zeal and the 
 serenity of Christian enjoyment. " The Eastern nations," 
 he writes to his sister, "had their talismans, which were to 
 advertise them of every danger, and guard them from every 
 mischief Be the love of Christ our talisman." Again, writ- 
 ing on an Easter Sabbath, " Can my dear sister," he exclaims, 
 *^ wonder that I call on her to participate in the pleasure I 
 am tasting. I know how you sympathize in the happiness of 
 those you love ; and I could not therefore forgive myself if 
 I were to keep my raptures to myself, and not invite you to 
 partake of my enjoyment. The day has been delightful. I 
 was out before six, and made the fields my oratory, tlie sun 
 shining as bright and as warm as at midsummer. I think my 
 own devotions become more fervent when offered in this way, 
 amidst the general chorus with which all nature seems on such 
 a morning to be swelling the song of praise and thanksgiving." 
 He had now deliberately devoted himself to Christ, and re- 
 solved that all his enersjies should be dedicated to His service. 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 73 
 
 It will be well to pause for a moment^ tliafc we may learn 
 the precise position of Wilberforce at this juncture, that we 
 may know what Christian conversion had done for him, and 
 estimate the forces at his command for serving his God and 
 his country. 
 
 The look he cast over his past life was one of astonishment 
 and sorrow ; his feelings were as those of a man who, after a 
 night of intoxication and revelry, is aroused from a drunken 
 morning sleep to brace on his armour and go instantly to meet 
 the foe ; or of one who finds that, while he has slept, a fair 
 wind has been lost, and the tide is gone far backward, and 
 he will never by utmost diligence make now a good voyage. 
 He was twenty-six years of age. His life, since his twelfth 
 year, had been one course of mental dissipation ; his intel- 
 lect, naturally alert, had been abandoned to volatility ; he 
 stood appalled, and well-nigh powerless. Had his will been 
 roused to a giant enei^gy, — had he collected all his faculties 
 for one determined struggle, — had he, calculating that, to at- 
 tain the mental power and material which a true education 
 might at that epoch have realized for him, a space of ten, or 
 at least five years, of stern, unmitigated, silent toil was abso- 
 lutely required, deliberately given that period to the task, and 
 performed it, — it is impossible to say what he might have been, 
 or what work he might have efiected. But he made no such 
 grand effort. Life was so far advanced that he did not dare 
 to withdraw his hand for a moment from work ; he does not 
 seem to have even formed the conception of what was ne- 
 cessary. 
 
 Wilberforce, though perhaps the greatest statesman of the 
 century whose character was based iipon evangelical princi- 
 ple, cannot be regarded as the Christian statesman of our era. 
 The modern Christian statesman has not yet appeared. For, 
 by statesman, in this august and pecuhar sense, must be 
 meant one who exerts so much power in the political world, 
 
74 WILLIAM WILBERFORCli 
 
 that the general aspect of affairs is coloured by his influence, 
 the attitude of his country among the kingdoms of the world 
 that which he, at least in a large measure, has appointed. 
 The Christian statesman will be he who can impai-t to Bri- 
 tain once more the aspect of a great, free, Protestant nation ; 
 who, in the nineteenth century, will bring Christianity into 
 politics, and, helming the State with the strong arm of a 
 Cromwell, make it apparent to all nations that he holds his 
 commission, as governor, from God ; who will gather round 
 him that deep and ancient sympathy with vital Christianity 
 which does exist in these lands, who will combine it with the 
 science and adapt it to the conditions of the time, and make 
 the flag of England once more, not the mere symbol of com- 
 mercial wealth or military renown, but the standard of Chris- 
 tian civilization. 
 
 These words may seem visionary and Utopian. Is it really 
 so ] Have we tacitly come to the conclusion and agreement 
 that Christianity, that Protestantism, is to be permitted indeed 
 to exert what power it can in subordinate spheres, but, in its 
 distinctive character, is no more to be admitted into the coun- 
 cils of nations ? Have we consented that Britain, when deal- 
 ing with other kingdoms, shall indeed speak, and with resist- 
 less power, as a commercial, a military, a colonizing nation, 
 but have no word to say as a Christian nation ? It may be 
 so ; but let us perceive clearly what we imply by the con- 
 cession. We imply that nations, as such, are exempted from 
 the ordinance of glorifying God ; that, in this important re- 
 spect, they form an absolute solecism in the universe. Na- 
 tions must be intended, I say not in what precise way, but 
 at least in their distinctive character, to bear a part in the 
 universal harmony of the universal choir that hymns the Crea- 
 tor's praise. Something more vital than political morality, more 
 nobly human than desire of national wealth, more lofty than 
 xnai-tial honour, must one day again penetrate the Senates and 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 75 
 
 Privy Councils of the world. Since tlie days of Cromwell 
 there has been no leader of the British nation, no Pitt, no 
 Fox, no Wellington, of whom you can say that, as a states- 
 man, he was Christian. "Wilberforce was a Christian Mem- 
 ber of Parliament ; to a perceptible and blissful extent, he 
 introduced Christianity into the councils of Great Britain j 
 it is probable that since his day we have retrograded ; but 
 the Christian statesman of the modern epoch he was not 
 
 The power of vital godliness did all for Wilberforce that 
 was, perhaps, without a miracle, possible ; it did not create 
 within him new powers ; it did not convey supernaturally 
 into his mind new and sufficient stores of knowledge ; but it 
 did much. 
 
 Light, frivolous, fascinating, Wilberforce made a narrow 
 escape from being a character of a sort which is surely one ot 
 the most pitiful human life can show, — a fashionable wit and 
 jester. How profoundly melancholy is the spectacle of a man, 
 the main tenor of whose life is an empty giggle and crackle 
 of fool's laughter ! How ghastly, after it is all past, does the 
 perpetual smirking and smartness of such men as Theodore 
 Hooke appear ! Wilberforce could vie with these in powers 
 of entertaining and being entertained ; his whole training, 
 with one slight exception, tended to foster these powers ; and 
 now they had found their sphere, and passed their probation. 
 His political position was the natural counterpart of that 
 which he occupied in social circles. With powers of natural 
 eloquence which drew unmeasured applause from such men 
 as Burke and Pitt, with great quickness of memory, and, to 
 a certain extent, of an*angement, with a judgment naturally 
 clear and strong, and with a hearf which would not swerve 
 from the path of a rough genuine English honour, he had 
 reached a conspicuous station as a supporter of Pitt, and could 
 speak a distinct, independent, and valuable word on most sub- 
 jects. Yet he records that his political life was then without 
 
76 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 unity, tliat he " wanted first principles," that his own distinc- 
 tion was his " darling object." His final estimate of this pe- 
 riod was nobly stern and true : — " The first years that I was 
 in Parliament I did nothing, — ^nothing, I mean, to any good 
 purpose." 
 
 Both as man and as politician, he was now changed. The 
 flickering light of vacant and aimless mirth faded from his 
 lip and eye, the sacred energy of Christian purpose began to 
 mould and brighten his features ; if there was still somewhat 
 of restlessness and unsteadied vehemence in his look, it had 
 one point toward which it always turned, and its natural 
 kindness was gradually deepened and sublimed into the holier 
 warmth of Christian love. As a politician, he reached a new 
 independence and individuality. He could no longer wheel 
 round in the circle of party ; he could no longer, even to a 
 limited extent, take his opinions in the mass from the fac- 
 tion to which he belonged ; he told Pitt he would still sup- 
 port him where he could, but that he was no longer to be a 
 party man, even to the same extent as formerly. He look- 
 ed out for a work of his own, for something which he might 
 do as one whose character was in all things professedly Chris- 
 tian, and who believed that it was as God's servant alone 
 that he could take a share in the government of Britain. 
 For this work, whatever it might be, he lost no time in pre- 
 paring himself. He instantly set about the task of concen- 
 trating his faculties, and enriching his intellectual stores ; 
 he turned to study with an earnestness he had never hitherto 
 known ; above all, he commenced the careful and uninter- 
 mitted study of Holy Writ. His biographers have not erred 
 in considering this last the most important element in his 
 new mental discipline. The power of the Christian Scrip- 
 tures to engage, to train, and to occupy the intellect, has been 
 attested in express and emphatic terms by such thinkers as 
 Jonathan Edwards and Lessing. 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFOECE. 77 
 
 Wilberforce did not wait long ere lie found his work. It 
 was twofold. On Sunday, the 28th of October 1787, he 
 wrote these words in his journal : " God Almighty has set 
 before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave 
 trade, and the reformation of manners." With solemn yet 
 courageous earnestness, he assayed these august achievements ; 
 he had already counted the forces against him in his public 
 and private Christian walk ; after looking them full in the 
 face, this had been his conclusion : " But then we have God 
 and Christ on our side ; we have heavenly armour ; the 
 crown is everlasting life, and the stiiiggle how short, com- 
 pared with the eternity which follows it ! Yet a little while, 
 and He that shall come will come, and will not taiTy." 
 
 It is with Wilberforce, in his connection with those two 
 movements, the first of which resulted in the emancipation 
 of the slaves in the British Colonies, and the second of which 
 developed into what is called Exeter Hall philanthropy, that 
 we are primarily concerned, But it were well, if such 
 might be possible, to reach a conclusive estimate at once of 
 the value of the great measures of Abolition of the Slave 
 Trade, and Slave Emancipation, and of the part Christianity 
 bore in their attainment ; while the class of kindred pheno- 
 mena, which are included in the general designation of phi- 
 lanthropic efforts for the reformation of manners, has a spe- 
 cial claim upon our notice. 
 
 Of the particular method in which Wilberforce led the 
 contest against the Slave Trade, and of the various stages of 
 that contest, it is unnecessary to speak. His task cannot be 
 alleged to have been one of a severity demanding the high- 
 est efforts of courage and endurance, or whose performance 
 called forth peculiar heroism. That he did encounter oblo- 
 quy and scorn, that he did undergo heavy and protracted la- 
 bour, is certain ; that, from year to year, he stood forth with 
 the calm determination of one who had a great work to do, 
 
78 WILLIAM WILBERFOKCE. 
 
 and wlio would do it with English courage, sagacity, and 
 perseverance, is undeniable ; that, in the whole course of his 
 operations, he earned that substantial applause which is the 
 meed of every man who performs well and comp]etely the 
 duty which he regards himself commissioned of God to ac- 
 complish, no one can question. But he deserves no higher 
 honour than this. His sphere of exertion, whatever its in- 
 conveniences or occasional troubles, was, on the whole, one 
 of honour and ease ; failure brought no danger or biting dis- 
 grace, and from the civilized world voices were raised to 
 cheer and applaud him ; it was worthy and honourable to 
 struggle and conquer as he did, but the fact of his having 
 done so can never be such a testimony to character as simi- 
 lar exertions would have been in the case of a man who work- 
 ed in the glare of half a world's indignation, and had to con- 
 template the risk of death. 
 
 It was in 1789 that he delivered his first regular speech 
 on the Slave Trade. Even when we have made allowance 
 for the enthusiasm of the moment, we must conclude that 
 the opinions expressed of this performance by Burke and 
 Bishop Porteous prove Wilberforce to have been a man of 
 great natural eloquence, and of rich and vigorous mind. 
 "The House, the nation, and Europe," according to Burke, 
 ^' were under great and serious obligations to the honourable 
 gentleman for having brought forward the subject in a man- 
 ner the most masterly, impressive, and eloquent. The prin- 
 ciples were so well laid down, and supported with so much 
 force and order, that it equalled anything he had heard in 
 modern times, and was not perhaps to be surpassed in the 
 remains of Grecian eloquence." Porteous styles it " one of 
 the ablest and most eloquent speeches that was ever heard." 
 It lasted three hours. Its effect was to bear the House, with 
 astonishing unanimity, along with the speaker. No addi- 
 tional proof is required that Wilberforce possessed popular 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 79 
 
 talents of a high order. In 1807, after many a galling dis- 
 appointment, his effoi-ts were crowned with success. The 
 traffic in slaves was declared illegal by the British Parliament. 
 Congratulations poured in upon Wilberforce from all parts 
 of the world ; but while drinking deeply of the joy which 
 rewarded his toil, he abandoned every claim to honour for 
 himself; all pride was swallowed up in thankfulness. "Oh 
 what thanks do I owe the Giver of all good, for bringing me, 
 in His gracious Providence, to this great cause, which at 
 length, after almost nineteen years' labour, is successful 1" 
 These are the words of a true Christian soldier ; their humi- 
 lity and silent earnestness, amid the applause of millions, are 
 beautiful. He lived to see a still greater day. When he retired 
 from political strife, the standard he had so long borne was held 
 aloft by Buxton and others ; with deep emphasis did he again 
 thank God when, in 1833, Britain emancipated her slaves. 
 
 Concerning this whole work of Slave Emancipation, we 
 have now heard the two extremes of opinion. For a time, 
 and a long time, it seemed to be a subject on which men 
 were at last agreed ; a universal poean rose round it, and 
 continued to be chanted on all platforms, in all newspapers, 
 in all schools of rhetoric and poetry. But, after a time, there 
 exhibited itself a disposition to question the advisability and 
 intrinsic excellence of the measures, and at length a strong 
 revulsion of feeling has taken place in certain quartera. Mr 
 Carlyle has poured the chalice of his scorn, comparable to 
 molten iron, on Britain's whole dealing with the negi'oes of 
 her colonies ; and, wherever his influence is paramount, a dis- 
 position to denounce the proceedings of the advocates of abo- 
 lition and emancipation manifests itself. 
 
 The pjeans were perhaps struck on too high a key. The 
 stern and numerous difficulties which have since revealed 
 themselves cast no shadow before; that one grand, all-com- 
 prehending difficulty of making men/ree, implying, as it does, 
 
80 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 such an elevation of nature, such a raising above sensuality, 
 sloth, and foolishness, into industry, self-respect, and wisdom, 
 as only a Divine hand could at once effect, was not then ap- 
 prehended ; it did not strike men that, if they destroyed 
 Sodom, they might have in its place a Dead Sea. But the 
 plaudits had more reason in them than the denunciations. 
 There is something wholesome and inspiring in the sound of 
 human rejoicing over wrong and iniquity even believed to be 
 overthrown ; on the other side, the vituperation, when all is 
 well looked into, turns out to have little more on which to 
 support itself than the old fact, whose truth we must so often 
 acknowledge and put up with, that human affairs are not 
 ideal, that hmnan intellects are bounded. It might be pos- 
 sible to strike the truth between the opposing views. 
 
 Slave Emancipation, of which the abolition of the Slave 
 Trade may be considered a part, was a great initial measure, 
 which did not exhaust the case, which did not even proceed 
 far with it, which cannot be said to have touched certain of 
 its greatest and most strictly original difficulties, but which 
 cleared the ground for its discussion, fixed the imperative con- 
 ditions of the problem, and laid down the fundamental axioms 
 by which it must be solved. It cleared the atmosphere round 
 the whole subject ; its very excess, if such there was, the very 
 fact of its abstaining from any tempering or temporising ex- 
 pedients, but attempting to break, as by one sledge-hammer 
 blow, the chain of slavery, made its teaching of certain great 
 principles the more emphatic. 
 
 The first great truth it declared was none other than that 
 of which something has been already said, and on which it 
 is needless here again to enlarge : That an essential equality 
 subsists among the members of the human family. It was 
 the second great assertion by Christian Philanthropy of this 
 fundamental principle : Howard's w^ork in the prisons of the 
 world was the first. 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 81 
 
 Slavery, in its essential nature, is precisely that wliich puts 
 man individually in the stead of God, as the ultimate source 
 of authority regarding a human being. Hence is at once ob' 
 vious the error of those who, pointing to the subordination 
 of class to class, and such other arrangements of society as 
 restrain and circumvent every man in every sphere, exclaim 
 that slavery cannot be abolished. From the laws of society, 
 in some form or other, we cannot escape ; but, whatever its 
 imperfections, society must be regarded as originally an ordi- 
 nance of God, enforced by a necessity of nature, and, with 
 whatever subordinate disadvantages and difficulties, conducing 
 towards the very highest and noblest results for the indivi- 
 dual and the race. No man, therefore, is a slave, however 
 hard he toils, however ill he fares, in simply conforming to 
 its legitimate ordinances. But whatever negatives the action 
 of the powers with which God has gifted a man, and which 
 he holds from Him, is of the nature of slaveiy ; every social 
 imperfection involving injustice and partiality, is more or less 
 allied to it ; and when a man is bought and sold as a chattel 
 or animal, and the action of those powers may altogether be 
 negatived, we have its darkest and most accurate type. 
 
 The second lesson which these legislative measures read 
 to the world was this : That Mammon was not the ultimate 
 authority in this question ; that, though the pecuniary loss 
 were of indefinite amount, there were other considerations, 
 of justice and humanity, which could overtop them, and that 
 infinitely. It was ^s if Mammon and Justice had been pit- 
 ted against each other, with the world for an arena : Mam- 
 mon pointed to these souls of men, said they represented gold, 
 and declared that the smoke of their torment would blacken 
 the dome of heaven ere he let them from beneath his sway : 
 Justice flung to him twenty millions, and bade him, with a 
 contemptuous smile, relax his hold. By whatever law the 
 questions connected with the Negro race were to be ultimate- 
 
 G 
 
82 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 Ij settled, it was not to be a consideration in the case, liow 
 they would realize the greatest pecuniary profit for white 
 men ; the general principle was emphatically enounced, that, 
 whatever of wealth or luxury a man may extract from any 
 portion of the earth, by making his fellow-man the tool for 
 its attainment, this method is essentially unjust, and on no 
 conceivable hypothesis to be defended. 
 
 There has been not a little discussion as to the respective 
 exertions of Clarkson, Wilberforce, and others, in the attain- 
 ment of their common object. To this controversy there shall 
 here be contributed not one word. We saw that Wilber- 
 force accepted, as part of the work appointed him by God, the 
 conduct of the struggle for the abolition ; and we saw him, 
 when the Slave Trade was no more, devoutly thanking God 
 for having honoured him to bear his part in the work. But, 
 in what shares soever the trophies of the victory be distri- 
 buted to individuals, it is just to claim the whole achievement 
 as a triumph for Christianity. Ramsay, whose book, publish- 
 ed towards the close of last century, was the prelude to the 
 agitation, was a Christian pastor ; Clarkson and Wilberforce 
 both toiled under the direct commission of Christian love. 
 To such an extent Christianity did colour our national coun- 
 sels. In the former century, the love of the gospel had shed 
 its mild light in the dungeon ; it now spoke an emphatic word 
 against slavery, — a word which, however little it may have yet 
 availed, will assuredly not die away until that foul stain of 
 shame and guilt is wiped from the brow^of humanity. All 
 that was of real value in the measure was its testimony, on 
 the part of the first nation in the world, to justice and love : 
 that testimony was priceless ; and it was the might of Chris- 
 tianity which drew it forth. Every noble mind, every heart 
 touched with poetic fire or raised by philosophic ardour, hailed 
 it with instant and exultant applause. Cowper, Coleridge, 
 Byron, Schlegel, Fichte, and a list of such, embracing, with 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 83 
 
 probably not a solitary exception, all the greatness and noble- 
 ness of tlie close of last century and the commencement of 
 this, declared Slave Emancipation to be a high and glorious 
 aim and achievement ; Mr Carlyle was, so far as I know, the 
 very first man of genius and nobleness, both unquestioned, to 
 hint a doubt regarding the fundamental principles which ani- 
 mated Clarkson and Wilberforce. And whatever scorn or 
 gratuitous insulting pity may accompany her path, it is an 
 auspicious omen, that the form in which Christianity has 
 walked forth most prominently in the sight of nations in these 
 latter ages has again been that of love ; she is about her na- 
 tural and peculiar work when she brings hope to the prisoner 
 and freedom to the slave. 
 
 We arrive now at the second portion of that twofold task 
 which Wilberforce believed to be appointed him by God. 
 This was the reformation of manners. The method to be 
 adopted was that of public exposure and philanthropic appeal. 
 The force of Christian love, scattered in countless bosoms in 
 the British Islands, was to become, as it were, conscious of 
 itself, to gather together and unite : when this was accom- 
 plished, it was to turn in concentrated power against evil, in 
 whatever form and place it appeared, either by bringing its 
 influence to bear directly on the Legislature, or by local and 
 personal endeavours. The efibrts of Wilberforce in this pro- 
 vince mark the commencement of the second stage of philan- 
 thropy ; the fire was to spread wide, and the attempt was to 
 be made to give it form and union. 
 
 The part played by Wilberforce, in connection with this 
 extension of the philanthropic movement, can be easily de- 
 fined and comprehended. Wherever there germinated a 
 scheme of benevolence, he cast on it a glance of encourage- 
 ment ; whoever designed, by voluntary efibrts on the part of 
 himself and his fellows, to benefit any part of the human race, 
 looked towards Wilberforce, nor looked in vain. But, after 
 
84 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 all, he was rather the principal worker in philanthropy, than 
 its organizing, ordering, compelling chief; for him we still 
 wait. To discern, by far-reaching and unerring glance, the 
 real force and the real perils of this wide-spread benevolence, 
 this many-worded spirit of kindness, that gathered its assem- 
 blies and spoke on its platforms ; to connect it, as a pheno- 
 menon, with the characteristics of our age ; to be a head to 
 its great throbbing heart, an eye to its hundred, earth-em- 
 bracing hands, was not given to "Wilberforce. Philanthropy, 
 under him, was aptly and expressively emblemed by that 
 motley throng which Sir James Stephen so graphically depicts 
 swarming in the chambers of his house ; a number of living 
 and embodied forces, some of whim, some of folly, some of 
 mere maudlin softness, all inclined to do good, and compla- 
 cently concluding that good intentions would pass for sub- 
 stantial working power. But it was no slight or profitless 
 work which Wilberforce did. Unless you know how to di- 
 rect your motive power, you will do no work ; but unless 
 you have your motive power, you are in a still more hopeless 
 case. He, and the right-hearted men who were around him, 
 fanned into a flame which covered Britain, that spirit of active 
 love which Howard evoked. To consider it open to discus- 
 sion whether this service was of value, seems to be to deny every 
 instinct man feels, every rule by which he acts. If a man 
 says that it is not a consoling, an auspicious fact, that in a 
 million breasts there is awakened the will, the bare will, to 
 work and war for the diffusion of light over our world, for 
 the social and moral amelioration of men, I know not how to 
 answer him. If a man, contemplating the grand temptation 
 which, by necessity of position, assails Britain in these ages, 
 the temptation to circumscribe, so to speak, the blue vault 
 by an iron grating, and beneath it, as in a temple, to kneel 
 before the shrine of Mammon, finds no healing, counteract- 
 ing influence in the spectacle of thousands of British hands 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 85 
 
 stretched out to take Mammon's gold and lay it on a higher 
 altar, I cannot assail, as I cannot conceive, his position. If 
 any one does not perceive that there is an infinite difference 
 between a nation, slothful and avaricious, that will do and 
 give nothing in the cause of God and humanity, and a nation 
 saying, " I will give, I will act, and if I know not how, I 
 will earnestly hear," I can merely signify dumb astonishment. 
 Had philanthropy hitherto done nothing, its presence in the 
 world would still be a blessing as of the early rain ; if it has 
 in certain directions fallen into error, it is both a common- 
 place and a fatal mistake to cast away good with evil ; an 
 error not committed, save by madmen, in other departments, 
 for you do not cast away your sword for its rust, or your 
 scythe because it is not hung with perfect scientific accuracy. 
 But philanthropy, Exeter Hall Philanthropy, has done much. 
 It has alleviated the woes of factory children, it has erected 
 ragged schools, provided shelter for the houseless, food for the 
 starving ; it has sown the world with Bibles. Since the day 
 when Howard called it forth, as a power distinctly to be seen 
 and felt in human affairs, its progress has been one before 
 which oppression has fallen, its step has startled cruelty and 
 crime. God has honoured it hitherto, and He will bless it 
 still. 
 
 But however well it may be to express this plain truth, 
 and however lawful to draw encouragement therefrom, it is 
 of more strict practical avail to clear the way for future work, 
 than to rejoice over what has been done. A few remarks 
 bearing on the operations of philanthropy may therefore be 
 submitted to the reader. 
 
 First of all, it must be clearly and definitely understood 
 what this wide-spread benevolence, considered as an opera- 
 tive agency, actually is. Emotion of every sort, all that por- 
 tion, so to speak, of the mind which generates action, is sim- 
 ply a force ; whether it does good or evil, depends entirely 
 
86 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 on how it is directed. Steam lies for ages unknown as a 
 moving po^er ; then for ages it is used merely in mines and 
 coalpits; at last it unites all lands by its iron highways, 
 quickening the pulse of the world, and making man finally 
 victorious over every element. The tenderest pity, the most 
 ardent love, can never be aught but a steam-power ; you must 
 know precisely how to use it, or it steads you not. Nay, 
 such a thing is possible as that the force should do evil in- 
 stead of good. In Hannibal's army at Zama, the elephants 
 were turned back upon his own troops ; it would have been 
 better if he had had no elephants. 
 
 This is a principle which, when stated in terms, no one 
 will contest ; but it is of vital importance, and is very apt to 
 be practically lost sight of. The excellence of a man's sen- 
 timent is apt to cast a delusive brightness over his thought ; 
 when we listen to one whom we know to be a good man, the 
 fervour of whose spirit delights and inspires, we feel it a 
 thankless and ungrateful task to bring his schemes under the 
 dry light of reason, and to tell him they are naught. Yet, 
 when we come into contact with fact and reality, emotion 
 goes for nothing ; good intention is whiffed aside ; no music 
 of applause, no gilding of oratory, will keep the -sinking ship 
 afloat ; it settles down like a mere leaky cask. Philanthro- 
 pists must learn to look deeper than the first aspect of a pro- 
 ject, to examine its ulterior bearings, to see how it allies it- 
 self with social laws ; they must accustom themselves to re- 
 sist the soft charm of plausible eloquence, to examine the 
 bare truth advocated, and to discern and accept this truth 
 when recommended by no eloquence, and scarcely caught from 
 stammering lips. 
 
 In the next place, it cannot be too often or too emphati- 
 cally insisted on, that philanthropy should clear its eyesight 
 by acquaintance vdth that science which has for its object 
 the laws of the social system. Since all human afiairs are 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 87 
 
 inextricably interwoven, no man can rightfully hold himself 
 entitled to put his hand to any part of the social fabric, with- 
 out knowing how his act will affect other parts. There are 
 only two possible hypotheses on which the science of the so- 
 cial system can be attacked : that there are no laws in econo- 
 mic and social matters, or that they are so profoundly mys- 
 terious, that an attempt to know them is prima facie absurd. 
 The first, no one, since the days of Bacon, would maintain. 
 The second might be urged with some faint show of reason. 
 The freaks of individual will are countless ; the soul of man 
 is the one thing, of all we know, which comes nearest to giv- 
 ing us the idea of infinitude. But it is assuredly true, on the 
 other hand, that there are certain great laws which may bo 
 discerned acting in man's life from age to age, and that their 
 general action may be traced and depended on. Political 
 economy can be attacked by no arguments which do not mi- 
 litate, more or less, against science in general ; and to answer 
 an argument levelled against modern science, would be giv- 
 ing a sufficient reason to every reader to close the book. Phi- 
 lanthropy ought more and more to ally itself with social 
 science, and the happiest results may be looked for from the 
 union. 
 
 Once more, and with reference to the practical working of 
 Philanthropy, it must be remembered that the secret of suc- 
 cess in every undertaking is, under the Divine blessing, to get 
 vien to do it. The whole might of Mr Carlyle's genius has been 
 bent to the proclamation of one great truth, — the sumless worth 
 of a man. Everything else is dead. Constitutions of absolute 
 theoretic perfection, laws of faultless equity, riches and armies 
 beyond computation, will be of themselves of no avail ; men 
 may put fire into these, but these will never fill the place of 
 men. The operations of the Bible Society have given the 
 most emphatic confirmation to Mr Carlyle's words on this point 
 €ver furnished in the history of the world, or possibly to be 
 
OQ WIIJJAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 furnislied. They liave afforded one other proof that it is 
 by man God will convert the world ; the Bible itself, when 
 alone, has not supplied the want. Here is the difficulty of 
 difficulties. You can get gold by subscription ; but a man 
 of real power, of piety, faculty, energy, cannot be subscribed 
 for. It is by the sagacious, powerful man, that the man of 
 power is known ; imbecility, seated on a mountain of gold, 
 can do nothing here. And yet, till you get your men, nothing 
 is done : if you give your gold to bad or incompetent men, it 
 were better that you Hung it into the Thames. It must be 
 fixed as an axiom in the heart of every philanthropist and of 
 every philanthropic society, that this is the point on which 
 success or failure absolutely depends. It must be fairly com- 
 prehended that it cannot be attained by mere examining of 
 reports, or any other mechanical process, although each of 
 these may contribute its aid. Not for a moment is it to be 
 forgotten that it must be done. If all the men employed by 
 philanthropy in its unnumbered schemes were godly, earnest, 
 and able men, what a power for good were then acting in our 
 country and to the ends of the earth ! 
 
 These suggestions are to be looked upon in the light of 
 finger-posts, indicating the way towards comprehensive re- 
 form, rather than unfolding the methods of such. If it is a 
 noble and effective form of exertion which arises from union, 
 sympathy, and the power of moral suasion, let us recognise 
 and honour the great movement of Christian philanthropy. 
 If pestilent babblers will endeavour to possess our platforms, 
 and to substitute ignorance and sentimentality for knowledge 
 and manly compassion, let men of real power, by the might 
 of those clear, strong words, which an English audience loves, 
 strike them into harmless silence or benignant shame. If it 
 is a fact, so boldly written on the forehead of our age that its 
 denial is an absurdity, and so firmly impressed upon our mo- 
 dern forms of life that its alteration were an attempt to hide 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 89 
 
 the steam-engine, to bury the press, to raze from the annals of 
 man the French Revolution, that the voice of public opinion, 
 whether right or wrong, does now rule Great Britain, let no 
 true, and bold, and earnest man disdain to speak into the pub- 
 lic ear by those channels which determine the sound of that 
 voice. Let Exeter Hall stand ; shut no door where men are 
 wont to assemble to listen to men ; but let every one who 
 listens there scrutinize and judge in the awe of a fearful re- 
 sponsibility, and let every one speak as before God. When 
 one surveys society in our days, and lays to heart how it is 
 guided, he does not fail to learn that the task of speaking 
 words to a human assemblage at present is as the task of hold- 
 ing the lightnings. 
 
 The conduct of the opposition to the Slave Trade, and the 
 perpetual promotion and superintendence of philanthropic 
 operations, were those aspects of the life of Wilberforce which 
 first caught the eye, and stood out most boldly to the public 
 gaze. Yet perhaps it is by somewhat altering our point of 
 view that we gain a full and clear comprehension at once of 
 the character in which he really was most serviceable to his 
 country, of the fountain whence each separate stream of his 
 activity flowed, and of the highest lesson his walk conveys. 
 Kegard him solely in his capacity as a Christian man ; look 
 upon him as he moves in the circles of Parliamentary ambi- 
 tion, — in the full influence of that icy glitter which is the 
 light and the warmth of those high regions. You then see 
 how living Christianity, unassisted by the might of talent, 
 can bear itself in the midst of political excitement and in- 
 trigue ; you may then judge whether those ancient arms, the 
 shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the 
 Spirit, have lost their heavenly temper. 
 
 You find that during his whole life these never fail him. 
 From fashion, and its loud pretence of joy, he turns aside ; 
 the atmosphere of faction is too foul for his purified organs ; 
 
90 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 holding by the standard of truth and godliness alone, he be- 
 comes himself a party. In a region unseen by the world, in 
 the stillness of the closet, where only the All-seeing Eye is 
 upon him, he lays open the recesses of his soul, that Divine 
 light may penetrate and pervade its every chamber ; there, 
 on his knees before God, he laments for secret sins, and pleads 
 for holiness in his inner life ; he looks earnestly and with se- 
 vere honesty within, searching his heart with the Word of 
 Ood as with a candle, that there may lurk in it no thought 
 or feeling to exalt itself against the Most High. He then 
 goes into Parliament and the world. By the gleam of the 
 gold it is seen that it has been purified by celestial fire ; his 
 light shines before men ; they acknowledge it to be a stead- 
 fast flame, untainted by the dim atmosphere in which it glows, 
 and ever pointed to heaven ; they are compelled to glorify 
 the God whom he serves. He embodies the simple might of 
 goodness, — ^the serene majesty of light. He shows what that 
 politician has won whose political scheme is briefly this, that 
 he will follow the Lord fully ; and proves what a rectifying, 
 healing, irradiating power in human affairs is the awakened 
 and vivid consciousness of immediate relationship to the Crea- 
 tor. He touches every question with the Ithuriel spear of 
 Christian truth ; and the falsehood in it starts forth, as by 
 irresistible compulsion, in its own image. And so, where the 
 subject suggests doubt, where soft folds of plausibility are 
 drawn over moral delinquency, or the shifting meteor of ex- 
 pediency offers itself for the pole-star of duty, men turn to 
 Wilberforce ; look on this, they say, with your eye : we be- 
 lieve it has been purified by a light Divine. 
 
 To trace the phases in which this distinctive godliness mani- 
 fested itself in his Parliamentary career, and to exhibit the 
 testimonies given to its heavenly virtue by the men with whom 
 he worked, were to detail his actings from his twenty-sixth 
 year. One instance must serve for a thousand 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 91 
 
 We have all heard of the impeachment of Melville. Of 
 his perfect innocence, or partial delinquency, this is not the 
 place to speak. However it was, the case was one of pro- 
 found interest in Parliament; and Ministers were extremely 
 anxious to screen him. Wilberforce was doubly impelled to 
 come to a conclusion favourable to him. His heart was na- 
 turally of a delicately tender and kindly order, and his old 
 friend Pitt had set his heart on clearing Melville. He exa- 
 mined the matter, but could not suppress the consciousness 
 of grave doubts. He listened eagerly to the explanations of- 
 fered by Ministers, when the discussion came on in Parlia- 
 ment ; looking into them with the piercing flash of English 
 shrewdness, quickened by godly earnestness, he saw, or thought 
 he saw, through them : he hesitated not a moment, but rose 
 .to his feet. The eye of Pitt was on him, with the pleading 
 of affection, and the authority of one deeply esteemed : Wil- 
 berforce felt the fascination of the look. But he faltered not : 
 he spoke the bold, unmeasured words of Christian honour ; 
 be went against Ministers, and condemned Melville. His 
 words fell on an attentive house ; the number of votes he in- 
 fluenced was named at forty ; Ministers were defeated. It 
 was felt that in a question of simple integrity, where casuistry 
 had to be eluded, and plausibility swept aside, Wilberforce 
 was the ultimate authority. In the British Senate in the 
 nineteenth century, when a point of morality had to be settled, 
 it was not to the man of poor duelling "honour," it was not 
 to the philosophic moralist, it was not to the upright mer- 
 chant, men looked for a decision : it was to the Christian 
 Senator, whose code was his Bible, and who walked, in child- 
 like simplicity, by the old conversion Hght. Consider the 
 number of opinions represented in that assembly, and then 
 estimate the weight and worth of this testimony. 
 
 Thus did Wilberforce, in his station in public afiairs, con- 
 spicuously manifest to men the fresh and prevailing power of 
 
92 
 
 WILLIAM WILBEKFOaCE. 
 
 living Christianity, and testify its superiority to every other 
 light. The book which he published was just the same tes- 
 timony expressed in words. To criticise, however briefly, 
 the View of Practical Christianity, would be now out of 
 date. It was marked by no peculiar traits of genius, by no 
 originality of thought or style. But it was clear, explicit, 
 warm, and animated ; over it all there breathed the fervour 
 of love and the earnestness of faith ; it was an attempt to 
 urge the pure gospel on the fashionable and worldly, and hold 
 it, to use Milton's superb language, in their faces like a mir- 
 ror of diamond, that it might dazzle and pierce their misty 
 eyeballs. And mankind did consent to listen to its pleading ; 
 it went round the world : very few books have been so widely 
 popular. It was published in 1797. 
 
 The domestic life of Wilberforce was of that happy sort 
 which defies long description. It can be but in rare cases 
 that the description of the course of a river, if given mile by 
 mile, is interesting ; even ^//ords worth cannot persuade us to 
 trace with him, more than once, the course of that Duddon 
 at whose every winding he has erected a mile-stone in form 
 of a sonnet. The river rose among green craggy mountains ; 
 in its joyful youth, it was the playmate of sunbeams ; the 
 dimpling, wavering, sparkling child, that dallied with the 
 zephyrs, or leaped over the precipice, wreathing its snowy 
 neck in rainbows ; as if in the strength of youth and man- 
 hood, it flowed long through a bounteous and lordly cham- 
 paign of cornfield and woodland, resting calmly in the noon- 
 day sun, listening to the reaper's song ; it widened into a 
 peaceful estuary, its force becoming ever less, and, in a silent 
 balmy evening, it lost itself in a placid ocean. This is all 
 we care vO know about the river. Much the same is it in a 
 case like that before us. Wilberforce's boyhood, manhood, 
 and old age, are well enough conceived by reference to this 
 common figure. 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 93 
 
 At the age of thirty-eight he married. His was a happy 
 family ; and a congeniality in the highest tastes bound him in 
 sympathizing affection to his wife. In the arm-chair, or at 
 the festal board, he was seen to the greatest advantage. By 
 reading what he has left us, we can evidently form no idea 
 of what he was either in Parliament or in his home. He 
 expressly tells us that he did not succeed with his pen ; that 
 the quickening excitement of society, the genial impulse 
 of speech, caused his ideas to start forth in more vivid 
 colours, in quicker and more natural sequence : and the par- 
 ticular power of the orator and of the wit partakes so much 
 of the nature of a flavour, — of an undefined and incommuni- 
 cable essence, — that a fame in that sort must always depend 
 mainly on testimony. A witticism without the glance that 
 lent it fire is often the dew-pearl without its gleam, — a mere 
 drop of water. But it cannot be doubted for a moment that 
 the social powers of Wilberforce were of an extraordinary 
 order. The two qualities whose combination gives probably 
 the most engaging manner possible, are tenderness and quick 
 sympathy ; the instantaneous apprehension of what is said, 
 and its reception into the arms of a tender, sympathizing in- 
 terest. Wilberforce had both. His heart was very tender. 
 To go from the country to the town would affect him to tears. 
 When John Wesley stood up and gave him his blessing, he 
 wept. We have seen how he delivered his testimony against 
 Melville : hear now how they afterwards met. The account 
 of the interview will be best given in Wilberforce's own 
 words : " We did not meet for a long time, and all his con- 
 nections most violently abused me. About a year before he 
 died, we met in the stone passage which leads from the Horse 
 Guards to the Treasury. We came suddenly upon each 
 other, just in the open air, where the light struck upon our 
 faces. We saw one another ; and at first I thought he waa 
 passing on, but he stopped and called out, * Ah, Wilberforce, 
 
94 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 how do you do ? and gave me a hearty shake by the hand. 
 I would have given a thousand pounds for that shake." A 
 generous and tender nature speaks in this last expression. 
 For everything in nature or man he had a glance of sympa- 
 thy ; provided always it lay in the sunlight, — provided it had 
 no guilt or baseness in it. 
 
 It is easy to present Wilberforce to the eye of imagina- 
 tion, as he used to appear when seated in his arm-chair, the 
 centre of a pleased and mirthful throvg. Diminutive in 
 size, with features spare and sharp, with vivid, sparkling eye, 
 he does not rest, but has a tendency to jerk and fidget ; his 
 face is piquant, mobile, varying in its lights and shades, like 
 a lake in a sunny, breezy April day. An idea is suggested 
 by some one of the company; a slight twinkle, an instanta- 
 neous change of light in his eye, shows he has caught it, and 
 embraced it, and looked round and round it ; he tosses it 
 about, as if from hands full of gold dust, till in a few mo- 
 ments it is wrapped in new light and gilding, — or he play- 
 fully transfixes it on the unpoisoned dart of a light, genial 
 banter, shrewd and arch, which finds its way straight to the 
 heart, — or his face grows solemn, and he utters, unostenta- 
 tiously but earnestly, a few devout words regarding it. Now 
 his face is one free, indefinite, joyful smile, — now he mimics 
 some parliamentary orator, — ^now he is giving some graphic, 
 faintly caustic sketch of character, with a sharp catching 
 smile about his lip, — and now he listens quietly, a tear in his 
 eye. Sir James Stephen, who doubtless was intimately ac- 
 quainted with Wilberforce, compares his vivacity to Vol- 
 taire's, and sets his tenderness above that of Rosseau : Ma- 
 dame de Stael pronounced him the wittiest man in England. 
 But perhaps the most entirely satisfactory and expressive 
 idea of his whole manner to be possibly reached is to be found 
 in these words of Mackintosh, who visited him when ad- 
 vanced in life : " Do you remember Madame de Maintenon's 
 
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 95 
 
 exclamation, * Oli, the misery of having to amuse an old king, 
 qui ruest pas amusahle /' !N"ow. if I were called to describe 
 Wilberforce in one word, I should say he was the most 
 * amusable' man I ever met with in my life. Instead of hav- 
 ing to think what subjects will interest him, it is perfectly 
 impossible to hit on one that does not. I never saw any one 
 who touched life at so many points ; and this is the more 
 remarkable in a man who is supposed to live absorbed in the 
 contemplation of a future state. When he was in the House 
 of Commons, he seemed to have the freshest mind of any 
 man there. There was all the charm of youth about him. 
 And he is quite as remarkable in this bright evening of his 
 days, as when I saw him in his glory many years ago." 
 
 The concluding years of his life were calm and beautiful. 
 He spent them at his country residence of Highwood. More 
 and more his eye turned towards the home he was now near- 
 ing ; through his vivacity, — through his still fresh activity, — 
 there shone more and more the softening, mellowing light of 
 holiness. He loved to expatiate under the open sky, to watch 
 the dew-drops, to gaze long and with unsated delight upon 
 flowers, the rising gratitude and delight of his soul flowing 
 forth in the words in which King David voiced similar feel- 
 ings on the battlements of Zion three thousand years ago. 
 " Surely," he would say, " flowei*s are the smiles of God's 
 goodness." 
 
 In 1832 he passed tranquilly into his rest. 
 
 Bichly gifted by nature, Wilberforce never repaired the 
 waste and dissipation of his faculties in those years when a 
 man ought to be undergoing a serious and methodic educa- 
 tion. The mighty intellectual powers were not his ; the 
 strength of far-reaching, penetrating thought, the comprehen- 
 sive and ordered memory, the imagination of inevitable eye 
 and creative hand. Unless that perpetual glow of feeling, 
 that free and exuberant fertility of wit, that natural power of 
 
96 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 eloquence and acting, wliicli lie possessed, come within the 
 strained limits of a definition of genius, lie certainly had none. 
 But in the evening of his days he could look over his life, 
 and recall the hour when he had devoted himself to his Sa- 
 viour, and thank God, without hypocrisy, that he had been 
 enabled in measure to perform his vow. His life was not in- 
 effective or dark ; it was spent in the noblest manner in which 
 a man can live, in advancing the glory of earth's eternal King, 
 by blessing that creature man whom He has appointed its 
 king in time ; and over it there lies Divine grace, uniting, 
 harmonizing, beautifying all, like the bow of Grod's covenant 
 
TUOM.\S CHALMERS. 97 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 Thomas Chalmers was bom in one of those homes which 
 have been the pride and the blessing of Scotland ; to which, 
 rather than to anght else, Scotland may point as her achieve- 
 ment among the nations, and to whose final uprearing count- 
 less influences and agencies have co-coperated. It is often 
 in the far distance that causes work, i/hose effects are seen 
 in living bloom around ; the cloud was gathered from the re- 
 mote Atlantic, whose drops cause the farmer's little corn-field 
 to spring ; the hillock on whose side his cottage turns its 
 bright face towards the southern sun was upheaved by the 
 might of central fire ere mankind was born. The fierce strug- 
 gle in the dark wood of Falkirk, the victorious charge on the 
 bright plain of Bannockburn, the wrestling of Luther with 
 Satan in his silent chamber at Erfurt, the far flight and inevi- 
 table gaze of the intellect of Calvin, the rugged earnestness 
 of Knox, the godly valour of Peden and Cameron, all con- 
 joined their agencies to build up the quiet homes of Presby- 
 terian Scotland. Nor was this an unworthy or insignificant 
 consummation : the almost reverential admiration with which 
 men have looked into the circle of The Cottar's Saturday 
 Night proclaims it to have been noble and sufl&cient. Of 
 such homes, substantial comfort and cheerful piety were the 
 
98 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 characteristics ; religious thoughtful ness and industrious peace 
 dwelt there in kindly union ; the " auld Ha'-Bible" was their 
 corner-stone. Such homes write on the face of the world the 
 best evidence of the truth of Christianity ! And the father 
 of Thomas Chalmers was the worthy head of such^ home, a 
 fine example of the right-hearted Calvinistic Scotchman. Of 
 deep and tender feelings, yet ever manly and firm, humble 
 and reverent towards God, unobtrusive yet unbending in the 
 presence of men, John Chalmers of Anstruther was that style 
 of man which forms the life-blood of a nation, and whose pre- 
 sence in a family is the satisfactory guarantee of an educa- 
 tion which may, without hesitation, be pronounced good. 
 Thomas was his sixth child ; he was born at Anstruther, in 
 Fife, in March 1780. He showed from the first a noble dis- 
 position : truthful, joyous, aflfectionate ; the reader can judge 
 how the influences of such a father and such a home would 
 act upon him. 
 
 In his childhood there occurred little worthy of remark ; 
 little more, probably, than is to be told of all healthy and clever 
 children. "When so much a child as to be grossly ill treated 
 by his nurse, he is yet so much a man as to observe with 
 strict honour a promise of secrecy which she easily won from 
 his unsuspecting heart. He soon determines to be a minis- 
 ter, and, not to lose time, chooses his first text, " Let brotherly 
 love continue," — a text, by the way, of which he would have 
 approved as heartily at sixty as at six. One day he is caught 
 pacing his room, and repeating, in evident emotion, the ^vords 
 " Oh, Absalom, my son, my son." These are pleasing traits, 
 if nowise extraordinary; they at least show clearly that 
 Thomas Chalmers was a noble child. 
 
 At school he was almost precisely what it is best for a boy 
 to be ; if he erred at all, it was on the safe side. This por- 
 tion of his training may be characterized fully and fitly by 
 saying, that the important education of the class-room was 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 99 
 
 carefully prevented from encroaching on the perhaps even 
 more important education of the playground. He was dis- 
 tinguished in school by no remarkable proficiency, and might 
 be known among his class-fellows only by the greater strength 
 and buoyancy of his nature. When he chose to learn, he 
 learned fast ; this is an undoubted and important fact. But 
 it was in the field or the playground, where the free, loud 
 laugh of the glad young bosom rang cheerily, every faculty 
 awake to watch the turns and win the triumphs of the game, 
 every muscle in fine healthful tension, every drop of blood 
 fiurging in exultant fulness of life, that an observant and pe- 
 netrating eye might have discerned the probability of his 
 trimming skilfully between metaphysical dreaminess and me- 
 chanic dulness, and attaining a healthful, powerful manhood. 
 He was at school rather a Clive than a Coleridge. His youth- 
 ful mind was one of marked candour and purity ; at no pe- 
 riod of his life was he tainted with aught definitely vicious 
 or ignoble. His nature was open, generous, affectionate ; 
 his strength, physical and intellectual, exuberant ; he was so- 
 cial, truthful, and pure-minded. 
 
 Ere completing his twelfth year, he entered the Univer- 
 sity of St Andrews. During the first two sessions, he was 
 still a school-boy. " Golf, football, and particularly hand- 
 ball," with similar avocations, occupied his time. Anything 
 deserving the name of classical culture he never received. 
 At the precise period when a few additional years at school 
 would probably have affected his whole history, he was sent 
 to the university ; his sympathies, unawakened to the great- 
 ness and the beauty of antiquity, were soon arrested by ma- 
 thematics. 
 
 It was in his fourteenth year that his mind awoke to its 
 full intellectual vigour. At that period he commenced his 
 third session at the university, and entered upon the study 
 of mathematics. The pursuit was eminently congenial, and 
 
100 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 lie at once became distinguished. The teacher of the mathe- 
 matical classes in St Andrews at this time was Dr James 
 Brown, and Chalmers was much in his society. It was the 
 peiiod of the French Revolution, and Dr Brown participated 
 largely in the excitement of the time. He was of the school 
 of radical reform in politics, and no doubt of extremely liberal 
 sentiments on religious matters. As was to be expected, 
 Chalmers embraced the opinions of his instructor. He read 
 Godwin's Political Justice with delight and approval ; he 
 gazed on that vast, elaborate, and surely imposing structure, 
 with its ice pinnacles clear, sharply defined, glittering in the 
 wintry air, and deemed it a palace in whose many chambers 
 the human race might at length find rest ; he breathed for a 
 time the thin atmosphere of its chill virtue and clockwork 
 justice, and thought it were well always to be there. The 
 ideas which he had brought from his father's house fell away 
 from him ; for the homespun but substantial garb of Scotch 
 Calvinism, he substituted one of modern make, jaunty and 
 of bright colour, but spun mainly of vapour and moonshine. 
 The thorough depravity of man, an atonement by the death 
 of Christ, salvation by faith alone, were lefl to the weak and 
 narrow-minded. What seemed a wider and more brilliant 
 prospect opened to the eye of the aspiring student. Scaling 
 the sunny heights of college promotion, loving truth and pro- 
 claiming virtue, winning the crowns of fame, expatiating in 
 the sky-fields of thought and imagination, basking in the smile 
 of the Universal Benevolence, he would go on in his strength 
 and prosper. This may be named the first epoch in the in- 
 tellectual history of Chalmers. 
 
 In 1795, he entered the Divinity Hall, formally to com- 
 mence the study of theology. His mind, however, was yet 
 under the spell of geometry. He had forced his way to the 
 French mathematical literature, and was diligently occupied 
 in that field. Towards the close, however, of his first theo- 
 
THOMAS CIIALMEllS. 101 
 
 logical session, a more important intellectual influence than 
 that of mathematics was brought to bear upon his mind. He 
 became acquainted with the Inquiry of Jonathan Edwards. 
 Its study was to him an exercise of rapturous delight ; his 
 mind was filled with it till it seemed about to " lose its ba- 
 lance." It was the second determining influence in his mental 
 development ; mathematics and radicalism were the first. 
 One or two obseiwations on the nature of this influence, and 
 on what it i*eveals, seem here necessary. 
 
 The mere fact that, at the age of fifteen, it was to Chalmers 
 not a task, but a positive and intense pleasure, to follow the 
 dry light of the great American metaphysician into those 
 remote and difficult regions of thought in which it expatiated, 
 is a proof of extraordinary intellectual endowment. At an 
 age when his sympathies might have been expected to find 
 comfor£ and response in the circulating library, and his in- 
 tellect a pleasurable occupation in the lighter walks of histoiy 
 or science, he found his whole spiritual nature freely and de- 
 lightfully exercised by the treatise on the freedom of the will. 
 And the effect it produced on his boyish mind is remarkable. 
 With the exception of Swift's iron misanthropy, there is per- 
 haps no phenomenon in literature comparable to the unim- 
 passioned coldness of the mind of Edwards in the investiga- 
 tion of those high and awful themes which are directly or in- 
 directly the subject of his Inquiiy. His argument, when 
 well understood in its limits and conditions, is, I think, irre- 
 fragable ; yet it is more than can be demanded of the human 
 mind to disrobe itself so entirely of human sympathy, as the 
 mind of Jonathan Edwards is seen to disrobe itself as we read 
 that treatise. Edwards was certainly not devoid of kindness 
 of heart, but, in composing his work on the freedom of the 
 will, he appears to have resolved himself absolutely into a 
 thinking apparatus. He deliberately looks into hell, and the 
 whole heat of its burnings cannot melt into a tear the ice 
 
102 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 in his eye ; he gazes on a great portion of his brother men 
 stretched to eternity upon a wheel, and his eyelid quivers no 
 more than if he saw a butterfly. 
 
 The circumstance with which we are at present concerned 
 is that, despite the tremendous impression produced on the 
 mind of Chalmers by the Inquiry into the freedom of the will, 
 its effect was not to darken but to brighten, not to depress 
 but to elevate. It produced "a twelvemonth of elysium ;'' 
 these are his own words. His intellect was not beaten hard, 
 and rendered dead to all other impulses, — a common case with 
 young men whom the genius of some writer overpowers. He 
 did not, with a trembling, gloomy, irresistible curiosity, pry 
 and pry into the world of mystery here opened up to him, as 
 young Foster would have done. He accepted the truth he 
 found ; he saw the whole universe in God. But when he 
 went with Edwards to the mouth of hell, he still heard the 
 melodies of heaven. He saw that Infinite Power clasped 
 the world, but he could feel that Infinite Wisdom guided the 
 infinite might, and be content. His mind expanded and 
 brightened. He might have been seen at early morn in the 
 dewy fields, whither he went to wander alone, and to expa- 
 tiate in the vast conception ; to feel the world but a little 
 station on which to stand and see himself overarched by the 
 infinitude of God as by the illimitable azure above his head ; 
 to lift up his eyes and catch a glimpse of the golden chains, 
 by which the universe hangs from the throne of God. Look- 
 ing upon him in those hours, one is reminded of that striking 
 passage in modern poetry, in which the great poet of nature 
 and meditation, whose conception of certain great influences 
 which aid in moulding lofty and thoughtful character was 
 perhaps stronger than that of any other, has pictured the cor- 
 responding stage of mental history in the case of his own hera 
 
 ** The growing youth, 
 What soul was his, when, from the naked top 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 103 
 
 Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun 
 
 Else up and bathe the world in light ! He look'd — 
 
 Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth, 
 
 And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay 
 
 Beneath him :— Far and wide the clouds were toucVd, 
 
 And in their silent faces could he read 
 
 Unutterable love. Sound needed none, 
 
 Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank 
 
 The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form. 
 
 All melted into him ; they swallow'd up 
 
 His animal being ; in them did he live. 
 
 And by them did he live ; they were his life. 
 
 In such access of mind, in such high hour 
 
 Of visitation from the living God, 
 
 Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired. 
 
 Ko thanks he breathed, he proffer'd no request ; 
 
 Eapt into still communion that transcends 
 
 The imperfect offices of prayer and praise. 
 
 His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power 
 
 That made him ; it was blessedness and love." 
 
 Chalmers was not at all smitten by fear ; the passionless 
 demonstration of Edwards, of all modes of representation per- 
 haps the best calcnlated to impress his mind with ten-or, cast 
 over it no abiding gloom ; he experienced the sublime emo- 
 tion of reverential awe, but he knew nothing of slavish fear. 
 His mind was of that radically sound and noble order which 
 responds to influences of hope and love rather than of fear 
 and constraint ; he had an affinity with light. 
 
 He had not yet, however, completed the stages of what was 
 strictly his education. He had to pass through a more pain- 
 ful ordeal than he had hitherto known. In 1798, he entered 
 the family of a gentleman as private tutor. Nothing of mo- 
 ment occurred during his residence there. It was, indeed, a 
 fine reply which he gave when taunted by his employer with 
 pride, one worthy of a self-respecting and high-minded youth : 
 " There are," he said, " two kinds of pride. Sir ; there is that 
 pride which lords it over inferiors, and there is that pride 
 which rejoices in repressing the insolence of superiors. The 
 first I have none of; the second I glory in :" yet slight im- 
 
104 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 portatice is to be attached to the probably accidental squabbles 
 in which he became involved. But about the period of his 
 quitting this residence and returning to St Andrews to com- 
 plete his theological studies, when he was just entering on 
 his twentieth year, he fell in with D'Holbach's once celebrated 
 ^ysteme de la Nature. The agitations of his tutorship had, 
 it may be, somewhat unsettled and fevered his mind, render- 
 ing it more open to assault, disturbing that calm concentra- 
 tion of power by which error is best met and repelled. The 
 pompous, far-sounding rhetoric of the book charmed his ear; 
 the magnitude and apparent stability of its scientific scaffold- 
 ing caught his eye ; its tone of calm assumption, as if it were 
 the conclusive utterance of ultimate truth, perplexed and con- 
 founded him. It preached virtue of the most high-flown order. 
 It could not be the birth of ignorance, for it was reared upon 
 the foundation of modern science. It planted its scientific 
 engines on the earth, and with an air of perfect strength and 
 philosophic deliberation turned them against principalities and 
 powers. First, it swept from earth's horizon all religions, the 
 Christian among the rest ; these it flung into one grave, and 
 wrote over it, — Superstition. Then it cast a thick impene- 
 trable smoke, as from the depths of hell, over all the heaven, 
 blotting out those fields of immortality towards which the eye 
 of humanity, through its weary pilgrimage, has ever gazed with 
 wistful hope ; these it called the phantom pictures of enthusiasm 
 and imagination. Last of all, it aimed its bolts at the throne 
 of the universe, to dethrone Him that sat there. The ultimate 
 achievement of science was to seat itself in the throne of 
 God. And how beneficent was its reign to be ! The green 
 earth was to bask in universal sunshine, impeded by no dark- 
 ening cloud ; the fair field was no longer to be trodden by 
 the hoof of the war-steed, the harvests of earth were no longer 
 to be fatted with human gore ; the world was to become one 
 vast dancing saloon, where men abode for a time, and from 
 
THOMAS CHALMEKS. 105 
 
 which, OD any occasion of inconvenience, suicide, tlie noble 
 right and privilege of the free, was ready to dismiss them ; 
 all Ethiopians were to be washed white, or at least white- 
 washed ; the infancy and boyhood of humanity had passed, 
 and now the noonday of its years had come. These things 
 were to be done by the knowledge of the laws of the world ; 
 such laws were all physical ; ideas could be mechanically ac- 
 counted for; "our soul has occasion for ideas the same as 
 our stomach has occasion for aliments." The proud philo- 
 sopher required but one word to account for the universe, — 
 physical law. Such was the teaching of the Systeme de la 
 Nature, 
 
 The mind of Chalmers was of a decidedly scientific cast ; 
 he had been long accustomed to the bare and precise rea- 
 soning of mathematics ; he delighted in a definite, compre- 
 hensible, tangible proof. Here, then, was D'Holbach, point- 
 ing out his laws, measuring, with consummate assui'ance, 
 heaven and earth, plausibly, nay, powerfully, exhibiting the 
 evils of superstition, and making them synonymous with the 
 evils of religion, talking in the loftiest strain of universal be- 
 nevolence and felicity, and concluding with a fine rhetorical 
 panegyric on virtue. To the baron it was sun-clear that a 
 divine power in the universe was superfluous ; these were the 
 laws, why go beyond them ? And if divine power was super- 
 fluous, it was but the next step to pronounce belief in it 
 noxious. Chalmers was staggered. It seemed, for a time, 
 as if that Eye which Edwards had shown him lighting the 
 imiverse was to go out. He was in deep anguish and per- 
 plexity ; his friends feared for his reason. But his mind was 
 too fair, too noble, and too substantially grounded, to lapse 
 into scepticism. He had heard one side of the question ; he 
 honestly turned to hear the other. The result was, that he 
 was firmly and for ever established in the belief of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
106 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 The various steps in tliis gradual consummation I am unable 
 to trace ; but the outline of the process may be discerned. 
 He candidly studied the great apologists of last century — 
 Beattie, Paley, and Butler. The first of these it was who 
 steadied him after the maddening draught of materialism : 
 his final declaration, uttered long afterwards, was, " Butler 
 made me a Christian.'* He soon saw that, with all its pre- 
 tence and paraphernalia, the system of D'Holbach was a mere 
 film on the surface of things ; the arguments of Beattie cer- 
 tified him of the reliability of man's inner beliefs ; and But- 
 ler's giant intellect gave him a glance into the real structure 
 of the universe. He came to the unalterable conviction that 
 there is a God. He then looked calmly at the historical evi- 
 dence for the fact, that Jesus of Nazareth did perform works 
 competent only to almighty power on the plains of Judea ; 
 the clear and masterly logic of Paley satisfied him that it was 
 so. The other steps naturally followed. The result was a 
 deliberate conviction that it is a fact dubitable by no fair and 
 capable intellect, that the Christian religion was positively 
 revealed to man by the living God. 
 
 Two remarks here suggest themselves. 
 
 The first is. That this method of proof embraces substan- 
 tial evidence for the truth of Christianity. There are minds 
 which are incapable of doubting the existence of God : born 
 with an ingrained conviction that man was created for an end, 
 that the universe is not a mad flickering phantasmagoria, de- 
 void of purpose, and meaning blank nothing, they are unable 
 to compass the conception of the non-existence of the Supreme 
 Mind. This form of intellect is doubtless the most substan- 
 tial and healthful of all. And it is likely that the mind of 
 Chalmers was radically of this type ; the temporary delirium 
 produced by D'Holbach would probably have departed even 
 without positive opposing argument, when his mind regained 
 the power of calm thought. But, if this central fact is 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 107 
 
 doubted, it must, first of all, be placed on an impregnable 
 basis : and how can it be so, save by exhibiting the reason- 
 ableness of an acceptation of the ineradicable beliefs of hu- 
 manity, of a trust in " the mighty hopes Avhich make us 
 men ]" It being placed beyond doubt that God exists, and 
 that the world has been established by Him, the next thing 
 is to advance to a more precise idea of His general govern- 
 ment and of our relation to Him, an end to be attained by 
 earnest contemplation of that small portion of His ways which 
 we do know, — in other words, by a consideration of the ana- 
 logies of Butler. The ground thus cleared, — the need and 
 the reasonableness of Christianity demonstrated, — the time 
 will have come to consider the actual historical evidence for 
 its truth j and the clear, impartial, comprehensive summary 
 by Paley of the testimony to the fact that Christ raised La- 
 zarus, and rose Himself, from the grave, will always continue 
 a satisfactory embodiment of the essentials of this evidence. 
 If the inquirer now believes that the mission of Jesus was 
 Divine, that his " living Father" sent Him, the whole system 
 of revelation of which He is the corner-stone will be seen to 
 stand on an impregnable basis ; all that was delivered before 
 the Christian era resting on His authority ; all that has been 
 delivered since secured by His promise. In the individual 
 case, there may be a mode of arriving at the conviction ot 
 the Divine truth of the Scriptures different from that here 
 sketched. These Scriptures may be so applied to the soul by 
 the Holy Spirit that their Divine origin cannot be doubted. 
 It is equally true that the profound accordance with the 
 general order of things here on earth exhibited by these 
 writings, the answers they embody to man's questionings, the 
 supply they offer to man's wants, may be so explored and com- 
 prehended that tlie result must be an assurance that the whole 
 phenomenon is utterly beyond explanation, save on the hypo- 
 thesis that the ordinary dealings of Providence were in one 
 
108 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 case diverged from, and the natural powers of man in one in- 
 stance divinely supplemented. But when the question is a 
 simple question of fact ; when a man desires not, in the first 
 instance, to enter the edifice of Christianity, but to learn 
 whether the pillars of it were laid by God, in the same posi- 
 tive, independent, objective way in which He created the 
 world, the plain logical vindication of the historical fact, that 
 a superhuman power accompanied the words of Jesus, is a 
 legitimate form of Christian evidence. 
 
 For it must be distinctly avowed on the one hand, and 
 kept in view on the other, that the province of the Christian 
 apologist is limited. There is one sphere which he can never 
 enter, the sphere of the opemtions of the Divine Spirit. He 
 may show the consistence of Christianity, viewed as an ex- 
 ternal fact, with the laws of evidence ; but he cannot open 
 the eyes of '' the world" to see that Spirit whom the Saviour 
 declared its inability to see ; he cannot enable the natural 
 man to discern the things which are "spiritually discerned." 
 Were the work of Christian apology com]:)lete, it could by 
 possibility have achieved but two things : the proof of Chris- 
 tianity as a religion once supernaturally given, and the proof 
 of Christianity as a religion in all ages divinely characterized. 
 The work still remaining to be done in Christian apologetics 
 falls mainly under the second of these heads. That work 
 Paley and his school did not certainly, save perhaps in a 
 scarce perceptible degree, attempt ; but they did attempt, 
 and with a success v/hich can hardly be called in question, 
 the former portion of Christian apologetics. They answered 
 the question which men will naturally and fairly in the first 
 instance put to the Christian — How do you know that your 
 Master spoke in Judea, and spoke with supernatural autho- 
 rity ] And a satisfactory answer to this enquiry must al- 
 ways embrace a proof of Christianity sufficient to content 
 the sober mind, and to condemn the gainsayer. 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 109 
 
 The second remark is but a particular application of the 
 fii*st. It is, that in the present day there exists a dispo- 
 sition unduly to depreciate the apologists of last century. 
 Against Paley in particular a very strong prejudice has be- 
 gun to gain ground — a prejudice of perhaps slight importance 
 in itself, and not absolutely without foundation in reference 
 to Paley individually — but of decidedly injurious tendency 
 in throwing discredit on the substantial service rendered by 
 him to the Christian cause. His chamcter it is not difficult 
 to define. It was not of the noblest type ; but it was still 
 further removed from one radically ignoble. His mind was 
 antithetically opposed to all that holds of poetry ; emotional 
 energy of every sort was alien to his mental atmosphere ; his 
 temperament was a uniform mean, an untroubled calm, re- 
 moved at once from the glory and the gloom of storm. His 
 intellect bore such relation to a mind like Paul's as a creed 
 bears to a Prophecy of Isaiah — as the cold steel of a Roman 
 legionary to the flaming sword of an angel. Joy to the 
 measure of rapture, sorrow to the measure of despair, he 
 could not feel ; the devotion of the martyr and the raving 
 of the fanatic were alike removed from the balanced mode- 
 ration of his mood ; the mighty passions which surge in the 
 revolution or crash on the battle-field found no answering 
 sympathy in his breast. And Foster declared truly that 
 this " order of mind is ill fitted to embody the highest gran- 
 deur of the Christian character — that the natural incapabi- 
 lity of great emotions operates veiy strongly to prevent the 
 prevalence of the Christian spirit." Yet it is just as plain, 
 on the other hand, that Paley was radically an honest, able, 
 worthy man. Of rough Yorkshire kindred, and humorous 
 homely ways, he was precisely of the stuff from which na- 
 ture makes the substantial, deliberate, steady, sagacious Eng- 
 lishman ; there was a certain sarcastic, though kindly rug- 
 gedness and plainness in his speech, pointedly opposed to in- 
 
110 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 sincerity or meanness ; a warm homely man, whom those 
 who knew him loved; one totally devoid of affectation and 
 pretence, with little ambition, and no greed. And his in- 
 tellectual light, if very dry, was powerful ; the error was 
 subtle it could not pierce, the truth was sure which stood its 
 scrutiny. To discern with conclusive certainty the vital 
 points of a question ; to draw them out in clear logical se- 
 quence ; and to estimate their real and available value, few 
 minds have been better able than Paley's. His style wants 
 poetic adornment and emotional fire ; yet it has a certain 
 conclusive satisfying tone, and its perfect clearness lends it 
 no mean charm ; it makes you feel that it is not all base 
 metal which does not glitter. Paley's mind, though want- 
 ing certain affinities with minds of the highest order which 
 Johnson's possessed, was essentially more substantial and 
 powerful than that which produced Rasselas, If you look 
 well, moreover, you will find the moral system of each near- 
 ly similar ; the high and serene region of Christian holiness, 
 as distinguished from prudential virtue, neither can be said 
 to have entered. I shall not object to Johnson's being en- 
 titled a hero ; but if his theory of virtue resolved itself radi- 
 cally into prudence, as Mr Carlyle grants, I shall at least 
 consider Mr Kingsley in an untenable and absurd position, 
 when he represents Paley's character as an unanswerable ar- 
 gument against his reasonings. But, indeed, the absurdity 
 into which Mr Kingsley, in the person of his hero Alton 
 Locke, has suffered himself to fall, is complicated and glar- 
 ing. To effect that confutation which the precise nature of 
 the infidelity of last century required, an intellect such as 
 Paley's was positively demanded. The faintest gleam of en- 
 thusiasm, the slightest warmth of passion, would have neu- 
 tralized its effect. It was the cool, " philosophic," enlight- 
 ened intellect which found Christianity unsatisfactory ; it 
 was the cold sharp edge of the scalpel of modem science 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. Ill 
 
 which was declared to have exposed its unsoundness; un- 
 stable and excited minds, natures enthusiastic and fanciful, 
 might be allured by the imposing fable ; but if you divested 
 yourself of all prejudice and all passion, and turned on the 
 Bible the same clear impartial judgment which you brought 
 to the study of Euclid, it was not a matter of doubt that re- 
 jection of every notion of its inspiration would result. To 
 meet such opponents, to dissipate such ideas, Paley was the 
 very man. " Not so fast,'' he said, " I'm Yorkshire too : 
 look at this phenomenon just as you look at any other in 
 nature or history ; look at it on all sides, with piercing scru- 
 tiny, but with fairness and without haste ; and then, whe- 
 ther convinced or not, declare honestly if it does not at 
 least require a tremendous effort to consider it the fruit of 
 imposture or frenzy V Since the days of Paley, infidelity 
 has changed its tone ; the olch jargon about priestcraft^ im- 
 posture, and fanaticism, has well-nigh died away ; there is a 
 caution now in assailing fairly and in front the facts of Chris- 
 tianity : and for this change there can be no doubt we are 
 largely indebted to him. Mr Kingsley is a man of rich emo- 
 tions and unquestioned earnestness ; but his intellectual force 
 is puny to that of Paley ; and it is not with the best gi'ace 
 that a clergyman of the Church of England puts into the 
 mouth of a sceptic a vague and irrelevant charge against the 
 character of him who wrote the Horce Paulince. The tem- 
 perament of John Foster diflfered as essentially from that of 
 Paley as Mr Kingsley's, yet his verdict on Paley's achieve- 
 ment as a defender of Christianity was as follows : — " It has 
 been the enviable lot of here and there a favoured indivi- 
 dual to do some one important thing so well that it shall 
 never need to be done again : and we regard Dr Paley''^ 
 writings on the Evidences of Christianity as of so signally 
 decisive a character, that we should be content to let them 
 stand as the essence and the close of the great argument on 
 
112 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 the part of its believers ; and should feel no despondency or 
 chagrin if we could be prophetically certified that such an 
 efficient Christian reasoner would never henceforward arise. 
 We should consider the grand foi-tress of proof, as now raised 
 and finished, the intellectual capital of that empire which is 
 destined to leave the widest boundaries attained by the Ro- 
 man far behind." This may require qualification and cir- 
 cumscription, but it is a very important testimony, and will 
 ultimately be found to be substantially correct. 
 
 We have seen that Chalmers passed through an ordeal of 
 doubt ; and such doubt as was peculiarly ensnaring to his 
 mathematical intellect and strong scientific tastes. That Har- 
 mattan wind, in which, it is said, no soul of man can now 
 live, had passed over him, with its doleful music and its burn- 
 ing sand ; but he came through unscathed ; on the home- 
 ward side of the desert his joints were not loosed, his nerves 
 were not unstrung, his frame had been too firmly knit to be 
 relaxed, he sprang forward as if he had never drooped. And 
 on any theory of character, tliis is the grand proof of the 
 vital force and natural vigour of a man. Doubt is the foe 
 by vanquishing which the young knight of truth wins his 
 spurs. Doubt is the lion guarding the palace of truth, which 
 must be looked at, and dared, and controlled by the daunt- 
 less eye, but in passing beyond which alone are to be won 
 the conquests of manhood. It had no power to petrify or 
 paralyze Chalmers ; he inherited the instinctive knowledge 
 that between the true, however difficult its proofs may be to 
 exhibit, and the plausible, however difficult its disguise may 
 be to pierce, the distance and difierence are simply infinite. 
 It was a moral impossibility for him to have been a sceptic ; 
 he would have forced his way to conscientious and hearty 
 action, or sunk into madness or the grave ; doubt was to him 
 agony ; he felt it to be the negation of all work, the death 
 of action, if it was not its birth ; and he struggled towards 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 113 
 
 truth as a giant might struggle through flames to his dearest 
 treasure. 
 
 In his twentieth year he was licensed to preach the gospel. 
 
 For the functions of the high calling to which he aspired, 
 he felt no enthusiastic predilection. His thirst for know- 
 ledge was by no means satisfied, and the decided bent of his 
 ambition was still towards academic preferment. Instead of 
 seeking work in his profession, he proceeded to Edinburgh, 
 and studied at the University there during two sessions. 
 Metaphysical and mathematical subjects chiefly occupied his 
 attention ; but his reading was doubtless wide and varied. 
 It is generally said that he was a man of meagre knowledge, 
 that he could lay no claim to erudition. There is truth in 
 the assertion ; but it is apt to render us oblivious to another 
 tinith of no slight importance, by which it is to be qualified 
 and supplemented. What is generally and technically under- 
 stood by learning, Chalmers did not possess. But with the 
 great questions of his day, and the general questions which 
 at all times naturally agitate the human mind, he was abun- 
 dantly acquainted ; and the impetuous force of his own ge- 
 nius was suflivjient to overpower and render invisible even 
 what knowledge of books he did possess. His native strength 
 refused to be trammelled by the thoughts of other men ; he 
 so completely fused in the fire of his own intellect what he 
 obtained from others, every ingot was so perfectly melted, that 
 it became impossible to recognise it in that molten torrent. 
 And of the pedantiy of learning he was perfectly, felicitously 
 free. If he found good wheat lying before him, he deemed 
 it to the full as valuable and fit for use as if it had lain three 
 thousand years in the case of a mummy ; if common sense 
 and plain evidence set their stamp on a fact or argument, he 
 did not care to affix to it the seal of antiquity. We saw him 
 deeply influenced by the literature and ideas of the French 
 Revolution ; we found him rejoicing in the sublime absti*ac- 
 
 I 
 
114 * THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 tions of Edwards ; we found him plunged in the surges of 
 doubt by D'Holbacli, and rescued by the strong arms of the 
 great apologists of his own or the preceding age. And now, 
 for two years, during which he engaged very sparingly in 
 ministerial work, he led the life of a student ; a life which, 
 in his case, could not be idle. We must not forget, besides, 
 that he had mastered French, and carried his studies into the 
 rich mathematical literature of that language ; his scientific 
 acquirements, lastly, were becoming more and more extensive 
 and profound. If not learned, he was certainly a man of 
 great information. 
 
 We must now pass lightly over what is yet one of the 
 most interesting and characteristic portions of the history of 
 Chalmers, — ^that, namely, which embraces the first few years 
 of his incumbency in Kilmany, and during which, amid scorn 
 and conflict, he taught mathematics and chemistr}'' in St An- 
 drews. 
 
 In that period, with all its eccentricity, and with even a 
 certain degree of displeasing extravagance, there is much to 
 admire. So great and healthful is the young strength, that 
 it must attract the sympathies of the healthful and strong. 
 A surging, insatiable energy characterizes Chalmers during 
 the time. It seems a pleasure to him to find hills in his way, 
 for the mere opportunity of grasping and hurling them aside ; 
 his toil and his enjoyment rise together ; he is a perfervid 
 Scot, a lion rampant : mathematical studies, chemical studies, 
 considerable metaphysical studies, parochial duties, university 
 struggles, book-making on an impoi*tant scale, and much more, 
 are insufficient to damp his first youthful ardour. His intel- 
 lectual powers, too, have not been outrun by his energy ; he 
 has given unquestionable proofs of a rare order of talent, — 
 the speedy and joyous subjugation of every new science which 
 came in his way, the suggestion of a theory for the recon- 
 ciliation of Scripture and geology, the acquisition of a clear, 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 115 
 
 glowing, and finely balanced style. There is sufficient proof, 
 also, that he has already conceived, in outline, an entire 
 scheme of Christian evidence. Lastly, and of all most deci- 
 sive, he has begun to make his influence distinctly felt among 
 the men who come within his sphere ; Chalmers of Kilmany 
 has become one to whom eyes are turned, and concerning 
 whom expectations are formed ; the invisible crown set by 
 nature on his brow is slowly waxing visible. And, whatever 
 may be doubted, it is certain that his moral qualities are of 
 the kingly order. Courage, tenderness, enthusiastic loyalty, 
 an ever open hand, wakeful and ardent sympathy with all 
 that is high, and pm^e, and healthful ; these, and similar traits 
 of nobleness, cannot fail to evince that here is another of 
 those whom, from the ancient time, nature has intended for 
 trust, honour, and love. 
 
 But it must be conceded that, in an estimate of the cha- 
 racter and powers of Chalmers during this youthful period, 
 no express reference is necessary to Christianity : Chalmers, 
 in fact, was then a Christian pastor in a sense and manner 
 which is now becoming obsolete. The last century produced 
 in Scotland a form or semblance of Chiistianity which will 
 probably never re-appear. It was the result of the general 
 decay of earnestness over the land, and the sickly flowering 
 of a sentimental and wol^dy philosophic morality. From the 
 religion of the Puritan and Covenanter there had been a re- 
 coil ; to be virtuous was good and fair ; honour and truth were 
 to be commended ; sublime benevolence was to be preached ; 
 but to defy earth and hell for your belief, to worship God under 
 the mist of the mountain come, to mount the scafibld rather 
 than throw a sand-grain in the eye of conscience, were the 
 follies of bigotry and excitement, produced endless commo- 
 tion, and even endangered the interests of general morality 
 and respectable society. The grand distinctive doctrines of 
 Christianity were, probably, in some sense true ; to deny them 
 
116 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 altogether would stultify tlie Bible ; but tliey were to be 
 quietly considered incomprehensible, and, as strictly esoteric 
 mysteries, to be excluded from public ministrations. Who 
 is not familiar with the watchwords of the honey-mouthed 
 school which came then to occupy the pulpits of the Church 
 of Knox ? Virtue its own reward, white-robed innocence 
 descending from heaven (in no great haste), decorum and de- 
 cency prim of visage and trim of garb, the enlightenment of 
 the age, the happiness of the greatest number, flowed blandly 
 forth as the preaching of Christianity. The art of the preacher 
 was softly to mouth truism, skilfully to gild commonplace. 
 That school produced Blair. It is interesting to observe what 
 it made of Paul. Headers may have seen one or two ser- 
 mons by a noted Moderate preacher in which the attempt is 
 made to depict him as a Christian orator. The fiery and 
 urgent man, whose words flame and burn on the page, who 
 startled the philosophic serenity of the sages of Athens, and 
 uttered his grand song of triumph in the scowl of Nero, who 
 could not open his lips without speaking of Jesus Christ and 
 Him crucified, who abandoned, in express terms, as different 
 in idea from Christianity, the wisdom of Greece and the mo- 
 rality of law, was represented standing, in polite and grace- 
 ful attitude, and lecturing Felix, for more than half an hour, 
 on virtue, mercy, justice, and respectability in general, cau- 
 tiously avoiding the " mysteries" of the Christian religion, 
 and recommending it to his weak hearer in a soft and harm- 
 less garb borrowed from Seneca. The effect over the country 
 was simple and decisive. The heart of the Scottish people 
 turned from the modern school : the popular instinct named 
 it — Moderate. 
 
 It may be thought strange that such a man as Chalmers 
 could ever have been a follower of a school like this. Yet 
 it is a fact admitting of no question. Christianity had never 
 fairly laid its grasp on his heart; he had never profoundly 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 117 
 
 considered whether it was the real living Christianity he 
 held or no. He offers a striking example of the not unusual 
 phenomenon of a man whose natural force and nobleness will 
 remain unparalyzed by any influence of school or creed. But 
 it may be that this easy-suiting garment called Christianity 
 is not really adapted to display the Herculean mould of his 
 limbs ; it may be in the garb of the warrior, in the old mail 
 of the martyr, that we can best discern the strength and ma- 
 jesty of his frame ! Let us proceed. 
 
 At about the age of thirty Chalmers engaged to write the 
 ^article Christianity for the Edinburgh Encyclopcedia, In 
 the midst of the study and composition connected with this 
 article, he was attacked by a severe illness, which confined 
 him for a period of four months. It was an era in his his- 
 tory ; the most important era of all. It was from it that 
 he dated the central fact of his life — his conversion. 
 
 Death had, of late, more than once passed by Chalmers, 
 casting on him the pale glare of his eye ; one after another 
 of his brothers and sisters had been carried to the grave. At 
 length the impartial foot seemed to be drawing near to his 
 own threshold ; he felt no coward fear, but, with an earnest 
 calmness which he had not hitherto known, he began to 
 think. Fear was no important agent in the mental revolu- 
 tion which ensued ; the state of mind indicated by Banyan's 
 Slough of Despond, he expressly says, he never experienced. 
 His nature was of the nobler sort, which is drawn by a 
 glimpse of heaven, and that a heaven of holiness, rather than 
 startled by an unveiling of hell. He could not but discern that 
 there had been something in the breasts of the early Chris- 
 tians which was not in his. Eternity, in its unmeasured 
 vastness, enwrapped his mind ; time, seen against its burning 
 radiance, seemed dream -like and filmy. The virtue of phi- 
 losophy, he began profoundly to suspect, was not the holi- 
 ness of God. The power of this vii-tue, too, to do much to- 
 
118 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 wards the regeneration of the world, became questionable. 
 His old friend Godwin, in discoursing of justice, had spoken 
 thus : — " A comprehensive maxim which has been laid down 
 upon the subject is, * that we should love our neighbour as 
 ourselves.' But this maxim, though possessing considerable 
 merit as a popular principle, is not modelled with the strict- 
 ness of philosophical accuracy." Chalmers hardly found this 
 maxim, defective as it might be, conformed to in the parish of 
 Kilmany. His appeals on the subject had been received with 
 imperturbable calmness. He had witnessed no effect whatever 
 from lectures, however impassioned, on virtue and benevo- 
 lence. In his own heart, and in his sphere of work, some- 
 thing seemed essentially wrong. And so there commenced 
 a work in the privacy of his closet, which may, without any 
 figure, be said to have resulted in the kindling of a new vital 
 energy in the centre of his being. Its progress was gradual, 
 but every step was taken irrevocably j its conclusion found 
 Chalmers transformed from a historic into a vital Christian, 
 from a philosophic into a Christian pastor. Christ had be- 
 come to him all in all. I shall not intrude upon the privacy 
 of his closet while the great change is taking place. I shall 
 not attempt to trace the fading of old things into oblivion 
 and death, and their gradual resurrection as all things be- 
 come new in Christianity. I shall not venture to watch 
 his soul in its pleadings with God, until, at last, that won- 
 derful passage bears personal reference to Chalmers, "the 
 kingdom of God is within you." But there is interest in 
 noting the appearance of weakness which presents itself as 
 we look into that closet. It recalls the " hysterical tears of 
 a soldier like Cromwell/' the "delusion," whose strength 
 " scarcely any madhouse could equal," of Bunyan ; there is 
 not, certainly, such intensity of feeling, but the sense of a 
 divine presence and agency is the same. We hear him ear- 
 nestly pleading for pardon, though his life has been highly 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 119 
 
 Virtuous ; lie calls himself a sinner, though always respect- 
 able j he trembles, although surely God is good. His soul 
 is prostrate. What can we hope for from the like of this ] 
 What advantage has it over the most " melancholy whimper- 
 ing" of fanaticism, of which Chalmers could once speak? 
 May we not apprehend a total relaxation of energy, a total 
 shrivelling of intellect 1 Time will answer the questions. 
 Meanwhile one point of considerable moment may be re- 
 marked. It is before the Infinite God he stoops ! It may 
 be deemed possible that conscious alliance with the Infinite 
 will not make him weak among the finite ; possibly, when 
 he once feels that the eye of God is actually fixed on him, 
 the light of all other eyes, whether in wrath or in applause, 
 may grow dim in proportion ; perhaps, when he lays down the 
 philosophic armour in which he has trusted, he may go forth 
 in the strength of weakness, mightier than before. " 'Tis con- 
 science that makes cowards of us all, but oh ! it is conscience, 
 too, which makes heroes of us all."* 
 
 Times are changed in the manse and parish of Kilmany. 
 The minister is changed, and many changes follow. One by 
 one the worldly aspirations that have fired the breast of 
 Chalmers fade away ; reluctantly, but resolutely, the eye is 
 averted from university honours ; reluctantly, but irrever- 
 sibly, the determination is taken, and the mathematical vo- 
 lume closed. One great idea embraces his soul like an at- 
 mosphere, the glory of God ; one great work lies before him, 
 to manifest that glory in the good of man. His soul now 
 gushes forth at all seasons in prayer : his aim with himself 
 is no longer to preserve an unblemished walk before men, 
 and to have the testimony of his heart that he possesses the 
 manly virtue of the schools ; his aim is the inward heaven 
 of Christianity, the mental atmosphere that angels breatne, 
 unsullied purity of thought and emotion in that inmost dwell- 
 * Coleridge. 
 
] 20 THOMAS CHALMERS. j 
 
 ing where hypocrisy cannot come. His aim with his peo- 
 ple is no longer merely to repress dishonesty, to promote so- 
 briety, to produce respectability in general ; it is to turn 
 them to righteousness, that they may be his joy and rejoic- 
 ing in the day of the Lord ; it is to array them in that robe, 
 purer than seraphs' clothing, in which not even the eye of 
 God can find a stain ; it is to lead them with him as a peo- 
 ple into the light of God's countenance. 
 
 His parishioners, meanw^hile, are astonished. They see 
 by '^ the glory in his eye" that some strange new light has^ 
 dawned upon him. They sat listless while he descanted on 
 the beauty of virtue, but they cannot sit unmoved while his 
 heart glows within him, and his face seems suffused with a 
 transfiguring radiance, as he unveils the beauty of holiness, 
 and turns their eyes to the wonders of Infinite Love stream- 
 ing through Jesus down upon the world. Nor can their 
 apathy maintain itself when he carries his ministrations into 
 the domestic circle, and with burning earnestness presses 
 home individually the offers and the appeals of the gospeh 
 The parish of Kilmany glows with returning Christianity, 
 like the fields of opening summer. For it is no partial change 
 that has come over Chalmers. Partial characteristics were 
 never his ; halfness went against the grain of his nature ; 
 he had held all his beliefs firmly. And now, in the man- 
 hood of his powers, when the feeling was beginning slowly 
 to permeate Scotland that a man of master intellect had 
 arisen in the land, after he had long and diligently walked 
 in the path of this world, he was arrested as by a blaze of 
 light from heaven, smitten awhile to the ground, and then 
 raised up a new man, a Christian. He had formerly known 
 the God of the fatalist, and had bowed, in a certain ecstatic 
 awe, before Him ; now he knew the God of the Christian, 
 and believed him to be Love. He had never worshipped 
 sinful self; now even righteous self w^as crucified. It w^as 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 121 
 
 a gi'eat day for Scotland when Clialmei^s, in the might of his 
 opening manhood, became vitally Christian. 
 
 It was about this time, in August 1812, that he married 
 Miss Grace Pratt. Of his domestic concerns it is unneces- 
 sary to say more than that his home was one of deep and 
 tranquil comfort ; in all embarrassment, toil, and opposition, 
 a sanctuary of inviolable repose. 
 
 But his fame has been extending ; the news that some 
 mysterious change has passed over the minister of Kilmany 
 has thrilled electrically over Scotland. Such oratory has not 
 been heard in these parts in the memory of man. It speedily 
 becomes known that one of the greatest preachers in the 
 Church of Scotland ministers weekly in a sequestered valley 
 near the estuary of the Tay. A feeling of deep gladness be- 
 gins to pervade the Evangelical party, as the new leader steps 
 forward tot ake the command. And hark ! from the respect- 
 able, soft-going, moderately-religious ministers, what voice is 
 that ? "As for Chalmers, he is mad !" What a piece of 
 testimony is here ! How decisive, how comforting ! " Paul, 
 thou art beside thyself* 
 
 This fortuitous sneer about madness is not void of sug- 
 gestive meaning. Look at the great workers and waiTiors, 
 the great thinkers and governors, all who have been of the 
 kings of the earth : does not their power, in one universal 
 aspect of it, admit of definition thus, — A force as of mad- 
 ness in the hand of reason 1 In our age, we find two men 
 who pointedly suggest this combination ; Thomas Chalmers, 
 and, in certain respects still more forcibly, but in others far 
 less, Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 The sequestered Fifeshire valley cannot retain Scotland's 
 greatest preacher. The Tron Church in Glasgow becomes 
 vacant ; and after a sharp contest, in which he is pitted against 
 Principal Macfarlane, Chalmers is appointed its minister. 
 Calmly balancing arguments, he concludes that the hand of 
 
122 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 God is in the arrangement, and that it is his duty to go ; but 
 he is well aware that he leaves tranquillity for turmoil, the 
 trust and tenderness of personal friendship for the din and 
 vacancy of public station and applause ; he bids adieu to his 
 quiet valley and its one hundred and fifty families with deep 
 and honest sadness. " Oh !" he said, long afterwards, " there 
 was more tearing of the heart-strings at leaving the valley of 
 JKilmany, than at leaving all my great parish of Glasgow/' 
 
 It was some time after quitting Kilmany that Chalmers, 
 in an address to his former parishioners, bore that emphatic 
 and weighty testimony to the power of evangelical Christia- 
 nity as a moral agency, which has been so often quoted and 
 referred to. He distinctly declared that his preaching of 
 mere virtue had been absolutely powerless ; but that the pro- 
 clamation of God's love in Christ Jesus was at once mighty. 
 His words furnish an additional and important attestation, 
 that the simple truths of the gospel of Jesus are gifted with 
 a power to lay hold upon and impress healthy and unsophis- 
 ticated intellects, which belongs to no moral or philosophical 
 dogmas. In Chalmers, Christianity was seen in its ancient 
 freshness, beauty, and power ; and in our century he found 
 its might to purify the hearts and lives of men, to breathe 
 moral health over a people, to radiate light around, as pre^ 
 vailing as when the star led the way to Bethlehem. He was, 
 and any man like him will be, a centre of beneficent in- 
 fluence. Such talents as his must ever continue rare ; but 
 what were the effect to be looked for from a pastorate whose 
 members all resembled him in the single but paramount cir- 
 cumstance of godliness ! Imagine the land sown with pas- 
 tors kindled, as by Divine fire, with that ambition which God, 
 in a promise unspeakably glorious, has appointed for them : 
 — " They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the 
 stars for ever and ever." It lies within the discernible and 
 traceable power of a truly Christian ministry to shed over 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 123 
 
 our land a brightness as of the resurrection morning. The 
 nation would live anew ; the golden day would break ; the 
 baleful forms and influences of crime would be smitten ; and 
 infidels, as they saw the serpents which now cast their deadly 
 coils round the limbs of the nation, writhing, with dazed eyes 
 and relaxing hold, in the overpowering light, would be asto- 
 nished and silenced. 
 
 From the time of his settlement in the west may be dated 
 the commencement of that intellectual kingship which Chal- 
 mei-s can be said to have long exercised over the great body 
 of the Scottish nation. He now steps forth into that arena 
 where are the severest tests of greatness. He becomes the 
 cynosure of a city and people ; he reads applause in every 
 eye ; he hears it from every tongue. Now is the time to 
 know what he really is. Does Chalmers in elevation seem 
 in his natural station and atmospliere ? Does he, amid noise 
 and pretence, lose the power of distinguishing and prizing real 
 work ? Can he gauge and measure fame, and put it to its 
 uses like any other dispensation of God ] Can he distinguish 
 between adulation streaming in from all the winds, and which, 
 in all its varieties, is either mere vacant sound or selfishness 
 set to music, from the still but immortal voice of friendship ] 
 Does he give indications of an unsettled, weakly enthusias- 
 tic, or fanatical mind 1 Are his air and attitude those of 
 one who has drugged his intellect with an " opiate delusion," 
 and rushes wildly and vaguely on, with haste for energy, and 
 vociferous dogmatism for thought ^ These are fair and im- 
 portant questions ; the answers will gradually unfold them- 
 selves. 
 
 Ko sooner do we find him fairly in the midst of the tu- 
 mult and glare of his Glasgow popularity, — no sooner do we 
 perceive his words swaying the minds of thousands, his house 
 the centre of admiring throngs, his fame a theme and topic 
 in the city, — than we are arrested by an instance of retired 
 
124 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 and tender affection.. There is a member of his congrega- 
 tion, aged twenty. The delicacy and beauty of the young 
 man's thoughts, the purity of his aspirations, the general 
 nobleness of his nature, draw towards him the heart of Chal- 
 mers. There springs up between them a close, confiding, 
 boy-like friendship ; tender and impassioned as any friendship 
 of romance, yet cemented by the holier sympathy of Chris- 
 tian love. Their " loves in higher love endure ;" to endure 
 for ever. It was a fair spectacle in our hard-working cen- 
 tury, where ideals are so few ; — Chalmers, the most renowned 
 preacher, perhaps in the world, certainly in Scotland, walk- 
 ing by the side of his youthful parishioner, and pouring out 
 his heart in the endearments of a soft, almost womanly af- 
 fection. If you would thoroughly know the man, look long 
 upon that spectacle. The trumpeting of fame brings no com- 
 fort to him ; he permits it to die away in the distance ; but 
 now he finds one heart where pure love dwells, he knows 
 that this at least is real, he folds his friend to his breast in 
 an ecstacy of fondness, he walks by his side under the blue 
 sky, listening to his voice, in deep serene delight, as to a strain 
 of spiritual music. Or look into his closet, and see the friends 
 on their knees before God, the fiery Chalmers and the mild 
 Thomas Smith, to whom his heart is soft as a fountain. 
 Smith gradually faded away in a consumption ; often, with 
 tearful eye, did his pastor bend over his bed, or kneel by its 
 side; and when, at last, he lay in death's pallor, the strong, 
 manly face of Chalmers was bathed in uncontrollable tears. 
 From of old it has been known, that valour and tenderness 
 form the noblest and most beautiful union ; the lion heart 
 and strength, guided by maiden gentleness ; perhaps all the 
 true and brave are tender. The simple story of his friend- 
 ship for Thomas Smith brings us into closer knowledge, and, 
 as it were, contact with the heart and nature of Chalmers, than 
 would the mere record of his fame, if echoed through centuries. 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 125 
 
 It was in the close of the year 1815 that his renown in 
 Glasgow culminated. He then delivered his famed Astrono- 
 mical Discourses. They were preached on week-days, yet 
 the audience crowded the church. There was a reading-room 
 opposite the edifice ; during the time of delivery it stood 
 ^ vacant ; the merchant and the politician pouring out, to hang 
 breathless on the lips of Chalmers. His style was now fully 
 formed, and was, in many respects, extraordinary ; perfectly 
 dissimilar from any other English style ; unallied in diction 
 and cadence to any foreign language, it was the native gi-o^vth 
 of his mind, an original birth of genius. And whatever 
 minor or particular exceptions may be taken to that style, I 
 cannot regard it as a matter open to dispute, that it has ele- 
 ments of marvellous power and grandeur. Massive and gor- 
 geous, expressive, often graphic, yet with a certain billowy 
 regularity of sentence and rolling cadence of rhythm, it was 
 in the hand of its own magician a really mighty weapon. 
 Exuberant to what in written composition seems diffuseness, 
 it might, if used by a weakling, sound like bombast ; but its 
 exuberance is that of tropic woods, and ocean waves, and 
 rainbowed cataracts, the teeming and varied opulence of a 
 mind of boundless sympathy, the grand luxuriance of nature ; 
 and when the curbless intensity of the preacher's fire burned 
 in its every word, when the glittering eye, and glowing fea- 
 tures, and fiery gesticulation, proved that even its abundance 
 sufficed not to body forth the earnestness of Chalmers, all 
 thought of bombast or diffuseness fled, and the effect was tre- 
 mendous. The true power of the orator was his ; he could 
 subject men not merely to his reason, but to his will. The 
 witnesses to the effect of his eloquence are so numerous and 
 explicit, that doubt is no longer possible on the subject. 
 When the thunder was at its height, when his eye blazed 
 with that strange watery gleam of which we hear, men in- 
 voluntarily moved theii- bodies, and, though in postures which 
 
126 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 would ordinarily occasion pain, were unconscious of a sensa- 
 tion ; when there was a pause, a sigh arose from the congre- 
 gation ; strong men, even learned men, wept. 
 
 We may form some conception of the impression made by 
 these Discourses, when even now we consider their general 
 tenor. The theme, whatever may be said concerning its ar- 
 gumentative value or treatment, is sublime ; it is handled, 
 too, precisely in the way to give it power in the pulpit ; every 
 point is brought out with such boldness, that no eye can fail 
 to see it ; there is no wire-drawing, no soft murmuring, no de- 
 licate pencilling, no easy meandering ; each vast wave comes 
 rolling on, fringed with its own gorgeous foam, and echoing 
 its own thunder. If we consent to place ourselves under 
 the wizard eye of the orator ; if at one moment we mark its 
 rapt and fiery gleam, as if lit in sympathy with those seraph 
 eyes which it saw looking from the empyrean ; if, at another, 
 we watch the deeper softness of its azure glow, while it seems 
 to gaze on Mercy unfolding her wings ; and if we surrender 
 ourselves to the combination of influences, as voice, features, 
 and subject, are all at last in climax, it will surely be no longer 
 impossible to conceive the effect, when the ocean billow, after 
 long gathering, broke. 
 
 An elaborate and detailed criticism of these sermons is 
 now superfluous. Many objections have been taken to their 
 logic ; and Foster stands, doubtless, not alone, in objecting 
 to their style. For my own part, I confess that my admira- 
 tion is intense. They appear to me to have the true poetic 
 glow j that fusing, uniting fire burns over them, whose gleam 
 compels you to drop your measuring line or gauging apparatus, 
 and utter the word — genius. To accompany the preacher in 
 his high flight seems like sailing with that archangel whom 
 Richter, in his dream, saw bearing the mortal through the 
 endless choirs and galaxies of immensity ; only that here we 
 do not tremble and cry out at the overpowering spectacle of 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 127 
 
 God's infiDitude, for the softening light of the Cross falls oon- 
 tiniially around us. And, after all that has been said, I must 
 consider the logic of these marvellous Discourses satisfactory. 
 It has been said that the argument against which they are 
 levelled is weak and obsolete. I suspect it is neither ; save 
 in a sense applying to infidel arguments in general. Walking 
 in a still autumn night in the country, by the faintly rustling 
 corn-field or the lonely wood, and gazing upward to the illi- 
 mitable vault, where the stars in their courses walk silent and 
 beautiful, and where the milky- way, with its myriad worlds, 
 lies along the purple of night like a breath of God's nostrils, 
 is it unnatural for the human being to say, Can the Son of 
 the Almighty have come to die for atoms such as T, in an 
 atom world like ours ? If such a thought is powerless with 
 many minds, it is very forcible with others : I know it to be 
 so with some. And after calm reflection, what do we finally 
 arrive at in the case, as the seemly and reasonable attitude 
 of him who is a feeble and puny denizen of earth, yet a spirit 
 of thought and immortality ? It appears to be twofold. 
 Looking towards the stars, it is seemly for him to bow his 
 head in lowliness and gratitude, and to say, with the monarch 
 minstrel, " What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, and 
 the son of man, that Thou regardest him V But then, look- 
 ing to the corn God has raised to nourish him, the animals 
 over which God has made him king, the fair world He has 
 from of old prepared for him, the still princely retinue or 
 army of faculties he has given him, to master it and to count 
 the stars, he may turn with reasonable and faithful joy to the 
 Son of David, and listen to Him as he says, " Consider the 
 lilies of the field, how they grow : they toil not, neither do 
 they spin : and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all 
 his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if 
 Grod so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to- 
 morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe 
 
128 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 you, ye of little faith V This seems the true attitude. 
 This last is the satisfactory answer to the infidel argument; 
 and it is this answer which Chalmers, with all the force lent 
 it by modern science, re-enunciated. The telescope may keep 
 man humhle, but it cannot crush him into insignificance ; the 
 microscope shows ever how the world of littleness stretches 
 away, as if to infinitude, under his feet. And if the might 
 of Omnipotence can arrange, in their unspeakable delicacy, 
 the tendrils of the corals in the depths of ocean, and bring 
 to maturity colonies and nations, in all the animation of their 
 life and the glow of their costume, within the bosom of a 
 flower, and reach a perfection of beauty, after which art toils 
 at what may be called an infinite distance, in the iris, hung 
 in every mountain brook, will God not wipe away a stain 
 as if from His own forehead, will He not humble His great 
 adversary on a territory he hoped he had won, will He not 
 amend the one imperfection in the world — sin 1 And is it 
 not in consistence with the glory of His name, that, thus to 
 vindicate Himself, He has made a display of mercy and con- 
 descension at which heaven and earth may stand agaze 1 
 
 Chalmers had now fairly reached the pinnacle of Scottish 
 renown. The heart of the populace throbbed responsive to 
 his eloquence ; and from perhaps the highest personal autho- 
 rity then in Scotland, from Jefirey of the Edinburgh Review , 
 it received this testimony : "I know not what it is, but there 
 is something altogether remarkable about that man. It re- 
 minds me more of what one reads of as the efiect of the elo- 
 quence of Demosthenes, than anything I ever heard." 
 
 And now, when his Astronomical Discourses had, with 
 far-reaching trumpet-flourish, heralded his approach, he pro- 
 ceeded to London. 
 
 On the day after his arrival in the metropolis, he preached 
 in Surrey Chapel. The service began at eleven ; at seven 
 in the morning the place was filled. At length Chalmers 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 129 
 
 ascends the pulpit, and all eyes are centred there. The ser- 
 mon commences. The face of the preacher has a certain 
 heavy look, over its pale, rough-hewn, leonine lineaments ; 
 his eyelids droop slightly, and his eyes have something at once 
 dreamy and sad in their expression ; his voice is thin, some- 
 what broken, unimpressive ; his tone may be called drawling, 
 and his dialect is broadly, almost unintelligibly, provincial. 
 The London audience sits cool and business-like, not given 
 to tumultuous emotion, and accustomed to moral essays ; eye 
 meets eye in half-disappointed surmise. But look, Chalmers 
 is beginning to move ; he gradually works himself into the 
 heart of his subject ; his voice is becoming loud, rich, impas- 
 sioned : the Londoners sit still unmoved, but now no eyes 
 are wandering ; the preacher warms, the latent heat within 
 beginning to be evolved ; he curbs his spirit sternly, but it 
 will bear him away : his auditors are silent, a consciousness 
 of some strange enchaining power begins to pervade the place, 
 but the light in the thousand eyes fixed on Chalmers is still 
 in great measure that of criticism ; the Londoners still know 
 where they are : the orator warms swiftly to white heat ; his 
 face is radiant with earnestness; the distending eyeball swims; 
 at last the fire within lights in it that wondrous watery gleam 
 which tells that the spirit of Chalmers is in the last passion 
 and agony of its might : his audience have forgotten where 
 they sit ; they bend forward in simultaneous assent to his 
 every paragraph ; he has chained them to the chariot-wheels 
 of his eloquence. 
 
 Report of the new wonder flies over London. Fashion 
 hears of him in her glittering saloons ; senators and peers 
 speak of him in their halls and cabinets. The highest and 
 gayest in the land crowd to hear him. " All the world,'* 
 writes Wilberforce, in his journal, " wild about Chalmers." 
 Chancellors and Lords desire to be introduced to him ; the Lord 
 MsijoY visits him ; mighty London seems to do him homage, 
 
 K 
 
130 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 The spectacle is strange ; the test the man has to stand is 
 searching. From the still and sequestered vale of Kilmany, 
 he has ascended to the highest summit of contemporary fame. 
 He was all unregarded in his quiet parish ; he has now the 
 great ones of the earth becking and applauding round him ; 
 there is a shout in his ears as if he were more than human. 
 Let us not fail to perceive the danger and difficulty of his 
 situation. The assenting voice of one fellow-creature has been 
 said by one of the best of judges to " strengthen even in- 
 finitely" any opinion a man may have formed, and a flatter- 
 ing opinion of one's self is so easy to strengthen ; amid the 
 vociferous plaudits of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, 
 to retain one's self-estimate, undiminished, unmagnified, un- 
 wavering, is difficult indeed. And how many, even of the 
 powerfully-minded, have failed, when popular applause, — that 
 sun whose stroke so often is madness, — has centred its rays 
 upon them ! Edward Irving was no ordinary man ; yet he 
 who, in his noble and beautiful eulogium on this " freest, 
 broth erliest, bravest human soul" he ever met, bears witness 
 to his force and healthiness, tells us also that he swallowed 
 the intoxicating poison of fame, and had not " force of na- 
 tural health" to cast it out. Edinburgh celebrity contributed 
 largely to the ruin of Burns ; applause, every one knows, in- 
 flated and befooled Kousseau ; Byron, unconscious perhaps 
 of the fact, and in words scornfully denying it, was really the 
 slave of fame, — one might almost say, of mode ; and to what 
 length might the list not be extended ? There is a masterly 
 touch in Ovid's description of Phaeton and his unhappy ride. 
 The chariot has just reached the zenith. Hitherto the aspiring 
 driver has kept a tight rein, better or worse, with fair success. 
 But now he looks from his imperial station on the vast round 
 of the earth ; its oceans, its forests, its mountains, its cities, 
 are outspread below him ; all seem to gaze towards him, and 
 drink glory from his eye. He cannot endure it ; his brain 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 131 
 
 reels, his eye swims, the weight of his office oppresses his in- 
 dividuality, the fire-snorting coursers drag the reins from his 
 relaxing hand, and tear away after their own mad will. The 
 man who can see the world gazing on him unmoved, is the 
 man intended by nature to be looked at ! Chalmers trium- 
 phantly bears the test. Let the world say what it will, he 
 knows he is just Chalmers of Kilmany, neither more nor less, 
 — one whose power, be it what it may, neither inflates nor 
 collapses in the popular gale. All who approach him find 
 him simple, unassuming, devout. Nay, his instinct of reality 
 is rather offended than otherwise ; his heart whispers that 
 much of this tumult is mere vocal vacancy. As principali- 
 ties and powers cluster round him, he stands quiet and self- 
 possessed, unabashed, unastonished, unalarmed; his greatness 
 has its source within. No man could more thoroughly weigh 
 popular acclaim, and more firmly pronounce it wanting ; beau- 
 tiful ardours and rapturous admirations would have been 
 somewhat damped in London, had his ultimate definition of 
 such matters been by any chance heard — " the hosannahs of 
 a drivelling generation !" 
 
 One other remark must be added, ere we accompany Chal- 
 mers back to Scotland. There was a day when he spoke of 
 "literary distinction" as his "pride and consolation ;" there 
 was a day when this London notoriety would have appeared 
 to him almost sublime. Is it unfair to suppose that the light of 
 that eye which, though invisible, he now seems ever to see 
 resting on him, has shed an equalizing radiance over chancel- 
 lors and peasants, and made sublunary approbation a matter 
 of quite secondary moment ? 
 
 Returning to Glasgow, his popularity continues at the same 
 unprecedented height as before ; his study becomes a pre- 
 sence-chamber for guests of all ranks and from all quarters. 
 But it is never through the general eye that you can really 
 see Clialmers ; it is when you mark him unbosoming mm- 
 
132 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 self, in tender, artless affection, to his sister Jane, or waim« 
 ing the hearts of all around him by his hearty geniality and 
 rough sagacity, or turning from the despised " popularity of 
 stare, and pressure, and animal heat," to look for any plant 
 which the Lord of the vineyard has honoured him by using 
 his hand in planting. 
 
 Of his life in this inner circle, we have an illustration which 
 is too beautiful and of too profound significance to be omitted ; 
 he who cannot read in it the true nature and the intrinsic 
 nobleness of Chalmers can interpret no biographic trait what- 
 ever. A gentleman named Wright, an intimate acquaintance, 
 meets him one day in company. Usually the centre of cheerful- 
 ness and pleasure, Chalmers is to-day downcast and heavy. Mr 
 Wright, happening to walk with him on the way home, ven- 
 tures to inquire whether he is ill. He is well enough, but must 
 confess he is not at rest. His heart is grieved. " It is a mat- 
 ter," he says, "that presses very grievously upon me. In 
 short, the truth is, I have mistaken the way of my duty to 
 God in at all coming to your city. I am doing no good ; 
 God has not blessed, and is not blessing, my ministry here." 
 He remembers Kilmany and its one hundred and fifty fami- 
 lies ; he thinks how sure and how beautiful the work of God 
 was there ; he has exchanged his earnest ministrations from 
 house to house, for inevitable and perpetual visits of cere- 
 mony or entertainment ; his parish church, filled with devout 
 and humble hearers, for a mixed and staring throng, many 
 of whose members come to see the preacher. It is like going 
 from reality, which he loves as his heart's blood, to hollow- 
 ness and pretence, which he hates with inborn and immea- 
 surable hatred. His heart sinks at the idea, that in his hands 
 the work of a Christian pastor should degenerate into emo- 
 tional excitement or literary admiration ; that his portion is 
 to be mere earthly renown, instead of the glory of having 
 turned even one to righteousness. His eye is where a Claris- 
 
THOMAS CHALMEBS. 133 
 
 tian pastor's should be ; fame, adulation, popularity, will, he 
 knows, be shrivelled up in the first breath of eternity; while 
 an immortal soul, saved by his means, will be a gem in a 
 crown eternally brightening. In friendly simplicity and 
 greatness of heart, seeking the relief which every noble na- 
 ture finds in sympathy, he reveals his sorrow to his friend. 
 And, lo ! he finds in his answer a solace which he little ex- 
 pects. Mr Wright details to him a case in which he knows 
 the ministry of Chalmers to have been effectual in rousing a 
 soul to deep personal godliness, in making it flee to Chnst 
 for salvation. " Ah," exclaims his delighted and grateful lis- 
 tener, " Ah, Mr Wright, what blessed, what comforting news 
 you give me ! for really I was beginning to fail, from an ap- 
 prehension that I had not been acting according to the will 
 of God in coming to your city." 
 
 We have still, however, to contemplate Chalmers in his 
 principal aspect as a force and influence among men. That 
 which, in our estimation, gives to his career its highest gran- 
 deur, and ranks him with the great ones of time, is the tre- 
 mendous power with which he grasped one vast idea ; the idea 
 of Christianity in application to national existence, the idea 
 of the Christianization of the State. To use his own magni- 
 ficent words, the aim of his life was to nurse the empire to 
 Christianity. It is fine to see, as it were, his great heart 
 throbbing with this sublime conception ; to mark how his 
 enthusiasm always gushes out afresh as it comes before him ; 
 to listen to the incidental tones of lyric rapture which break 
 from his lips, when the light of the mighty thought, as of 
 the coming Christian morning, strikes along his brow. This 
 is the idea which makes the life of Chalmers epic. The 
 nineteenth century is marked by the triumphant march of 
 science on the one hand, and by the awakening of the peoples 
 on the other. Banners innumerable have been unfolded a& 
 bannei-s of national salvation : there has been the cloudy en- 
 
134 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 sign of transcendentalism ; there has been the standard of 
 mere science and political philosophy, with its meagre dia- 
 grams and cold metallic lustre ; there has been the black flag 
 of atheism : Chalmers, with the gait of a champion, stepped 
 forward with the ancient banner, the old legend still burning 
 on its massive folds as in letters of golden fire, " In Christ 
 conquer !" Round that banner, in the age of science and 
 democracy, he called us to rally, and told how the fight 
 would go. 
 
 But it was not only the dauntless valour and tireless per- 
 severance with which he proclaimed that Christianity alone 
 can save the nations, which distinguished him. These might 
 have characterized a very inferior man. It was his clear per- 
 ception of the position in which Christianity now stands to 
 peoples, it was his essential agreement in the axioms on which 
 he proceeded, with the soundest and greatest intellects of this 
 and all ages, it was his statesmanlike comprehension of the 
 main outlines of the method by which Christianity is to be 
 applied to national life, that stamped him as the highest 
 practical Christian thinker of his age. Of an intellectual 
 power which enabled him to sum and master the lessons 
 science has taught, and the means science has provided, for 
 the amelioration of the community, he was able to discern 
 what place Christianity may occupy in relation to these. 
 Agreeing with all the master intellects among men, that it 
 is only by the inspiration of moral life into a nation that its 
 physical life can prosper ; and difiering from Mr Carlyle only 
 in that he deemed the one source of moral life a personal 
 God, and the grand instrument of moral life the religion of 
 Jesus, he yet did not turn with contemptuous indignation 
 from the advocates of special scientific methods ; he took the 
 difierent plan of supplementing their deficiency, of speaking 
 the truth without which their systems were dead. He did 
 not, with indignant stamp of his foot, shake to pieces as 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 135 
 
 wortliless the mechanism of science ; he said it was an in- 
 valuable, an indispensable mechanism ; but he brought a coal 
 kindled in heaven to put it in motion, to inspire it with life, 
 to spread over it a new and glorious light. In language of 
 glowing poetry, he represents Christianity visiting earth from 
 the celestial realms, her first and all-embracing object to bring 
 to men treasures of immoii^al joy, yet, by a sublime necessity, 
 scattering beatitude in the paths of mortal life. With the 
 ancient heroic devotion, he toiled for the realization of his 
 idea ; no old crusader or mediaeval king strove more valiantly 
 in faith or in patriotism than he, to be the Christian divine 
 demanded by the nineteenth century. If it is the harmo- 
 nizing, concentrating might of one gi-eat idea pervading a cha- 
 racter and life, which is recognised as imparting to these an 
 epic grandeur, surely we can alHrm such of the life and cha- 
 racter of Chalmers. 
 
 With the glance of one who sees before and after, far along 
 the centuries past and future, the high aim of Chalmers was, 
 by one gigantic impulse, to raise the Church of his country 
 to what the nation and the age required. Town and countiy 
 he would divide into manageable parishes ; the Presbyterian 
 mechanism of the Kirk-Session he would bring to bear with its 
 innate power and intimacy; over all would prcvsideasetof godly 
 and energetic pastors, who would superintend and vitalize the 
 whole. Thus, in a thousand streams, the very water of life 
 would circulate through the veins of the nation. A personal 
 intimacy and friendship would bind pastor to peasant, rank to 
 rank ; "the golden chain of life" would be unbroken, and it 
 would be none the less beautiful, binding, or pleasant, that it 
 was anchored within the veil Over the land there would pass 
 the breath of a moral renovation; every other renovation would 
 follow in benign and natural sequence ; it would look to heaven 
 with one broad smile of peace and contentment, like the face 
 of a strong man awakening to health after long sickness. 
 
136 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 Ilis method of carrying out his plans in his own parish, 
 the example he offered to the pastors of Scotland and the 
 world of their efficacy, was perhaps the most triumphant por- 
 tion of his whole acting in the matter. Here it is import- 
 ant to observe him ; new discoveries of his intellectual energy 
 and his moral worth dawn on us at every step. We saw 
 formerly that, in the meeting of all the winds of fame, he 
 could preserve unfluttered his self-estimate, and work as 
 calmly as in quiet Kilmany. He could stand alone. "We 
 learn now that he can draw others around him, work with 
 them, and teach them to work. Here it is that the true 
 kingly talent comes out. He knows the genuine worker, he 
 attracts him towards himself, he strikes into him new fire ; 
 he can light a sympathetic flame in the bosom of each with 
 whom he acts, so that he becomes a miniature of himself. 
 Eveiy thing yields to his contagious energy ; the very Town 
 Council of Glasgow assent to his views ; his subordinates fol- 
 low him as the carriages follow the steam-engine. Chan- 
 cellors and duchesses, and the tumult of crowds encircling 
 Chalmers, might be gadflies round a sunflower ; but we cannot 
 be deceived here. Look upon him in the heart of Glasgow, 
 as he dives into noisome vennels, or feels his way up dark 
 winding stairs, seeking out de^itution, seeing the fact in its 
 own nakedness, looking his foe in the face, and bringing to 
 smite it that one weapon he bears, the sword of the Spirit. 
 Then you see Chalmers. And his great experiment prevails : 
 Christianity, with Chalmers and the Kirk-Session he directs 
 as its instruments, is found to meet every social want in the 
 populous and difficult parish of St John's. 
 
 It is well known that Chalmers was during his whole life 
 an implacable enemy of the English poor-law. In the fun- 
 damental proposition on which he based his opposition, that 
 ^ poor-law endangers the feeling of independence, and con- 
 sequently the morality of a people, by converting the petition 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 137 
 
 for an alms into tlie demand of a right, he has been agreed 
 with by men of the most directly opposed character and opi- 
 nions, and of the highest intellectual powers. The acknow- 
 ledged master in the schools of political economy, David Ri- 
 cardo, records his emphatic opinion to this effect ; his shrewd 
 and cool-headed disciple, M'Culloch, pronounces the poor-laws 
 " essentially injurious," — an opinion, by the way, which ren- 
 ders highly astonishing his estimate of the efforts made by 
 Chalmers against them. At the distance of a hemisphere, 
 both in thought and sentiment, from these men, — they, as it 
 were, in Polar cold and bareness, he in tropic thunder and 
 luxuriance, — Mr Carlyle has expressed the same opinion. 
 "Whether these authors have been quite correct or no, I do 
 not undertake to determine ; Dr Alison adduces a fact or 
 two which tell strongly in an opposite direction ; the point 
 to be noted is, that Chalmers here stood by no means alone, 
 that his belief on the point has been treated as an axiom by 
 such thinkers as Kicardo and Carlyle. He declared that the 
 only sound and safe method was that of nature ; and he pro- 
 nounced Christianity able to hold up the hands of nature, and 
 strengthen her to attain the desired end in her own fair and 
 salutaiy manner. To the argument that the support of the 
 poor, if left to voluntary effort, would fall entirely on the be- 
 nevolent few, he rei)lied, that, if things were properly ma- 
 naged, every parish would be able, without strain or incon- 
 venience, to support its own poor ; he might have added (per- 
 haps, though I do not remember meeting the remark in his 
 writings, he has added), that Christianity makes it a privi- 
 lege to stretch out the hand of charity, and that this act of 
 the benevolent may be intended as a continual rebuke of the 
 world's selfishness, and protest against it. To the assertion 
 that benevolence could not be depended upon, he replied, 
 that he trusted solely neither to benevolence nor to any im- 
 pulse of a fortuitous character j but to known principles of 
 
138 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 human nature ; — the desire to rise, the sympathy of friends, on 
 the side of the poor ; and on the side of philanthropy, the un- 
 failing bounty of at least a chosen few. The machinery he 
 provided is thus described in his own words : — " We divided 
 the parish into twenty-five parts ; and, having succeeded in 
 obtaining as many deacons, we assigned one part to each, — 
 thus placing under his management towards fifty families, or 
 at an average about four hundred of a gross population. We 
 constructed also a familiar or brief directory, which we put 
 into their hands. It laid down the procedure which should 
 be observed on every application that was made for relief. 
 It was our perfect determination that eveiy applicant of ours 
 should be at least as well off as he would have been in any 
 other parish of Glasgow, had his circumstances there been as 
 well known, — so that, surrounded though we were by hostile 
 and vigilant observers, no case of scandalous allowance, or 
 still less of scandalous neglect, was ever made out against us. 
 The only distinction between us and our neighbours lay in 
 this, — that these circumstances were by us most thoroughly 
 scrutinized, and that with the view of being thoroughly ascer- 
 tained, — and that very generally, in the progress of the in- 
 vestigation, we came in sight of opportunities or openings for 
 some one or other of those preventive expedients by which 
 any act of public charity was made all the less necessary, or 
 very often superseded altogether. " Here there is really nothing 
 Utopian ; rather is there a deliberate and accurate calcula- 
 tion of means, measuring of resistance, and mastering of de- 
 tails. With so many inspectors, it is difficult to see how 
 destitution could be overlooked j with so many to scrutinize 
 and investigate, it can hardly be conceived that any natural 
 channel of relief, by the obtaining of work or of assistance 
 from relatives, could be unnoticed ; with so many to inform 
 and appeal, it would be no easy matter for benevolence to fall 
 asleep. And then, as has been said, he proved it ; amid 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 139 
 
 difficulty, obstruction, and witliout putting out all his forc^ 
 he succeeded to the full ; every objection and sneer was at 
 last silenced, save one. He could not shut the mouth of the 
 gainsayer when it was alleged that, to render the machinery 
 effective, there would in each case be required a Chalmers. 
 
 If other men despaired of the power of Christianity to heal 
 and beautify the nation, was it not right, and noble, and va- 
 liant, that Chalmers should not do so ? His belief was no empty 
 sound, no half-hypocrisy. The religion of Jesus, he said, has 
 all its ancient power ; for the mechanic dispensings of a great 
 lifeless reservoir, walled in by the State, it can give the sweet 
 watering of nature's gentle rain ; where Law can but order re- 
 lief with her iron tongue, it can set Pity by the bed of national 
 weakness, to hallow the ministries of Mercy by their own na- 
 tive smile. There was a great fund of hope and valour in 
 his breast ; he would not despair of the commonwealth ; he 
 would not sit slothfully down in what was at best a mere ne- 
 gation of evil, and whose occupancy deferred the real good. 
 The worst you can say of him here is actually and without 
 paradox the best which could be said ; for it is that which is 
 to be said of all the noblest of the sons of men, and which is 
 the crown of their nobleness, namely, that they looked for- 
 ward to a brightened future, as that in which it would be 
 good, and, as it were, natural, for them to live and expatiate ; 
 that they seemed to be messengers sent before to herald a 
 better time, and that the mode in which they delivered their 
 unconscious prophecy was a summons, burning with earnest- 
 ness and hope^ to all men to arise and inaugurate the new 
 era now. Chalmers could not find his rest in 
 
 ** The round 
 Of smooth and solemnized complacencies, 
 By which, in Christian lands, from age to age. 
 Profession mocks performance." 
 
 He dared the original attempt to infuse the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity, like vital sap, into the national frame ; he aspired to 
 
140 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 shake off from the Christian peoples that motirnful sleep, — of 
 custom, of routine, of worldliness, — ^which has ever, with gra/- 
 dual, but hitherto irresistible influence, closed the national 
 eye, that seemed ere while to be opened wide and kindled with 
 empyreal fire. This is the heroic aspect of his life j his end- 
 less battle against mere respectability and commonplace ; his 
 valiant and life-long endeavour to set Christianity on the throne 
 and in the heart of the nation. He is the modern Christian ; 
 shutting his eye to nothing, acquainted with every contem- 
 porary agency, but declaring that Christianity is still able to 
 marshal every force, and meet every requirement in social 
 existence. And let it be boldly said that he here pointed 
 the way in all reform which can be regarded with perfect sa- 
 tisfaction and unfaltering hope ; if he failed, we must just 
 raise the same banner, and, w^th somewhat of his ardour, still 
 calmly and dauntlessly bear it on : the life of Chalmers was 
 a proclamation of the world's last hope. 
 
 In at least the special forms in which he himself had striven 
 to reanimate the nation with Christian life, he did fail. For 
 long years he travelled, and wrote, and argued for Church 
 extension ; year after year he looked to every quarter of the 
 heavens, if perchance a gleam of hope against pauperism might 
 cheer his eye. But the day of his life drew on to a close, 
 and the work was yet to do. Then he withdrew into his 
 closet, and in silent heaviness of heart penned the following 
 words ; they are to be found in Dr Hanna's last volume : — 
 
 "Sabbath, December 12, 1841. — The passage respecting 
 Babel should not be without a humble and wholesome effect 
 upon my spirit. I have been set on the erection of my 
 Babel — on the establishment of at least two great objects, 
 which, however right in themselves, become the mere ob- 
 jects of a fond and proud imagination, in as far as they are 
 not prosecuted with a feeling of dependence upon God, and 
 a supreme desire after his glory. These two objects are the 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 141 
 
 deliverance of our empire from pauperism, and tlie establish- 
 ment of an adequate machinery for the Christian and gene- 
 ral instruction of our whole population. I am sure that, in 
 the advancement of these, I have not taken God enough 
 along with me, and trusted more to my own arguments and 
 combinations among my fellows, than to prayers. There 
 has been no confounding of tongues to prevent a common 
 understanding, so indispensable to that co-operation without 
 which there can be no success ; but without this miracle my 
 views have been marvellously impeded by a diversity of opi- 
 nions, as great as if it had been brought on by a diversity of 
 language. The bankers in the way of access to other men's 
 minds have been as obstinate and unyielding as if I had 
 spoken to them in foreign speech ; and, though I cannot re- 
 sign my convictions, I must now — and surely it is good to 
 be so taught — I must now, under the experimental sense of 
 my own helplessness, acknowledge, with all humility, yet 
 with hope in the efficacy of a blessing from on high still in 
 reserve for the day of God's own appointed time, that ex- 
 cept * the Lord build the house, the builders build in vain.' " 
 
 The spectacle of Chalmei^, as he pens these lines, is as- 
 suredly the most sublime afforded by his life. The very 
 health and tenderness of childhood are in the heart of the old 
 warrior ; he brings his sword, and lays it down at eventide, 
 willing, even with tears, to acknowledge that it is because 
 of the weakness of his arm, and the faithlessness of his heart, 
 that the enemy has not been vanquished. 
 
 Of the causes of this ultimate failure, which, however, 
 might be a failure more in appearance than reality, it is un- 
 necessary to say much. 
 
 If there was any great supplement to be made to the ge- 
 neral system of Chalmers's thought and opinion, it was an 
 adequate sense, on the one hand, of the difficulty of his en- 
 terprise, and, on the other, of the chief and indispensable 
 
142 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 means by which it could be accomplished ; on the one hand, 
 of the impotence of mere machinery, and, on the other, of the 
 extreme rarity and inestimable worth of true and mighty 
 men. It is an invisible force that is wanted, rather than 
 wheel- work ; the latter will be provided with comparative 
 ease ; the most elaborate machinery, without this living force, 
 may hang vacant in the winds, like a rattling skeleton where 
 once was the throb of life and the flush of health. The 
 Church-state of Arnold — kings and senators teaching wis- 
 dom and doing the bidding of God, the powers of evil aghast 
 at the new vision of Christian unity and love ; the manage- 
 able parishes, and country studded with churches, of Chal- 
 mers ; — alas ! one must cast a questioning, or at least a warn- 
 ing, glance towards all such schemes. The universal Church, 
 that looks so fair in the distance, of which all the formerly 
 separate churches are but pillars, all within whose walls are 
 true Christians, all without whose walls are Pagans ; — can we 
 look long at the imposing structure without seeing, as if 
 emerging from beneath its crumbling battlements, a great 
 whited sepulchre, uniform — as death 1 A country filled with 
 clergymen, a church in every street, a parish in every val- 
 ley ; — must we not here also proclaim that danger impends ? 
 In our crossgrained world, every good thing has a counter- 
 feit which is doubly evil : self-respect, recognised as indis- 
 pensable to completeness of character, is aped by impudence 
 and conceit ; politeness, one of nature's fairest and costliest 
 flowers, which can grow only in a rich and kindly soil, is 
 mimicked by etiquette, a poor gumflower ; sanctity, the at- 
 tribute of the sons of the morning, may, by human eyes, be 
 confounded with sanctimoniousness spumed of devils. And 
 it is a well-known law that the nobler the thing is tlie baser 
 is its counterfeit. A hypocritic smile, a traitorous kiss, are 
 worse than a scowl of honest hate or a stab of open ven- 
 geance. If, then, a godly minister is an angel of lignt, a 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 143 
 
 gocTiess pastor is a veiy angel of darkness. Between the real 
 Oliristian pastor, whose worth cannot be summed, and the 
 indolent, greedy, black-coated lounger, who burdens with 
 his maintenance, who blights by his example, who is a con- 
 tinual living profanation of what is holiest, there is but an 
 invisible difference. Get your men, and all is got. A 
 Brainerd finds himself a congregation among North Ameri- 
 can Indians ; a Schwartz, among the swamps and fevers of 
 the Camatic ; but churches will not by any natural neces- 
 sity attract ministers. This immoveable fact we must al- 
 ways take along witli us. Chalmers, no doubt, knew it, and 
 it will ultimately, as seems probable, be found that it was by 
 acting on individual men over the country that his influence 
 was most powerful : but he did not grasp it in all its mighty 
 import, and make it consciously and avowedly the basis of 
 his operations : one man alone has proclaimed this doctrine 
 in all the emphasis which is its due — Thomas Carlyle. Ah ! 
 what a prospect might we have had now had Carlyle and 
 Chalmers toiled side by side in the Church of Scotland ! Let 
 us not, however, deem that we shall be sinless if we neglect 
 the truth to which each has called our attention. 
 
 After four years' incumbency in the parish of St John's, 
 Chalmers removed, in November 1823, to St Andrews, to 
 fill the chair of Moi^l Philosophy in the University there. 
 His main reason for quitting Glasgow deserves notice. His 
 experiment in the parish of St John's silenced, as was said, 
 all objections but one. This one was the determined asser- 
 tion that the whole success was due to the eloquence and 
 energy, in one word, to the individual character, of Chalmers. 
 It is fine to see how this galls him. He exclaims against 
 the " nauseous eulogies" which would turn into an empty 
 compliment to him the demonstration of the power of Chris- 
 tianity. But it is vain to argue : the one reply they make 
 to eveiy appeal is, St John's parish is worked by Chalmers. 
 
144 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 What can be done 1 The following are his own words : — 
 " There was obviously no method by which to disabuse them 
 01 this strange impression, but by turning my back on the 
 whole concern ; and thus testing the inherent soundness and 
 efficacy of the system by leaving it in other hands.^' And 
 so he goes to St Andrews ; let the cause prosper, whatever 
 may become of him ! 
 
 In 1828 he is inaugurated as Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Edinburgh, — an office he continues to fill until 
 within a few years of his death. Over his students he exer- 
 cises the same powerful and benign influence which he has 
 shed on all who have come within his sphere. His prelec- 
 tions tend to produce godly and ardent pastors, rather than 
 nice controversialists ; he is, though not so named, the great- 
 est among professors of Pastoral Theology ; his spirit goes 
 over Scotland incarnated in young, vigorous, aggressive Chris- 
 tian ministers. 
 
 We now approach that epoch in the life of Chalmers dur- 
 ing which, for the last time, he was to act a great and pro- 
 minent part before the eyes of men. Within the circle of 
 his sympathies and the ken of his powers he had embraced 
 all the leading interests of the empire ; with a gigantic and 
 hallowed energy he had striven to reanimate them by an in- 
 spiration of divine fire. And with a certain hopefulness, 
 which, though damped by opposition, could not altogether 
 die, he had ever looked to the endowments and machinery 
 of that Scottish Church which he loved with the double af- 
 fection of patriotism and pride. Whether it came of the 
 substantial and practical nature of his intellect, or whether 
 it arose from his deep loyalty and conservative tendencies, 
 he was a decided and inflexible advocate of religious estab- 
 lishments. But, with the views of a statesman, he was also 
 a divine. Never for a moment did he conceive the unchris- 
 tian idea that it was State support which gave existence or 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 145 
 
 power to a Church. The doctnne of the distinct existence 
 of the Church of Christ he grasped with all the firmness of 
 his powers, and discerned with all their clearness ; whatever 
 his faith in the efficacy of Christianity, it was in a Chris- 
 tianity not the bondslave of man, but the messenger of 
 God. 
 
 It is, of course, unnecessary to detail in this place the va- 
 rious stages of the controversy which preceded the celebi-ated 
 Disruption of 1843 in the Scottish National Church, or to 
 define, with precision and in detail, the argumentative posi- 
 tions taken by the respective parties. It were, however, un- 
 pardonable altogether to shun the question. Chalmers acted 
 a part therein too prominent to render this permissible; while 
 the movement itself bears closely on one of the main general 
 objects of this little work, the ascertainment of the actual 
 power and practical availability of what names itself Christian 
 principle in our age. 
 
 To speak in a way that may look somewhat pedantic, we 
 have to discover, as the essential points in the matter before 
 us, the idea of a State, the idea of a Church, and the relation 
 between the two ; wherein each of these, — the State, the 
 Church, and the relation, — essentially consists. 
 
 It is a fundamental axiom in the whole discussion, that 
 the glory of God is the end and intent both of Church and 
 State. The arguments adducible by reason to prove that the 
 end of individual existence is God's glory can be brought, per- 
 haps without exception, to prove the same fact in the case of 
 governments. Bu.t let no rash conclusions be drawn from 
 this all-important declaration. Every man works for God's 
 glory when he performs the peculiar task assigned him by 
 God ; it may be implied in his thorough discharge of this 
 task, that he abstain from all other efibrts and functions, how- 
 ever plausibly he may be invited thereto ; and the remark ap- 
 plies equally to all beneath the government of God. 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 This axiom laid down, we have to take but one step, when 
 the whole matter clears up before us. Man's nature, indi- 
 vidual and social, is twofold, spiritual and physical. That he 
 has a physical nature, that he is a denizen of earth, and has 
 to work that he may live, no argument is required to prove. 
 That his nature also is spiritual, that, as a spirit, he is con- 
 nected with a system of things not terrestrial but celestial, not 
 temporal but eternal, is attested by reason. Here, too, no- 
 thing more is strictly necessary than a simple statement of 
 the fact. 
 
 Broadly contemplated, the Chiu'ch is a union among men, 
 considered as spiritual beings, and for spiritual ends, and the 
 State a union for objects of a strictly terrestrial nature. 
 
 Has God appointed to Church and State, thus broadly dis- 
 criminated, respective duties ? And what are they 1 
 
 The function of a State, viewed in the relation indicated, 
 is confined to terrestrial matters. A government is, as it 
 were, God's commissioner to see that the national farm be 
 thoroughly tilled. The State's object is to render itself safe 
 from without, and, to express all in one word, prosperous within. 
 This does not exhaust its duty in relation to other States, but 
 it comprehends all its duties towards itself. And for the at- 
 tainment of this object what is necessary 1 It is needful, in 
 one word, that the national virtues flourish. For safety, it is 
 requisite that the people be co^^rageous, sober, observant of an 
 oath ; for prosperity, it is necessary that they be industrious, 
 so that the nation collectively may derive the greatest possible 
 benefit from its soil, climate, and mineral wealth, and that 
 they be commercially upright, so that the rights of all may be 
 balanced, and the general welfare subserved. A government 
 prevents internally every form of aggression by man on man; 
 this last is the precise, scientific definition of crime in a na- 
 tion. There is a morality whose exclusive theatre is earth; 
 there is an integrity between man and man which supports 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 147 
 
 commerce; a national steadfastness and industry which avert 
 revolution ; a loyalty, a patriotism, a valour, which girdle the 
 State as with bayonets. These constitute work sufficient for 
 any body corporate. 
 
 There are men who consider such achievements as have been 
 glanced at above, and the general morality indicated, to be all 
 which can concern men and* nations. Atheistic morals are 
 by nature and necessity confined to such. A man might re- 
 main immaculate, on the system of D'Holbach, or Godwin, or 
 Comte, though he had never believed in or heard of a God. 
 In all such systems, man's whole duties are his duties to man. 
 
 But, if we believe that man is even now the denizen of a 
 higher world than that of sense, if we attribute reality to a 
 spiritual province of things, a morality and a government dif- 
 ferent from these are seen, in natural and inevitable sequence, 
 to emerge. This is celestial morality; and the body corpo- 
 rate which bears the relation to it which secular government 
 bears to secular morality is the Church. All that a brother 
 man is empowered to demand of another is, that he give him 
 free and fair play for all his faculties, that he harm him not ; 
 God may demand of a man that he be holy in thought, heart, 
 and action ; terrestrial morality may be called harmlessness ; 
 celestial, holiness. To profane the name of God may imply 
 no harm to a fellow-man, but it may be an ' fraction of man's 
 duty to God. The devotion of a certain time to the worship 
 of God may or may not be of direct and obvious advantage 
 to the community, but it may be required by God. In short, 
 there may be a surveillance of man as a denizen of the spiri- 
 tual world, as well as a surveillance of him as a denizen of 
 earth. And so, by a sequence as strict as in the case of the 
 State, a separate set of functions arise for the Church. 
 
 If we have been following correctly, though for a short way, 
 the light of reason, it seems to have led us to the greater light 
 of revelation. This teaches us that man at first was not a 
 
148 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 fettered bond-slave, tliat he had not to purchase existence by 
 toil, that he was not cursed with labour ; that sin deprived 
 him of his spiritual birthright, condemned him to work that 
 body and soul might remain together, and set Death over 
 him as a ruthless taskmaster to keep him in the furrow. But 
 it teaches us also that those higher regions, towards which 
 reason wistfully but weakly looks, are real ; that we are spirits 
 still ; that God is yet our King ; that immortality and spiri- 
 tual joys may again be ours ; and that we even now exist in 
 a system of relations which bind us to the spirit- world. Secu- 
 lar government has been rendered necessary by the fall ; the 
 Church exists by virtue of the promise. Both of them, 
 viewed from the stand -point of eternity, and regarded as sepa- 
 rate systems of mechanism, are expedients, and both tempo- 
 rary. The State must cease to exist when men are purely 
 spiritual, and mutual injury is impossible ; it will cease, as 
 was formerly said, when justice and love shall have become 
 one. The Church, too, viewed as a visible organization, will 
 conduct men but a certain way ; it will vanish at the gates 
 of heaven. It finds man in a condition of lapse and distemper, 
 it aims to restore him to a paradaisal state : this done, it will 
 pass away, enveloped in a cloud of glory. For the present, 
 the duties of State and Church are discriminated ; neither is 
 delivered from direct responsibility to God ; but the Church 
 respects the first table of the law, the State the second. 
 
 A detailed proof from Scripture that the State has duties 
 of its own is unnecessary ; and it would lead us too far to 
 enter upon a detailed proof and definition from Holy Writ of 
 the powers and duties of the Church. The general course, 
 however, and nature of the evidence in the latter case may 
 be at a glance apprehended. Either, with Whately, we might 
 determine the powers which pertain of necessity to every cor- 
 poration, and, showing that the Church is, by its Scriptural 
 definition, of that nature, infer that these powers belong to 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 149 
 
 it. Or we might cite the express declarations of our Lord, 
 by which He committed the power of discipline, the power, 
 under Him, of opening and shutting the kingdom of heaven, 
 to His Church ; declarations with which, whatever they mean, 
 it cannot even be maintained that any teiTestrial power can 
 interfere, and whose meaning seems as clear and explicit as 
 words can make it. And we might point, further, to the in- 
 dubitable practice of the early Church ; we might instance, 
 as absolutely sufficient and conclusive, the case of the Church 
 of Corinth. The authority of Paul as a preacher of Chris- 
 tianity will not be questioned by any to whom I now address 
 myself; the fact that he points out the duty of expelling a 
 certain member from the Church is not within the reach of 
 cavil ; and the whole nature and compass of the discipline of 
 a Christian Church are unfolded in his general directions on 
 the subject. In a word, it might be shown, by clear and con- 
 clusive arguing, that the early Christian Church exercised 
 powers within itself according to a law given it by inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 Any penalty inflicted by a Church will, of necessity, be 
 purely spiritual. The offence committed is one against God ; 
 the punishment with which it is to be visited can have refer- 
 ence solely to Him. A physical punishment is, by the nature 
 of the case, out of the question. If the member expelled or 
 excommunicated laughs at the decree, it is, as respects visible 
 suffering inflicted by men, null and void. It is true, indeed, 
 that if the inhabitants of the country in which the decree 
 takes effect are all Christians, and consequently attach weight 
 to the displeasure of the Church, considerable discomfort must 
 result from discountenance by his brethren. But this is a 
 remark which applies to the working of every possible cor- 
 poration. 
 
 Having now granted that the provinces of Church and 
 State are severed, and having laid it down that the former, 
 
150 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 in its requirements and penalties, has exclusive reference, di- 
 rectly or indirectly, to celestial morality, it may seem diffi- 
 cult for us to find any mode in which they can legitimately 
 and beneficially be allied. In point of fact, however, this 
 has become a simple matter. The State is bound to enter- 
 tain the question, regarding every agency which may present 
 itself^ Does it further the views entertained, the objects aimed 
 at, by the State 1 A careful attention may be needful here : 
 truth in the matter lies close to error. It is one thing to 
 ask. Will the Church, used as a mechanism by the State, pro- 
 mote State objects 1 and another to ask the absolutely dis- 
 tinct question. Will the Church, acting solely for its own ends 
 and by its own laws, promote that morality which the State 
 requires, and is appointed by God to require ] The first is 
 a question the Church of Christ dare not even listen to ; the 
 second is that which the State is bound to ask, and to which 
 the Church may render a decisive answer, and one on which 
 an alliance between Church and State may be reared. 
 
 It is perhaps not too much to say that we are here at the 
 very spring and original fountain of all the errors, theoretic 
 and practical, which have encumbered this subject ; that by 
 a distinct recollection and recognition of the separate pro- 
 vinces of celestial and terrestrial morality, and of the respec- 
 tive functions of Church and State, such errors would have 
 been obviated. The Church, in virtue of its origin, by char- 
 ter of its King, in the discharge of those duties which alone 
 render it necessary and existent in the sum of things, con- 
 cerns itself with celestial morality j with a morality which 
 lies beyond the pale of human law, whose rejection may in- 
 fringe no right of man with man, which is between man and 
 his God. Reason, in its highest and purest moments, de- 
 clares the province and functions of the Church to be real ; 
 the Word of God ratifies this decision, assigns the Church 
 certain duties, and appoints for it a certain government. The 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 151 
 
 omy offer it can or dare listen to from the State is one which 
 will guarantee its action as a Church. Turning to the State, 
 on the other hand, we find it answerable to God for the 
 maintenance of the common weal ; and it is but another form 
 of expressing this to say, that it is answerable for the pro- 
 motion of those virtues on which the safety and prosperity 
 of a commonwealth depend. When a Church comes before 
 it, it has simply to inquire whether that Church, acting in 
 the only way in which a Church can act, will promote public 
 morality ; in other words, whether the promotion of celestial 
 morality will further that other morality by which a State 
 subsists. 
 
 And what answer is it right for a State to render to this 
 question ? To omit a consideration of other cases, it is surely 
 plain that a State and Church naming the name of Christ 
 can satisfy each other here, so as to form an alliance, not 
 merely of harmless, but of eminently beneficent nature. State 
 and Church hold their powers from the same hand ; God has 
 appointed them to perform different functions, but they are 
 united by the bond of a common service. Their powers are 
 co-ordinate, but they mutually assist and establish each other. 
 The one grand argument to prove that the State ought to be 
 in kindly alliance with the Church, ought to countenance, 
 and to its ability support it, is this : That reason, histoiy, 
 and Scripture, blend their testimonies to show that religion 
 is the only safeguard of a nation ; that love to one's neighbour 
 can never nationally subsist, save as dependent upon love to 
 one's God. 
 
 Observe how close truth here lies to error. The Church, 
 forgetting that its province is essentially and exclusively spi- 
 ritual, that its penalties can be tenible in the esteem of a 
 man only in so far as he is a Christian and believes in its 
 power with God (with the qualification formerly mentioned), 
 •ovei-steps its bound, and touches a man's terrestrial posses- 
 
152 THOMAS CHALMERS, 
 
 sions ; fines, tortures, slays liim. This is an anomaly in na- 
 ture ; no Church can have power to touch a hair of a man's 
 head, or an ear of his corn. This error has taken form in a 
 system which has not failed to illustrate its baneful effects, 
 the system of Popery. 
 
 But in our day it is an error of a very different order which 
 prevails. It is the error of regarding the Church as an or- 
 ganization to be looked on as primarily and directly subser- 
 vient to the interests of State morality. This ignores celes- 
 tial morality, and, by turning the Church into a system of 
 police, positively annihilates it. A Church which should be 
 merely a piece of State mechanism, is easily conceivable. It 
 would simply relinquish its native functions as connected with 
 celestial morality. A secular government desires that men 
 be upright, and sober, and brave ; but it directly subserves 
 no end of State that men believe in an everlasting reward and 
 a heavenly King ; yet, if the Church has a distinct existence, 
 these must be of capital importance for it. A Church is re- 
 quired to proclaim from her pulpits a morality immaculately 
 pure; Government may find, or imagine it finds, such mo- 
 rality reflect in no flattering manner on its own measures : 
 nay, it may desire the advocacy of its measures, directly or 
 indirectly, from the pulpit ; and so the process may go on 
 extending and deepening, till the very essence and origin of 
 a Church are forgotten. And yet, do not ideas, tending di- 
 rectly to this result, pervade society in our day ? Is it not 
 a common notion among the members of our National 
 Churches, that they are Churches in virtue of their connec- 
 tion with the State 1 Is it not a fact that many excellent 
 persons in our Churches, in the Church of England for in- 
 stance, would apply the term of schism to a separation from 
 the State 1 As if the State made the establishment of Eng- 
 land a Church, as if it could exercise no function apart from 
 the State, as if it would be equivalent to its extinction as a 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 153 
 
 Church, to throw it again into the condition in which that 
 of Corinth was when it received its doctrine from the mouth 
 of Paul ! Among the Dissenters, on the other hand, and in 
 what may be called a negative form, the same idea has ex- 
 tensive prevalence. It seemed perfectly absurd to Foster to 
 hear it asserted, as the Scotch Kon-intrusion party astonished 
 liim by asserting, that the State might endow, but could 
 never regulate, a Church. As if, forsooth, the question of 
 endowment or non-endowment were a vital, or even an im- 
 2>ortant one, in the case ! The gmnd question is. Whether 
 the State is bound to sanction, countenance, and promote the 
 Church ; settle this affirmatively, and you have settled the 
 question of an establishment : whether the form of support 
 which consists in handing it a certain portion of money is 
 sound and legitimate or not, is a different question alto- 
 gether, and of very subordinate importance. To imagine 
 that the acceptance of a certain form of support implied an 
 abnegation of distinctive and essential power and existence, 
 was surely an egregious error, and one which, fallen into by 
 such an intellect as Foster's, indicated prevailing ignorance 
 as to the real nature and functions of a Church. 
 
 It is not possible too severely to denounce this great heresy. 
 A Church such we have seen men imagine for themselves 
 w^ould not necessarily turn men to God ; it would merely pre- 
 serve them in a state of respectability and loyalty. This is 
 against the very idea of a Christian Church ; if it becomes 
 universal, religion, strictly speaking, is as good as dead in our 
 Churches. The sister establishments may, doubtless, go on 
 for a time ; and it may even be deemed desirable by many 
 without their pale that they should still continue to subsist. 
 Evils there are which they may certainly obstruct. But if 
 they become simply a part of the government mechanism for 
 the quiet guidance of the nation ; if they are to be primarily 
 and undeniably hills of dead earth heaped on the Enceladus 
 
 2 E 
 
154 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 of modern revolutionism ; if their strength is to be made up 
 of the many who, having no religion of their own, take that 
 which comes to hand wdth a government sanction ; if their 
 members are to be, not Christians, but " respectable persons;" 
 if their piety is to be, not the reverent upturning of the finite 
 eye to the Infinite God, but a fluctuating accommodation to 
 the religious fashions of the day — that goes once to church, 
 or twice, as is the mode; that subscribes to missions, and gets 
 up sales for charitable purposes, or does not, as is the mode ; 
 that has family prayers or not, as is the mode — then they 
 may indeed remain for a time, and even do their w^ork, and 
 get their reward, but the first blast of millennial Christianity 
 will sweep them utterly away. Tlie Tyrians chained Apollo 
 to the statue of Dagon, but Alexander laid their towers in 
 the dust all the same ! Revolution is fearful ; the unchained 
 masses, foaming maddened in atheistic frenzy, are fearful ; 
 but Christianity chained in the temple of Mammon is the 
 most fearful of all. 
 
 The principles now sketched, or rather the one principle 
 of the separate existence and co-ordinate Divine origin of the 
 Church, in perfect independence of the State, constituted the 
 vital element in the long struggle which issued in the rending 
 asunder of the Church of Scotland. To one out of the din 
 of conflict, who contemplates the matter in the stillness of 
 distance, the whole becomes absolutely plain. I shall by no 
 means assert that there were no such obscuring or confound- 
 ing influences around those who were parties in the debate, 
 as to render it conceivable, and consistent with honesty, that 
 they should oppose that view of the case taken by the party 
 of Chalmers ; and, plain as it seems to me, that the question 
 was one touching expressly the principles just laid down, 
 there is perhaps no person now ;ti Scotland who would refuse 
 assent in terms to what has been said. Yet, putting the ar- 
 gument of the party which opposed the majority in the most 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 155 
 
 favourable liglit possible, what does it amount to ] Suppose 
 that tbe Church, in admitting the ministers of chapels of 
 ease to a full and equal share in every ministerial function, 
 did overstep the letter of its legal powers, and that the whole 
 actings of Government towards it during the struggle were 
 influenced by this consideration, how does it affect the ques- 
 tion ? It seems merely to clear it up, and to bring it within 
 a narrow compass. If a Church possess corporate freedom, 
 we shall agree that it has those powei*s which belong by na- 
 ture to a corporation. These we may as well take from 
 Whately ; no one will say he fixes the standard too high. 
 Corporate freedom implies that the body in question has offi- 
 cers, rules, a power of discipline, and an authority to admit 
 or exclude members. Now, when Chalmers in London de- 
 clared the Church of Scotland free, it either was so in the 
 above sense, or it was not. If it was, then it is but a state- 
 ment of an obvious fact, that it was competent to it to admit 
 the chapel ministers to its full membership. If it was not 
 free, if Chalmers was mistaken, if, from any cause whatsoever, 
 or in any circumstances, this right was called in question, it 
 was necessary, at whatever expense, that it should be vindi- 
 cated. It will be said that this act of admission on the part 
 of the Church affected, indirectly but unquestionably, the 
 civil rights of certain individuals. Be it so ; provision has 
 Tbeen made against the objection : if a time had come when 
 civil rights, when endowment, in one form or another, inter- 
 fered with the very life of the Church, the time had also come 
 when it behoved that Church to declare, that its perfect se- 
 verance from all endowment was, strictly speaking, of infi- 
 nitely less moment than that there should remain the faintest 
 doubt of its freedom. It is, besides, a well-known fact, that 
 the Church, ere laying its endowments at the foot of the State, 
 expressed its willingness to surrender all control over the 
 money paid to those inducted into its parishes. That fatal 
 
156 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 error, liowever, whicli lias been noted, prevailed widely. Men 
 deemed it something anomalous and unheard of, that a Church 
 should receive money from a State, and yet possess a jurisdic- 
 tion absolutely distinct from that of the secular government. 
 
 Chalmers, looking at the whole question with the eye at 
 once of a statesman and of a divine, saw into its essence, and 
 took his position accordingly. With no elaborate searching 
 or arguing, his piercing eye flashed at once through all so- 
 phistry to the truth that the life of the Church was in danger. 
 It was with a certain astonishment and sorrow that he fought 
 his last battle. If ever there beat a loyal heart, it was in his 
 bosom. Since the day when he wept in the garden which 
 recalled the glories of Marlborough, — since the day he had 
 enlisted iu the volunteers, chaplain and lieutenant, — since 
 the day he had invoked death to smite him ere his country 
 fell, — he had ever loved kingship, and national steadfastness, 
 and the dignity of an ancestral Church. He knew that the 
 Church of his fathers was throbbing with spiritual life, as she 
 had not done for two centuries ; he saw her missionaries 
 going to the ends of the earth ; he saw her blooming into new 
 fruitfulness at home, and casting her mantle over all the po- 
 pulation. It was with dismay and amazement that he wit- 
 nessed the infatuation of the Government ; that he listened 
 to the unspeakable nonsense uttered about clerical oppression, 
 Popery, liberty of the subject, &c. ; that he saw Conserva- 
 tism in Scotland trying to get the tough old Presbyterian 
 Samson, liis hair grown after two centuries of weakness, to 
 be a mere maker of sport for it. As he said of his parting 
 from his dear sequestered Kilmany, there was tearing of the 
 heartstrings there ! 
 
 Yet shall we not say that there was something fine in the 
 spectacle of Chalmers contending at the head of the Church 
 of Scotland, for the fundamental doctrine that the Church of 
 Christ owes its existence to no fiat of the State, to no dole 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 157 
 
 of public money, but to the word of its Master, and to that 
 alone ? That it was the duty of the State to support the 
 Church, he held to be irrefragable ; but to make the Church, 
 not a fire which it fed with fuel, but a machine which it re- 
 gulated and worked, he saw to be a fundamental heresy. 
 With a mind perfectly settled on the question, and with an 
 intrepidity which his known and enthusiastic respect for con- 
 stituted authorities rendered the more conspicuous and the 
 more noble, he calmly yet unliinchingly contended. His hair 
 was growing white, and a deeper stillness was settling in his 
 eye, though the old liquid fire would at times gleam out ; 
 his fame had spread over the old world and the new ; he had 
 been flattered by the highest aristocracy of the land ; yet he 
 was still the same devout humble Christian that he had be- 
 come when first the light of God opened upon him at Kil- 
 many ; he was still the same earnest worker as when he set 
 Glasgow into a ferment of Christian philanthropy ; he was 
 still the same tender-hearted personal friend who wept over 
 the grave of Thomas Smith. His words, his writings, and, 
 most of all, his example, had struck new vitality through 
 all the borders of Christian Scotland ; and now, as the glories 
 of eventide were beginning to encircle him, he paw around 
 him an army of young ardent spirits, who, in their pulpits, 
 preached Christ and Him crucified, and, in the assemblies of 
 their Church, defended her rights with an ability and a per- 
 sistency which astonished every party. The sun looks proud- 
 est in the evening ; and the cause of his grandeur is, that, 
 ere he himself sinks to rest, a thousand clouds, which his light 
 brightens into radiance and beauty, encircle and seem to es- 
 cort him : so, when a great man draws to his rest, a thousand 
 younger men, whose fire has been kindled by him, reflect his 
 light and testify his power. 
 
 In the beginning of the summer of 1843, Thomas Chal- 
 mers and in all nearly five hundred ministers of the Church 
 
158 THOMAS CHALMEES. 
 
 of Scotland severed the connection which bound them to the 
 State, relinquished every claim on its immunities, and re-con- 
 stituted the Church in a state of freedom. Not abjuring the 
 l^rinciple of an Establishment, but protesting that no Govern- 
 ment sanction could stand in the room of that Divine au- 
 thority which gave life to a Church, they parted from a Go- 
 vernment which seemed ignorant of its nature, and claimed 
 an authority paramount to that of its charter written by the 
 finger of God. 
 
 The act of Chalmers and his followers requires no trum- 
 peting, and none shall be attempted here. But it is a mere 
 argumentative assertion, removed altogether from enthusiasm 
 or exaggeration, that the Scottish Disruption, whatever minor 
 opinions may be held regarding it, did evince that Christianity 
 has a real and a powerful hold upon both the pastors and the 
 people of Scotland in our day. I shall not insist upon much 
 being made of this ; Scotland has little to boast of, and great 
 cause for repentance ; but it would be a sin and a shame not 
 to attach to it a real and august importance. In an age of re- 
 spectability and commonplace, — in an age when the decorous, 
 the established, the aristocratic, is still so revered and clung 
 to by at least our middle classes, — a large body of men, well 
 advanced in life, and many of them tottering under grey hairs, 
 deliberately stepped from under the smile of power, delibe- 
 rately risked their continuance as a Church, on the Chris- 
 tianity of the people and the blessing of God. Such events 
 do not occur in the history of dead religions ; such phenomena 
 cannot appear where religion is a doubt. 
 
 The whole spectacle of the Disruption, viewed in the rela- 
 tion borne to it by Government, is anomalous and amazing. 
 Disencumbered of all incidental and extraneous entanglements 
 arising from the civil rights of individuals, the power claimed 
 by the Church of Scotland, ere demitting its endowment, was 
 precisely that which is exercised by every Dissenting body in 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 159 
 
 the kingdom, and whicli it at once began to exercise on part- 
 ing from the State. This circumstance alone appears suffi- 
 cient to Isaac Taylor to stamp the conduct of the State as 
 impolitic ; and, though far higher gi'ounds than his may be 
 taken in discussing the general question, the fact involves 
 conclusive evidence that there was no ruling British states- 
 man of the day capable of taking a strong original look at 
 the matter. The sovereign power of Britain tore asunder a 
 body of known loyalty, which sat enthroned in the affection 
 of the mass of the people of Scotland, and whose influence 
 could not but be pronounced, on the whole, promotive of 
 public morality, for one of two causes : either because it 
 would not permit the Church to do what every Dissenting 
 body does, and what this body could not when disestablish- 
 ed be prevented from doing ; or because there was not abi- 
 lity and decision in its compass sufficient to disentangle and 
 make short work with a few beggarly questions touching 
 money matters. From this dilemma there is no escape. 
 Into one of two errors, or both, it seems to have been impos- 
 sible for British statesmen to avoid falling : into that of 
 fancying that the Church claimed a Popish power, that it 
 was going to erect a spiritual despotism ; to which, remem- 
 bering that we live in the nineteenth century, and that all 
 Protestant Dissenting bodies are thus spiritual despotisms, 
 one may decline replying, as sheer and infantile fooling : or 
 into that of affirming the Church to be a mere State police, 
 paid, and, by natural consequence, superintended, by Govern- 
 ment ; which has been already shown to imply an ignorance 
 of the very conditions of the question,— a negation of the 
 existence of a Church. 
 
 Chalmers was now becoming an old man. On passing 
 his sixtieth year, he entered on what he called the Sabbath 
 of his life, six working decades past. It was a beautiful 
 thought, and showed how his great soul yearned, like all the 
 
160 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 noble, for repose. Over the last years of his life there rests 
 a still and pensive beauty, a soft radiance of Sabbatic calm ; 
 not unshaded by sadness, not unbroken by agitation, they 
 are wrapped in peace and harmony by that effect which poet- 
 painters ever love, the dawning, in the background, of infi- 
 nite light. It was hard, with now aged limb, to leave that 
 Establishment, from whose battlements, in the mom, and 
 noontide, and hale afternoon of his years, he had looked with 
 a glance of pride and satisfaction, such as lit the minstrel 
 king's when he looked from the towers of Zion. It was, 
 indeed, a high consolation that in Scotland there was still 
 enough of "celestial fire" to organize and animate a free 
 Church ; but his faith in Voluntaryism was not even yet 
 absolute ; and the one grand idea of his life, the reaping of 
 the great outfield, the diffusion of ^Christianity over all the 
 land, seemed no longer realizable. That sadness which we 
 saw to be characteristic of the close of the most memorable 
 and precious lives, descended perceptibly, in the evening of 
 his days, on the manly brow of Chalmers. 
 
 The general aspect of these years is of deep interest and 
 instruction, and cannot but reward a few final glances. 
 
 While the member of an Established Church, the large 
 heart of Chalmers had opened its gates to everything noble 
 in Dissent, to receive and love it ; and now, when he was 
 himself member of a disestablished body, his nature flung 
 aside those constraining and cramping cords of sectarianism 
 which seem inevitably to twine themselves, however insen- 
 sibly, round men of particular parties and denominations. It 
 was with a glow of generous and enthusiastic joy that he 
 hailed the Evangelical Alliance ; as one in a fleet on a stormy 
 sea, when morn was drawing on, might hail the streaks of 
 that sun which was to extinguish the lamp in each separate 
 vessel. And with a fearless and truly Christian cosmopoli- 
 tanism, he threw out his sympathies in other directions. He 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 161 
 
 earnestly accepted a contribution towards the cause of hu- 
 manity, whencesoever it came. He could stand immoveable 
 in his own belief, and yet hear words of instruction or mo- 
 nition from others whose opinions were widely apart from 
 his : he could rest in his belief that Christianity, that the 
 preaching of Christ crucified, could alone regenerate the 
 world ; and yet he could hear, in the words of Mr Carlyle, 
 the voice of God to the Churches, proclaiming that their in- 
 difference and their dormancy had left a breach to the enemy. 
 
 What a stirring gleam of Christian valour, too, in that de- 
 termination, old as he was, to master German philosophy ! 
 He is not the man to be afraid ; he will enter this untrod- 
 den region ; if any new seed, or fruit, or flower of truth has 
 been found, he must know and possess it ; if any new form 
 of eiTor has appeared, he must go, like a brave and faithful 
 son, to set it, yet another trophy, on Truth's immortal brow ! 
 
 His intellect was now calm, comprehensive, sage ; his 
 heart was fresh as with the dew of youth. He again read 
 Shakspeare, Milton, and Gibbon. His re-perusal of the first 
 of these furnishes a beautiful and characteristic trait. After 
 a life of continual effort, of perpetual contact with men and 
 things, after the world had done its worst upon him, both in 
 applause and in censure, he still revelled in the aerial gaiety, 
 the many- tinted summer-like beauty, the genial, though keen 
 sagacity, of Midsummer's Night's Dream. Of Shakspeare's 
 plays, that was his favourite. It is a very remarkable cir- 
 cumstance ; telling of a gentleness of nature, a kind gleesome 
 humour, an exuberant unstrained force and freshness of in- 
 tellect, surely rare among theologians. As kindred to this, 
 and of still deeper beauty, w^e may regard his tender play- 
 ful affection for his infant grandson. He writes to little 
 Tommy with the perfect sympathy of one whom the world 
 has still left guileless as a child ; he relates little anecdotes 
 for his amusement ; tells him of birds' nests ; demonstrates 
 
 M 
 
162 TnOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 to him, with syllogistic conclusiveness, that it is a logical 
 mistake to love his hobbyhorse better than his grandpapa, 
 merely because the former is " biggest ;" he does not forget 
 to send him toys when at a distance, he makes him feel him- 
 self quite a man as he stands beside grandpapa assisting him 
 to range his books ; and, best of all, he leads him, by kind, 
 winning, imperceptible ways, to the footstool of their com- 
 mon Father. The child of four, and the veteran of three- 
 score, kneel down together alone, that the smile of God may 
 light on both His children ! 
 
 There is one negative characteristic which appears to be 
 constant in men deserving to be called, in any right sense, 
 great. They are perfectly free of knowingness ; of the light- 
 sniffing, nil admirari mood, that trembles at the thought ot 
 a sneer ; they are more simple than other men. This was 
 signally the case with Chalmers. 
 
 It is by looking at the inner life of Chalmers, at his walk 
 with God, that we come to know and understand him. It 
 is by knowing well what he was in his closet, that we can 
 explain what he was in the world of men. The three re- 
 verences that figure so largely in Goethe's system were all 
 found there ; with this difierence, that the word and feeling 
 of reverence were applied to no finite being, but only to the 
 Infinite God. The " trust thyself" of Emerson, that " iron 
 string to which every heart vibrates," was never shown in 
 any better than in him ; but it was held, not as the whole 
 truth, but as half of the truth, which could never become the 
 whole. It was the self-trust of humility, not of pride ; it was 
 the trust that knew the world, hanging, as it seems, on nothing, 
 to be yet upheld by the hand of God ; it was the tmst which 
 felt nothing finite worthy to be feared, since a chord of love 
 bound its possessor eternally to the very heart of God. He 
 trusted himself; as David, Paul, Luther, Cromwell, trusted; 
 but it was among the finite he did so ; before his God he lay 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 163 
 
 l-^w. He trusted liimself to face the world, but not to scale 
 the uDiverse. Christianity has furnished a gi-eater number of 
 courageous, iron-built men, than either philosophy or any re- 
 ligion besides itself can show ; but the sternest and greatest 
 of them bowed the head to the Highest. Christianity leaves 
 no place for cowardice, while it blasts the eye of pride. Chal- 
 mers was a man of prayer ; he was much alone with God. 
 And how much is included in this assertion ! Did the world 
 shout and adulate 1 Its voice became silent and of little mo- 
 ment when the inner chambers of the heart were flung 'open 
 before the eye of God, searching into the recesses of the soul, 
 casting a ray of celestial pureness, in whose light motes, else 
 invisible, were seen. Did the world rage and scorn ? Its 
 frown became of small importance in the smile of God, its 
 rage and tumult of slight avail, if the voice that called order 
 out of chaos said, "Let there be light." The hallowing in- 
 fluence of habitual prayer pervaded his whole life ; to com- 
 fort in adversity, to strengthen in toil, to cheer in battle, to 
 sober in victory. Humble yet coui'ageous, weak yet strong, 
 he saw himself filled with human frailty and human faults, 
 yet he shone before the eyes of men. 
 
 The deep sagacity which had been ripening during a life- 
 time was true and sure at its quiet close. " The public is 
 just a big baby !" What a profound and deliberate know- 
 ledge of society is here. And what a comparison ! A big 
 baby ! a great, pulpy, lumbering thing, that could do nothing 
 but squall ! Yet how he grasped to his heart any really noble 
 and godly man ; even with a kiss, as Tholuck said in amaze- 
 ment ! The true individual soul, and the real hidden work, 
 were still what he dearly loved. From the glare of observa- 
 tion he shrunk aside j but you might have seen him in Burke's 
 Close, in the West Port, at his old work, bringing Heaven's 
 light into the hovel aiid the heart of the poor. 
 
 Taken all in all, Chalmers was a noble type of the Chris- 
 
164 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 tian man. He showed how Christianity embraces and en- 
 nobles, but does not cramp or curtail, humanity j how, in 
 that Divine influence, all old things do indeed pass away, 
 but leave no desert behind, for a fairer verdure springs, beau- 
 tified by immortal flowers, and nourished from living foun- 
 tains, in an inner world where all things have become new. 
 The vital warmth which would pervade a system of society 
 really Christian, can be but counterfeited and galvanically 
 mimicked by worldliness ; Christianity extends her claim and 
 dominion over everything, if it have the one characteristic of 
 being good. From the breast of Chalmers all the counter- 
 feits of worldliness were banished, but the goodly company 
 of healthful human emotions, of noble human attributes, en- 
 tered in their stead. The cold aflectations, the hypocritic 
 smiles, the mellifluous falsehood, the greedy complaisance, all 
 the glitter by which fashion hides her heart of ice, never found 
 any point of adherence in him ; but the manly and genial de- 
 ference of true politeness, a politeness based on the essential 
 equality in the sight of God of " all human souls," was truly 
 his ; to peer and peasant he was the same self-respecting yet 
 truly modest and courteous man, — no touch of trepidation, 
 no tone of flattery, towards the one ; no "insolence of con- 
 descension," no patronizing blandness, towards the other. He 
 loved genial mirth and a deep hearty laugh ; the simper of 
 etiquette, the giggle of frivolity, were alike alien to his nature. 
 It is well, likewise, to remember, that his heart was ever 
 kept warm and fresh by those gentle ministries which nature 
 has appointed, and Christianity, of course, sanctions : by the 
 tender influences of home, by the wife of his bosom, and the 
 children whom God had given him. These are nature's ge- 
 neral means, and doubtless they are, in general, the best, to 
 preserve health in the whole system of thought, of feeling, 
 and of action. The man who plays for an hour or two at 
 bowls with his children, as his elder found Chalmers doing, 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 165 
 
 will not likely, with Godwin or any other, fabricate for you 
 a world on philosophic principles, with ice figures going by 
 clockwork for men, and painted in the highest style of art. 
 Follow the ecclesiastic, or professor, from the debate or the 
 conclave, into his own home ; there see him, in his warm arm- 
 chair, with his three daughters near him, one shampooing his 
 feet, another talking the sort of nonsense which she knows 
 will set him into fits of laughter, and the third making up the 
 perfect harmony, by playing the tunes of dear old Scotland; 
 can you apprehend narrowness or fanaticism in that man ? 
 Will not that laugh shake out of the heart every taint of theo- 
 logical rancour, lift from the brow every shade of gloom, ex- 
 press that unromantic, unostentatious, unspeakable comfort, 
 which fills a really Christian home ? These are drops of 
 sweetness instilled into the very fountain of the life ; no won- 
 der that the streams are clear, and musical, and bordered 
 with flowers. 
 
 Those combinations in which nature most cunningly dis- 
 plays her power, and which give the rare and excelling cha- 
 racter, were variously represented by Chalmers ; his mind was 
 rarely complete and symmetrical. An eye to see, a voice to 
 speak, an arm to do : few men have had all three as Chalmers. 
 The strength that can stand alone ; the social sympathy that 
 plants little grappling gold-hooks of love in all surrounding 
 hearts : the receptive faculty to grasp the thoughts of others, 
 to sifb them, to compare them, to mete their power of light 
 to reveal truth and of lightning to blast error, to make the 
 world an armoury ; the independent and original energy by 
 which nevertheless the character acts freely and naturally ; 
 the power of saying, deliberately and irrevembly, No ; the 
 tenderness that often wept : reverence towards God, respect 
 towards man, love towards all : — ^you can assert for him each 
 of these. 
 
 The balancing of hope and apprehension is an important 
 
166 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 consideration in the elimination of character. It seems, as 
 was before remarked, a providential arrangement that hope 
 generally prevails in the noblest and greatest minds. Chal- 
 mers was sunny in his whole nature. Fear plays a very slight 
 part in his mental or external history. It had a small share 
 in his conversion ; it was rather the conviction that the re- 
 medy needed for the world was deeper than he had foimerly 
 deemed, — that the holiness without which a man cannot see 
 Grod was something above the virtue of philosophy, — which 
 led to that great change. And in all his works there are 
 cheerfulness, hope, courage, — no touch of despondency or 
 misanthropy. Yet his mind was of no flimsy, romantic cast. 
 He knew the world to be a stern reality, with ribs of rock 
 and veins of iron, not to be softened and tamed into perpe- 
 tual mildness and docility, by poet, pedant, or philosopher. 
 He had enough of hope to make him work cheerfully and in- 
 defatigably ; he had enough of fear, of soberness and appre- 
 hension, to avert despair at the results of his work. 
 ** The king-becoming graces, 
 As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, 
 Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness. 
 Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude," 
 
 were all in some measure his ; and in him they flowed from 
 the only Source from which they can flow in strength and 
 purity. 
 
 To give his radical characteristic in one word, Chalmers 
 was, as man and as thinker, a great mass of common sense. 
 He had a giant's grasp of the fundamental facts of man's ex- 
 istence, an inborn notion how this world is put together ; he 
 was not the man to build you metaphysical palaces, mist skil- 
 fully tinted by moonshine, or to lead you, with clear small 
 safety-lamp, through argumentative mazes ; but he had a pro- 
 found consciousness of those unseen principles by which men 
 actually live and work ; he was a man against whom a nation 
 might lean. To use a comparison applied by himself in the 
 
THOMAS CHALMERS. 167 
 
 case of Edward Irving, he was a force of gravitation, not of 
 magnetism. 
 
 And his books, which it is unnecessary to review, are dis- 
 tinguished in a manner correspondent to this. They were 
 now round him in many substantial volumes, and more were 
 to be given to the world after his death. They embodied that 
 grand idea which lent sublimity to his life, the union of hu- 
 manity with Christianity, the omnipotence, in the man and 
 in the nation, of the gospel of Jesus. He is the king oi prac- 
 tical theologians. Those books do not abound with learned 
 disquisitions or erudite quotations ; but they take bold, broad 
 views of man and his salvation, and they burn all over with 
 the blended fire of lofty human emotion and lowly Christian 
 faith. If you do not find in them the delicacies of a minute 
 ingenuity, or the meagre exactness of logical formula, you 
 meet with those great ideas which may be called the kei/ ideas 
 in systems of religion, ethics, and polity ; with which, if your 
 hand is not specially weak, you can solve, far and wide, the 
 practical problems of life. It has been objected that they are 
 filled with iteration, and their style has often been called de- 
 clamatory. There is doubtless something in the charges. But 
 it should be remembered that Chalmers was by instinct an 
 enforcer, a preacher of truth ; he would fling thunderbolt on 
 thunderbolt, till he sent one fairly home; he looked upon what 
 he delivered, not so much as something for its own sake to 
 be demonstrated, as what was to tell on the public mind, and 
 be impressed upon it with that view. He wrote with the 
 sound of the world in his ears ; every one of his books seems 
 anchored to earth. 
 
 At last his earthly Sabbath came to an end. He had been 
 in London, giving evidence before a Committee of the House 
 of Commons. His intellect, as this evidence testifies, was still 
 clear and strong ; and in private he was the same quiet but 
 genial and hearty man that he had ever been. He visited 
 
168 THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 Mr Carlyle, and the two extraordinary Scotclimen had an 
 acquiescing and cordial conversation, with " a gi'eat deal of 
 hiughing on both sides." He returned to Edinbui'gh about 
 the time when the Assembly of the Free Church met ; oq 
 Friday, May 28, 1847. 
 
 On the Sabbath evening that followed, he was more than 
 usually benignant and genial ; but a cloud might be seen to 
 flit across his features, and, walking in the garden, he was 
 heard, in low but very earnest tones, saying, " O Father, my 
 Heavenly Father !" His general aspect, however, was one- 
 of cheerful and genial composure. 
 
 Next day, the May morning rose over Arthur Seat, and 
 the Castle rock, and the spires and palaces of that lordly city 
 which he loved so well. Men rose bustling after the Sunday 
 rest, and the conversation in town would turn largely on tho 
 doings of the two Assemblies, and the appearance he was to 
 make that day. But, as the hours wore on, a whisper stole 
 over the city, stopping for a moment every breath : Chalmers 
 was dead. One had entered his room in the morning, and 
 found him motionless ! " he sat there, half erect, his head re- 
 clining gently on his pillow ; the expression of his counte- 
 nance that of fixed and majestic repose." The land mourned 
 for him, as Judah and Israel mourned for the good kings of 
 old. 
 
THOMAS ARNOUX 169 
 
 THOMAS AKNOLD. 
 
 About the beginning of this century, a little boy might have 
 been seen playing in a garden at West Cowes, Isle of "Wight 
 The name of Napoleon and the din and rumour of war filled 
 the air around him ; his keen eyes brightened and sparkled 
 continually, as they looked out upon martial pomp and pre- 
 paration. The sight of the great war-ship entering the har- 
 bour, or bearing away to seek the foe ; the news of battle 
 and victory ; the loud, loyal choi-uses of mariners, who stepped 
 and looked with the consciousness of ruling the waves : 
 these, mingling with the kindly tones and melodies of a Chris- 
 tian home, which softened eveiy harshness and discord into 
 a musical harmony, were the earliest influences to mould the 
 mind of Thomas Arnold. Though naturally bashful, the 
 child was yet, so to speak, intensely alive, in body and in 
 mind. He got hold of Pope's Homer, and the many voices 
 of war around him strengthened its influence ; it was one of 
 his favourite amusements to enact the Homeric battles, with 
 staves and garden implements for swords and spears, reciting, 
 with a great sense of grandeur in the proceeding, the speeches 
 of the heroes of Homer, that is, of Pope. At eight, he went 
 to Warminster School, at twelve, to Winchester ; in each he 
 showed sympathetic intensity of intellect, heart and head 
 
170 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 acting strongly and in unison. He displayed great warmth 
 in his boyish friendships. Ere proceeding to Oxford, which 
 he did at sixteen, his information had extended widely. He 
 had read Gibbon and Mitford twice, and was well acquainted 
 with Russel's Modern Europe ; he knew also to a consider- 
 able extent the historians of Greece and Kome ; his bent, it 
 was already manifest, was towards geography and history. 
 
 Arnold entered at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1 81 1 ; 
 it was an important epoch in his life, and his whole sojourn 
 at the university is full of interest. The society in Corpus 
 was select ; and during Arnold's career it embraced young 
 men of a high and rare order ; such, for instance, as Whate- 
 ly, Heber, and Keble. He was an important member of 
 the fraternity. He represented the healthful, well-balanced, 
 daringly active English mind ; instincb with sympathies that 
 passed beyond academic walls to expatiate in the wide world ; 
 fond of poetry, and ardently affectionate, yet shrewd, discri- 
 minating, and burning his way through words to things. 
 The air of Oxford was such as breathes through the Hall of 
 the Past, and the great body of the students of Corpus, each 
 in his several manner, loved and reverenced what was old ; 
 but Arnold was for freedom and advancement, and rebelled 
 against the genius of the place. Yet, one by one, the nobler 
 of his fellow-students came to know him and to love him ; 
 into one true heart after another he threw his invisible grap- 
 pling-iron, and linked it to his for life. Corpus was a little 
 senate in itself, where all the big questions of the day were 
 discussed ; and Arnold was an active and vehement disput- 
 ant. You can imagine him appearing at times even over- 
 bearing, but it was only when he was himself overborne by 
 his subject. He could not hold an opinion by halves ; if it 
 entered his heart at all, it was received with the warm wel- 
 come of hospitality, and defended at all risks. He was to 
 be seen in the midst of a circle of the best men of Corpus, 
 
THOMAS ARXOLD. 171 
 
 combating valiantly and cheerily for his own views against 
 them all. The logical arguer would urge the danger of cut- 
 ting the moorings of society, and drifting ofi* on the revo- 
 lutionary sea ; but Arnold would answer that it was only 
 Conservatism which transmuted harmonious change into col- 
 liding revolution : the Tory loyalist, whose father was in Par- 
 liament, might expatiate on the glories of the throne and the 
 nobility, as the ramparts of a nation ; but he would briefly 
 answer, I love the people, and feudalism was wnrong in its 
 very idea : and then, in mild accents, might Keble evoke a 
 faint cloud of golden dust from the treasuries of the past ; 
 and this he would summarily lay with some cold water from 
 the wells of his favourite Aristotle. Yet his warm sympa- 
 thies could not resist the strong and kindly influences of the 
 place, and he became somewhat more Conservative. 
 
 Of his religious feelings during his abode at Corpus, we 
 have slight information. His reading led him to Barrow, 
 Hooker, and Taylor, and his heart was opened by natural 
 nobleness to the more profound and enduring influence of 
 Christian tinith. His disposition was devout, his morals pure. 
 
 Altogether, the university career of Arnold is to be pro- 
 nounced auspicious. If his scholarship was not what is tech- 
 nically called profound, it was yet thorough and comprehen- 
 sive : he was not ignorant of words ; but that hungry instinct 
 of reality within him, with which it was vain to contend, 
 called resistlessly for things. He won the prize for two es- 
 says, Latin and English ; he became intimately and sympa- 
 thizingly acquainted with ancient history ; and he drank in 
 the wisdom of Aristotle with almost passionate enthusiasm. 
 But the most benignant of all the influences which encircled 
 him at the university, was assuredly the friendship of such 
 men as Keble, Whately, and Justice Coleridge. These 
 friendships were cherished by him during life with the ear- 
 nestness of duty and the enthusiasm of love. It is a beauti- 
 
1 72 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 ful and inspiring spectacle to behold tlie several friends, as 
 from their respective stations they send kindly and life-long 
 greetings to each other ; like vessels in one fleet sailing to- 
 wards the dawn, that hang out lamps of signal and comfort, 
 to point the way and break the darkness. 
 
 When about to emerge from the years of youth and edu- 
 cation into those of manhood and performance, Arnold's 
 mind became more deeply moved than it had hitherto been 
 on the subject of religion. He remained at the university 
 for four years after ceasing to be a gownsman. During these 
 it was that his mind passed through a discipline of doubt, 
 which finally resulted in the establishment of his character 
 on a Christian basis, — in what he would have defined as his 
 conversion. The precise stages of this all-important occur- 
 rence we are unable in his case to trace ; but his ultimate 
 attainment was clear and decisive, the general method of his 
 reaching it is perfectly ascertainable, and the lessons conveyed 
 in it to similar inquirers, together with its testimony to the 
 truth of Christianity, invaluable. 
 
 The special subject of his questioning was, as in the case 
 of Foster, the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. His belief 
 on the point appears to have been confirmed by two main 
 arguments : first, that the attempts made by those who re- 
 jected the doctrine to find for their views a warrant in Scrip- 
 ture were the mere mockery of criticism ; and, second, that 
 the abstraction to which deism gives the name of God, leaves 
 all-unsatisfied in the human soul that sublime craving which 
 is its distinguishing glory, — that yearning pain which finds 
 .solace only in communion with the Divine. In order to his 
 finding the former of these arguments conclusive, it was ne- 
 cessary that he should consider the testimony of Scripture 
 final in the matter ; and the question arises, What were the 
 grounds on which he received the Bible as the word of the 
 living God ? The answer which can be rendered, — not per- 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 173 
 
 haps given precisely at this peiiod, and to be gathered, not 
 from any declaration uttered at any one time, but from the 
 tenor of his whole writings, — is singularly satisfactory, in 
 is on all hands conceded that his historical acumen was pierce- 
 ing : his most obvious characteristics were clear shrewdness 
 and sharp-cutting English sense ; he had trained himself to 
 investigate ancient writings by constant study from his boyish 
 days of Greek and Roman authors ; and, in the early vigour 
 of his powers, he sat down at the feet of Niebuhr. He ap- 
 proached the Scriptures precisely as he did any other compo- 
 sition handed down from ancient times ; he applied to them 
 that criticism which separated the chaff from the wheat in 
 Livy, and unravelled the intricacies of Thucydides ; and he 
 found conclusive evidence that they were the word of God. 
 The reader may perhaps, in perusing the Biography of John 
 Sterling by Mr Carlyle, have been struck with the effect pro- 
 duced upon the mind of the former by the perusal of Strauss's 
 Life of Jesus. Sterling remarked, that, whatsoever men were 
 going to, it was plain enough what they were going from ; 
 this German book, one is apt to conclude from his words, was 
 to deal the final blow to all Christian institutions ; the ears 
 of the world, you suppose, are deafened with the rumour of 
 it, the sky darkened by its mighty shadow. Of the same 
 book Arnold wrote as follows : — 
 
 " What a strange work Strauss's Leben Jesu appeal^ to 
 me, judging of it from the notices in the Studien und Kriti- 
 ken. It seems to me to show the ill effects of that division 
 of labour which prevails so much among the learned men of 
 Germany. Strauss writes about history and myths without 
 appearing to have studied the question ; but having heard 
 that some pretended histories are mythical, he borrows this 
 notion as an engine to help him out of Christianity. But 
 the idea of men wiiting mythic histories between the time of 
 Li^y and Tacitus, and of St Paul mistaking such for realities 1" 
 
174 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 Thus it is that the matter appears to one really trained in 
 historical induction. There is no " Coleridgean moonshine" 
 in that eye ! He sweeps through painted mist and carefully 
 woven cobweb, right to the heart of the question. It is to 
 no fond dreaming enthusiasm, very beautiful, it may be, but 
 very weak, that he commits himself; he asks no aid from 
 imagination, and he does not stop to inquire whether the 
 plain fact, which his Saxon intellect demands, is given him 
 by logic or by reason ; he wants the fact itself. Grasping 
 firmly, therefore, the hand of history, he finds his step at 
 once on Judean hills ; and he is surrounded by men who have 
 the same hearts in their breasts, the same earth under their 
 feet, as men in the nineteenth century. He fixes specially 
 his regards upon Paul. He sees him trained in the school of 
 Tarsus ; he hears him, in calm, earnest, clear, persuasive words, 
 disputing with Grecian sages ; he notes that his opinions are 
 so temperate that he becomes all things to all men; that his 
 moral preaching is pure, mild, and thorough ; that his zeal 
 is stronger than death. He perceives that his every earthly 
 prospect is blasted ; his good hopes of advancement, under the 
 smile of high priest and Pharisee, turned into certainty of 
 bitter hatred ; his life rendered one scene of hardship, danger, 
 and poverty, by his belief in the Divine mission of a certain 
 Teacher. He observes that he companies with men who de- 
 clare that, a few years before, they saw this Teacher pass up- 
 wards into heaven, and had witnessed his raising of the dead 
 while He went in and out among them. All is real, present, 
 visible ; there is none of the dimness of antiquity, the seclu- 
 sion of mystery ; these men sit there in Judea, unimpassioned, 
 earnest, unanimous ; there is in the whole scene no analogy 
 the most distant to aught resembling a myth ; the gospel they 
 proclaim is love and truth ; the danger they face is death ; 
 the motive they can have, on the hypothesis that they ai'e 
 liars, inconceivable ; the life they lead, the unanimity of their 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 175 
 
 testimony, on the liypothesis they are enthusiasts, positive 
 contradictions : as with a stamp of his foot he shakes the 
 whole mythic theory to atoms as an absurdity, to accept 
 which were a feat of credulity within the powers of no faith 
 save that of infidelity. There is a fine precision in Arnold's 
 instant selection of Paul, as afibrding absolutely conclusive 
 means of vindicating the strict historic verity of Christianity. 
 The leading facts of Paul's life, as eliminated in the Horm 
 Paulince, are as well established, on their own evidence, as 
 those of the life of Calvin ; and if they are granted, not only 
 does every mythic theory dissolve like a film of vapour, but 
 the first links of a chain are taken into the hand, by which 
 it appears scarce possible to avoid being led believingly to the 
 feet of Jesus. Finding the historical evidence of the Divine 
 truth of Christianity satisfactoiy, Arnold does not seem to 
 have been able to doubt tliat Paul, John, and the other evan- 
 gelists, do, with more or less explicitness, avow their belief 
 in the divinity of Jesus. To this belief he was perhaps par- 
 tially led, and in it he was certainly confirmed, by the second 
 consideration which has been mentioned. It is exhibited in 
 the following important passage : — 
 
 " For my own part, considering one great object of God's 
 revealing Himself in the person of Christ to be the furnish- 
 ing us with an object of worship which we could at once 
 love and understand ; or, in other words, the supplying 
 safely and wholesomely that want in human nature, which 
 * has shown itself in false religions, in ' making gods after our 
 own devices,' it does seem to me to be forfeiting the peculiar 
 benefits thus offered, if we persist in attempting to approach 
 to God in his own incomprehensible essence, which, as no 
 man hath seen or can see, so no man can conceive it. And, 
 while I am most ready to allow the provoking and most ill- 
 judged language in which the truth, as I hold it to be, re- 
 specting God, has been expressed by Trinitarians, so, on the 
 
176 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 other hand, I am inclined to think that Unitarians have de- 
 ceived themselves, by fancying that they could understand 
 the notion of one God any better than that of God in Christ ; 
 whereas, it seems to me that it is only of God in Christ that 
 I can in my present state of being conceive anything at all.'* 
 Strangely enough, a Unitarian writer of the day has quoted 
 from this passage against the doctrine of the divinity of our 
 Lord. Is it not rather to be considered the subscription of a 
 singularly clear, healthful, and honest mind to that great fact 
 of the human consciousness, which is the chief argument de- 
 ducible from nature in support of the doctrine of the Trinity ? 
 It is a virtual appeal to the testimony of history that deism 
 has ever failed to take a real hold of the mass of mankind ; 
 that, when strenuously pressed by dialectic, its deity has be- 
 come a confessed inconceivability, the absolute nothing of 
 Oken j and that, when left to gain a footing among the body 
 of a people, it has taken the thousand forms of polytheism. 
 The noblest of the Grecian sages did not point at nothing 
 when he longed for more light, and dimly shadowed the 
 Christian Trinity ; even the brow of Plato grew sad under 
 the infinite vault, filled, indeed, with a certain pale icy ra- 
 diance, but having no Sun. Christ came to lift the veil of 
 Isis j to ^:k. the lona eye of humanity on a known God. Ar- 
 nold, by his revering love of the Saviour, and the satisfaction 
 which he declared he experienced for the highest and most 
 profound longings of his soul in the worship of Him, testi- 
 fied that the Desired of the nations had come ; through Jesus 
 he could commune with his God ; holding by the hand of 
 Jesus, he could stand unconsumed, as it were, in the very 
 blaze of the throne ; instead of an argument in support of 
 Unitarian views, his words afibrd one more proof that there 
 is between poor man, lying in troubled slumber on the world- 
 desert, and his God, the precipice of an unsealed infinitude, 
 if no ladder is let down, if no divine Saviour has come. The 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 177 
 
 end of all liis doubt was, to use his own form of expression, 
 his placing himself consciously under the banner of the Lord 
 Jesus, his cleaving to Him, his reposing absolute trust in 
 Him, his resolving to become His faithful soldier and servant 
 to life's end. Then his mind became calm and strong ; he 
 had, as he again says, " a security within, a security not of 
 man, but of God." 
 
 Arnold now took orders in the Church of England, sub- 
 scribing to her formularies. He professed not to agree with 
 these in all things ; he specially dissented from the Atha- 
 nasian Creed. Of his views on these points he never made 
 a secret, openly declaring that no interpretation of the clauses 
 to which he objected in the creed just mentioned could bring 
 them into accordance with his opinions, and defining his act 
 of subscription to indicate merely a general sympathy with, 
 and willingness to adhere to, the Church of England. In 
 this he erred. I agree with Mr Greg in believing him to 
 have acted with perfect honesty ; yet his mistake was serious. 
 I shall not discuss the matter here, but I refer the reader, 
 for its masterly treatment, to Foster s article on the Life of 
 Paley. 
 
 Arnold settled first at Laleham, near Staines, with his 
 mother, aunt, and sister, proposing to take pupils. Here he 
 remained for nine years, his character gradually unfolding, 
 his views becoming matured. He disciplined himself to 
 thorough work, and thought much. His eye, during the pe- 
 riod, turned with ever-increasing earnestness upon the great 
 interests and questions of his age and country, and gradually 
 every Conservative tendency which had attached to him at 
 Oxford was cast off; he became the determined, uncompro- 
 mising foe of every form of worship of the past, or attempt 
 to clog the progress of the present. His religion, too, went 
 on deepening from year to year ; .he drew closer and closer 
 to God, and to his Friend and Saviour Jesus ; and, more and 
 
178 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 more, the fruits of the Spirit beamed forth in thought, feel- 
 ing, and action. At Laleham he married, and here six of 
 his nine children were born. 
 
 At length Arnold was elected, in a marked and flattering 
 manner, to the head mastership of Rugby. He was then 
 thirty-three years of age ; in the very prime of life. He 
 continued to occupy this post until his death, and here it 
 was that he became so widely known and valued as a prac- 
 tical thinker and reformer. I shall endeavour to throw out 
 before the eye of the reader a general picture of his life, for 
 it is so alone that an adequate idea can be formed regarding 
 it ; one or two of his more remarkable opinions may be there- 
 after specially considered. 
 
 The first look at Arnold's career reveals a very important 
 circumstance, one which constituted a main element in his 
 character, and exerted a great influence in moulding his ca- 
 reer. It is impossible to regard him for a moment without 
 perceiving the intensity of his physical life. This was con- 
 spicuous in his early days ; it continued to characterize him 
 to the last. It made labour a positive pleasure ; it sent him 
 to the mountain side with ever fresh delight ; it impelled 
 him resistlessly to the work before and around him. Act- 
 ing the Homeric battles in his father's garden, scampering 
 over the fields at Oxford, bathing and boating with his pu- 
 pils, he is ever the same intensely alive, joyous being. It is 
 seen in his face ; he looks as if he were watching the mo- 
 ments in their flight, eager to grasp them ; his eye suggests 
 that of the good Ritter Hagen of " the rapid glances /' his 
 lips are compressed and firm, as if closed after the utterance 
 of one clear unalterable No, which Coleridge could not say ; 
 there is strength in his firm unquivering cheek, in his iron 
 brows, in his unwrinkled forehead. His intensity overthrows 
 everything, even literary delicacy ; " I must write a pamph- 
 let, or I will burst," he says : one sees him gasp with ear- 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 179 
 
 nestness as lie utters the words. It is to be found, likewise, 
 in his valour and open-faced independence. He longs to 
 fight the Oxford men, " as in a saw-pit." And he has a clear 
 sympathy for the nobleness of the battle-field, thinking no 
 man can be of sound human feelings without sharing it. 
 
 Directing attention to the sphere in which this tireless 
 energy worked, and the modes in which it exhibited itself, 
 we are called first to observe Arnold as a teacher. Both in 
 theory and practice he is here admirable. The objects he 
 aimed at in education may be summed up in two words, — 
 character, power. By the first of these is meant complete, 
 self-estimating, self-respecting manhood ; by the second, that 
 harmonious development of each faculty of the mind, that 
 raising of each capacity into the condition in which it can 
 naturally, healthfully, and perfectly perform its function, 
 which is attainable by intellectual culture. He avoided, on 
 the one hand, the fallacy, that a man is not fitly educated 
 unless he is made master of the powers, I say not the ac- 
 quirements, of a scholar ; that, for instance, a man of slight 
 intellectual faculty, like Howard, may not be as thoroughly 
 educated in character as a man of high intellectual faculty 
 like Bentley ; he shunned, on the other hand, the far more 
 palpable, but extremely common error, which surely has 
 exerted an unsuspected influence in our modem educational 
 improvements, that education consists mainly in conveying 
 a certain amount of information into the mind. 
 
 This statement is embodied in two brief but comprehen- 
 sive expressions quoted from Arnold by Mr Stanley : first, 
 " If there be anything on earth which is truly admirable, it 
 is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural 
 powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously 
 cultivated ;" second, "It is not knowledge, but the means 
 of gaining knowledge, which I have to teach." 
 
 As his theory of education was philosophic in its sound- 
 
180 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 Lei5S and width, his practice of tuition may be characterized 
 in one word as marked by its totality ; it embraced him as 
 a whole ; it was in his step, and eye, and tone, and much 
 which cannot be even indicated ; the pupils saw that their 
 teacher was a true man and Christian ; the grasp of his energy 
 they felt upon them ; they knew not how, but the very air 
 seemed pervaded by his influence. 
 
 That continual watchfulness and readiness of mind, that 
 never-flagging energy, that clearness and compactness of know- 
 ledge, and that genial sympathizing insight into the youthful 
 mind, which are demanded in the practical teacher, were his 
 in unusual measure. And his success was proportioned to 
 his merits. His pupils were inspired with a fine sympathy 
 with himself in carrying on the business of the school ; ac- 
 customed to be treated as Christian gentlemen whose word 
 was not to be called in question, they learned to shrink from 
 meanness, to acquire self-command, and to make intelligence 
 and nobleness their aims ; at the university, youths from other 
 quarters might excel in the quickness, the cleverness, and, it 
 might even at times happen, the minute accuracy, of school- 
 boys j those from Rugby had the character, the thought, the 
 deliberate purpose, of men. 
 
 But the expansive energies of Arnold could not confine 
 themselves to the school. Around him lay the world in a 
 stirring and tumultuous epoch, with its questions to be answer- 
 ed, and its work to be done. He was not the man to be struck 
 dumb by the one, or confounded by the other. Christian him- 
 self in every pulse of his being, believing in Christianity as 
 a truth, knowing it as a life, and recognising its claim to per- 
 vade with its influence every province of human affairs, he 
 bent all his energies to eflect that reform which it professes 
 its power to work in nations. Allusion is not now made to 
 luB particular views ; attention is called to his attitude and 
 aim. These present a spectacle of Christian thoroughness 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 181 
 
 and valour wliich must stir every heart attuned to high im- 
 pulses. He knows no fear ; he will listen to no compromise. 
 To the world he seems even turbulent ; for he cannot breathe 
 the same otmosphere with error, but must instantly unsheathe 
 his sword, and rush against it : there is a flash of real war- 
 horse fire in his eye ; he yearns for the battle. Words fall 
 from him which a man may seize and treasure up as a sort 
 of diamond-dust for whetting and burnishing his mental ar- 
 moury. " I do not undei-stand how the times can help bear- 
 ing what an honest man has the resolution to do ! " The 
 opposition of the wicked to Christianity and the Christian 
 ministry he regards as satisfactory, nay, consoling, — the only 
 testimony in their favour which it is in the power of such to 
 give. He feels that it is a grand thing to fight the devil, 
 when one's mind is fairly made up as to the identity of the 
 foe. " The work here is more and more engrossing continu- 
 ally ; but I like it better and better : it has all the interest 
 of a great game of chess, with living creatures for pawns and 
 pieces, and your adversary, in plain English, the devil,'' &c. 
 This is a diflerent attitude from Foster s, though that, too, was 
 sublime. Foster looked over the field where the forces of 
 the enemy were ranged, and gazed into the eyes of their 
 "great commander," with stern defiance, indeed, but with a 
 tear of burning grief that the positions of the field were in 
 his hands ; Arnold's eye flashes right in his face with utter 
 defiance, but also with a certain blasting gleam of triumphant 
 contempt ; he longs only to come to close quarters, and, 
 with the sword and the shield given him from heaven's 
 armoury, to wrest the victory from the prince of the world. 
 It is always the word " onward" that he speaks ; it is 
 ever higher that he will have the banner float ; God and the 
 angels may be spectators ; but, for us, up, brothers, and at 
 them ! 
 
 Arnold was singularly true to that type ')f character which 
 
^^^ THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 is recognised as in a peculiar sense English ; lie embodied its in- 
 domitable energy, its unpretending honesty, its practical sense. 
 In doing work he will be unmatched ; but he must clearly 
 see what is the work to be done. When he reaches the Gallic 
 invasion in his Roman history, he must commence the study 
 of the Erse language ; but he never finds his footing sure 
 among the abstractions of metaphysics, or even of mathema- 
 tics. He attacks the evil that lies to his hand. He pre- 
 fers in conversation a man who difiers from him to one who' 
 agrees, because some work may then be done, and they end 
 not exactly where they began. He claims no right or power 
 to rule the empire of the air, and radically lacks the faculty 
 of building air-carriages for a lifetime. " Before a confessed 
 and unconquerable difficulty his mind reposed as quietly as m 
 possession of a discovered truth." 
 
 In strict and beautiful accordance with the general firm- 
 ness and health of Arnold's distinctively English character, 
 was the love of nature which he displayed. It was not th^t 
 sympathy which gives full occupatio;, ,, ^j,, ^^^1 ^^^ ^^^^^^ 
 the business of a life ^ ^^^.^ ,,,^^ ^^^^ ^^^^. ^ ^ ^irff^Wdven 
 web of sentimeiit ahA phantasy^ indi*^ Mtltly aerial and more 
 delicately tinted thdii d y^ii df goi^ffl^i*, and presenting to the 
 eye such net^ and WOndt^^i^ Colours, that men gather round 
 its pOBsfe^sot*, ii,M Mil iiim a poet. He could not anywise 
 gympathte with Wordsworth when he said, that the mean- 
 est flower that lives awoke within him thoughts that were 
 too deep for tears. This, he felt, was a little too ethereal, 
 the spire melting into the mist, the strong, clear glance of a 
 manly love fading into the filmy gaze of one that dreamed. 
 But perhaps none ever illustrated with finer precision that 
 strong and healthful sympathy with nature, which is a desirable, 
 if not indispensable, element in eveiy complete and harmo- 
 nious character; that unafiected delight in the beautiful, which 
 sheds a dowy and flowery freshness over earnest devotion to 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 183 
 
 the good, aiid wreathes with a green garland the brow that 
 inflexibly endeavours after the true ; a power to hear, and to 
 blend with the practical energy of life, those unnumbered les- 
 sons which are inscribed on nature's varied pageantry, and 
 which we cannot doubt that God intended us to read. "With 
 the healthful, rejoicing, boyish affection of an intensely alive 
 and happy nature, he expatiated in the magnificent home 
 which God had hung out in the heavens for His creature man. 
 He did not look upon it, as it is the duty and high privilege 
 of the poet to do, with the feeling that it was his work to 
 reveal its wonders, and, by a melody that leads captive eveiy 
 heart, to turn the eyes of men to behold it ; but he never 
 ceased to look upon it with the eye of one who felt that he 
 worked better in the consciousness that he dwelt in such a 
 home, and knew that to the unstopped ear of man, as he pro- 
 ceeds on the journey of life, there arises from stream, and rock, 
 and wood, and gentle fountain, a choral melody, to inspire 
 to tranquillize, to gladden. It was the ordinary English love 
 of fields, and hills, and sunbeams, raised to more than ordi- 
 nary intensity. His eye kindles grandly as he sees the sun 
 pouring his broad, bright, parting smile over the Grampians, 
 seeming to " tread on thrones ;" he has watched the Alps at 
 eventide, and remembers for ever the sublime appearance of 
 their peaks " upon a sky so glowing with the sunset, that, in- 
 stead of looking white from their snow, they were like the teeth 
 of a saw upon a plate of red-hot iron, all deep and black /' he 
 has never done looking at the great nmning rivers, which he 
 regards as the most beautiful objects in nature ; the wild flowers 
 on the mountain sides are, he tells us, his music ; it is Arnold 
 in his kindliest, but not least characteristic aspect, that we see, 
 as we mark him walking by his wife's pony in sunny English 
 afternoons, watching every phenomenon of nature, and doub- 
 ling his joy by the sympathy of his Mary. 
 
 To form an adequate idea of the nature of Arnold's reli- 
 
184 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 gious life, it is necessary to conceive fully that whi/ was 
 its central point, his close, conscious, and ever realized union 
 and friendship with the Lord Jesus. His perceptions were 
 all clear, his emotions warm ; he realized, with vivid dis- 
 tinctness, the living manhood of Christ ; and all that warm 
 affection which found such dear employment in embracing 
 his earthly friends, clung with exhaustless enjoyment and 
 perpetual freshness to the Divine Man, whom as a friend he 
 had in heaven. Of Jesus he ever thought ; the outwelling 
 of tender love towards Him shed over the strong framework 
 of his character that beautiful and gentle light which rests 
 on the soul of him who has even one bosom friend ; for, in 
 the throwing wide open of the breast to the eyes of another, 
 in reposing perfectly in his honour, wisdom, and love, in 
 humbly yet joyously knowing that he is every way worthy 
 of your total affection, there is implied such a power of break- 
 ing the chords that bind you to self, such a power to iden- 
 tify yourself with another, to look upon your whole charac- 
 ter through his eyes, and to estimate yourself by his fully 
 appreciated and dearly prized excellence, that a noble mo- 
 desty, a mildness, a manly tenderness, must more and more 
 speak its influence, in voice, mien, and action. This is the 
 natural influence of pure human friendship. And in Jesus, 
 Arnold found, in faultless perfection, all he sought in an 
 earthly friend. His eye went right across the intervening 
 ages to look into the eyes of the Saviour ; he saw there that 
 wisdom which silenced the gainsay er, that calm before which 
 the tempest became still, that love which beamed through 
 tears upon the weeping sisters by the grave of Lazarus ; he 
 seemed to grasp that hand which supported Peter among the 
 waves, and whose touch lit the seared eyeball. Or his eye 
 pierced beyond the atmosphere of earth altogether : he felt 
 himself walking by the river of life, in the midst of the Para- 
 dise of God ; and here, too, he saw that same Jesus, with 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 185 
 
 tliose same human features and tliat same liuman smile ; and 
 when, in the overflowing fulness of his heart, every expres- 
 sion of affection that might pass between eai^thly friends failed 
 to express his emotion, he could, without scruple and with 
 speechless joy fulness, bow down and worship Him. We noted 
 that his heart had yearned after one in the image of God, 
 and yet in the image of man, whom he could worship ; we 
 found in that yearning the expression of a want common to 
 humanity, and an argument against Unitarianism j and now, 
 when we see the yearning satisfied, may we not bid every 
 Unitarian say, whether this influence, blessing and hallowing 
 his whole life, is a delusion, and whether such warm and living 
 emotions could flow from the sole and irrealizable conception 
 of the infinite, the absolute, the one ? 
 
 But we must look at Arnold in one other and final aspect ; 
 or rather, we must look at him where every other aspect is 
 seen under a mellowing light, and all his joys blend in one 
 perfect harmony. We have not yet looked into his home ; 
 and, without any exaggeration, we may say, it was a sight 
 for an angel's eye. It warms one's heart to think of Arnold's 
 marriage and his domestic circle ; he was so precisely fitted 
 for household joys. There is something comforting in the 
 absolute demonstration, which his intense relish of life affords, 
 that, bad as the world may be, and dismal as are the aspects 
 of human society, there is yet a distinct possibility, beneath 
 the stars, of enjoyment, serene from its very intensity, per- 
 fectly apart from the restless excitement of worldiness, or 
 the melancholy delirium of passion. His home was a scene 
 of unbroken, of almost ecstatic joy. You are continually re- 
 minded of its vicinity in perusing his biography ; stray gleams 
 from its ever-burning hearth are perpetually wandering over 
 his correspondence. With an earnestness that is the very 
 voice of the heart, he exclaims, " My wife is well, thank God ;" 
 and one is strangely impressed with the unconscious but true 
 
186 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 sublimity of liis words, when he speaks of the " almost awful 
 happiness of his domestic life.'* 
 
 It has, in all ages, been a prerogative of Christianity to 
 plant and foster domestic feelings and felicities. The religion 
 of Jesus walks among men, and offers them two great boons ; 
 in one hand she holds the treasures of immortality, in the 
 other the blessings of home. Philosophy has ever been high, 
 remote, and unparticipating ; in her glittering robes, she 
 treads in majesty along the high places of the world, amid a 
 light that scarce mingles with earth's atmosphere, but falls 
 on the eternal snow, a cold, intellectual light, which has never 
 yet brightened the cloud of unspeakable sadness resting on 
 her brow. A high task is hers, and we shall pay her all 
 honour; but let us dwell rather with Christianity in the val- 
 leys and in the clefts of the rock, where she spreads the nup- 
 tial couch, and lights the household fire. 
 
 It is time now briefly to notice one or two of Arnold's 
 principal opinions. 
 
 Arnold of Hugby will ever be known as a foremost cham- 
 pion of the belief that Church and State are identical. He re- 
 garded Christianity as the true test of citizenship, and at once 
 withdrew from all concern with the London University when 
 he found that his proposal for including Scripture in the en- 
 trance examination was not to be acceded to. He earnestly 
 opposed the very idea of a Christian priesthood as distinguished 
 from a Christian laity; he considered discipline strictly and ap- 
 propriately a civil penalty ; the idea of government propounded 
 by Warburton, that it is a mere protective and legislative force, 
 he deemed utterly erroneous. Arguing that the end of a 
 nation, as of an individual, must be the glory of God in its 
 own greatest happiness, he asserted that the sovereign power, 
 that from which there is no appeal, must, without a solecism 
 and almost a contradiction, be a religious power ; in a Chris- 
 tian country, of course a Christian power. Let there, he pro- 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 187 
 
 posed, be framed some general declaration of belief in Chris- 
 tianity, embracing the recognition of the Trinity, the inspi- 
 ration of Scripture, and certain other leading doctrines ; let 
 a certain diversity be permitted in the forms of worship ; let 
 the Churches be occupied by ministers of various shades of 
 belief and various preference of form, in the several parts of 
 the Lord's day ; let the king be recognised as the head of the 
 Church on earth ; and let all members of the Government, 
 from premier to constable, be ministers of the Church-State. 
 
 Such was his scheme. It may well be regarded with won- 
 der. It is true that he did not look upon it as at once rea- 
 lizable ; it is a fact that he cared little for any imposing aspect 
 which might result from uniformity, if reality were sacrificed 
 to attain it ; yet it is also unquestionable that no idea lay 
 nearer his heart than the Identity of Church and State; while 
 no desire moved him more strongly than the instant and 
 earnest promulgation of his views on these subjects. 
 
 Arnold's views on this point contained too much truth to 
 render it a useless or superfluous task to combat their error. 
 Several of the minor propositions on which he insisted are 
 extremely popular in our day. Particularly does this hold 
 true of his proposal to introduce the external morality of a 
 respectable life, in place of any allusion, tacit or express, to 
 particular points of intellectual belief, as a test of Church 
 membership. Few general decl arations are hailed with warmer 
 enthusiasm than that which affirms the panacea for our eccle- 
 siastical ills to be this : To remove entirely, or to attenuate un- 
 til all obstructing definiteness is removed, the dogmatic creeds 
 of our Churches ; substituting some easy acknowledgment of 
 the truth of Christianity, and a consideration of individual 
 character. Not doctrine, but life ; such is the cry of thou- 
 sands. Combined with an earnest desire for unity and uni- 
 formity among the Churches, this idea leads men of deep piety, 
 and accustomed to reflect on the present aspect of things, to 
 
188 THOMAS AKNOLD. 
 
 propose such modification of our creeds as would make Pres- 
 byterians and Episcopalians one, and, it might even be, draw 
 an immense contribution from Kome. Combined with a de- 
 sire to share the ease and respectability of national establish- 
 ments, and a distaste for all religious controversy, it encou- 
 rages men of unsettled or latitudinarian opinions to hope that 
 their general, and, as it were, complimentary recognition of 
 Christianity will procure them the name and honour of Chris- 
 tians. A few remarks may be hazarded on the subject. 
 
 First of all, attention is called to that principle, clearly dis- 
 cernible, and of unbounded range in our present economy, 
 which may be generally designated. Division of labour : that 
 principle which seeks the attainment of results by the ba- 
 lancing of forces, the harmony of antagonisms. The pre- 
 ference and pre-eminence which each individual accords to 
 his own profession are certainly delusions ; yet is it manifest 
 that these and similar delusions produce expedition and hearti- 
 ness in the several departments of human work. Boldly ex- 
 tend the application of the principle : it is scarce possible to 
 extend it too far. It will show the Almighty Governor of 
 the world, in theinscrutable wisdom of His providence, educing 
 in man's history the greatest good possible to a free but fallen 
 will ; it will lead us to discern that many ideas of vital mo- 
 ment are kept alive by the jealous circumscriptive zeal of 
 sects, and that a general ardour and activity are maintained 
 by the really noble emulation of bodies making, though by 
 different paths, for one goal ; whereas otherwise both might 
 be covered up in the whited sepulchre of a vast and lifeless 
 uniformity. We are fallen : we cannot, in speaking of man, 
 take a step without acknowledging that. Truth does not 
 here embrace the world like the great tidal wave, sweeping 
 along in majestic calmness of power, and filling every creek 
 and estuary ; truth rather descends fertilizing in many rills 
 from the mountain side ; and it is better that it descend for 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 189 
 
 the present even so, than that it should flow in one broad 
 river, leaving an arid desert over all the land, save on its im- 
 mediate banks. Were Christian zeal increased in each of the 
 Christian sects, the earth would revive and bring forth fair 
 flowers and fruits ; but, by the draining of them all into one 
 huge reservoir, no good would for the present be done. 
 
 It would be well, next, to consider earnestly the intense 
 individuality of Christianity ; its habit of starting, in all 
 its reforms, from the unit, and not from the mass. Arnold 
 knew the importance of those words — " The kingdom of God 
 is within you ;" but he did not perceive their full bearing 
 upon certain of his opinions. By the conversion of indivi- 
 duals the world will be regenerated, and not otherwise. This 
 does not make the Church, in its visible form and appoint- 
 ments, of slight importance ; but it points out its grand duty, 
 that of converting men, and shows the vanity of looking for 
 a substitute for pei^onal godliness in any mechanism or ap- 
 paratus. The difficulty here presented is stupendous ; but it 
 is precisely the one which must be met. Easy were it to 
 renew mankind, and change the face of the world, if it could 
 be done in a public way, by the devising of some magnificent 
 and politic scheme of government ; then might the comer- 
 stone of the new world be brought out in haste, and, indeed, 
 with shouting (for should not we have found it ?) ; but the 
 kingdom of God cometh not with observation : it is tiie silent 
 unseen work, in the quiet parish, in the quieter heart, that 
 advances it ; there is no waving of banners, no triumph of 
 human wisdom. And its final glories will come when the 
 Sun of the latter morn is rising : the golden walls of the New 
 Jerusalem will be cast in heaven. 
 
 . But in fact the matter turns ultimately upon this question, 
 What sort of unity or uniformity is desired "i A reality or 
 a sham ? A unity which will give clearness and wisdom in 
 counsel, and prompt decision in action, which will fan gently 
 
190 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 the ranks of a sympathizing, consciously agreeing people, each 
 individual strengthening his neighbour's hand ; or a flaring, 
 meaningless banner, towards which every man looks with 
 anxious suspicion, not knowing whither it leads, — a blazoned 
 pretence, which makes each man unaware with whom he acts, 
 and leaves him in the torment of loneliness, rendered three- 
 fold more intolerable by the absence of that clearness of 
 vision, and distinctness of aim, which redeem the evils of 
 positive singularity of belief, — a perplexing and indefinable 
 Delphic enigma, whose highest end is that ever contemptible 
 one, to save appearances ? 
 
 Supposing any such scheme as Arnold's were carried into 
 effect to-morrow, what were gained 1 Would it be any ad- 
 ditional union, that ministers who were wont to preach in 
 different places of worship, officiated at different times, and 
 to different congregations, in the same edifice 1 Could it be 
 expected that a month would pass over without discomfort 
 and disruption ? Would any additional force be conferred 
 upon individual effort by its being ranged under this totter- 
 ing standard of patchwork unity ? What advantage might 
 result in the assailing of adversaries is so slight, as to be al- 
 most impalpable to imagination ; while vast additional con- 
 tempt would be hurled against any such Church, by a body 
 of infidel assailants more closely united than ever. A Church 
 acts through her members ; Christianize your members, and 
 you invigorate your Church ; but that some unaccountable 
 power would arise from furnishing members with a huge va- 
 pour-built abstraction, called a church, is incredible. 
 
 This whole idea contradicts and outrages certain of the 
 deepest, noblest, and most ancient instincts of men. To erect 
 the banner of truth, to leave no stain on the stars beaming 
 there, and then to strive, in the face of scorn and hatred, to 
 draw men around it and to carry it over the world ; — these 
 are the perennially noble aims of men. To inscribe it with 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 191 
 
 an ambiguous legend, to blot and stain its stars, to exclaim 
 that it is of slight consequence whether men believe in it, if 
 they only follow it ; — these are no sublime objects at all. 
 
 It is proper to obviate difficulty by observing, that all Ar- 
 nold's reasoning from the Epistles of St Paul, even if granted 
 to be unassailable on its own ground, which is by no means 
 to be done, can be met by this altogether preliminaiy con- 
 sideration : That the Epistles of Paul, and the other Epistles 
 of the ITew Testament, are addressed to those already in the 
 Christian Church, and supposed, ipso facto, to have acceded 
 to the scheme of Christian doctrine propounded by the Apos- 
 tles. It is not to the internal exercise of Church disciphne, 
 but to the original admission into the Church, that appeal 
 must be made. And in that transaction, how brief soever 
 the formula might be, it had no reference to the life, but to 
 the faith. It was the believing acceptance of Christ which 
 entitled any one to baptism. And if the simple declaration 
 of belief in Christ were now as little ambiguous as it was 
 then, the briefness of the formula, as well as its essential cha- 
 racteristic, might be retained j but when a general declara- 
 tion comes simply to nothing, when it would admit all men, 
 from Unitarians to Methodists, who chose to name the name 
 of Christ, your only choice, if you retain the essential nature 
 and value of the early declaration by which a man was ad- 
 mitted to the Church of Christ, is, to make it more explicit. 
 
 It is, after all, more in consistence with the general con- 
 stitution of human affairs, that a body of men should unite 
 themselves under a test of doctrine, than by a test of con- 
 duct. There is no fact more certain, or more generally re- 
 cognised, than this. That the spiritual life of a man, his in- 
 ternal world of belief, opinion, feeling, determines his spoken 
 or acted life. "False action," remarks Mr Carlyle, "is the 
 fruit of false speculation ; let the spirit of society be free and 
 strong, that is to say, let true principles inspire the mem- 
 
192 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 bers of society, tlien neither can disorders accumulate in its 
 practice/' &c. If you wish to know a man thoroughly, you 
 must know his belief : as he thinks in his heart, so is he» 
 "No great revolution in man's external life ever took place 
 without originating in this internal region ; all religions and 
 philosophies address man as a reasoning, believing, not alone 
 as an acting creature ; and the fact holds eminently good in 
 the case of Christianity, which came to the world offering 
 salvation by faith in Christ, wrought by the Spirit of God 
 in the inner man. It may be known, indeed, from life, whe- 
 ther profession is faithful ; if one comes with "Lord, Lord," 
 on his lips, you may know by his fruits, — ^you have no other 
 means of knowing except by his fruits, — whether he really 
 believes in the Lord or no. But if he declines even this 
 preliminary confession, if he cannot say, in terms admitting 
 of no ambiguity, that his faith is the Christian, you cannot 
 argue from his conduct to" his belief 
 
 Those who believe that instant and universal harmony 
 would arise from an appeal to a standard of life in our de- 
 termination of the question of Church membership, may pro- 
 fit by a reminder that there are facts in ecclesiastical history 
 to render their position more than doubtful. The history 
 of Menno Simonis and his followers, in the period following 
 the Reformation, deserves their consideration. Whatever 
 lessons we may or may not draw from that history, we can- 
 not fail to draw this : That to settle the standard of conduct 
 will be as fruitful a source of disagreement as it has been to 
 uphold that of belief You will again have your lax and 
 more lax, your old and new, your hot and cold, your good, 
 bad, and indifferent (the latter tending to multiply) ; in one 
 word, you will find that the formula for absolute concord 
 among any great body of men is still in that undiscovered 
 region where lie the philosopher s stone and the elixir vitse. 
 Unless, indeed, you are willing, for uniformity, to sacrifice 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 193 
 
 every fMng else ; there is one magician whose wand will give 
 you UDiformity enough, on hig own conditions ; will you con- 
 sent that your Church be touched by the mace of Death *? 
 The fact is, that we must bear in mind what we may call 
 the melancholy immortality, the resurgent Phoenix nature, 
 of error. Looking on former ages, one can discern, perhaps, 
 an excessive tendency to rely upon creeds ; this perished, 
 but, in dying, gave birth to what is equally an error, the dis- 
 position altogether to underrate them. Surely it is unwise 
 to cast from us the fi-uit of the intellectual toil of centuries ; 
 if it is true that creeds cannot save us, is it not a still more 
 absurd mistake to conceive that theological indefiniteness will 
 prove a salve for all our ills ? 
 
 The source of Arnold's general misconception on these 
 subjects, and of much of the error prevalent regarding them, 
 seems to lurk in these words made use of by Arnold : — 
 "Sectarianism, that worst and most mischievous idol by 
 which Christ's Church has ever been plagued.'* This is at 
 the very root of the matter, and deserves especial considera- 
 tion. It is absolutely certain that there is a deeper evil than 
 Sectarianism in the Church of Christ ; there is in all ages 
 that tendency of poor drowsy humanity to fall asleep and 
 hide its eyes from the celestial radiance ; there is that stag- 
 nation, that indifference, that death, wrapping itself in va- 
 rious coverings, — of loyalty to man, of custom, of respectabi- 
 lity, — against which all that is good in Sectarianism has been 
 the rebellion and resistance. Who, with the Bible in his 
 hand, and the history of the Church to read by its light, can 
 fail to discern, what, indeed, has been seen by a seai-ching 
 eye which has yet, alas ! looked away from the Cross to other 
 hopes, that it is precisely the heavenly nature of Christianity 
 as an individual work, its perennial and essential superiority 
 to any form of belief or mode of practice, to any standard in 
 morals or attainment in life, which can be asserted of a class, 
 
 o 
 
194 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 or trarjsmitfced by descent, which has necessitated the phe- 
 nomenon, startling at first, but, when well examined, highly 
 encouraging, that its every great revival has occasioned divi- 
 sion and debate ? Christianity has been a struggling light, 
 a femienting leaven, a purging flame ; at its every revival 
 men have striven, as it were, to crystallize it and still keep 
 it hot, whereas it has indeed crystallized, but instantly began 
 to cool. Were it not for Sectarianism, would not certain 
 Churches have become absolutely dead, — decayed willow- 
 trunks, hollow, dry as tinder, hoary yet not venerable ? That 
 divisiveness is in its nature bad, I would be the last to deny ; 
 that the strength of union is so great that the Christian 
 ought to look well ere he foregoes it, is also true ; but when 
 our Lord Jesus spoke of his bringing division into the world, 
 his eye glanced over the whole interval between that hour 
 and the Millennium ; and, though the unspeakable peace which 
 He breathed over his disciples ere departing from them is 
 ever to be sought after by the Church, and may at times 
 blissfully envelope her as it wraps in its ethereal atmosphere 
 the individual soul, yet she cannot hope for unbroken repose 
 until touched by the rays of the latter morning. And this 
 fact is of extreme importance, for instruction, for warning, for 
 consolation. It is well that men be constantly reminded that 
 Christianity is, once for all, essentially and eternally different 
 from a power of respectability ; that it has a perennial ten- 
 dency to turn this world upside down ; that it raises the soul 
 into a region of other and loftier feelings and habitudes than 
 can be attained by the embracing of any system or the fol- 
 lowing of any rules ; that it is a walk of tribulation, gloomy 
 with the frowns of kinsman and fellow-citizen. Christianity 
 is a personal, real, and even awful agency, and no yearning for 
 peace must be permitted to neutralize the effect of this con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Though there is thus much to be questioned in Amold'a 
 
THOMAS AKXCLD. 195 
 
 Views on cliurches and creeds, it must be again affirmed, and 
 with emphasis, that they embodied a great amount of inva- 
 luable truth. The prominence he gave to the great fact that 
 priesthood, in all relating to mediation, intercession, or pe- 
 culiar hereditary privilege, found its completion and conclu- 
 sion in Christ, is sufficient of itself to impart value to his 
 system. There is, perhaps, no idea in the circle of theological 
 truth more glorious or pregnant than this. That every mem- 
 ber of Christ's mystical body. His Church, is a king and 
 priest to God ; that converted men are now God's Levitical 
 tribe on earth, witnessing for Him before the world, and 
 bearing censers filled with fire from off the heavenly altar ; 
 that no Christian, whatever his sphere, can absolve himself 
 from the responsibility and duty of preaching Christ in his 
 life and conversation ; that the clergy have no power dis- 
 tinct from the Church, and are simply that part of it set aside, 
 as fitted in a more marked degree than the others, to preach 
 and to rule ; — these and kindred ideas would, if they per- 
 vaded the minds of Christian nations, so completely dissipate 
 at once all superstitious reverence towards the pastorate, and 
 all class opposition to it, — would shed such a spirit of true 
 unity, and harmonious, intelligent content through our 
 Churches, — would animate to such fresh and far-extended 
 zeal in the efforts of all to spread the gospel of our Lord, — 
 that no earnestness, no iteration, can be excessive in their 
 advocacy and demonstration. All the writings, too, of this 
 truly Christian man, whether on this or on other subjects, 
 proclaim to the world the sad fact that Christianity has yet 
 but slightly leavened its affairs, and call for a thorough pe- 
 netration by its spirit of every province of things. 
 
 Contemplating the whole phenomenon of Arnold's belief 
 in this Church-State, I cannot but conclude that he fell here 
 into that mistake of noble minds which represents the world 
 as by no means in so ruined a condition as has been deemed, 
 
196 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 and hopes for speedy amendment, by simple declaration of 
 error, and proclamation of truth. Nature seems, as it were, 
 to kindle this hope, in order that the young and ardent may 
 go in full heart to the work, and not leave the world to ab- 
 solute stagnation and death. Had Luther, when he felt the 
 giant stirrings of the young life in his bosom, been permit- 
 ted to catch a glimpse of those griefs and forebodings with 
 which, in his latter days, he wa» apt to regard the state of 
 the world, his hand had scarce been steady enough to hold 
 that pen whose end shook the mitre in the Palace of the 
 Seven Hills. The glory of exultant hope gleams over Mil- 
 ton's earlier page, yet he lived to mourn the evil days on 
 which he had fallen, and to shadow forth his own stern sor- 
 rows in Samson Agonistes. All great and noble souls seem 
 to have begun their work in hope, and ended it in sorrow 1 
 Arnold could not even have given utterance to his scheme 
 as a present measure without conceiving more favourably of 
 men than their state warrants. 
 
 When death overtook him, he was, of com-se, as far from 
 the attainment as ever. Towards the end he said : — " When 
 I think of the Church, I could sit down and pine and die.'' 
 He retained his opinions on the subject to the last, but was 
 beginning to have misgivings. " I am myself so much in- 
 clined to the idea of a strong social bond, that I ought not 
 to be suspected of any tendency to anarchy ; yet I am be- 
 ginning to think that the idea may be overstrained, and that 
 this attempt to merge the soul and will of the individual man 
 in the general body is, when fully developed, contrary to the 
 very essence of Christianity. After all, it is the individual 
 soul that must be saved, and it is that which is addressed in 
 the gospel" And again, shortly before his death : — " I feel 
 so deeply the danger and evil of the false system, that, despair- 
 ing of seeing the true Church restored, I am disposed to cling, 
 not from choice, but necessity, to the Protestant tendency of 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 197 
 
 laying the whole stress on Christian religion^ and adjourn- 
 ing the notion of Church sine clie.^^ This is in the right di- 
 rection j in conformity with the spirit of the Heformation, in 
 conformity with the spirit of the New Testament. The Old 
 Testament dealt with systems and nationalities ; the New 
 Testament deals with individual conversion, with individual 
 life : the old dispensation had its kingdom of Israel, seen 
 among the nations as a cluster of beams falling from heaven 
 on one spot, in a dark weltering sea ; the new dispensation 
 has its kingdom of God, noiseless and unobserved, in the in- 
 dividual heart : the old dispensation had its temple on Mo- 
 riah, crowning the mountain with gold, and adorned with the 
 richest and rarest workmanship of the ancient world ; the new 
 dispensation has the soul of man for its temple, viewless, and, 
 to the unpurified, unennobled thought, unimposing, yet su- 
 blime and everlasting. It is an unseen, a spiritual sublimity, 
 that Christianity aims at ; its ineffable holiness enrobes the 
 soul in an immortality which can even now be recognised to 
 hold more of heaven than of earth, and to have no element 
 which will not flourish best in the serene air of eternity : 
 confound it with systems and hierarchies, with the pomp and 
 show of visible ceremonious uniformity, and you overlook its 
 essence; there will be no end of your wandering. Let Chris- 
 tians awaken to convert the world \ that done, all is done ; 
 that missed, though the world tottered under the weight of 
 cathedrals, and the pile of ghastly uniformity had a base as 
 broad as Sahara, all were lost. 
 
 Arnold's view of the office and education of the theologian 
 in our day deserves a passing glance. He recognised the 
 value of the human element, as distinguished from the barely 
 theological, in the training of ministers of the gospel, the fatal 
 danger that students of theology become mere discriminators 
 of doctrinal correctness, mere defenders of creed and system, 
 mere catechetic expounders of the truth, mere denizens of 
 
198 
 
 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 the scliool or library, failing to unfold within them that ex- 
 pansion of human sympathy which is the means in God's hand 
 of the action of man. on man. Soundness in doctrine is of 
 vital importance ; yet theological education must wander from 
 the spirit of Christianity if it becomes a mere instruction 
 and practice in systematic or exegetic theology. It is well 
 that a fisherman can keep his net in order, perceiving and 
 rectifying the slightest rent or weakness ; yet the manner of 
 casting the net is also of great moment ; and it is too com- 
 mon to find young men armed at all points in exegetic and 
 controversial theology, who yet fail utterly when they come 
 to cast the gospel net out into the world. Christ called his 
 disciples to be fishers of men, — to the grand practical task of 
 world-conversion ; when He sent out the seventy, His sum- 
 mary of doctrine was very short, while his detail of the method 
 of their preaching was much more extended. 
 
 Arnold's political views need not long detain us. He loved 
 politics extremely ; he considered the desire to rule a noble 
 ambition. The leading features of his system can be easily 
 defined ; they reflect well the main features of his mind, fiery 
 realism, and statesmanlike constructiveness. He was one 
 of the most determined opponents that Conservatism, in the 
 various forms in which it has stereotyped itself, ever met. 
 He deemed it always, in its essence, erroneous ; to halt was of 
 necessity wrong ; it was only by progress, he would have said, 
 that what is good could be preserved : proceed as slowly as 
 is necessary for sureness ; but pause on your voyage, and that 
 moment your ship begins to rot, or the revolutionary tempest 
 awakens behind, and then the acceleration is fatal. His words, 
 on the subject are deliberate and bold : — " As I feel that, of 
 the two besetting sins of human nature, selfish neglect and 
 selfish agitation, the former is the more common, and has, in 
 the long run, done far more harm than the latter, although 
 the outbreaks of the latter, while they last, are of a far more 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 199 
 
 atrocious character ; so I have in a manner vowed to myself, 
 and prayed that, with God's blessing, no excesses of popular 
 wickedness, though I should be myself, as I expect, the vic- 
 tim of them, no temporary evils produced by revolution, shall 
 ever make me forget the wickedness of Toryism, — of that 
 spirit which crucified Christ himself, which has, throughout 
 the long experience of all history, continually thwarted the 
 cause of God and goodness, and has gone on abusing its op- 
 portunities, and heaping up wrath, by a long series of selfish 
 neglect, against the day of wrath and judgment." Again : — 
 " There is nothing so revolutionary, because there is nothing 
 so unnatural and so convulsive to society, as the strain to keep 
 things fixed, when all the world is by the very law of its crea- 
 tion in eternal progress ; and the cause of all the evils of the 
 world may be ti^ced to that natural, but most deadly, error 
 of human indolence and corruption, that our business is to 
 preserve, and not to improve." He challenges a wide induc- 
 tion : — " Search and look whether you can find that any con- 
 stitution was destroyed from within, by faction or discontent, 
 without its destruction having been, either just penally, or 
 necessary because it could not any longer answer its proper 
 purposes." At times he breaks forth in a fine strong figure : 
 — " * Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo,' is the 
 cry of Reform, when, long repulsed and scorned, she is on 
 the point of changing her visage to that of Revolution. " From 
 these characteristic sentences, compared with other parts of 
 his works, we learn accurately his position as a political thinker. 
 Selfishness in its two forms he shunned on either hand : the 
 selfishness that will sit in icy and relentless indifference on 
 its throne, though that throne be placed on a pyramid of 
 skulls ; this is the selfishness of those for whom it has, in all 
 ages, been hard to enter into the kingdom of heaven : and 
 the selfishness which cries simply, give, give ; let religion, ho- 
 nour, valour, all be fiung aside ; let Throne, Church, Aristo- 
 
200 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 cracy be cast into the fire, that we may be warmed at the 
 blaze j this is the selfishness of anarchy and atheism : between 
 the two he trimmed, in the golden mean of a manly patriot- 
 ism, a reasonable, unresisting, nnhasting progress, and a stoop- 
 ing to the majesty of law. The Warburton theory of Go- 
 vernment he rejected ; he recognised the duties and respon- 
 sibilities of nations ; and thus his political system is traced 
 back to its union with his Christianity in the responsible civil- 
 religious Church-State. The laissez-faire school he opposed 
 resolutely, looking with feelings of profound and melancholy 
 interest upon the eighteenth century in its first half as a time of 
 rest, which might have been improved, but was lost for ever. 
 
 In 1842, Arnold wrote thus in his diary: — "The day 
 after to-morrow is my birth-day, if I am permitted to live to 
 see it, — my forty-seventh birth-day since my birth. How 
 large a portion of my life on earth is already passed ! And 
 then, — what is to follow this life 1 How visibly my outward 
 work seems contracting and softening away into the gentler 
 emotions of old age. In one sense, how nearly can I now 
 say, ^ VixV And I thank God that, as far as ambition is 
 concerned, it is, I trust, fully mortified ; I have no desire 
 other than to step back from my present place in the world, and 
 not to rise to a higher. Still, there are works which, with 
 God's permission, I would do before the night cometh ; espe- 
 cially that great work, if I might be permitted to take part 
 in it. But, above all, let me mind my own personal work, 
 to keep myself pure, and zealous, and believing, — labouring 
 to do God's will, yet not anxious that it should be done by 
 me rather than by others, if God disapproves of my doing it." 
 
 Christianity has wrought its work ; the armour is girded 
 on, yet there is the willingness to unbrace it ; the noble war- 
 rior valour yearns to share the combat, but yet is embraced 
 and transfigured in the nobler, that hides self altogether in 
 desire for the glory of God. Next morning he hears the 
 
THOMAS ARNOLD. 201 
 
 voice of death ; the sun of that birth-day looked upon his 
 corpse. 
 
 There is something martially stirring, and even beautiful, 
 in the death of Arnold. It is like that of a warrior on the 
 stricken field ; so suddenly does it come, and with such a 
 calm piide does he meet it. That brief, decisive inquiry as 
 to the nature of his ailment is strangely interesting ; he is 
 racked with pain, and yet he is as pointed, cool, and explicit, 
 as if he were examining a pupil. And the last look seen in 
 his filming eye was that of unutterable kindness ! 
 
 At the time when Arnold died, he could be ill spared to 
 England. In the peaceful retirement towards which he had 
 for some time looked, his eye might have taken a calmer and 
 wider survey of those great questions with which his life had 
 made him so thoroughly conversant, and on which the thought 
 of a lifetime was well spent ; in the still and rich light of 
 a restful evening, he might have seen what escaped his some- 
 what agitated gaze in the glare and bustle of day. Indica- 
 tions there were, as we have seen, of a change. It is not our 
 part, however, to complain; rather let us join in that noble 
 expression of satisfied acquiescence in the plans of God, which 
 so appropriately and sublimely closed his last writing. 
 
202 SAMUEL LUDGETT. 
 
 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 What is that one point in which nature suri)asses all novel- 
 ists and depicters of character, and by their relative approach 
 to which, all such are to be ranked, from Shakspeare down- 
 wards ? It is the union of variety with consistency. To draw 
 the man of one idea is easy. You have but to represent him, 
 in all circumstances however distracting, with his thoughts 
 running in one channel ; on all occasions however irrelevant, 
 introducing his favourite topic ; and, unseduced by any evils 
 incurred or benefits foregone, spending health and wealth in 
 the indulgence of his propensity. Don Quixote, Mr Shandy, 
 and Uncle Toby, are models in this sort. To draw the man 
 who is a bundle of inconsistencies is also easy : to attain this, 
 you have simply to pay no attention to what your character, 
 as an individual, should either say or do, putting your own 
 opinions on all subjects into his mouth, and always exact- 
 ing from him the heroism to abandon his own individuality, 
 to contradict himself in opinion and action, in order to ad- 
 vance your plot, or bring you out of a difficulty. Now, na- 
 ture never produces a man whose whole existence is the pur- 
 suit or embodiment of one idea, although she comes very near 
 it. For the most part, her way is to give men a large va* 
 riety of qualities, opinions, powers. The man of absolute in- 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 203 
 
 consistency slie never produces at alL Her inimitable still 
 is shown in the delicate graduation and adjustment of powers, 
 so that they can live at peace in one bosom, and the man be a 
 single personal identity. As she has struck a beautiful harmony 
 in the senses, so that in their variety they result in unity,- 
 so does she unite variety with unity in the individual cha- 
 racter ; her men are not single lines, nor does she piece to- 
 gether contradictions ; weakness and strength in action, un- 
 less each is fitful, warmth and coldness of heart, clearness and 
 obscurity of intellect, generosity and niggardliness of disposi- 
 tion, never co-exist This is a point of importance both in 
 criticism and biography. Lord Macaulay and Sir James 
 Stephen have noted nature's variety ; but the whole truth of 
 her variety in consistency may not have been so distinctly 
 noted. Shylock, cited by Lord Macaulay, shows indeed many 
 passions ; but they are of a household ; they have all a gloomy 
 and obdurate scowl : hatred, revenge, avarice, fanaticism, 
 darken his brow and eye ; but they admit no alien gleam 
 from love, forgiveness, or generosity : he is just such a cha- 
 racter as nature would produce, and as he who held the mir- 
 ror up to nature could paint. So it is in every other case in- 
 stanced by Lord Macaulay, and so it must always be in na- 
 ture. To expound fully, and apply the principle, might make 
 a valuable chapter in criticism. But biography, and not criti- 
 cism, is the present business. The dramatist or novelist and 
 the biographer differ in this : the former have for their aim 
 to attain, amid diversity, a natural harmony ; the latter has 
 nature's unity given, and his task is to show how its varia- 
 tions cohere and are consistent. When, after fair scrutiny, 
 you find a character, in a novel or drama, acting inconsist- 
 ently, decide that the author is so far incompetent ; when you 
 see a man in life acting in a manner which appears to you 
 contradictory, conclude you do not understand him. 
 
 About the beginning of this century there was, at the vil- 
 
204 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 lage school of Kimmersden, near Coleford, in Somersetsliire, 
 a boy about ten years of age. He had been born at Wring- 
 ton, another Somersetshire village, in 1794, of poor shop- 
 keeping people, who seem to have been hard put to it to find 
 a livelihood ; for they went from village to village seeking 
 a sure though humble maintenance ; and it was only after 
 many a shift that they opened a little general shop in Cole- 
 ford. The boy was in some respects distinguished from his 
 fellows. One day he picked up a horse-shoe, went with it 
 three miles, and got a penny for it. He managed to lay to- 
 gether one or two other pennies, and commenced trading among 
 his school-fellows. Lozenges, marbles, and so forth, were his 
 wares. He sold to advantage, and his capital increased. By 
 calculation on the prices charged in the shops, by buying in 
 large and selling 'in small quantities, by never losing an op- 
 portunity or wasting a penny, by watching for bargains and 
 stiffly insisting on adherence to their terms, he laid shilling 
 jbo shilling, and pound to pound, until, at the age of fifteen, 
 he was master of thirty pounds sterling. The spectacle cannot 
 be called pleasing. A boy, whose feelings should have shared 
 in the exuberance and free generosity of youth, converted 
 into a premature skinflint and save-all ; the frosty prudence 
 of life's autumn crisping and killing the young leaflets and 
 blossoms of life's spring ; a rivulet in the mountains already 
 banked and set to turn a mill ; — surely the less we hear of 
 such a boy the better : was he born with a multiplication 
 table in his mouth 1 This boy's name was Samuel Budgett. 
 A touch of romance is a salutary ingredient in chai^cter ; 
 in .boyhood and youth it is particularly charming ; but there 
 is a possibility that it may go too far; and a sentimental, 
 tearful child, who is always giving some manifestation of the 
 finer feelings, borders on the intolerable. There was at this 
 same Kimmersden school (even in village schools variety of 
 character will come out) a boy who seemed to be romewhat of 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 205 
 
 this sort. Wlien a little money came into his possession, 
 he bought Wesley's Hymns, and of a summer evening you 
 might have seen him walking in the fields, reciting his fa- 
 vourite pieces with intense enjoyment. His mother was 
 once dangerously ill, and liis father sent him on horseback, 
 in the night, for medical assistance. As he rode back, in 
 the breaking morning, he heard a bird sing in a park by 
 the wayside ; he listened in strange delight, and seemed to 
 receive some tidings from the carol. On reaching home, he 
 went to his sister, and gravely informed her that he knew 
 their mother would recover, that God had answered his prayers 
 on her account, and that this had become known to him as 
 he heard a little bird sing in Mells Park that morning. Not 
 one boy in a thousand would have marked that bird's song. 
 On another day you might have observed him coming along 
 a lane on horseback : as you looked, you saw that he was not 
 thinking of his horse or his way ; his eyes had an abstracted 
 look, though animated and filled with tears ; the bridle had 
 fallen from his hand, and his hoi^e was quietly eating grass. 
 He was at the moment in reverie ; he was dreaming himself 
 a missionary in far lands ; and the tears streamed down his 
 cheeks as he knelt among tropical bushes, under a southern 
 sun, to implore blessing on the household he had left at home. 
 Such was the sentimental scholar of Kimmersden. And 
 what was his name ] Samuel Budgett ! 
 
 Nature had framed no contradiction. The boy's heart 
 was tenderly affectionate, his nature keenly sensitive, his sym- 
 pathies rich, kindly, poetic ; but his young eyes had seen 
 nothing but struggle and penury in his father's house j he 
 had learned, by natui'al shrewdness and happy occasion, the 
 lesson of thrift ; he had a brain as clear and inventive as his 
 heart was warm ; by accident or otherwise, the pleasurable 
 exercise of his faculties in that juvenile trading commenced, 
 and with the relish of a born merchant he followed the game. 
 
206 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 The money itself was little more to him than the pieces are 
 to a born chess-player ; its accumulation merely testified that 
 all worked well. The coalescence and relative position of 
 the two sets of qualities were sometimes finely shown. He 
 wasted no money, yet he lost no time in buying Wesley's 
 Hymns. He amassed thirty pounds in a few years of boyish 
 trading, but when the sum was complete, he gave it all to his 
 parents. 
 
 Having finally decided to be a merchant, and adopting it 
 as his ambition to raise his family to tolerably affluent cir- 
 cumstances, Budgett was apprenticed, at the age of fifteen, to 
 an elder brother, who had a shop in Kingswood, a village four 
 miles from Bristol. His education, now formally completed, 
 had, in all relating to books, been meagre enough. He had 
 learned to read, write, and to some extent cipher ; no more. 
 In other respects it had been more thorough. He had al- 
 ready, in his boyish mercantile operations, served an appren- 
 ticeship to clearness of head, promptitude and firmness in ac- 
 tion ; his father's house had been a school of rare excellence ; 
 so rare, that, on the whole, flinging in Pocklington Academy, 
 and St John's College, Oxford, and the Gallery of the House of 
 Commons, into the opposite scale, it may still be pronounced 
 superior to that of Wilberforce. In that house he saw honesty, 
 industry, determination, and godliness ; he saw how severe 
 the struggle for existence sometimes is ; he saw how facul- 
 ties must be worked in order to their effective exercise. Of 
 special importance was that portion of his education which 
 consisted in the influence of his mother's godliness. He was 
 still a child of nine, when he happened one day to saunter 
 past her room. The door was shut, and he heard her voice. 
 She was engaged in prayer, and the subject of her petitions 
 was her family. He heard his own name. His heart was 
 at once touched, and from that moment it turned towards 
 heaven. Surely a beautiful family incident The heart of 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 207 
 
 that motlier was probably heavy at the moment, her eyes 
 perhaps filled with tears ; yet God heard her, and on herself 
 was bestowed the angelic office of answering her own prayer. 
 Samuel Budget t went to apprenticeship from his father's 
 house, a steady, kindly, radically able, and religious youth. 
 
 His apprenticeship was not such as to permit his habits of 
 perseverant industry to be broken or to relax. He was at 
 the counter by six in the morning; "and nine, ten, or eleven 
 at night,'* were the ordinary houre of closing. The toil he 
 underwent was such that he used to speak of it till the close 
 of his life. He was of small strength, and little for his 
 years ; the exertion of the grocer's business was doubtless too 
 much for him. He soon became a favourite with customers, 
 his manner was so unaffectedly kind, his attention so close 
 and uniform. It is interesting also to observe the keen thirst 
 for knowledge which he displayed during those years. If he 
 heard a sermon, he treasured it up like a string of pearls, 
 and adjourned at its close to some sequestered place, to con 
 it over, and lay it up in his inmost heart. What books 
 came in his way he eagerly devoured ; for poetry he showed 
 a keen relish, and committed large portions to memory. He 
 exclaims, almost in anguish, " O wisdom ! O knowledge ! — 
 the very expressions convey ideas so delightful to my mind, 
 that I am ready to leap out and fly ; for why should my ideas 
 always be confined within the narrow compass of our shop 
 walls V A shop-boy with so genuine and fixed an aspira- 
 tion after knowledge will scarce fail to find education. The 
 power to act nobly and effectively may exist with little book 
 knowledge : to know living men, to have sat long under the 
 stern but thorough teaching of experience, to have a sympathy 
 open to the unnumbered influences of exhaustless and ever- 
 healthful nature, may set a man above those who have studied 
 all things at second-hand, as seen through other eyes, and re- 
 presented by feeble human speech. Budgett had the faculty 
 
208 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 to work well ; lie was acquiring a thorough knowledge of 
 men, and a power to measure them at a glance ; he loved the 
 open fields and skies, the summer woods and the river bank, 
 and every smile and frown on the face of what the ancients 
 well called our Mother Earth. About the time when his 
 apprenticeship closed, in August 1816, he wrote thus to a 
 friend : — ^' As it respects my coming to Frome, I thank you 
 for your kind invitation. I have intended going ; but I as- 
 sure you, when it comes to the point I have no inclination 
 to go anywhere ; for, if I cannot find happiness at home, it 
 is in vain to seek it anywhere else. I think if I were to come 
 with the determination to enjoy the company of my friends, 
 by going to any places of recreation or amusement, though I 
 am very fond of such kind of engagements, particularly where 
 religion and real happiness is the subject of conversation, yet 
 it may tend rather to divert my mind from God as the source 
 of my happiness, than unite it to him. But for one thing I 
 have long felt an earnest though secret desire ; which is, to 
 
 spend a little time with you and Mr T alone, where no 
 
 object but God could attract our attention ; that we may, by 
 devout conversation, by humble, fervent, faithful prayer, get 
 our souls united to each other, and to God our living Head, 
 by the strongest ties of love and afiection." The young man 
 who writes thus from behind a grocer^s counter has pretty 
 well supplied the defects of his education ; in important re- 
 spects he is educated. The idea of the last sentence is that 
 of the noblest possible friendship : we can look for no fairer 
 spectacle than that of those three friends kneeling before 
 God, that the celestial bond of a common love for Him may 
 knit their hearts. 
 
 After serving for three years with a salary, on the expira- 
 tion of his seven years' apprenticeship, Budgett was taken 
 into partnership by his brother. 
 
 He feels now that he has got a firm footing, that a spot 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 209 
 
 has been found in the world on which he may live and work. 
 He prepares himself for the future accordingly. A pleasant 
 little background of romance suddenly beams out upon us. 
 "We find that long ago — *' very early" — he had fallen in love 
 wdth a certain Miss Smith of Midsomer-Norton. His little 
 touch of originality had been manifested here too ; he had 
 ventured to admit hope into his heart to this serious extent ; 
 he had dared to permit imagination to paint, in clear hues 
 and with a flush of sunlight over its front, a snug pretty little 
 cottage on his horizon, with one waiting at its threshold who 
 to him seemed heavenly fair ; during all his toil in that dis- 
 mal prosaic shop from morniug to night, he could see in the 
 distance that angelic figure smiling him on. He had now 
 reached that little cottage ; from the faint though beautifully- 
 tinted work of a dream, it had changed into solid brick, — a 
 decided improvement : he mamed Miss Smith, and turned to 
 face life with the heart of a man. He was now twenty-five 
 yeai-s of age. 
 
 Let us for a moment contemplate the sphere in which 
 Samuel Budgett commences work for himself. His sphere 
 is not imposing ; it is a retail shop in the grocery business, 
 in the village of Kingswood, four miles from Bristol. His 
 brother is a respectable, industrious, plodding man, who has 
 prospered hitherto according to his ambition, and dreams not 
 of any change. There seems but little room for advancement, 
 little scope for talent ; one can but buy and sell like OQe*s 
 neighbours, and live as heretofore ; at all events, the field is 
 open and level to all. Mercantile wealth and honour are, 
 indeed, the possible prizes ; but that a village shop should 
 ever come into competition with any great establishment, — 
 with those of Bristol, for instance, — appears never to have oc- 
 curred to any one. Samuel Budgett's prospects are such as 
 one may have in a village grocery. 
 
 The new partner is found to have ways of his own, which, 
 
210 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 in this establisliment, are regarded as new-fangled, or even 
 officious. His brother casts a glance of indifference, or even 
 dislike, upon his proposals and proceedings ; only after a 
 time, and as the commanding talent of Samuel becomes more 
 plain, does he fairly throw the reins into his hands. Budgett 
 acts in the way natural to him. It may be briefly charac- 
 terized thus : he does, with perfect accuracy and thorough- 
 ness, what lies to hand, — what is ordinary and established in 
 the routine of business, — and he has always, besides, a sure and 
 piercing glance ahead and around. Here perhaps lies the 
 precise point of difference between the accurate, methodic 
 man, who will conserve all, but make no advancement, and 
 the man who will step onward ; both are thorough workers^ 
 but the one has no originality, no instinct of improvement, 
 no healthful, intelligent audacity ; while the other has. The 
 blundering man, again, the man whose boldness and origi- 
 nality are not so fitly those of manhood as of youth, looks 
 only, or principally, forwards ; he devotes not sufficient time 
 and energy to the ground already won ; he will set off in 
 foolish pursuit while a body of the enemy is yet unbroken 
 on the field. The man who will make real progress never 
 neglects the business of the moment, but he looks forward 
 too ; he ventures, on the right occasion, in the strength and 
 self-reliance of talent, to break through sanctioned rules, and 
 shape new ones for himself. The truly and healthfully ori- 
 ginal man is not he who recklessly gambles, appealing from 
 custom to chance, but he who, with a light of his own, hold- 
 ing as little of chance as the prudence of the veriest plodder, 
 appeals from custom to vision. Such a light had Samuel 
 Budgett ; in this sense, and to this extent, he was an origi- 
 nal man. 
 
 It is not easy to exhibit this originality of Budgett's in 
 action. When once a thing is done, as Columbus, and that 
 wonderful Chinese genius who discovered that pigs could be 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 211 
 
 roasted without burning houses, knew, its performance, nay 
 its invention, seem the simplest things in the world If we 
 trace Budge tt's career step by step, we find nothing in the 
 course of his ascent to wealth and influence which it does 
 not seem certain that we should have done had we been in 
 the circumstances. Yet it is almost certain we should have 
 done otherwise ; and we have this simple way of satisfying 
 ourselves as to the probability that we should, viz., by in- 
 quiring whether, mutatis mutandis, we are advancing in our 
 own sphere. In every walk of life there are certain minu- 
 tiae which are visible only to the man of insight, and to be 
 seized only by the man of tact, but which are yet the tender, 
 scarce perceptible, filaments leading to fortune's mines. If 
 you know not how to see and seize these in your own de- 
 partment, depend upon it, gentle reader, had you been put 
 down, instead of Samuel Budgett, in this shop at Kingswood, 
 you would have sold groceries over the counter all the days 
 of your life. 
 
 Mr Arthur sketches, with much animation and graphic 
 power, the progress of Budgett, as he pushed on, step by 
 step, and won position after position ; but we shall not here 
 follow liim. The reader must picture to himself a man of 
 untiring activity who is yet never flurried, of keen and con- 
 stant sagacity, of tact in dealing with men, of real and 
 abounding affection to his fellows, so that the interest he 
 manifests in their affairs has in it no element of deceit or af- 
 fectation. He must mark him ever in the van of circum- 
 stance, discerning opportunity from afar, and seizing it with 
 eagle swoop. He must see him gradually diffusing a spirit 
 akin to his own on all who come within the sphere of his 
 influence ; incapacity, indolence, and dishonesty, shrinking 
 from his look. He must note specially the skill with which 
 he combines conservation with advance. The customer who 
 is secured is always first attended to ; all thought of extend- 
 
212 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 ing tlie trade is to be postponed to his convenience ; tlie 
 shops which deal with Budgett are seen to be the most pros- 
 perous, and no customer is ever lost. Looking at the per- 
 fect internal working of the business, one fails to find any 
 suggestion of progress ; to mark how it is expanding, one is 
 apt to think extension the sole endeavour. Budgett has al- 
 ways his foot on the firm ground; but the light in his eye 
 comes from yon bright gleam still in the distance. 
 
 A single illustration of his mode of work may convey some 
 idea of its general character. 
 
 The business has now branched out in all directions. 
 There are " several establishments" in Bristol ; the retail shop 
 is the centre of great warehouses and counting-houses ; at 
 Kingswood there are kept forty-seven draught horses. One 
 night the citizens of Bristol are startled by the reddening of 
 the whole horizon in the direction of Kingswood Hill ; the 
 warehouses of the Messrs Budgett are in flames. The men 
 of Bristol stand gazing as the huge blaze illumines the sky ; 
 from all neighbouring quarters there is a flocking of specta- 
 tors, and a racing of engines. Eflbrts are vain ; the horses, 
 indeed, the stables, and the books, are preserved ; but ware- 
 houses, counting-houses, and the retail shop, are burned to 
 the ground. Samuel Budgett has not, of course, forgotten to 
 insure, yet the pecuniary loss is above three thousand pounds. 
 Here surely is enough to confuse one ; without warning, and 
 in a night, the fury of fire consumes your accumulated sub- 
 stance, and puts its volcanic interruption on your arrange- 
 ments ; your workmen are flung out of their posts, your me- 
 thods of work are broken up, your whole business-machine 
 is torn limb from limb, and lies scattered in fragments. Now 
 is the hour to prove whether you are a man of self-command 
 and originality ; whether your mind is of that iron order 
 which the sound of battle clears and animates ; whether, 
 when custom, on which, as on a quiet horse, you have hither' 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT 213 
 
 to ridden composedly along, suddenly pitches you from its 
 neck and leaves you sprawling, you have courage and power 
 to rise to your feet, and lay your hand on a new steed, and 
 vault on his back, and break him in for yourself. Budgett 
 sees into the whole matter, and comprehends how it is to be 
 managed, precisely as if ho had done nothing his life long 
 but set things in train after sudden fires. The next morn- 
 ing every customer expecting goods on that day from the 
 Budgetts receives a circular. It states briefly that there has 
 been a lire on the premises, and that one day is necessary to 
 repair the consequent disarrangement. Just one day : in 
 such length of time, Samuel calculates, the wrath of the fire 
 will have been baulked. And one day is sufficient. He 
 goes swiftJy, but with no hurry, into Bristol, hires a new 
 house, sets all hands to work, and the next day sees all cus- 
 tomers sei-ved. Bristol becomes henceforward the head- 
 quarters ; and Samuel Budgett, now the sole head of the busi- 
 ness, is more powerful than ever. 
 
 This is the true English working talent ; the same quiet, 
 speedy energy you see in Marlborough, in Monk, and, in 
 grander combination, in Cromwell ; in whatever form it is 
 embodied, there is no standing it ; men, nations, nature it- 
 self, give way before it. 
 
 It was but an unpromising sphere in which we saw him 
 finally set to work ; a village shop, with a line of donkeys 
 at its door. There he took his post, to measure himself with 
 his opponents, — to bring his force into the general system of 
 social dynamics. Years have gone by, and the never-failing 
 might of intellectual power has vindicated itself The force 
 of Budgett's mind has affected the whole region. His ware- 
 houses tower proudly, like those of merchant princes ; over 
 all the south-western counties of England his connection ex- 
 tends ; over the sea, from distant lands, come vessels with 
 cargoes for him. It is probable that a greater efiect was not 
 
214 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 possible in liis department. He was not in tlie arena of tlie 
 Kothscliilds and Barings ; he never measured himself against 
 the rulers of the Stock Exchange. But in the field where 
 he did contend, he distanced all competition ; without capi- 
 tal, without prestige, in a village in the vicinity of a large 
 town, he built up a business which cast every rival into the 
 shade. And those warehouses have been built, this magni- 
 ficent business has been established, with no fortuitous aid 
 from happy conjunctures of circumstance, or timeous open- 
 ings of the field ; it has been by seeing the hitherto invisible, 
 by descrying every trace of occasion, by the constant, imper- 
 ceptible application of a clear and tireless intellect, that his 
 triumphs have been won. And now he is a man of wealth 
 and importance ; he has satisfied his youthful ambition. The 
 day was w^hen he sold cheese by the pound across the coun- 
 ter ; he now receives goods " by the cargo," and sells them 
 " by the ton.'' The day was when it was a serious question 
 whether goods might be conveyed to Doynton and Puckle- 
 church, — a momentous and amazing undertaking to journey 
 once a- month to Frome ; he has now a regular stafi" of effi- 
 cient travellers, spreading the connection north, south, east, 
 into the very heart of England. " I remember," said an old 
 man, who felt like a Caleb Balderstone on the subject — "I 
 remember w^hen there were five men and three horses ; and I 
 have lived to see three hundred men and one hundred horses." 
 It may be here in place, although what is advanced must 
 be taken with the commentary of all that is yet to be related 
 of Budgett, to look fairly in the face certain objections which 
 have been urged against him on the score of sharp trading. 
 He rose, it has been whispered, by elbowing aside his fellows, 
 by grasping, with unbecoming haste and eagerness, what, in 
 natural order, would have fallen to other men ; if just, he 
 was not generous ; he gave no indulgence, and made no al- 
 lowance ; he pressed every advantage, and used every oppor- 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 215 
 
 tunity ; lie seemed always at a running pace, wliile sober men 
 walked. As the testimony of Mr Arthur, given in his vigo- 
 rous and admirable work The Successful Merchant, may be 
 considered somewhat partial to Budge tt, and as it is well to 
 have a view which you wish to combat stated in its most 
 plausible form, I quote a paragraph from Mr Arthur s pages. 
 He has just intimated that the subject of his narrative was 
 ** quick to descry an advantage, and resolute to press it ;'' 
 he proceeds thus : — " This . . . formed the chief de- 
 duction from the benevolence of his character. In business 
 he was keen — deliberately, consistently, methodically keen. 
 He would buy as scarcely any otlier man could buy ; he 
 would sell as scarcely any other man could sell. He was an 
 athlete on the arena of trade, and rejoiced to bear off the 
 prize. He was a soldier on the battle-field of bargains, and 
 conquered he would not be. His power over the minds of 
 others was immense, his insight into their character piercing, 
 his address in managing his own case masterly, and, above 
 all, his purpose so inflexible, that no regard to delicacy or to 
 appearances would for a moment beguile him from his ob- 
 ject. He would accomplish a first-rate transaction, be the 
 difficulty what it might That secured, his word was as gold, 
 und generosity was welcome to make any demands on his 
 gains. But in the act of dealing, he would be the aptest 
 tradesman in the trade. To those who only met him in the 
 market, this feature of his character gave an unfavourable im- 
 pression. They frequently felt themselves pressed and con- 
 quered, and naturally felt sore. To those who knew all the 
 excellence and liberality which lay beneath this hard mer- 
 cantile exterior, it appeared the peculiarity and the defect 
 of an uncommonly worthy man, yet still a defect and a pe- 
 culiarity." 
 
 "What is the general law on this point 1 how does nature 
 arrange in Uie matter \ 
 
216 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 In all professions and trades, certain contending forces are 
 brought into play. No man denies that the faculties of re- 
 spective men, their sagacity, their energy, their perseverance, 
 are different. Every profession is a form of human exertion, 
 an arena for human power ; and it is all but implied in this, 
 that in every profession there will be degrees of success and 
 failure. From this last circumstance it will be an inevitable 
 result, that certain persons find themselves surpassed, beaten, 
 thwarted, and that they feel pain in consequence. It is one 
 of the sad consequences of the fall, irremediable save by a 
 reversal of that fall, but, like other such painful phenomena, 
 itself of remedial tendency in the body politic, that every 
 man who rises in any profession must tread a path more or 
 less bedewed by the tears of those he passes on his ascent. 
 The incompetent or indolent soldier takes commands from 
 his able and active comrade who has left the ranks ; the able 
 and indefatigable physician absorbs the practice of the dullard 
 or the empiric ; the lawyer whose logic is as a Damascus 
 sabre, and who wields it with an Arab arm, condemns his 
 heavy-eyed or careless brother to starve. There may be no 
 envy and no hate ; there may be no feeling of indignation, and 
 no affixing of blame ; but there will be at least the pain of 
 privation, of failure. More peculiarly does this apply to 
 mercantile professions. Here the precise mode in which 
 talent is brought to bear is in making money : if you are so 
 much abler than your neighbour, you win so much the more 
 money than he ; and, as your relative winnings are drawn from 
 a common store, namely, the purse of the public, the more you 
 have the less he gets. Depend upon it, he will in these cir- 
 cumstances feel " sore." 
 
 What, it may be inquired further, are the components of 
 that force which a man brings rightfully into the arena of 
 his profession ] Its components are twofold — capital and 
 faculty. It is a man's right and duty to use these to the 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 217 
 
 utmost. In some professions, intellectual power constitutes 
 the whole force ; but it is not so in commercial affairs. It 
 is honourable, as will not be questioned, to lay out at fair in- 
 terest the money or other capital which is yours. It is pre- 
 cisely as honourable to use to its last iota the faculty which 
 nature has committed to your charge. If you see the gleam 
 of a gold vein where I saw only clay, the reward is justly 
 yours ; if you know the ground where com will grow better 
 than I, your sheaves must be more numerous than mine ; if 
 you have stronger sinew and more perseverance, and choose 
 to toil for hours in the westering sun after I have unyoked 
 my team, you must lay a wider field under seed than I. And 
 no upright or manly feeling in me will permit me to accuse 
 you when you thus work your faculties to the utmost. The 
 pearls are for him that can dive, the golden apples for him 
 that can climb. I am no brave man if I bid you bate your 
 energies out of pity or misnamed coui-tesy ; and if you listen 
 to such request, you incur the responsibility of showing, at 
 the last, a return on your talents not so great as He will know 
 to have been possible who gave you them to occupy till His 
 coming. Nature — and the word is used to designate reve- 
 rently the method of His working who is natirre^s power — in- 
 tends every faculty to be used to the utmost. A man who 
 expects less from his competitors than an unsparing use of all 
 their means, is a coward ; a man who aims at having more 
 than the fall use of his own, is a churl. 
 
 There are two positive and conclusive proofs that this is 
 nature's intention, which will be presently adduced. But it 
 may first be asked, whether this view of the case does not ac- 
 cord with the general feeling and sense of men. Is it not a 
 bitter insult to a man who is on an equal footing with your- 
 self, to temper your powers till they can act without in any 
 way annoying him, to disguise your faculties that he may not 
 feel his weakness ? Is it not recognised, that if one man sees 
 
218 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 where he can make a bargain honourably and openly while 
 another man is blind, and, instead of availing himself of the 
 opportunity, apprises his neighbour of its whereabouts, he 
 virtually gives the latter a dole ? 
 
 Leaving this, however, the two following considerations 
 demonstrate the fact that nature means and commands men, 
 without asking questions, and in every department of affairs, 
 to use their talents to the utmost. 
 
 The first is. That this is nature's method of spurring on 
 the indolent, and having her work rightly done. Every true 
 man is a whip in nature's hand to scourge on the laggard : if 
 he works rightly, he must be so. And if there is whipping, 
 there must be feeling. What is it which keeps the human 
 race in progress at all 1 What is it which prevents our sitting 
 down by the wayside and falling into a half-sleep, and, find- 
 ing what will merely suffice for an animal existence, moving 
 onward no more ^ Is it not that, at intervals, in the several 
 corps of the army, a strong and determined spirit starts up, 
 who will strike forwards with new speed, and, despite the 
 remonstrance of the slothful, animate the whole battalion to 
 fresh life and energy 1 Nature makes you pay for every 
 hour of sleep or pleasure beyond the number she approves ; 
 and he whom she appoints to receive for her the payment is 
 the man who has worked while you have slept or trifled. 
 
 But, secondly, it is found that nature is here kind also ; 
 that, however individuals may smart and grumble, this method 
 subserves most effectually the interests of the majority. Her 
 aim is thoroughness of work and amount of produce ; when 
 these are attained the common weal is best consulted. And 
 to reach this it is necessary that all the faculty of the com- 
 munity be at work, and to its utmost strain. One man can- 
 not possibly restrain the honourable action of his powers for 
 the sake of the feelings of another, without the loss of a cer- 
 tain amount of that force by which nature carries on her ope- 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 219 
 
 rations and provides for lier children : kindness must blunt 
 no sword or scythe, or it will cause ten to weep instead of one. 
 
 The idea of charity is alien to the idea of trade ; all that 
 can be demanded under the name of mercantile honour is 
 justice. 
 
 These remarks, and especially the second of the proofs that 
 nature intends no respect to be shown to individual feeling 
 in mercantile competition, will be illustrated by a glance at 
 the general effect of the success of Samuel Budgett in the 
 south-west of England. That effect was a general increase 
 in the animation and vigour of his order of commercial ope- 
 rations over the district. The customers caught the spirit 
 of those who had so ably secured their custom ; the firms 
 still able to contend bestirred themselves ; there was new activ- 
 ity everywhere. In one word, nature's work was better done 
 in those quarters than formerly. Mr Arthur appears to be 
 unconscious of that very important aspect of the operations 
 of the commercial class which is now referred to. He re- 
 cognises the duty of each man to provide for himself ; he re- 
 cognises the duty of every man to " adapt his services to the 
 general good ;" but he does not perceive that, in the thorough 
 performance of this last task, the man may find it impossible 
 to avoid giving pain to certain of his own class. The con- 
 fusion into which he falls arises from his failing adequately 
 to distinguish the "general interest" of the public from the 
 interest of competing merchants. He argues as if it ought 
 to have been an element in Budgett' s motives and calculations, 
 to provide for the success of those engaged in operations si- 
 milar to his own. He starts with a condemnation of Bud- 
 gett for inflicting "soreness" on those with whom he dealt; 
 but he never says, and his whole book is an affirmation of 
 the opposite, that Budgett did not work as effectually /or tlie 
 public good as was possible. It was his brother merchants 
 alone who suffered j it was in the market he was harsh ; it 
 
220 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 was the extreme thoroughness of his performance of that task 
 which Mr Arthur accurately defines as the merchant's in the 
 social system, — the task of " directly conveying the creatures 
 of God into the hands" of those for whom they are intended, 
 — which made him at times obnoxious to those who performed 
 the same task, from whatever cause, not quite so thoroughly. 
 In point of fact, it is here that the radical strength and 
 stamina of Budgett's character become conspicuous. The cir- 
 cumstances urged in objection are conclusive proof that his 
 mind was hale and of strong fibre, — that vital Christianity 
 had introduced no softness or incapacity for working to the 
 utmost of his powers into his nature. Mr Arthur informs 
 us, his aim was unimpeachable honour and his word gold. 
 We know, too, that money was not his object ; that wealth 
 was a matter for which he cared little. The proof of this 
 important point is perfect He did not cling, with miserly 
 tenacity, to business to the last ; he took matters quietly, and 
 strove after no further extension when life was still strong 
 in him. After he had ceased to attend with his old impel- 
 I'ng vigour to the afikirs of the firm, he heard some one say 
 that he, the speaker, wished for more money. " Do you V* 
 exclaimed Budge tt : "then I do not; I have quite enough. 
 But if I did wish for more, I should get it." On his death- 
 bed, when his voice was tremulous with the last weakness, 
 he deliberately said, "Biches I have had as much as my 
 heart could desire, but I never felt any pleasure in them for 
 their own sake, only so far as they enabled me to give plea- 
 sure to others ;" and we know him to have been a man, out 
 of the market, of a generosity which might be deemed extra- 
 vagant. His brother merchants did unquestionably at times 
 feel themselves disagreeably overborne, did experience an un- 
 easy sensation, and call him keen and harsh. It is always 
 unpleasant to pay tribute, and these men were commanded 
 by nature to pay tribute to Budgett as their king. And 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT, 221 
 
 why did lie, who had no particular desire for money, and 
 an acute feeling of any pain he gave, thus permit himself, 
 no doubt consciously, to pain his brother merchants ? It 
 was the strong instinct of the born merchant ; it was the 
 strong instinct of the true man. He could not dishonour 
 his competitors by supposing them incapable of the stern joy 
 of warriors in worthy foemen ; he could not rein his steeds 
 that stumbling or laggard hacks might reach the goal before 
 him : he could not, without intense suffering, curb the facul- 
 ties nature had given him, or turn them from their work. 
 Those who experienced his power felt sore : certainly. Did 
 the sectioners feel sore when they arrived at the camp of 
 Sablons "some minutes" too late, and found that Napoleon 
 had clutched the guns 1 But was it not right that the quick 
 mind and ready hand should have them 1 In the market, 
 Budgett knew instinctively that integi-ity ruled, that charity 
 iind favour were alien to the place ; had he won counters in- 
 stead of guineas, he would have acted just in the same way. 
 One can imagine him even having had compunctious touches ; 
 but a sterner and healthier feeling would overrule pity, and 
 hold it firmly in its place. 
 
 "I'd give the lands of Deloraine 
 Brave Musgrave were alive again ;" 
 
 SO said the chivalrous William, although he had just explain- 
 ed that, loere Musgrave alive again, it would be necessary for 
 him, by the rules of Border honour, at once to re-kill him. 
 
 This whole argument in defence of Budgett falls to the 
 ground if it can be proved that, in his habitual dealing, there 
 was the slightest infraction of equity, the slightest departure 
 from the rules of the game. But, since we perceive that all 
 the pain occasioned to his rivals in the market can be ac- 
 counted for simply, rationally, and probably in another way, 
 - — since we are absolutely certain that he had no particular 
 love of money, — and since we find his hand to the fuU as 
 
222 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 ready to give as to gain, — may we not confidently declare his 
 sharp, or rather his thorough dealing in business, to have been 
 no deduction from his benevolence, but to have been a testi- 
 mony of remarkable point and conclusiveness to the general 
 force and ability of his character 1 To any man that needed 
 a helping hand he would have extended one ; but if you met 
 him on the field, you were foot to foot and eye to eye opposed, 
 and mercy could come only in the form of contempt. Sala- 
 din sent Coeur-de-Lion a horse that he might fight like a 
 knight; but did he blunt his sabre when he met him on the 
 battle-plain 1* 
 
 We have now seen, so to speak, the framework of our 
 man ; we find that it is the unflawed iron of integrity, clear 
 insight, and energy : he is a man who can work. 
 
 But we saw that, in his boyhood, there was not only a 
 stern, but a gentle aspect of his character : we may find now 
 that this iron fi-amework of his manhood is wreathed with 
 verdure and dewy flowers. We have seen him when he had 
 simply to measure his strength : we must survey him now as 
 a master ; as a member of society philanthropically desirous 
 of removing its evils ; and as a father. 
 
 Entering Budge tt's central establishment, where, as we 
 
 * All this, so far as the general principle is concerned, still appears to 
 me unassailable and important. But in its application to Budgett I confess 
 that I now entertain some doubts whether it goes the who^e length neces- 
 sary to his vindication. Hundreds of men have made fortunes as large 
 as his, and from similar beginnings. In their case, as well as in Bu 'gett's, 
 the general causes of dislike here detailed would act ; but they have retained, 
 even in the circles of their own profession, even as men of business, a cha- 
 racter for open-handed frankness and genial acquiescence in the success of 
 others. This character Budgett did not tear. I cannot perceive how 
 he could have missed it, exc^^pt through the action of some element in his 
 trading habits which pertained to him alone, and which had been better 
 away. To show in woris what this was may be impossible. I cannot 
 think that Mr Arthur has correctly pointed it out. It was something to 
 be felt rather than seen ; and the opinion, universal so far as I have been 
 able to judge, among men of business, that it did exist, must, I fear, be 
 accepted as conclusive in the case. 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 22^ 
 
 have seen, hundreds of men are employed, we find that the 
 whole works with faultless regularity. The genius of Eng- 
 lish industry seems to have chosen the place as a temple. 
 There is no fuss, little noise : there is no haste — no time for 
 that. The face of every workman shows that he may not 
 linger ; its firm lines at the same time declare that he has no 
 wish to do so. Hearty activity, healthful, contented diligence, 
 are seen on every hand. The immense daily business is 
 timeously transacted ; and the hours of evening see the place 
 shut and silent. 
 
 Samuel Budgett is the mainspring of the whole vast ma- 
 chine. Under the middle size, with strong brows, open fore- 
 head, and lower features firm and clearly cut, he may at once 
 be discerned to be a man who can dare and do : his " quick 
 brown eye" pierces everywhere, and overlooks nothing • its 
 glance makiug the wheels go faster. He speaks a word of 
 encouragement to the active, he sends an electric look to the 
 indolent ; it is plain his authority is unquestionable, and that 
 he retains and uses it without an effort. Bungling of no sort, 
 be it from want of power or want of will, can live in his 
 glance ; he can detect falsehood lurking in the depths of an 
 eye, and veiling itself in the blandest smile ; he has a tact 
 and ready invention which find a quiet road to every secret ; 
 only perfect thoroughness of work and perfect honesty of heai-t 
 can stand before him. Yet the kindly and approving is evi- 
 dently his most natural and congenial look ; he speaks many 
 a word of sympathy and kindness ; the respect and deference 
 wbich wait on his steps are tempered by affection. 
 
 As a master he is, first of all, thorough. His men have 
 a profound knowledge that he is not to be trifled with. The 
 incompetent, the indolent, are discharged. A man must 
 perform what he has taken in hand, or go. " Why, sir," said 
 one who had been long in his service, " I do believe as he 
 would get, aye, just twice as much work out o' a man in a 
 
224 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 week as another master." This power of infusing a working 
 spirit into men explains his entire success. Conceive every 
 man he employed working thoroughly : everything else be- 
 comes then conceivable. He has the gift of knowing men ; 
 for him who would prosper in any sort of practical endea- 
 vour, it is the indispensable gift. To this thoroughness and 
 penetration it was of course again incident that pain was 
 felt in certain quarters ; rotten branches, ineffective work- 
 men, could not be cut away without crashing and crackling : 
 here, too, we meet the fine confirmatory evidence of his real 
 power and energy, that he awakened complaints on the part 
 of those in whom these were lacking. 
 
 Next, he has a warm and honest sympathy with his men. 
 It is not the result of their work, in the shai)e of his own 
 profit, which gratifies him, so much as the satisfaction and ad- 
 vantage of all who work along with him. We find no nig- 
 gardliness, no appearance of strain, in his efibrts to attain 
 wealth. If he gets more work out of men than other mas- 
 ters, his employed get more from him in the best forms than 
 other men. At the time of his entering partnership, the 
 working hours are from six in the morning to nine at night. 
 This goes against the new partner s grain. " I do not like 
 to see you here," he would say to the employed ; "I want 
 to see you at home : we must get done sooner." Dismissal 
 at half-past eight is attempted, and the men are greatly re- 
 lieved. But this is only a commencement. If there are too 
 few men, more can be added ; if there is trifling, men must 
 go altogether. As the business enlarges, the time shortens ; 
 and Samuel does not rest until he sees his men all trooping 
 off cheerily to their familiec; at five or half-past five in the 
 evening. Keep these parallel achievements in view when you 
 estimate the generosity and mercantile honour of Budge tt. 
 There is in the establishment a regular system of fines ; but 
 the head or heads pay most, and the whole goes to a sick 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 225 
 
 fund There is an annual festival given to the men ; good 
 cheer, athletic games, and a cei*tain amount, moderate, it may 
 be hoped, of speech-making, speed the hours. The Kev. Mr 
 Carvasso, hearing our merchant speak on one such occasion, 
 thinks his address of " an extraordinary character," wishes it 
 had been printed, and adds, "Except on that occasion, I 
 never heard him come out in a set public address, but the 
 talent then displayed convinced me of the grasp of his mind, 
 and how greatly some had mistaken him." There is a sys- 
 tematic distribution of small rewards from week to week ; 
 Budgett stands at a certain outlet to the premises with a 
 pocketful of little packages containing money, and slips one 
 into each man's hand as he passes out ; " one would find he 
 had a present of five shillings, another of three, another of 
 half a crown ;" the gift is graduated by relative merit. " Ah, 
 Sir," exclaims an old informant, " he was a man as had no 
 pleasure in muckin' up money ; why. Sir, he would often in 
 that way give, aye, I believe, twenty pounds on a Friday 
 night, — ^well, at any rate, fifteen pounds." Besides this, cer- 
 tain of the employed are made directly to feel their interest 
 in the success of the business. " When a year wound up 
 well, the pleasure was not all with the principals ; several of 
 those whose diligence and talent had a share in gaining the 
 result, found that they had also a share in the reward." 
 " One," Mr Arthur goes on to say, " after describing the pains 
 Mr Budgett had taken to make him master of his own branch 
 of the business, and how, when satisfied with his fitness, he 
 had devolved upon him important responsibilities, said, with 
 a fine feeling which I should love to see masters generally 
 kindle among those in their employment, ' And he never had 
 a good year, but I was the better for it when stock-taking 
 came.'-" 
 
 But, last and most important of all, Budgett, in his ca- 
 pacity as master, is a religious man, — a real, earnest Chris- 
 
 Q 
 
226 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 ti'an. We have not now to ask wliether his energy is unim- 
 peded and nnrelaxed, whether his powers have their full 
 swing ; but it is important to learn of what sort his religion 
 is, and to what extent it pervades his life, that we may know 
 whether it is of a nature to be pronounced effete, — ^whether 
 it is, on the one hand, a fashionable deistic assent to Chris- 
 tianity, or, on the other, a cramped fanaticism or bigotry, not 
 blending in kindly union with the general modes of his ex- 
 istence. In his case Christianity was never intellectually 
 doubted ; and he may therefore be taken as a good example 
 of a thorough English merchant, who still, in the nineteenth 
 century, drew the vital strength of his character from that 
 Christian religion in which he had been born, and in which 
 he had unconsciously gi'own up. His religion was of that 
 personal, penetrating order, which has in all times character- 
 ized men who, even among Christians, have been recognised 
 as such in a peculiar sense ; of that sort which made Bunyan 
 weep in anguish, and at which the merely respectable person 
 in all ages laughs ; of that sort against which Sydney Smith 
 aimed his fine but melancholy raillery, in unaffected wonder- 
 ment at its refusing to him the name of Christian minister. 
 This determined merchant, whom we have seen pushing on 
 to fortune through the press of vainly opposing rivals, humbles 
 himself daily before God, searches his soul for secret sins, finds 
 cause for keenest sorrow in the turning of God's countenance 
 away from him. This Budgett can weep like a child, or like 
 Bunyan, or an old Ironside, for his shortcomings. Chris- 
 tianity is to him as fresh as it was to Peter when Christ com- 
 manded him to feed His lambs ; its salvation is to him as 
 clear a reality as it was to Stephen when he saw heaven opened. 
 And it blends in the kindliest union with his whole charac- 
 ter and actions ; he feels that a Christian must be one all in 
 all ; he lives as if in the continual sense of having been made 
 by Christ one of God's priests upon earth. His natural tact, 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 227 
 
 and power of winding himself into close conversation, so as 
 to get at men's inmost hearts, are brought into the service 
 of the gospel. In an unostentatious, quiet way, he manages 
 to urge its claims on his men, by casual words, in little snatches 
 of conversation, at any moment when he has them alone. 
 Every man in his establishment is perpetually reminded that 
 he is considered by his master an immortal being, and feels 
 that all temporary differences between them are merged 
 in the sublime unities in which Christianity embraces all 
 human relations. Once a man came begging employment of 
 him : the wife of the applicant thus narrated the result : — 
 ** I shall never forget my husband's feelings when he came in 
 after having seen Mr Budgett for the first time. He wept 
 like a child ; indeed, we both wept, for it was so long since 
 anybody had been kind to us. Mr Budgett had been speak- 
 ing to him like a father ; but what affected him most was 
 this, — ^when he had. signed the agreement, Mr Budgett took 
 him from the counting-house into a small parlour in his own 
 house, and offered up a prayer for him and his family." The 
 young men resident on the premises have separate rooms, for 
 the express end that they may be able to seek God in pri- 
 vate. There is daily prayer on the premises ; every day, in 
 the morning, the whole concern is, as it were, brought directly 
 under the eye of God, His authority over it recognised, and 
 His blessing invoked. And every year at stock-taking, ere 
 Samuel became sole head, it was observed that the two brothers, 
 when it was ascertained what precise progress had been made, 
 retired into a private room, and there joined together in prayer. 
 It is a Christian mercantile establishment. 
 
 And what is the result on the whole ? There is the pro- 
 gress we have seen, — a progress which we can now to some 
 extent understand. His neighbour tradesmen are heard to 
 " speak as if he rose by magic," and to insinuate that " there 
 is some deep mystery in his affairs :" we have some idea of 
 
228 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 his enchantments. But the progress is not all. There is 
 another circumstance, of which certain hints have already- 
 been let fall, but which is deserving of special attention. It 
 is the fact that there is diffused through the whole body of 
 the employed a loyal zeal for the success of the business, — 
 — ^that they are united by sympathy in a common aim, — that 
 they feel as true mariners for the honour of their ship, as true 
 soldiers for the fame of their regiment. His men, we hear^ 
 are " personally attached" to Budgett ; they like to work with 
 him and for him ; they are proud of what lias been done, and 
 proud of having contributed to its achievement. This is a 
 notable fact. With it, as the crown of the whole, we com- 
 plete our survey of Budgett in the capacity of master. 
 
 The prospect which has been opened up to us suggests cer- 
 tain lessons, clearly legible, and of vital concernment, touching 
 what may be called the practical philosophy of social life in 
 this our age. 
 
 It being sufficiently evident that feudal tenures and powei-s 
 have in our day ceased to exist, and the first general glance 
 at our social arrangements seeming to reveal " cash-payment'' 
 to be "the sole nexus," the universal connecting medium, be- 
 tween the classes of society which employ and those which 
 are employed, Mr Carlyle and others have pronounced on the 
 case in contempt, wrath, and lamentation. In a pamphlet 
 recently published by Mr Carlyle, its objectionable aspect is 
 finely represented by a high personage who complains to the 
 writer. If conscience and common sense permit, it is well to 
 condole with our distressed fellow-creatures. Let us there^- 
 fore accord a hearing to his complaints. "Drops of com- 
 passion tremble on our eyelids," &c. : — 
 
 "The Duke of Trumps," says Mr Carlyle, "who some- 
 times does me the honour of a little conversation, owned that 
 the state of his domestic service was by no means satisfactory 
 to the human mind. ' Five-and-forty of them,' said his Grace, 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 229 
 
 * really, I suppose, the cleverest in the market, for there is 
 no limit to the wages : I often think how many quiet fami- 
 lies, all down to the basis of society, I have disturbed, in at- 
 tracting gradually, by higher and higher offers, that set of 
 fellows to me ; and what the use of them is when here ! I 
 feed them like aldermen, pay them as if they were sages and 
 heroes. Samuel Johnson's wages, at the very last and best, 
 as I have heard you say, were L.300 or L.500 a-year ; and 
 Jellysnob, my butler, who indeed is clever, gets, I believe, 
 more than the highest of these sums. And, — shall I own it 
 to you ? — in my young days, with one valet, I had more 
 trouble saved me, more help afforded me to live, actually 
 more of my will accomplished, than from these forty-five I 
 now get, or ever shall It is all a serious comedy, — what you 
 call a melancholy sham. Most civil, obsequious, and indeed 
 expert fellows these ; but bid one of them step out of his re- 
 gulated sphere on your behalf ! An iron law presses on us 
 all here, — on them and on me. In my own house, how much 
 of my will can I have done, — dare I propose to have done ] 
 Prudence, on my part, is prescribed by a jealous and ridicu- 
 lous point-of-honour attitude on theirs. They lie here more 
 like a troop of foreign soldiers that had invaded me, than a 
 body of servants I had hired. At free quarters ; we have 
 strict laws of war established between us ; they make their 
 salutes, and do certain bits of specified work, with many 
 becks and scrapings ; but as to service, properly so called, 
 
 ! I lead the life of a servant. Sir ; it is I that am 
 
 a slave ; and often I think of packing the whole brotherhood 
 of them out of doors one good day, and retiring to furnished 
 lodgings ; but have never done it yet !' Such was the confes- 
 sion of his Grace." 
 
 "For," adds Mr Carlyle, "indeed, in the long run, it is 
 not possible to buy obedience with money." 
 
 Readers may be disposed to join in returning to the Duke 
 
230 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 some such reply as this : — " Your complaint, we must con- 
 fess, is indeed pitiful. Your domestics look upon you mani- 
 festly as a mere dispenser of good things ; they know you 
 have money, and that by a little juggling they can get it out 
 of your hands ; they laugh at you in their sleeves ; you are 
 among them as the returning lord in Don Juan among the 
 groupes that feasted at his expense ; in one word, they make 
 a fool of you. Kow this is never done, your Grace, unless 
 nature gives material assistance. You perceive that the sail- 
 ors in a seventy-four do not make a fool of their captain ; 
 Budgett's men, we find, made no fool of him ; and do you 
 think that the man to whom you confess would be made a 
 fool of in that style, were he in your place ? He has made 
 something very like an assertion that you are a ' reed shaken 
 in the wind j' he thinks, we used to understand, that your 
 Grace's coat and badges were * torn in a scuffle' somewhere 
 about 1789 ; your resort for consolation was a little strange. 
 What does your Grace want 1 Would you have your fellow- 
 creatures bow down to your coronet % They say it is of 
 faded tinsel. Would you have them reverence the face of 
 which you are the ' tenth transmitter ?' They say, ^ O, look 
 at it ; it is uncommonly foolish.' Would you like to have 
 the gallows-tree on your lawn, and manacles in a dungeon 
 under your halH Like enough; but these are precisely 
 what your Grace never shall get ; reach forth your hand to 
 them, and see whether a red stream will not flow to wash 
 your parchments very white ! Your Grace finds it too much 
 to remember the duties for which you have hired your ser- 
 vants ; you have no tact or authority to rule men, no digni- 
 fied self-respecting sympathy to win them. You fancy it is 
 the form of your connection that prevents your being ho- 
 noured ; it is no such thing : the dying Napoleon awed men 
 by the power of his eye, when his tongue was already silent; 
 but men of your stamp were never truly obeyed since the 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 231 
 
 world began. Not even a gallows would help you ; it is a 
 hopeless case. And we regard it as exactly as it should be ; 
 like master, like man. Your affliction administers to us sott 
 delectation ; we should deem it treacherous to our time to 
 pity you. We give you sixpence !" 
 
 The case is simple enough ; the phenomenon need not 
 startle us. The old obedience has indeed passed away ; and 
 true it is that obedience has never been, and can never be, 
 bought by money. What then ] There is a new obedience 
 possible. Thanks to the French Revolution, thanks, what- 
 ever its evils, to advancing democracy, that it has struck, as 
 by a imiversal electric shock, into the heart of humanity the 
 idea, to be extinguished never again, but to work itself more 
 and more into life and development, that no parchment written 
 by human hand, no gold dug from earthly mine, can give a 
 man title to obedience. That title must be written with other 
 than human ink, bought with other than earthly gold. It 
 must be written on the brow in lines of strength and though t- 
 falness ; it must be seen on the lip, where earnest self-respect, 
 and habitual self-command, and resolution that can die, have 
 displaced vanity, sensuality, and pride ; it must glow, with a 
 clear and ethereal fulness as of heaven's sanctioning light, 
 from the unagitated eye, in the calmness of comprehending 
 knowledge, the deliberate energy of justice, the disarming 
 magic of love, the contftraining majesty of godliness. As 
 never before, all men are now flung on their individuality ; 
 obedience is seen to be a thing beyond the reach of purchase, 
 the possibility of transmission ; if you can rule men, they will 
 obey you ; if you cannot, there is no help. Look into that 
 establishment of Budgett's once more. What tie subsists 
 between him and his men 1 The only "visible tie is of gold ; 
 he pays them certain moneys, and they work for him in re- 
 turn ; their right to stay, his right to retain them, are pre* 
 cisely equal Is he not^ then, their master ] He can show 
 
232 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 no patent of nobility unless he has one from "Almighty 
 God ;" he was rocked in no ducal cradle, he wears no feudal 
 coronet, beneath his mansion is no dungeon. Yet is he not 
 a master 1 Shall we say that the obedience which waits upon 
 his steps is of degraded quality, or unworthy of the name, 
 because it is expressed in the alacrity of the open and manly 
 forehead, the willing sympathy, unshaded by fear and un- 
 tainted by sycophancy, of the freeman's kindling eye 1 Shall 
 we say that the workman no longer renders to his natural and 
 equal master a service and homage, as precious and as sincere 
 as those of the serf who was predestined, ere his birth, to 
 follow his chief whithersoever his bare will ordained, because 
 the honeysuckles of his cottage wrap his own inviolable castle, 
 and free-born children gambol round his knee 1 That he 
 toils is no disgrace ; it is appointed him by no injustice of 
 man, but by the beneficent, though stem, decree of nature ; 
 and his evening may be as glad and tranquil when the day's 
 work is over, his sleep as sweet ere he goes forth to labour, 
 his self-respect, his independence, his bold uncowering truth- 
 fulness, in one word, his whole inheritance both of duty and 
 reward, as rich in the essential bounties of freedom as those 
 of his master. Some men must ever ride in the car of civi- 
 lization, while others drag it. The old reins by which men 
 were guided have been wrenched from the hands of the 
 drivers ; the drivers themselves have, in some places, been 
 rolled in the dust, and trampled in their gore. But the fate 
 of the French nobility need not be universal ; a strong and 
 wise man can yet take the seat, and with new reins — the 
 golden chords of love, the viewless chains of sympathy — still 
 guide and control men. We see Budgett, a man born in po- 
 verty, do so with easy and natural efibrt. Why look back ? 
 Why not rather charge ourselves than our time 1 Why per- 
 petually gaze with reverted visage on the coffined Past 1 That 
 lingering red is not the flush of health j that tranquil and 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 233 
 
 smiling slumber is not the repose of gathering energy ; it is 
 the stillness and rigid moulding of death that are on that 
 face ; no resurrection ever woke a buried era. Feudalism 
 in all its aspects — its airy and gallant chivalries, its simple 
 devotions, its conventual dreamings — with its Du Guesclins, 
 its good Douglases, its kingly Abbot Samsons, its troop of 
 fair ladies riding with golden stirrups to the crusade — has 
 passed away to the very spirit and essence, and Democracy 
 lays its iron roads across its grave. Many generations will 
 gaze on the picture of the whole resuscitated life of the thir- 
 teenth century, as it has been painted, in a boldness of out- 
 line and incomparable richness of colour which must long defy 
 the rounding finger and obscuring breath of time, by Mr Car- 
 lyle ; yet Abbot Samson had his hand-gyves in his dungeon, 
 and no tongue dared to move in his presence. The man who 
 will rule men in an era of freedom must dispense with these ; 
 and though the hero of Past and Present was assuredly bom 
 a prince and ruler, men of his radical type are still extant, 
 and even common, in England ; and why obstinately close our 
 eyes to the same power as his, when exhibited, not in a medi- 
 aeval monastery, but in a mercantile establishment of the work- 
 ing era ? Of old you might have obedience of serfs, but you 
 had not freedom. In the modern time, when your masters 
 are incompetent, you have a pretended though ignoble free- 
 dom on the part of servants, and no true obedience. "Where 
 you have competent masters and governed servants, both are 
 free. Is it reasonable, then, and manly, to whine and whimper 
 over our modern arrangements, as might a delicate-looking 
 Puseyite curate, or to sneer at, and denounce, and turn away 
 from them, as do very different men, instead of I'ecognising 
 it as one great task and duty of our age to reconcile master- 
 ship with freedom, and valiantly setting about it ? That Mr 
 Carlyle has written on these matters as he has done may 
 well excite surprise. I may have utterly misconceived the 
 
234 SAMUEL BUDGETI; 
 
 whole purport and philosophy of his Hi&tory ol the French 
 devolution ; but, if I have any decided idea as to the mean- 
 ing of that book, or of what he says in his essay on Ebenezer 
 Elliott, it is, that one great lesson he would enforce is, that 
 the feudal nobility must either vanish, or show themselves 
 possessed of personal powers to win the respect and affec- 
 tionate obedience of men. Yet this duke is precisely one of 
 those persons who could have no power except what lay in 
 chains and badges. The world has seen strange things; but 
 it may be worth its while to turn aside and contemplate Mr 
 Carlyle in the capacity of apologist for pithless personages 
 still fondly called noblemen. 
 
 The true point of view from which to discern the essential 
 type and distinguishing characteristics of Budgett is the mer- 
 cantile : it is him in his true character ybu see, when you 
 mark his intense delight as he moves among a gi'oup of active 
 working men, animating them by his presence, directing their 
 movements, and thrilling with sympathy for honest exertion. 
 But we must briefly glance at the other phases which his cha- 
 racter displays : we must see him fairly out of the commer- 
 cial atmosphere. And what aspect does he present to us 1 
 He comes out from the mine where he has been toiling so 
 eagerly with the gold he has so manfully won. Has he the 
 greedy, inhuman look of the miser, the small frost-bitten eye 
 of the niggard ? He has worked hard, and the result we see 
 in money : the " beaverish" talent he certainly possesses. Has 
 his soul become beaverish too 1 No. He has still the boy's 
 heart which throbbed with joy when he flung his boyish earn- 
 ings, the thirty pounds, — ^which probably appeared to him then 
 a greater sum than any he afterwards possessed, — into his 
 mother's lap. Over the deep mine, far up in the taintless 
 azure, he has ever caught the gleam of treasure which might 
 well purge his eyes in the glare of earthly gold. To make 
 money has been his duty ; he could not work to the measuta 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 235 
 
 of his abilities without that result ; but to give is his delight 
 and his reward. With the same tact which stood him in such 
 good stead among his workmen and customers, he strikes out 
 devices of good ; with his native energy he carries them out. 
 His positive expenditure in philanthropic objects is fully 
 L.2000 a-year. His mansion becomes a centre of beneficent 
 light for the whole district, — in every direction the broken 
 mists of ignorance and vice retiring. His heart is as warm, 
 his hand as open, as if he had never known what it was to 
 make a shilling ; he shows himself worthy to be a steward of 
 nature, with large gifts committed for disposal to his hand ; 
 he scatters bounty where his agency is unseen ; he ever makes 
 charity the handmaid of industry, never of recklessness or 
 sloth ; the blessed influence of generosity, tempered by jus- 
 tice, and governed by strong intelligence, is felt over the 
 district. 
 
 And now we shall look for a few moments into the sanc- 
 tuary of his home. We saw him take his early love to be 
 his wife, in a little cottage in an English lane. As his other 
 projects have prospered in his hands, his cottage has gradually 
 changed its appearance ; he is now in a commodious man- 
 sion, seated in the midst of broad pleasure-grounds, and com- 
 manding a wide prospect of that region which his presence 
 has lighted with new comfort and gladness. In his family 
 circle we find him displaying the same traces of original cha- 
 racter which we have marked in his procedure elsewhere. 
 His children are admitted to an unwonted intimacy and con- 
 fidence. " They knew his business affairs intimately, and in 
 every perplexing case he would gather them round him, with 
 their mother and aunt, and take their advice. His standing 
 council was formed of the whole family, even at an age when 
 other fathers would think it cruel and absurd to perplex a 
 child with weighty concerns." He seems to have attained 
 that perfection of domestic rule where kindness is so govern- 
 
236 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 ed by sagacity that severity is banished, yet every good ef- 
 fect of severity won. The sympathy which he meets among 
 his workmen, and which lends an aspect of noble work and 
 noble governance to his whole business establishment, per- 
 vades, with a still finer and more tender warmth, the cham- 
 bers of his home ; his children go hand-in-hand with him in 
 his plans of improvement, the willing instruments in every 
 philanthropic device. And he feels that he has their sym- 
 pathy in higher things than these ; we hear him expressing 
 the Conviction that they are all going along with him on the 
 way to heaven. This is the final touch of joy that can gild 
 a Christian home, a ray of heaven's own glory coming to 
 blend with, to hallow, to crown, the blessings of earth. Be 
 it a delusion or not, one would surely wish to " keep so sweet 
 a thing alive :" if it is a fond enthusiastic dream, so perfect 
 is the smile of happiness on the dreaming face, that it were 
 surely kind to let the sleeper slumber on. He believes that 
 all his family will again gather round him on the plains of 
 heaven : that the flowers which now shed fragrance through 
 his life will continue to bloom beside immortal amaranths ; 
 that the voices which are now the music of his being will 
 mingle with the melodies of his eternal home ; that the light 
 of those smiles which gi^eet his approach to his threshold, 
 and which now make summer in his heart, will blend with 
 the light that fadeth never. Let us not say that his hopes 
 are vain : his children are his friends, and friendship lives in 
 the spirit-land. 
 
 Thus soft, genial, tenderly kind, do we find the hard-trad- 
 ing Budgett, when we contemplate him where kindness and 
 tenderness are in place. Depend upon it, were he not a right 
 merchant in the market, he would not be so gentle in the 
 home : it is only the strong who can thus wrap the paternal 
 rod in flowers. To see him in the market, one would say 
 there was not a dew-drop of poetry to soften the ruggedness 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 237 
 
 of liis nature. Follow him in a walk on liis own grounds^ 
 and you are apt to tliink him a soft sort of man, with some- 
 what of a sentimental turn. For he has still the same open 
 sense for nature's beauty and music that he had when he 
 heard that little bird's morning carol, and felt in his young 
 heart that God had answered his prayer for his mother. There 
 is a certain dewiness, a flowery freshness, over his character, 
 an air of unexhausted, unstrained strength. Three things, 
 at least, nature has united in him, which have been deemed 
 incompatible : thorough working faculty, religion of the sort 
 which weeps for sins invisible to the world, and poetical sym- 
 pathy. You may see him distancing his competitors in the 
 market, until they whisper that he must work by magic ; 
 you may see his cheek wet with tears as he prays to his Grod ; 
 you may hear him, in gleeful tone, quoting verse after verse 
 of poetry in his fields, while his children romp around. From 
 his early days, too, the strange merchant has preached, and 
 with extraordinary power ; his connection with the "Wesleyan 
 body leading him to this. His whole character, last of all, 
 is veiled in humility ; his bearing is that of a truly modest, 
 self-knowing man, who can act with perfect self-reliance, yet 
 take advice, if such may come, from a child. 
 
 At the age of fifty-four, when it might have been hoped 
 that many yeai-s of life were yet before him, Budgett gave 
 symptoms of a fatal malady. Dropsy and heart-complaint 
 showed themselves, and his strength gradually wore away. 
 His death-bed was glorious even among Christian death-beds. 
 And though no weighty argument can be based upon the 
 closing scenes of Christian men, death -bed experience is not 
 of slight importance. Life is assuredly more important than 
 death ; on it ought the main attention to be fixed. Yet it 
 is mere vacant absurdity to deny that fear casts its shade over 
 mankind here below, as they look forward beyond time ; that 
 it is really the king of terrors whose realm is the grave, and 
 
238 SAMUEL BUDGETT. 
 
 tJiat it has been one grand aim of all religions to discrown 
 the spectre. If, moreover, man is only for a span a deni- 
 zen of time, — if he is yet to be born into eternity, and his life 
 here is of importance only in its relation to his life beyond, — 
 that must ever be a moment of supreme interest to men, 
 when the immortal soul is preening her wings for an infinite 
 ascent, when earth is becoming still, and voices out of the 
 distance seem to reach the dying ear, and a strange radiance 
 falls across the bourne into the glazing eye. Budgett found 
 his simple Christian faith, laying hold of the sword of the 
 Spirit, strong enough to palsy the arm of the terror-crowned, 
 and strike from it its appalling dart ; nay, he found that 
 simple Christian faith of power sufficient to steady his eye in 
 gaze upon the spectre, until his terrors faded away, and he 
 became an angel standing at the gates of light. At first he 
 was troubled and cast down ; but ere long the victory was 
 complete. I shall quote a few of his words, leaving readers 
 to make upon them their own comments ; to judge for them- 
 selves whether they express a selfish joy, or that of one whose 
 delight was in holiness and in God ; and to observe the child- 
 like humility that breathes beneath their rapture. His death 
 occurred in the April of 1851, and these words were uttered 
 by him from the time that his illness began to manifest its 
 fatal power ; they sufficiently indicate the occasions of their 
 utterance : — 
 
 " I sent for you to tell you how happy I am ; not a wave, 
 not a ripple, not a fear, not a shadow of doubt. I didn't think 
 it was possible for man to enjoy so much of God upon earth. 
 I'm filled with God." 
 
 " I like to hear of the beauties of heaven, but I do not 
 dwell upon them ; no, what I rejoice in is, that Christ will 
 be there. Where He is, there shall I be also. I know that 
 He is in me, and I in Him. I shall see Him as He is. I 
 delight in knowing that," 
 
SAMUEL BUDGETT. 239 
 
 " How our Heavenly Father paves our way down to the 
 tomb ! I seem so happy and comfortable ; it seems as if it 
 cannot be for me, as if it must be for somebody else. I 
 don't deserve it." 
 
 " I have sunk into the arms of Omnipotent Love." 
 
 " I never asked for joy ; I always thought myself unworthy 
 of it ; but He has given me more than I asked." 
 
 " I am going the way of all flesh ; but, bless God, I'm 
 ready. I trust in the ments of my Redeemer. I care not 
 when, or where, or how ; glory be to God !" 
 
240 JOUN FOSTER. 
 
 JOHN rOSTEB. 
 
 John Foster, peasant in the west of Yorkshire, and father 
 of the John Foster with whom we are concerned, was one of 
 those undoubting Christians whose lives, unnoticed by the 
 world, and unconsciously to themselves, are yet faithful tran- 
 scripts from apostolic or patriarchal times. He no more 
 questioned the stability of that path on which he went to- 
 wards eternity, than he questioned the firmness of the ground 
 along which, with solid measured tread, he walked to his 
 daily toil. For twenty years before his death, he prayed 
 every year that God, if it seemed good to Him, would ter- 
 minate his earthly career. And this strength of character 
 was finely shaded by a tendency towards reflection, a love of 
 meditation and retirement. There was a lonely spot on the 
 banks of the river Hebden whither he used to retire in me- 
 ditative hours, and which became known as Foster's Cave. 
 His wife Ann was the fitting spouse of such a husband. Her 
 piety was of the same order as his ; her decision still more 
 conspicuous. One day, before their marriage, Mr Foster 
 happened in her presence to be in a desponding mood. " I 
 cannot," he said, "keep a wife." — " Then I will work and 
 keep my husband," rejoined Ann. 
 
 On the 17th of Sentember 1770, their son John was bom. 
 
I JOHN FOSTER. 241 
 
 It soon became evident that the child inherited more or 
 less the disposition of either parent. He was a quiet, retir- 
 ing boy, who loved to separate himself from the boisterous 
 circle of youthful mirth, and to commune with his heart 
 alone; his sympathies were not diflfusive, his likings were 
 few ; we hear but of one friend of his own age ; he lacked 
 the glad buoyancy of early youth, and soon learned to wan- 
 der musing by the brook side or in the lonely wood. In 
 this we recognise the son of that John Foster who used to 
 meditate and to pray in the cave beside the murmuring Heb- 
 <ien. He was, however, nowise destitute of acute feelings 
 or strong energies : here he took after his other parent 
 When he did love or hate, he did either welL 
 
 But it soon became manifest that he possessed elements of 
 •character distinctively his own. He was not merely shy and 
 silent, heedless of boyish sports ; he was not only an obser- 
 vant, sagacious, precociously wise, and, as neighbours said, 
 ^* old-fashioned" little man : he was conscious, besides, of feel- 
 ings with which no sympathy was to be expected from any one, 
 — of pensive yearnings, and half-defined longings, which shut 
 him, by the barrier of a strong individuality, from the throng. 
 His sensibilities were tender to a degree rare in boyhood ; 
 he " abhorred spiders for killing flies, and abominated but- 
 ohers /' his imagination tyrannized over him, painting to his 
 eye the scene of torture, or the skeleton, or the apparition, 
 until he shrank in loathing and terror from their ghastly 
 distinctness. This delicate sensibility, manifesting itself in 
 a fellow-feeling with every being that did or could sufier 
 pain, and this eye-to-eye clearness of imaginative vision, were 
 determining elements in his developed character. 
 
 He was about fourteen years of age when he ventured so 
 far to unbosom himself to his friend Henry Horsfall as to 
 let him know that the peace of his heart had been disturbed, 
 and that it was only by taking to himself as a garment the 
 
242 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 robe of Christ's righteousness that he could regain calmness 
 of mind. This was the turning-point of his life, the occasion 
 of his first and irrevocably determining to enlist in the army 
 of light. A long period elapsed ere his whole system of be- 
 lief evolved itself, and many a change passed over his spirit 
 before he finally reached a station in which he could calmly 
 feel and act, unshackled by fear and unshaken by doubt ; 
 but he had taken the step of separation, he had lifted his eye 
 from earth to heaven ; and whatever change — of circum- 
 stance, of opinion, of feeling — may afterwards have taken 
 place — however he may have doubted, whithersoever he may 
 have wandered — this attitude was never altered. 
 
 When he attained his seventeenth year he became a mem- 
 ber of the Baptist congregation at Hebden Bridge ; and about 
 the same time resolved to dedicate himself to the Christian 
 ministry. For three years he devoted himself to theological 
 and general study in Brearly Hall, an educational institute 
 in the neighbourhood. While here, he continued, as in his 
 early boyhood, to lend his parents occasional assistance in 
 their labours at the loom. 
 
 He now applied himself to the acquisition of knowledge 
 with intense earnestness. For whole nights he read and 
 meditated, choosing as his retreat on such occasions a grove 
 in Dr Fawcett's garden. His mind was tardy in its opera- 
 tions. He performed his scholastic exercises with extreme 
 slowness. But his efforts were unremitting and determined ; 
 and no doubt it was here he acquired much of that exten- 
 sive, though somewhat miscellaneous information, of which 
 his works give ample evidence. Here, too, he was enabled 
 to indulge his love of the various aspects of nature. It was 
 his recreation to ramble in the neighbouring glens and wood- 
 lands. On one occasion he wandered for a whole night with 
 a friend under the open sky, that he might note the vaiying 
 features of twilight, of darkness, and especially of dav/n. He 
 
jon:s FOSTER. 243 
 
 displayed at an early period, what lie continued to evince 
 through life, a deep and genuine love of nature. In early- 
 days it led him to wander in solitary ways, while other boys 
 were at sport; and in after years it caused him to speak of 
 those unacquainted with the sympathetic emQtions of a deep 
 affection for nature, as seeming to want a sense. He loved 
 every aspect of sky and earth ; but the naturally serious cast 
 of his mind was evinced by his preference of the great and 
 gloomy. The glories of the moon streaming over the forest, 
 and showing the dim crag, with its giant shadow in the slum- 
 bering lake, — the slow march of the laden clouds across the 
 sky, — the cleft cloud, whose jagged edges were fringed with 
 white fire, and from whose caverns issued the laugh of the 
 thunder, — these fitted best his sombre yet vivid imagina- 
 tion, and yielded him the pleasure of a stern enchantment 
 But he had also a look of sympathy and love for more deli- 
 cate and minute beauties. He would watch lovingly the 
 kindling smile of nature as Spring awoke and opened the 
 gates to Summer : he heard with a thrill of joy the note of 
 the bird, and speaks often of the sky-people, the inhabitants 
 of the summer sunbeams, that were such favourites with Jean 
 Paul. Yet Foster's love of nature was perhaps never the 
 passionate love of the poet; and the flow and freshness of its 
 early manifestations were soon impaired by a habit of schooled 
 and conscious observation. He exercised a careful supervi- 
 sion over his thoughts and impressions, striving to subject 
 all the operations of his intellect to a "military discipline." 
 He learned to observe nature with a certain constrained ac- 
 curacy, to jot down his various impressions of her beauty, to 
 gather analogies, similes, and so on ; by which method, it is 
 to be feared, coy nature will not be known. Foster was in 
 all things too self-conscious. He would have the flower up 
 to see how its roots were thriving. He would lay out his 
 mind iike a Dutch garden, all trimmed, and squared, and 
 
244 JOHN FOSTER, 
 
 ordered. This is an important element in his character. It 
 impeded that easy natural flow of thought and diction, it 
 dulled that sportive buoyancy of soul, which indicate, as they 
 spring from, an energy working much by spontaneity and 
 impulse, a knowledge that has Ueen naturally matured, and 
 is ever fresh and verdant. We meet in his works with 
 glimpses of insight into the vast region of our unconscious 
 influences ; but he seems to have considered it his duty to 
 order every movement of his own mind with an algebraic 
 exactness; he never fairly embraced and submitted to the 
 beautiful and important truth, that the noblest education is 
 that of sympathy, when, with viewless hand, she throws open 
 the gates of the soul in order that the forms of beauty and 
 the light of truth may silently enter in. 
 
 The acuteness of Foster's sensibilities has been already al- 
 luded to : another word must be devoted to the subject ere 
 passing on. In no way is he more frequently or dogmati- 
 cally characterized than by the word "misanthrope." This 
 word is an absolute misapplication. It can be proved that, 
 from his earliest to his latest years, his heart was tenderly, 
 delicately kind. His sensibilities were not less, but more 
 acute, than those of his fellow-men. 
 
 At first glance he appeared cold. It was natural that he 
 should : the circumstances of his boyhood, and perhaps a 
 constitutional tendency, determined it so. He had no very 
 early associates ; his parents were far advanced in life, and 
 did nothing to encourage the healthful sprightliness of child- 
 hood j his brother Thomas was too much younger than him- 
 self to be his playmate ; he had no sister. The consequence 
 was, that he grew up externally cold and self-involved. On 
 his sedate and pensive countenance there was not that look 
 of vivacious geniality, that flower-like smiling, which is na- 
 ture's appointed expression and emblem of kindness of heart. 
 He possessed no advantages of face and form, nor had he 
 
JOHN FOSTER, 245 
 
 that nameless power to attract and please wliich makes some 
 persons universal favourites. 
 
 Yet all this was in his case consistent with the fact that 
 he was naturally one of the most truly loveable of human be- 
 ings ; noble, gentle, tenderly affectionate. His nature, in 
 its depths, had a far truer and deeper tenderness than that 
 of thousands of genial, ever-smiling, companionable boys and 
 girls. The proof of this is twofold : first, direct manifesta- 
 tions, on his part, of delicate sensibility ; and, next, that the 
 supposition of an underlying tenderness of nature is neces- 
 sary to explain, and sufficient for the explanation of, several 
 remarkably prominent leanings and opinions of Foster. 
 
 Among the direct manifestations of genuine and tender 
 kindness, we may place first his acute feeling of the suffer- 
 ings borne by the lower animals. This is an infallible pledge 
 of kindness of heart. In Foster's case it was a deep, constant, 
 and considerate feeling. Yery interesting also, in this point 
 of view, is that sense of a void in his heart, to be filled only 
 by a loved and loving object, which breathes in his early 
 letters. He yearned with intense desire for some fully sym- 
 pathizing heart " Cold as you pronounce me," he exclaims 
 in an early letter, "I should prefer the deep animated affec- 
 tion of one person whom I could entirely love, to all the tri- 
 bute fame could levy within the amplest circuit of her flight" 
 Again, — " Something seems to say. Come, come away ; T am 
 but a gloomy ghost among the living and the happy. There 
 is no need of me ; I shall never be loved as I wish to be 
 loved, and as I could love. ... I can never become 
 deeply important to any one ; and the unsuccessful effort to 
 become so costs too much, in the painful sentiments which 
 the affections feel when they return mortified from the fer- 
 vent attempt to give themselves to some heart which would 
 welcome them with a pathetic warmth." These are the ac- 
 cents of a really tender, as well as noble nature ; of one which 
 
 T 
 
246 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 found no joy in isolation, although met by disappointment 
 in the throng. Foster was not recognised by men in gene- 
 ral to be kind ; but none ever came into close converse with 
 him who did not know it well : there were deep and pure 
 fountains of tenderness in his heart, but far secluded from 
 the general gaze. There are wells among the calcined ridgea 
 of the Abyssinian deserts known only to the wild gazelle, 
 and for which even the wandering Arab seeks in vain for 
 ages. Many a man there is who is deemed hard and unge- 
 nial, merely because his kindness is hidden deep and cannot 
 be approached by ordinary paths. Further and conclusive 
 proofs of Foster's deep kindliness of nature will unfold them- 
 selves as we proceed. 
 
 At the age of twenty-one he left Brearley and entered the 
 Baptist College in Bristol. His application here must have 
 been fitful. "Probably," he says, writing to a friend in 
 Yorkshire, " there never was a more indolent student at this 
 or any other academy. I know but very little more of 
 learning, or anything else, than when I left you. I have 
 been a trifler all my life to this hour." But his mind was 
 advancing. His letters testify to strong moral earnestness, 
 to a stern and manly ambition, and to a ripening soundness 
 of judgment. His eye was ever upwards. 
 
 He left the Bristol seminary ere he completed his twenty- 
 second year. His education, which, so far as school and col- 
 lege were concerned, was now completed, must be pronounced 
 defective. A general idea of the classics he had, but nothing 
 more ; his memory seems not to have been trained by any 
 systematic discipline, and, though by no means singularly 
 bad, was yet a cause of complaint to him through life ; his 
 reasoning powers do not appear to have been matured by 
 any course of scientific or metaphysical study, and all his 
 works bear witness to the fact. By miscellaneous reading, 
 however, he had gained a large, though heterogeneous, stock 
 
JOUN FOSTEK. 247 
 
 of knowledge j his intellect, while certainly giving no clear 
 promise that it would ever be of that embracing kind which 
 casts its generalizing glance over vast tracts of history, or 
 science, or philosophy, had yet proved itself possessed of great 
 natural vigour and shrewdness ; beneath all, — the substra- 
 tum of his whole mind, — lay a radical honesty, a penetrating 
 sense of reality. This last armed him with an almost irre- 
 sistible power to pierce disguises and bum up moral and so- 
 cial cobweb and filigree. 
 
 Such, in meagre outline, were the boyhood and youth oi 
 Foster. We have seen him under the influences of the home 
 and the school. We now arrive at that portion of his his- 
 tory which is in every case critical. We have to observe 
 him as he emerges from the quiet region, and the still though 
 powei-ful influences which have hitherto moulded his charac- 
 ter, and enters a wider and more perilous sphere. The kindly 
 words and glances of a godly father and mother, the friendly 
 admonitions of Christian instructors, must give place to the 
 rude teaching of expeiience. Till now he has been gently 
 and genially swayed by influences exterior to himself; he 
 has gone on in peace and trustfulness, unconsciously leaning 
 on the thought and knowledge of others ; not to any mea- 
 sure of excess, but rightly and blissfully, he has hitherto im- 
 bibed the impressions of his circle, and been what it is seem- 
 ly for a boy and a youth to be who has been planted by God 
 in a Christian family and a Christian land. But now his in- 
 structors are to be the many voices of contemporaneous life : 
 his keen and susceptible mind is to be brought into contact 
 with the agencies that ever work in the great world, shaping 
 out the future ; he is to know what men in their various 
 grades and nations are doing and saying, that he may man- 
 fully determine how it is his duty to speak and to act. He 
 is to make his opinions his own, by taking them down for a 
 time from those niches in his mind where the hand of parent 
 
248 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 or instructor had placed tliem, subjecting tliem to a careful 
 and earnest scrutiny, and either replacing them or casting 
 them away, by the free yet resolute hand of individual will. 
 He is to know the agony of doubt. He is to be flung from 
 youth's pinnacles of hope, till he almost discerns in the dis- 
 tance the dim Lethe of despair. He is, so to speak, to serve 
 his apprenticeship to the time, to be made acquainted with 
 its wants, its sicknesses, its conditions, its weapons, that at 
 length he may step forth a skilful and well-approved work- 
 man, knowing what it is foolish or boyish to attempt, what 
 it is imbecile or cowardly to shun. 
 
 For the accomplishment of this high object a period of ten 
 years will not be too long. We shall take a broad glance 
 along it, specifying a few of its more prominent influences,, 
 and endeavouring, in his own words, to trace his progress 
 through it. 
 
 It will be necessary for us in the outset to ask, what were 
 the great public influences of the time : the question can be 
 briefly answered. 
 
 We have already had occasion to refer to the French Re- 
 volution. It is unnecessary to do more now than to note 
 the extent of its influence. Every vein and artery of the 
 social system, and that in all lands, felt that tremendous throb 
 at the heart of the world. Thrones, senates, churches, felt 
 it ; nay, to pursue the metaphor, every smallest capillary to 
 which blood could circulate was afiected, every unobserved 
 assemblage where eye caught light from answering glance^ 
 every college coterie, every family circle. There was not a 
 noble young heart in Britain but beat more quickly at the 
 great tidings ; and almost universally it was the beating of 
 exultant sympathy. The revolutionary fire went burning 
 and blasting, and the eyes of the young kindled into joy and 
 hope. " It is," such was the universal shout, " the breaking; 
 of the dawn ; the mists are retiring before it ; nothing bufc 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 2x3 
 
 mist is dissipated ; presently tlie wide landscape, in a glory 
 and beauty as of calm and bounteous summer, will spread 
 away to our dazzled eyes towards the horizon of the future.'* 
 They did not reflect that the path of fire is over a soil left 
 blackened and sterile, where only the charred skeletons of the 
 once proud forest remain, and that long years revolve ere na- 
 ture kindly mantles it in green. Those were the days when 
 Coleridge and South ey were building, of cloud and moon- 
 beam, their notable fabric of pantisocracy, — the government 
 of all by all ; where every man, as Louis Blanc promised, 
 would keep his carriage. James Montgomery, in those days, 
 found himself a dangerous person, and was immured in a 
 prison. Wordsworth looked dark and dangerous. It was a 
 strange and tumultuous time. The great era of doubting had 
 finally come. All things were subjected to a trial as of fire, 
 and antiquity seemed only to make them burn better. 
 
 Foster was deeply affected by the great changes taking 
 place. Both politically and religiously, his opinions became 
 unsettled, — one might almost say, wild ; while the turmoil 
 and confusion in his mind were greatly aggravated by indi- 
 vidual characteristics. For far different questions presented 
 themselves to his mind than troubled other democrats. He 
 pondered deeply on the human tale, and the unfathomable 
 dealings of God with man. That insatiable yearning, which 
 has marked the noblest minds, to penetrate the gloom that 
 surrounds the destiny of man, to call a voice from the silence 
 in which we thread our way through immensity, — that sub- 
 lime want and disease which points to the state which is man's 
 health, and the place which is man's home, — was a prominent 
 and life-long characteristic of Foster. At first his ideas 
 on these matters were confused, tumultuous, wrapped in 
 deepest gloom ; for a time, a ray as of dawning light seemed 
 to fall on them, and he was joyous and full of hope ; then 
 this again proved but an earthly meteor, and no true herald 
 
250 JOHN FOSTEK. 
 
 of day ; finally, the gloom again fell in thick shadows, but in 
 his own hand was a lamp which made him at least secure and 
 calm. 
 
 " At some moments,'' he says, "life, the world, mankind, 
 religion, and eternity, appear to me like one vast scene of tre- 
 mendous confusion, stretching before me far away, and closed 
 in shades of the most dreadful darkness, — a darkness which 
 only the most powerful splendours of Deity can illumine, and 
 which appears as if they never yet had illumined it." 
 
 Such causes of internal unrest complicated gi-eauv tJtie dif- 
 ficulties with which Foster had to contend. As ytx, tne xxght 
 of religion shed no definite radiance. He had not settled for 
 himself the old question, put so emphatically in our time, 
 " What think ye of Christ, — whose Son is He V^ He was 
 not absolutely sure whether He was the Son of God, or only 
 the supreme of finite beings. He looked eagerly in a direc- 
 tion difierent from that where rested, calm amid all tempests, 
 the banner of the Prince of Peace. He turned for a time 
 to Thomas Paine. The first rude accents of universal free- 
 dom, which, rude as they were, deserve our respect, caught 
 his ear ; he spoke of the " rights of men," and " all that, and 
 all that." jN'ay, with a smile of amazement, we see the gentle, 
 pensive, musing Foster, in Dublin, hand in glove with a crew 
 of fiery democratic Irishmen, calling himself a " son of 
 Brutus !" 
 
 The aspect, indeed, of this whole period of Foster s history 
 is that of distraction and disquiet. There is a want of set- 
 tled determination, of deliberate working energy, of manlike 
 fixedness of aim. You mark in his active life the alternation 
 of spasmodic efibrt with too great relaxation of mind ; and 
 what remain of his writings of the period bear a similar tes- 
 timony. There are flashes of strong discernment in thought, 
 and striking brilliancy in expression ; of indications of ge- 
 nius there is no lack ; but we ever feel that this, as he tells 
 
JOHN FOSTEK. 251 
 
 US he was himself conscious, is not his rest. One thing, how- 
 ever, is always beyond doubt, and it is of a nature to impart 
 to all deviations and distractions a deep value and interest. 
 Through his whole life and thinking there bums the fire of 
 an indestructible ardour in the search for truth, and a deter- 
 mination, come what may, to put up with no counterfeit ', 
 sacred and unquenchable, we see this glowing in his letters 
 and stray sentences, a veiled radiance, but of hdavenly bright- 
 ness. Was not this the light that had been kindled in him 
 when he unbosomed his youthful sorrow to Henry Horsfall ? 
 In early life, "before the age of twenty," he commenced 
 the practice of jotting down observations and reflections ; 
 of these he carefiilly copied out a copious selection, entitling 
 them, A Chinese Garden of Flowers and Weeds, It is a strange 
 raedley, of great interest, and strikingly illustrative of the 
 varying mood of his mind. It abounds in passages of beauty, 
 and even of grandeur ; at intervals we meet an observation 
 on men and character somewhat severely true ; his strong 
 tendency towards the mysterious, his deep, devout earnest- 
 ness, the excellences and the defects of his imagination, and 
 his genuine, though somewhat restrained and impaired love 
 of nature, all reveal themselves. He longs for what he names 
 "an extensive atmosphere of consciousness," but which might 
 be better characterized as a universal and tender sympathy, 
 which, "like an -^olean harp," might "arrest even the va- 
 grant winds, and make them music." Of a calm and beau- 
 tiful evening we hear him say, that it is as if the soul of 
 Eloisa pervaded the air. He reads Milton, and pictures to 
 himself his world of spirits. He peers earnestly into the 
 deeps of the olden eternity, and could even wish for death 
 to snap the gravitation of earth : " I cannot wonder," he says, 
 "that this intense and sublime curiosity has sometimes de- 
 molished the corporeal prison, by flinging it from a precipice 
 or into the sea." Then, it may be, his imagination lapses 
 
252 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 into a wild and freakish mood : he figures himself, in great 
 exultation, tossing on the waves of a flaming ocean, rising 
 sky-high on the peaks of fire ; or, he looks on a file of clouds 
 slowly and darkly trooping along the sky before the wind, 
 his imagination transforming them into gaunt and sullen giants, 
 that frown grimly to the smile of the interspersed azure. 
 Presently, in milder and higher mood, he dreams of a visit- 
 ant that comes to his earnest longings from the celestial choirs ; 
 he walks in thought by his side, propounds to him the ques- 
 tions he has been gathering up for eternity, listens, in rever- 
 ing and wondering love, to every word in reply, and thinks 
 that he has at last found his ideal friend and his satisfying 
 informant. Soon he is again in the throng of common men 
 and women, making his half-cynical remarks ; he gravely lets 
 us know that, when he goes into company, he can see the 
 ladies taking his measure, and thinking they have it, while 
 he knows well enough they have not nor are capable of hav- 
 ing. Some one speaks to him of a certain " narrow-minded 
 religionist;" "Mr T.,'* he replies, "sees religion not as a 
 sphere, but as a line ; and it is the identical line in which he 
 IS moving." Sometimes his satiric fancy takes a wider sweep ; 
 and, fancying the sun an intelligence, he figures his rage and 
 disappointment at the miserable show the world turns out 
 for him to light up, " a tiresome repetition of stupidity, follies, 
 and crimes." 
 
 Foster's life, during this transition period, was externally 
 as well as internally full of vicissitude. He went from situa- 
 tion to situation, from England to Ireland, from Ireland to 
 England, and from England to Ireland again, without finding 
 a permanent resting-place. His preaching was nowhere ac- 
 ceptable with the mass of the people ; instead of being a cen- 
 tre of attraction, he was decidedly a centre of repulsion, in the 
 congregations where he ministered. He was really and deeply 
 defective as a preacher. His manner was exceedingly bad 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 253 
 
 I do not doubt, also, that a tendency to excessive refining 
 made his sermons difficult to follow. The writer over whose 
 page a reader can pore until he has analyzed every clause and 
 paragraph, may trace what labyrinths he chooses to enter, 
 and may lead his readers by what thin silken thread or what 
 faint taper-light he thinks fit ; but oratory of every sort, and 
 none the less, but rather the more, pulpit oratory, demands 
 the strongly marked line of distinction, the bold and massive 
 argument, the clear, broad gleam of light. Of this Foster 
 was never fully conscious, or, if conscious of the fact, and of 
 his want, he yet failed to amend it. It might, too, be affirmed 
 that his tone of remark had at times an air somewhat unna- 
 tural and far-fetched ; not obvious certainly, but not perfectly 
 natural ; and freshness and natm-e must unite to produce li- 
 terary excellence. However it was, he was unsuccessful as 
 a preacher. He went from chapel to chapel in vain j his 
 delicacies were rejected by the body of the people : they de- 
 sired bread. There were generally a few who esteemed his 
 teaching very highly. 
 
 To trace Foster's external career in all its changes during 
 these ten years is uncalled for. * His general course of life 
 can be easily conceived. He spent much time in musing. 
 By the banks of the Tyne, and in the meadows about New- 
 castle, he might have been seen, pensive and thoughtful, his 
 -eye often abstracted, yet at times lit up with a glance of keen- 
 est scrutiny and shrewdness. At Chichester, where we find 
 him a few years afterwards, he used to pace the aisles of his 
 chapel, in the silent moonlight, thinking earnestly; and it 
 seems to have been in those still hours that wider and calmer 
 views touching time and eternity, God and man, gradually 
 opened up before him. 
 
 One or two extracts from his correspondence of this time 
 will best illustrate his mental condition : — 
 
 ^* I sometimes fall into profound musings on the state of 
 
254 
 
 JOHN FOSTER, 
 
 this great world, on the nature and the destinies of man, on 
 the subject of the question, * What is truth V The whole 
 hemisphere of contemplation appears inexpressibly strange and 
 mysterious. It is cloud pursuing cloud, forest after forest, 
 and Alps upon Alps. It is in vain to declaim against scep- 
 ticism. I feel with an emphasis of conviction, and wonder, 
 and regret, that almost all things are covered with thickest 
 darkness, that the number of things to which certainty be- 
 longs is small. I hope to enjoy the sunshine of the other 
 world. One of the very few things that appear to me not 
 doubtful is the truth of Christianity in general.'' These are 
 suggestive words. The earnest, religious Foster, gazes for- 
 ward and around ; in every direction he sees stretching away 
 the infinitude of wonder, in which floats our little world, and 
 his eye falls only on thick tempestuous gloom j he turns al- 
 most in despair from the clouded heaven, and longs for the 
 sunlight of eternity. On one point he is assured : but it is 
 not sufficient to give him rest and satisfaction. Christianity 
 came from God : this he accepts as a general proposition. 
 And while he doubts not of this, while he deliberately and 
 immoveably believes that the Maker has broken silence in 
 time, and spoken to the creature in Christianity, he is severed 
 by an unfathomable gulf from every variety of mere philoso- 
 phic morality, from all that can be called bare natural reli- 
 gion. Yet this is not enough to give him rest ; general be- 
 liefs never bring stable tranquillity. He knows that God 
 has spoken : but can a reasonable being, so believing, rest 
 while he has no definite conviction of the import of what He 
 has said ? 
 
 There is progress indicated in the next, " Oh, what a dif- 
 ficult thing it is to be a Christian ! I feel the necessity of 
 reform through all my soul. When I retire into thought, I 
 find myself environed by a crowd of impressive and awful 
 images ; I fix an ardent gaze on Christianity, assuredly the 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 255 
 
 last Lest gift of Heaven to men ; on Jesus the agent and ex- 
 ample of infinite love ; on time as it passes away ; on per- 
 fection as it shines beauteous as heaven, and, alas ! as remote ; 
 on my own beloved soul which I have injured, and on the 
 unhappy multitude of souls around me ; and I ask myself, 
 Why do not my passions burn 1 "Why does not zeal arise 
 in mighty wrath to dash my icy habits in pieces, to scourge 
 me from indolence into fervid exertion, and to trample all 
 mean sentiments in the dust 1 At intervals I feel devotion 
 and benevolence, and a surpassing ardour ; but when they are 
 turned towards substantial, laborious operation, they fly and 
 leave me spiritless amid the iron labour. Still, however, I 
 do confide in the efficacy of pei^istive prayer ; and I do hope 
 that the Spirit of the Lord will yet come mightily upon me, 
 and carry me on through toils, and suffering, and death, to 
 stand in Mount Zion among the followei-s of the Lamb !" 
 
 As probably every man of high moral and intellectual en- 
 dowment, Foster, in the first ardour and poetry of youth, had 
 looked upon perfection as it shone beauteous as heaven ; he 
 had felt profoundly and unaffectedly that the world is not 
 dressed in those robes of purity and beauty in which it could 
 possibly have come from the hand of an infinite God. He 
 recognised the universal imperfection, and felt it most keenly 
 in his own bosom. At times his heart would burn with an 
 ardour that appeared unquenchable ; he seemed to shout for 
 the battle, and to rush out to confront the foe : but the world 
 stood there in its armed and serried ranks, its thousand eyes 
 looking stony defiance and inflexible hate ; he dropped his 
 weapon, and recoiled before the iron labour. But he has made 
 progress. A general belief in Christianity has become an 
 earnest personal straining of the eye towards Jesus ; though 
 all on earth fail him, and though his own heart harbours 
 traitors, yet is there an ever-living Spirit of the Lord, an4 
 His ear can be reached by a mortal by persistive prayer. . 
 
256 JOHN FOSTER 
 
 " Every new reflection," he writes, " tells me that my evan- 
 gelic determinations ought to be, and every hope flatters that 
 they will be, irreversible. Assembling into one view all things 
 in the world that are important, and should be dear, to man- 
 kind, I distinguish the Christian cause as the celestial soul of 
 the assemblage, evincing the same pre-eminence, and challen- 
 ging the same emphatic passion, which, in any other case, mind 
 does beyond the inferior elements ; and I have no wish of 
 equal energy with that which aspires to the most intimate 
 possible connection with Him who is the life of this cause, 
 and the life of the world.'' 
 
 Yet again, writing to his friend Hughes, he says : — " The 
 gospel is to me, not a matter of complacent speculation only, 
 but of momentous use, of urgent necessity. I come to Jesus 
 Christ because I need pardon, and purification, and strength. 
 / feel more abased, as He appears more divine. In the dust 
 I listen to his instructions and commands. I pray fervently 
 in His name, and above all things, for a happy union with 
 Him. I do, and will, proclaim Him. For His sake I am 
 willing to go through evil report and good report. I wish to 
 live and die in His service. Is not this some resemblance of 
 * the simplicity' of the fishermen, on which you insist with 
 emphasis ? This spirit, my dear friend, is in a certain de- 
 gree to be, I trust, divinely augmented — assuredly mine. 
 The Galilean faith has gained the ascendant," &c. 
 
 " The Galilean faith has gained the ascendant 1" After 
 all doubting and striving, this is the resting-place ; he sits 
 like a child at the feet of Jesus. Silently as the sleep of 
 returning health, there steals over the mind of Foster that 
 peace which was the legacy of our Master. True, his con- 
 tendings are not yet at an end, darkness and dismay at times 
 seem still closing round him ; but he now discerns his work, 
 be now sees the goal, he can now measure the enemy's force, 
 and knows Who is fighting on his side ; stem as he may feel 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 257 
 
 the contest to be, mournfully slight as may be bis impression 
 on the ranks of the foe, he knows that, one good day, the 
 battle will be won. 
 
 His intellectual position he thus defines : — " My opinions 
 are in substance decidedly Calvinistic. I am firmly con- 
 vinced, for instance, of the doctrines of original sin, predesti- 
 nation, imputed righteousness, the necessity of the Holy Spi- 
 rit's operation to convert the mind, final perseverance, &c. <fec. 
 As to the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, I do not deny 
 that I had once some degree of doubt, but not such a degree 
 ever as to carry me anything near the adoption of an oppo- 
 site or different opinion. It was by no means disbelief; it 
 was rather a hesitation to decide, and without much, I think, 
 of the vanity of speculation. But for a long while past I 
 have fully felt the necessity of dismissing subtle speculations 
 and distinctions, and of yielding a humble, cordial assent to 
 the mysterious truth, just as and hecaicse the Scriptures de- 
 clare it, without inquiring, * How can these things be f " 
 
 Thus had Foster, now in his twenty-ninth year, arrived 
 at that momentous epoch in a man's life when he can feel 
 with a good conscience that his work is found, and that, un- 
 til his allotment of time is spent, he is delivered from the 
 fickle and distempered sway of change. The period of this 
 consummation was auspiciously marked by another of equally 
 happy omen. About this time he met one whom he could 
 entirely love, and who reciprocated the affection. 
 
 A few words will be well spent in glancing at this last 
 happy crisis in Foster's life. In judging of one who has 
 been so widely characterized as a misanthrope and imper- 
 sonation of cold intellectual sternness, it may be of some avail 
 to know assuredly how he acted as lover, as father, and as 
 husband. 
 
 The biography of Foster, by his friends Messrs Ryland and 
 Sheppard, ought ere now to have dissipated the idea that he 
 
258 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 was unsocial Possessed of delicate sympathies and high in- 
 tellectual tastes, he was, of necessity, sensible of something 
 alien and uncomfortable in an atmosphere of dulness, pre- 
 sumption, or frivolity ; but he enjoyed, with a more lively 
 relish than is anywise common, the gentle, animating influ- 
 ence of noble converse. 
 
 This fact is attested, and the assurance we have that there 
 was no total absence of light and poetical ingredients in Fos- 
 ter's character is confirmed, by his short series of letters to Miss 
 Caroline Carpenter, a young lady who attracted his attention 
 before he met her who became his wife. These are quite in 
 the tone of a sentimental scion of chivalry. He waxes very 
 gallant. He is not perhaps in exact drawing-room costume; 
 the clank of the chain armour may be heard, half-mufiled by 
 the silken doublet ; even in his mood of extreme politeness, 
 he cannot be weak or frivolous. He does not attain a faultless 
 ball-room idiom ; he has always had something to say, so that 
 he has not had practice in the art of piquantly and simper- 
 ingly saying nothing. Perhaps, for a man like Foster, the 
 thing transcends the limited human faculties. " Pure, invo- 
 luntary, unconscious nonsense," Southey thought, " is inimi- 
 table by any eflbrt of sense." But no one can read these 
 letters without recognising a fine youthful strength of emo- 
 tion, a genial heartiness and warmth, removed very far from 
 aught allied to austerity. Miss Carpenter died young. 
 
 It was not until he attained his thirtieth or thirty-first 
 year, that Foster met the lady to whom he was afterwards 
 married. She was a woman cast in no common mould. Her 
 faculties and her will were powerful ; her feelings were of 
 great strength, and rested more deeply in her breast than is 
 usual in her sex ; her character was completed and crowned 
 by earnest Christianity. She had entered regions of contem- 
 plation far beyond those of ordinary minds, and her deep 
 musings on the dark and wonderful in human destiny had 
 
JOHX FOSTER. 259 
 
 iraparted to her character a stateliness and solemn repose. 
 She was an earnest, intellectual woman, sensible to high ambi- 
 tions, and fitted every way to be the friend and counsellor 
 of a true man. Foster addressed his essays to her ; she could 
 judge of them sternly and well. She was able to sympathize 
 with him in his highest moments. N"ay, she was perhaps by 
 one shade too congenial with Foster ; another gleam of sun- 
 light had been a clear advantage. A friendship such as can 
 exist only between noble spirits arose between them, a friend- 
 ship founded in natural, unforced sympathy, and growing by 
 the waters of immortality. After two years of intimacy, it 
 began to lose its name in the intensity of love, and they re- 
 solved to become knit in the closest bonds with which friend- 
 ship can be bound on earth. Five years still elapsed ere 
 they were maiTied. Foster's preaching could not be depended 
 on for a livelihood; and it was only when he became perma- 
 nently connected with the Eclectic Eevieio, that he took home 
 his friend, and called her wife. After five years waiting, he 
 did this with signal joy. All nature, he tells us, seemed 
 brightening around him ; Spring advanced with a new smile ; 
 the very roses that wreathed the young year's brow caught 
 new radiance from the dawning hope. 
 
 The married life of Foster was such as might have been 
 hoped for. There had been no taint in the original affection. 
 There had been no base thought of gold. Nor had he married 
 in the blindness of passion. For this, too, is a fatally erroneous 
 course. Men are to marry in emotions they share with the 
 angel ; not with the animal. Foster knew that when, in 
 the calm and real atmosphere of life, the fever of love's first 
 intensity was cooled, and passion's fine frenzy had passed 
 away, he would still see in the eyes of his Maria the immor- 
 tal sympathy of friendship, deeper than sex, stronger than 
 passion, fadeless to eternity. Perhaps the severest form of 
 l^uman sorrow, that which most nearly approaches the slow 
 
260 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 gnawing agony of him fixed hopeless on the immoveable roct, 
 arises from marriage in which there never was any friendship, 
 "but the original bond was earthly passion, arrogating to itself, 
 with the impudent lie of a harlot, the heavenly name of love. 
 It is only base natures that are beguiled by the vulgar glare 
 of gold, natures incapable of lofty joy or acute sorrow. But 
 passion is a Syren of more winning song, of more fatally 
 charming lure ; the warm, the impulsive, the noble, fall vic- 
 tims to her, and, after a short delirious dream, awake to a life 
 of hopeless misery. Friendship and love must unite in every 
 married union where happiness can be reasonably expected 
 or truly deserved : and friendship is an ajQfection arising from 
 pure sympathy of spirit, independent of aught else. Let none 
 look for happiness in marriage who are unable deliberately 
 and firmly to declare, that it would be a happiness to live 
 together for life, though they were of the same sex. I state 
 this with some breadth, and do so with consideration ; I 
 point to a hidden rock round which the ocean seems to smile 
 in sunny calm, but on which many a noble bark has perished. 
 Foster's marriage was such as beseems a man. The affection 
 began in friendship; and around this, as around a rod of 
 heaven's gold, the flowers and fruits of earth's pure love, those 
 tender joys and beloved interests which a bounteous and 
 motherly nature fails not to supply, when man has rightly 
 and valiantly performed his part, gradually and gracefully 
 came to cluster. 
 
 *' In passion's flame 
 
 Hearts melt, but melt like ice soon harder froze. 
 
 True love strikes root in reason ' 
 
 Foster was never compelled, in his moments of lofby thought 
 and exalted sentiment, to withdraw himself, even by silence, 
 from her who was to sojourn with him inseparably on earth; 
 he did not, in the presence of others, treat his wife's remarks 
 
 frivolous, or her opinions as slight : he found in her 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 261 
 
 sympathy, and accorded her the natural habitual respect, of 
 friendship. And let no one think that their happiness was 
 merely negative, — a monotonous and insipid respect or admi- 
 ration, instead of the warm, enthusiastic, unutterable inten- 
 sity of love. Love cast its golden anchors in their heart of 
 hearts, affecting every pulse of their being. 
 
 And a genial home they had ; natural fountains of childish 
 mirth and parental pride continually welling up within it. 
 Long after his marriage Foster wrote thus : — " I have noticed 
 the curious fact of the difference of the effect of what other 
 people's children do and our own. In the situations I have 
 formerly been in,' any great noise and racket of children would 
 have extremely incommoded me, if I wanted to read, think, 
 or write. But I never mind, as to any such matter of in- 
 convenience, how much din is made by these brats, if it is not 
 absolutely in the room where I am at work. When I am 
 with them, I am apt to make them, and join in making them, 
 make a still bigger tumult and noise, so that their mother 
 sometimes complains that we all want whipping together." 
 The happiness here is very real. The fact of "these brats" 
 being privileged is not unexampled. Jean Paul, when reso- 
 lute performance of duty made him deny himself even his or- 
 dinary meals, yet professed his inability to deny himself the 
 interruption of his children. Ko further refutation is required 
 of what has been alleged touching Foster's sternness in his 
 own hovisehold : this single passage, casting, as it does, a light 
 before and after, is the condensation of a thousand proofs that 
 every member of his family was a note in a perfect harmony, 
 and that, in the fine music which was the result, the silver 
 treble of childhood rung clearly and cheerily. Look at that 
 father as he rises from his work, yielding to the fond and 
 joyous impulse of his breast, snatching up his children, toss- 
 ing them in the air, and becoming merely the biggest and 
 loudest child of the group : then endeavour to suit the part 
 
262 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 he acts to the grave, stern, grimly intellectual Foster of \vlioui 
 you have heard. 
 
 A disorder in his throat, together with his striking unpo- 
 pularity, made it now advisable for Foster to relinquish re- 
 gular preaching. His virtual profession became literature. 
 During a protracted life he brought his influence to bear on 
 his age through the press. His residence was for the most 
 part the vicinity of Bristol. There he worked steadily, in 
 the heart of a peacefully happy home, cheered by the sym- 
 pathy of a noble wife and the glad looks of his own children. 
 In the following paragraphs, I shall endeavour first to define 
 generally the attitude in which he stood to God and man ; 
 and shall then more particularly refer to certain of the re- 
 markable points in his system of opinion. 
 
 When the restlessness of youtli began to settle into the se- 
 riousness of manhood, Foster seems to have looked more ear- 
 nestly into " the abysmal deeps of personality," into his own 
 soul, than ever formerly. He found it not what a spirit en- 
 dued with power to know its Author could normally, and by 
 original intention, be ; it was an exception and anomaly in 
 the works of Him who formed the lily and the star. And 
 this imperfection he perceived to be singular in its character. 
 The consciousness of himself and his race, written deep and 
 ineffaceable, as in eternal adamant, proclaimed man to be a 
 being, in such sense free, that he was responsible. The stain 
 on the flower and the speck in the star were innocent imper- 
 fection : the stain on his soul was guilt. Man stood on the 
 peaks of the world, where no other creature bom of earth 
 coidd come ; and, as to him alone it was given to gaze up- 
 ward and onward to the infinitude of spiritual glories, so for 
 him alone existed the possibility of an infinite descent. In 
 so mysterious and awful a system of relations, it was of un- 
 speakable moment that it should be certainly known that 
 there was a living and governing God This central iruih 
 
JOHN FOSTEB. 263 
 
 seems never to have been questioned by Foster. Nor did be 
 ever seriously doubt whether this God had actually and spe- 
 cially spoken in the Bibld. His doubts attached mainly to 
 the mode in which the word " Christ" was to be taken, — as 
 the word of reconcilement, of explanation, of healing, — the 
 explicative formula of the universe, — the ladder between time 
 and eternity, between God and man. Whether Christ was 
 God, or only a sublime created being, was for a time to him 
 doubtful. He questioned, he hesitated, he speculated. But 
 as his mind matured, and to the eye of contemplation the 
 universe seemed to deepen and widen around him, he became 
 gradually more and more impressed with the feebleness of 
 human speculation, and the strength of simple, if honest and 
 earnest, faith. He became keenly alive to the mystery which 
 envelops human things when contemplated by human reason. 
 The poor finite creature stood on his little world, and cast out 
 the measuring line of his tiny intellect into the abysses of in- 
 finitude ; for a little space it seemed to live ; for one little 
 moment it seemed to be piercing the darkness, like those dart- 
 ing threads of light seen in November ; but then it was swal- 
 lowed up in the infinite hollow of the night. He heard afar 
 the music of the redeemed ; he looked to the heaven of perfect 
 holiness ; he earnestly yearned thither ; but guilt obscured the 
 sky, and speculation could not pierce the gloom. The infinite 
 value of a definite declaration on the part of the living God be- 
 came then manifest; it seemed plain to his uncontrolled reason 
 that the Bible afforded such, in pronouncing Christ the equal 
 of the Father, the Infinite God. If this truth was mysterious, 
 it was at least certain : speculation, while unable to penetrate 
 mystery, had at the same time promoted doubt; but here 
 doubt was slain. He accepted the truth in question. Be- 
 lieving definitely in the divinity of Christ, and resolving to 
 take the facts of the universe as God had first fixed and then 
 revealed them, he adopted the general system of belief which 
 
264 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 has been that of so many of earth's most earnest and mighty 
 thinkers. He consented to see mankind as a drop of water 
 resting in the hollow of Jehovah's hand ; he subscribed to 
 all the essential articles of that reading of man's destiny and 
 God's revelation, known now for several ages as Calvinism. 
 Such was Foster's final religious attitude. 
 
 The political ground which he came to assume was worthy 
 of himself as a man and a Christian. When the atmosphere 
 of the world was all in vibration with the shouts of joy, of 
 triimiph, and of hope — when many nations seemed about to 
 join in choral dance around a freedom arrayed in the snowy 
 robe — ^when love was finally to become lord of all, and science, 
 the minister of love, to vanquish even death — ^it was not to 
 be wondered at that Foster, for a time, almost exulted in his 
 humanity, and forgot the chains which may cramp and de- 
 grade the soul bound by no external bondage. He took up, 
 as we have seen, with sons of Brutus and the> writings of 
 Tom Paine : perhaps the tough old world was to be reno- 
 vated even so ! But the earnestness of his being, the single- 
 ness of his eye, could not but dissipate such delusions. Gra- 
 dually the romantic light was seen to fade from human his- 
 tory and human nature. Like a true and valiant man, he 
 dared to look until he saw the worst ; and as he gazed, with 
 determined though saddening eye, he could not but perceive 
 that a long dark cloud, murky as the smoke of hell, shadowed 
 the generations of men ; that shouts of riot and revelling 
 might rise above it, and gleams of wild mirth break through, 
 but that, in general, it formed the fitting canopy of the lazar- 
 house, the scaffold, and the battle-field. The time when ty- 
 ranny and misery were to sink into a common grave, he was 
 compelled to allow, had not yet come. He awoke startled 
 from his dream of Eden, as at the flash of the cherubic swords. 
 But how did he act ? Terror-stricken, like a nervous child, 
 at the shouts of blasphemy and the deluge of blood, did he 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 265 
 
 tremble, and shriek, and rush back into the arms of the nurse, 
 —into old Toryism, and the worship of " whatever king doth 
 reign V Having looked long on the mountain, did he con- 
 clude no Moses would ever descend, and bow down to the 
 golden calf of despotism ? Ko. He took a position worthy 
 of a man who could look deliberately and choose firmly ; who 
 could hear above the dinning present the great voices of all 
 time ; a far truer position than many great men of his and 
 our time. It was manlier than Southey's, saner than Shel- 
 ley's, more stable and honest than Byron's. He held by the 
 great fact that, however defaced, however distorted, however 
 contaminated, freedom is in essence eternally noble ; and by 
 the kindred fact, that despotism, however tempered, however 
 embellished, is by nature poisonous and vile. For the pre- 
 sent, the graceful and musical motions of the free had passed 
 into the mad writhings and convulsive leapings of anarchy. 
 But he did not therefore believe the devil's elaborate lie, that, 
 because he had power to bring evil out of good, it was a right 
 and hopeful attempt to bring good oiit of essential evil. 
 
 " Lord of unceasing love, 
 From everlasting Thou ! we shall not die. 
 These, even these, in mercy didst Thou form, 
 Teachers of Good through Evil, by brief wrong 
 Making Truth lovely, and her future might 
 Magnetic o'er the fix'd untrembling heart." 
 
 It were difficult to conceive a more striking or conclusive 
 proof of the soundness and unimpaired vigour of Foster's in- 
 tellect,- after having brought his reavson reverently to accept 
 *' incredibilities," than is afforded by the fact that, after the 
 fierce revulsion in his ideas caused by the French Revolu- 
 tion, he still held, and continued with unchanging resolution 
 during life to hold, by the standard of freedom. 
 
 When we come more closely to survey Foster's system of 
 thought, as displayed in his writings and embodied in his 
 
266 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 life, we are met by one great belief which casts its shadow 
 over the whole. This is the belief in man's depravity. Hu- 
 man iniquity, wherever he looked, seemed to pollute all, to 
 pervert all. There is a certain gloomy sublimity in his tear- 
 ful gaze along the centuries. Where his eye falls, all seems 
 to become dark. As a storm in the high Alps has been ob- 
 served to hush the songs of the birds, and cast every gleam- 
 ing point into shade, so earth's boasted virtue and grandeur 
 faded in the look of Foster. You pointed him to the great 
 and good of the past, the wise and heroic, whose names are 
 the pride of nations : These, he said, were but the mountain- 
 peaks, that rose, few and solitary, into the sunlight, while a 
 world of ignorance, wretchedness, and crime, weltered below. 
 You told him of the literary masterpieces of bygone ages, of 
 sublime thoughts set in the perennial jewellery of poetic 
 beauty : These, he replied, were flowers, for the most pai-t 
 gaudy and ungraceful, growing on a putrid mass. You spoke 
 of the benign agencies which have been at work and are still 
 at work on man ; of the powers of science, of the refinements 
 of literature, of the gentle rain of education in the atmosphere 
 of earth, and the sunlight of religion coming down from hea- 
 ven : a sad smile passed over his features as he deeply mut- 
 tered. There is a power in man's heart, when acted upon 
 by the devil, to transform all these into " the sublime me- 
 chanics of depravity !" 
 
 This tearful thought was ever present with Foster, and was 
 ever a fountain of woe. The sovereign power in man's nature 
 he saw to have been dethroned, man's crown had fallen from 
 his head, man's moral gi'avitation towards the centre of the 
 universe had been mysteriously broken. Foster looked upon 
 sin simply as an evil, an incalculable evil. Was he not right ? 
 Is it not inconsiderate, and indicative of a want of sober and 
 careful reflection, to indulge in such expressions regarding 
 our fallen state as are met with in the present day ? Is not 
 
JOHN FOSTER, 267 
 
 the individual and distinctive nature of sin lost sight of 1 It is 
 spoken of as mere imperfection, as little more than what affords 
 an opportunity or a battle- field for goodness. Whereas it seems 
 plain that its peculiar nature arises from it sconnection with 
 a free, willing being, as related to a supreme, love-deserving 
 Father, that it is inextricably intertwined with the idea of per- 
 sonality, and that its least speck is in an essential and unquali- 
 fied sense vile. The supposition of sin's existence in any world 
 of God's creation besides our own, was to Foster an idea of acute 
 pain ; and I confess that I sympathize with him. I cannot but 
 disagree with a brilHant and able, but somewhat incautious, 
 writer of the day, in his remarks on this part of Foster s 
 views. There may be sublimer employment to be found in 
 the universe than battling to the death with the devil and 
 his angels ! It is unsafe to familiarize ourselves with the idea 
 that sin came into God's creation for its decoration. From 
 eternity to eternity, from world to world, sin was, is, and will 
 be — damnable. There is, indeed, a sublime aspect of its con- 
 nection with man's destiny, which Foster did not fail to per- 
 ceive ; it is a sublime office to battle for light, were it in a 
 world that quivered on the smoke of hell ; let us not shiink 
 from the combat ! But what we struggle against is eternally 
 vile, and there i-s no sublimity, but endless shame, worthy of 
 an agony to freeze our very tears, in much that it has entailed 
 on humanity. Is there any sublimity in the fact, that a man 
 cannot gi-asp the hand of his brother without the possibility 
 of its one day striking a dagger to his heart ? Why is it that 
 the smile, and the complacent gesture, and the softly- tuned 
 word, and all those dear emblems of kindness which shed a 
 lingering starlight over life, can be mimicked, and debased, 
 and turned into the dead paint of what is called politeness 
 and etiquette, to hide the sepulchral rottenness of false hearts ? 
 When the friend you have loved for years turns treacherously 
 against you for gold, is there sublimity in the fact 1 Is it 
 
268 
 
 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 not the agony of infinite shame that rises in our bosoms, as 
 we read that the mode of expression which nature has given 
 for the last speechless tenderness of love, was that by which 
 a Judas betrayed a Jesus ? Wander through the dreary 
 vistas of time : look into the caverns of the Inquisition ; see 
 the flames encircling that queenly maiden of eighteen who 
 had rescued her country ; gaze into the swollen eyes of Bea- 
 trice Cenci ; stand by the scaffold of Leonora Schoening : then 
 tell us of the sublimity of man's destiny. Look at that streak 
 of hell-brought slime, foul and inexpungeable, darker than 
 mist or rain-cloud on the purity of Mont Blanc, which blackens 
 the lofty snow of Bacon's brow, and then speak of the subli- 
 mity of man's destiny. Worst, far worst of all, why is it 
 that in our own hearts a hellish venom lurks ? The external 
 battle were slight, if it were all. But it is not so. Why is 
 it that we feel the suggestion of generosity ever cramped by 
 some small insinuation of self ] Why is it that only at rarest 
 moments can we rise to the feelings of noblest friendship with 
 man, or pure devotion to God ] Why is it that, imless we 
 are utterly lost to nobleness, or utterly blind to our own state, 
 we are so often "replenished with contempt 1" Sin has 
 done all this. We have heard enough of sublimity ; let us 
 change our tone a little. Not death alone, and pain, and dis- 
 ease, has this hellish agency brought along with it ; but as 
 it were the very rottenness and repulsive horror of death ; 
 ingratitude, cowardice, sloth, uncleanness, treachery. Sin is 
 the blackness of all light, the defilement of all purity, the 
 all-embracing formula for what is ignoble. Let us have self- 
 denial and nobleness enough to hope that our poor world is 
 the only tainted spot in the universe of God. 
 
 Foster's intense conception of sin is the key to much in 
 his system of thought. This we shall find as we proceed. 
 
 We have seen that his ultimate belief was that which is 
 commonly designated Calvinism. But there was one point 
 
JOHN FOSTEB. 269 
 
 on which he rejected its dogma ; he never believed in the 
 eternity of hell torments. There are few passages in litera- 
 ture more profoundly interesting than the long letter in which 
 he details his belief, and its grounds, on this solemn subject : 
 of all the writings of Foster, it is that which at once reveals 
 to us most of his character, and draws the heart towards him 
 with the tenderest feelings of affection. 
 
 The source of his behef here was twofold : the eye-to-eye 
 vividness with which his imagination painted before him the 
 horrors of eternal destruction, and the trembling sensibility 
 with which he looked upon any fellow-creature in pain. Both 
 of these are revealed in the following brief, but inexpressibly 
 touching, extract : — " It often surprises me that the fearful 
 doctrine sits, if I may so express it, so easy on the ^inds of 
 the religious and benevolent believers of it. Surrounded im- 
 mediately by the multitudes of fellow-mortals, and looking 
 abroad on the present and back on the past state of the race, 
 and regarding them, as to the immense majority, as subjects 
 of so direful destination, how can they have any calm enjoy- 
 ment of life, how can they even be cordially cheerful, how 
 can they escape the incessant haunting of dismal ideas, 
 darkening the economy in which their lot is cast ? I re- 
 member suggesting to one of them such an image as this : — 
 Suppose the case to be that he knew so many were all doomed 
 to suffer, by penal infliction, a death by torture, in the most 
 protracted agony, with what feelings would he look on the 
 populous city, the swarming country, or even a crowded, 
 mixed congregation ? But what an infinitesimal trifie that 
 would be, in comparison with what he does believe in look- 
 ing on these multitudes. How, then, can they bear the sight 
 of the living world around them *? " 
 
 Read these words, and judge of the heart of Foster. With 
 what a trembling, earnest hand, did he trace them ! What 
 a world of tender emotion, of mild but intense human sym- 
 
270 JOHX FOSTER. 
 
 patliy, of deepest love, they show ! And how beautiful, 
 though sad, is the simplicity that breathes through the pas- 
 sage ! In perfect unconsciousness he writes, all unthinking 
 of the rugged bosoms of his fellow-men, forgetful that each 
 has his own little circle of work, with its own little circle of 
 dust, encompassing it and him., and very much shutting out the 
 rest of the world. Of a thousand men, probably not one has 
 any definite conception of what the common belief implies. 
 The imagination is too dull to conceive it; the heart is too 
 hard to feel it. But Foster's intense conceptive power led 
 him in thought into the very bosom of hell ; there he saw 
 human eyes fixed in the agony of eternal despair, there he 
 listened to the endless, hopeless wailings of his brethren ; and 
 his heai't was steeled by no hard worldliness, by no wild fa- 
 naticism,* against sympathy with their woes ; he seemed to feel 
 that, were he himself among the celestial bands, the know- 
 ledge that those with whom he had once been a fellow-sojourn er 
 were in keen and everlasting anguish, would make him weep 
 upon the plains of heaven. He thought not of himself; all 
 his pain and sorrow came of sympathy. If ever in the breast 
 of man there was a heart more tremulously tender than a 
 woman's or a child's, that heart was John Foster's. 
 
 Such was the source of his belief respecting God's punish- 
 ment of sinners. The argument to which he was led can be 
 briefly summed up. After painting fearfully the horrors of 
 eternal woe, he deliberately adds : " I acknowledge my ina- 
 bility (I would say it with reverence) to admit this belief, to- 
 gether with a belief in the Divine goodness, — the belief that 
 * God is love,' that his tender mercies are over all his works." 
 He did not pass on to a belief in immediate and promiscuous 
 redemption : " On tio allowable interpretation do they" (the 
 words of Scripture on the subject) "signify less than a very 
 protracted duration, and a formidable severity." 
 
 The above may fairly be said to be Foster's one argument ; 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 271 
 
 the aids he seeks from Scripture to his views are at best but 
 attempts to open a path to a possible warrant on its part. 
 Andy in truth, it seems well-nigh the only argument of strength 
 which can be urged on that side. Let it not, however, be 
 thought that the position of those who adduce it is weak. It 
 is not only strong, but, in one point of view, absolutely un- 
 assailable. If John Foster, or any man, deliberately and ho- 
 nestly conceives it irreconcilable with infinite love that God 
 should condemn the wicked to everlasting punishment, I see 
 not how he can accept the fact without blasphemy. If a man's 
 reason, gazing earnestly and reverently, with lively conscious- 
 ness of its own faint and glimmering vision, and full thought 
 of the compass and might of infinite love guiding infinite 
 power, is yet unable, I say not to justify, but to believe in, 
 the 2^ossihle justice of eternal torments, I see not how he 
 can accept the doctrine. It is not lawful for any man, tak- 
 ing the sentence, " God is love," to use it as a fieiy rod, though 
 it were of celestial gold, wherewith to sear the eyeballs of his 
 reason. One man, considering long, and searching Scripture, 
 can, with no outrage on his moral being, embrace in one view 
 the courts of eternal joy and the pi-ison of eternal darkness, 
 and believe un constrainedly that the King who sits over both 
 is Love ; such an one was Jonathan Edwards. But another 
 man cannot do so ; and if he is as honest and reverent as the 
 last, who is there on earth that can accuse him ] Deeply 
 and solem.nly earnest was Foster : one seems to see a dark 
 cloud labouring along that letter, dropping tears on its way. 
 I do not subscribe to his belief on the point ; his view was 
 somewhat contracted, and, by a more mature consideration of 
 what is revealed to us of God's dealings and designs in the 
 creation of man, and a warrantable though careful borrowing 
 of light from other quarters, it might have undergone im- 
 portant and advantageous change ; but how, with his pre- 
 mises, he could avoid his conclusion, I cannot see. 
 
272 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 So profoundly difficult is the wliole question of eternal 
 punishment, and so intimately is it allied with a series of ques- 
 tions that have baffled, and surely will for ever baffle, human 
 reason, that there is perhaps no conceivable case in which 
 one would more carefully avoid peremptory or upbraiding 
 dogmatism. Poor finite beings, treating such a question, may 
 well bear with each other ! 
 
 I do no more at present than offer a general and prelimi- 
 nary remark, defining, in some measure, the conditions of the 
 question, and indicating what every man, in coming to a de- 
 cision regarding it, has, so to speak, to take along with him. 
 
 In a volume of sermons, published some time since by Mr 
 Theodore Parker of America, the matter is treated in the 
 following off-hand, easy manner : — " You look on the base 
 and wicked men who seem as worms in the mire of civiliza- 
 tion, often delighting to bite and to devour one another, and you 
 remark that these also are the children of God ; that He loves 
 each of them, and will suffer no ancient Judas nor modem 
 kidnapper to perish ; that there is no child of perdition in 
 all the family of God ; but He will lead home his sinner and 
 his saint, and such as are sick with the leprosy of their wicked- 
 ness, Hhe murrain of beasts,' bowed down, and not able to 
 lift themselves up. He will carry in his arms !" 
 
 Is it possible to believe that there is not in this something 
 essentially wrong 1 Is the subject, then, after all, one of 
 such wayside plainness, such fair and sunny simplicity ? Are 
 the clouds and thick darkness that have from the olden time 
 mysteriously veiled the future, and cast their shade over intel- 
 lects like those of Luther, Calvin, Leibnitz, Pascal, and Jona- 
 than Edwards, to roll away before a soft summer gale of senti- 
 mentality 1 I cannot believe it. I can scarce conceive aught 
 more diametrically opposed to the mightiest instincts that have 
 swayed nations, and the most earnest beliefs which have been 
 arrived at by great individual thinkers. What real thinker 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 273 
 
 has there been f lom Plato to Dante, from Dante to Calvin, and 
 from Calvin, I shall add, to Carlyle, who has not recognised 
 something unspeakably stern, something to create a solemn awe, 
 in the general structure and relations of this universe ? Were 
 nature all sunny and cloudless ; were the sea at all times glassy 
 and still, or the pathway only of the spiced and gentle wind, 
 leading along the white sail as if it were an infant of Ocean ; 
 were there only soft flowery lawns and May mornings, and no 
 volcanoes or avalanches ; were there but the smiles of birth- 
 day and of bridal upon human faces, no furrow traced by tears, 
 no wrinkle writ by age, no shadow cast by coming death ; 
 were human history one joyous chime, ascending from the 
 green earth to meet and mingle with the angels' music, broken 
 by no wailings of sorrow, no shrieks and groans of battle ; 
 had the slopes of Olivet been ever mantled with the vine, 
 and rung only to the song of the vintage, and never seen the 
 crosses by thousands in the grey morning ; did the human 
 eye, as years go on, gather brightness, and beam with ever a 
 clearer and prouder gladness, and were it not a fact that the 
 eye of every man or woman of well advanced years has one 
 expression giving tone to the others, vanishing, it may be, for 
 an hour, but always returning, and that an expression of sor- 
 row ; then might we have heart to join Mr Parker in his soft 
 and child-like strain. But whenever we assay to do so, are 
 we not confronted by immoveable facts, by this one great 
 fact, — MISERY ; and does not our tongue then cleave to the 
 roof of our mouth 1 Has it been all a mistake by which men 
 have ever regarded death as dark and calamitous, and its in- 
 fliction as the severest form of punishment 1 What means the 
 smoke of those sacrifices rising from every nation on earth to 
 an angry deity 1 Who put that word into the mouth of con- 
 science, giving along with it a power to compel all men to 
 listen, which declares man responsible, and the sinner in dan- 
 ger 1 Surely the assertion that these phenomena have refer- 
 
 T 
 
274 JOHN FOSTER, 
 
 ence solely to tlie inconveniences entailed on tlie sinner, in 
 this life requires no refutation. God has not averted the 
 painful effects of sin in this world ; He let Judas go to his 
 despairing death, and a devil even on earth gnawed the heart 
 of Saul ; by what argument can we conclude that He will 
 totally avert the effects of sin in the next, and place Judas 
 and Stephen alike within the light of His throne ? " Infinite 
 pity, yet also infinite rigour of law : it is so nature is made ; 
 it is so Dante discerned that she was made." These are the 
 words of Mr Carlyle. 
 
 Most of the ideas abroad regarding Foster have it for fcheit 
 basis that, even though his personal kindliness were conceded, 
 he must still, in his capacity as a public teacher, be pronounced 
 morbid through excess of gloom. In a noted disquisition 
 upon his character, it is sententiously stated that his tender- 
 est emotions were acts of ratiocination. Perhaps precisely 
 the most important lesson he conveyed to his age may be 
 brought to light by inquiring into the truth of such state- 
 ments. 
 
 Foster's tremulous sensibility, and his vivid and sleepless 
 imagination, gave him what may be called a perpetual con- 
 sciousness of human misery. The misanthrope says men are 
 bad, worthy to be hated, and deserving their sorrow : Foster 
 also said men were bad ; but he heard love whispering that 
 they were weak, and hatred for their sin was drowned in pity 
 for their suffering. 
 
 ** Never morning wore 
 • To evening, but some heart did break." 
 
 Foster seemed to hear it break. Do we not, as may be worth 
 noting, see so much in his portrait 1 Is not fche expression 
 which gives it tone that of tender, yearning affection 1 Sor- 
 row and misgiving are in the eye, but they seem to float in 
 pity and love. There is something of trouble in the earnest, 
 inquiring glance, telling of long pondering, and of a high cu- 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 275 
 
 Tiosity not to be satisfied ; but there is neither indignation 
 nor disdain. If the lip is faintly curled, it is not with con- 
 tempt ; it seems to tremble with a sad and extorted confes- 
 sion, that human effort is all but vain in assuaging human 
 woe. As we look, are we not vividly reminded of the lines 
 by Keats : — 
 
 " Anxious, pitying eyes, 
 As if he always listened to the sighs 
 Of the goaded world T* 
 
 These words are precisely descriptive of Foster's habitual cast 
 of mind. His face is not hopeful, it is not joyous ; but if 
 one emotion is absent, it is that of contemptuous hatred ; and 
 if one is present, it is that of scarcely hoping love. 
 
 Foster was a stern teacher. Looking with penetrative 
 vision over human history, and entering by imaginative power 
 into every scene and region of misery, — looking on ancient 
 history, and seeing, " by its faint glimmer," that it had been 
 " an ocean of blood," — and marking how, in modem times, 
 even the celestial light of Christianity had but faintly and fit- 
 fully irradiated the gloom of earth, — he turned round, with 
 the austerity of earnestness and the sadness of love, and pro- 
 claimed in solemn accents, that the world was no joyful gar- 
 den, but a sterile desert, its wells few, its palm-trees fadedy 
 and resting, as under a sky of iron, beneath the curse. Let 
 the shout of triumph, he said, die away : brethren, these are 
 no cool, tranquil lakes ; these towers and palaces are not of 
 pearl and gold ; these are but the mockeries of our sorrow ; 
 no man of heart will look upon them ; beneath our feet is 
 burning sand, and it is manful to know it ; only on the far 
 horizon gleams the serene light of our home. Gloomy, misr 
 anthropic, only half the truth, say a thousand ; alas ! it is too 
 near the whole truth, and of it we must be at times remind- 
 ed. Easy it is to paint your world ; so infinitely easier, as 
 has been remarked, to paint it an inch deep, than to amend 
 
276 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 lb by a hair's-breadth. Heroism, virtue, domestic joys, rural 
 )liss, the progress of the species, the sway of love, liberty, 
 •quality, and fraternity ; do you think Foster had not hearJ? 
 * )f these 1 Yes ; and for a time he listened earnestly, if per- 
 ohance there might be healing there ; and, even when dis- 
 appointed, he held to the truth they shadowed. But how did 
 his strong heart respond to the general advocates of freedom 
 in our day ] How did Enceladus greet the soft frivolous ac- 
 cents of the gentle Clymene, who lisped her comforting syl- 
 lables to the Titans 1 
 
 ** Not thunderbolt on thunderbolt, till all 
 That rebel Jove's whole armoury were spent ; 
 Not world on world upon these shoulders piled. 
 Could agonize me more than baby words 
 In midst of this dethronement horrible." 
 
 There are few spectacles afforded by our earth more noble 
 in their sadness than this which we find presented by Foster, 
 and misnamed misanthropy. It is the spectacle of a man who 
 looks over the ranks of his brothers as they wend mournfully 
 through time, who feels a sorrow deeper than words, striv- 
 ing upwards to pour itself forth, but who sternly crushes 
 dowTi the " climbing agony," and compels his tears to burn 
 only in his heart, lest they film his eye, and prevent the ear- 
 nest gaze of thought from piercing into the evil. This, too, 
 is among the duties of man ; to stand, like a kind physician, 
 beside the writhing patient, mankind ; and, while listening 
 to the groans, to mete the extent and virulence of the dis- 
 temper, and, it may be, apply some remedy which will for 
 the time increase the plaining. A man on earth may have 
 too much love to weep ! 
 
 The duty of man, as man, is thought. This is his distinc- 
 tive regal duty. Pity and love may aid and cheer him 3 but, 
 as sovereign worker in this world, his duty is governance, 
 guidance, — in one word, thought. And, in order to this, 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 277 
 
 lie must, with a valiant calmness, know in all cases the worst. 
 
 " To bear all naked truths, 
 And to envisage circumstance all calm, — 
 That is the top of sovereignty." 
 
 No man is qualified to be a public guide or instructor of men 
 who cannot more or less do this ; and a man generally is 
 mighty in proportion as he can do it, and has a love strong 
 enough to dare it 
 
 But there is another aspect in which to regard Foster's 
 gloomy representations of the human state and prospects. His 
 position was twofold : in one point of view, it resembled that 
 of the misanthrope ; in another, it was diametrically opposed 
 thereto. He declared the work to be stern, the battle to be 
 a reality. But he held earnestly by his standard ; he never 
 flinched work. Hear this grand sentiment from his lips : — 
 *' All that pass from this world must present themselves as 
 from battle, or be denied to mingle in the eternal joys and 
 triumphs of the conquerors." We know that he was tenderly 
 kind, and he never for a moment flinched from the combat. 
 This union absolutely negatives misanthropy, and the general 
 notion which attributes misanthropy to Foster must be dissi- 
 pated. He was a practical, living enforcement, with a new and 
 peculiar energy, of the great lesson that every man must work. 
 However dark the aspect of the field, though no higher hope ex- 
 ists for you than to lie cold and stiff while your brethren go 
 on to victory, you must yet fight on. Comparatively easy is 
 it to struggle when hope is bright, although this also is noble ; 
 but far more difficult is it to know all the hazards and toils 
 of the combat, to see no prospect that individual might will 
 perceptibly avail, and yet to keep the sword unbared, and never 
 dream of returning it to the scabbard. This is that high form 
 of virtue which is missed by the real misanthrope ; and it 
 Foster attained. He who comprehends his position here has 
 Understood his life ; here lies the problem of his biogi-aphy. 
 
278 JOHN FOSTEB, 
 
 We find this gloom, then, of whicli we have heard so much, 
 to be a right noble, a sublime melancholy. In the strength 
 of youth Foster s hopes had been high ; his eye had caught 
 the distant gleaming of paradaisal fields ; he had seemed to 
 hear the sound of millennial anthems ; his heart had swelled 
 high with emotion ; he had shouted for the battle. But he 
 soon paused in astonished sadness. It was as if a seraph had 
 seen from afar the new smile of our planet among the stars 
 of God, and had come through the azure to hear the notes of 
 its new hymn of praise, and had landed on its golden mar- 
 gin, and been confronted by — sin. The sorrow that was in 
 Foster's eye has been known by the noblest of earth. It was 
 that sadness which shaded the brow of Plato ; such sadness 
 was in the heart of Solomon when he said that much wisdom 
 was much grief. 
 
 Sorrow of this kind may not be absolutely required of us, 
 nor certainly ought it to darken the whole character. With 
 all her sternness, nature has appointed feelings of mirth to 
 play over the dark places of our lot. A stern mother she 
 is, a stem destiny is ours : but sometimes, nevertheless, she 
 does take her children in her arms and smile on and kiss 
 them ; she does intend us to yield at times to glad impulses, 
 to leave our brooding, to look on the sunny side of the cloud. 
 It is a fact that at every moment bitter tears are furrowing 
 human faces ; it is a fact that at every moment. Night, with 
 her shrouding darkness, is closing over half the world : but 
 it is a fact also, that at every moment some are smiling ; at 
 every moment somewhere Morn is scattering golden light. 
 And, above all, the Christian may be removed from over- 
 wlielming access of grief; he 
 
 " "Whose meditative sympathies repose 
 Upon the breast of Faith ;" 
 
 he who can overarch all clouds and contradictions with an 
 infinite radiance. But the calm rejoicing of the healthful 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 279 
 
 and balanced Christian mind is removed as far as possible 
 from flippancy or thoughtless gaiety. If our natures are of 
 the sunny complexion, let us be glad and thankful ; but let 
 lis not forget that some of the greatest intellects of time have 
 looked sadly on human affairs, or neglect the lesson they 
 teach. Of these intellects, though not taking a high rank 
 among them, was Foster's. He came near certain fatal in- 
 fluences, but he remained unscathed by all. He knew doubt, 
 yet he was not driven into infidelity ; he saw difficulty, yet 
 he was not driven into despair. He told men that the battle 
 with principalities and powers was stern and long, and with 
 hasty superficiality they exclaimed that he was wi*apped in a 
 garment of mere gloom. He shrunk in horror and agony 
 from the baleful form of sin, as he saw it in the world around 
 him ; by a sublime casting of the mantle of his love over the 
 universe, he yearned to shut out from its rejoicing borders 
 that mortal taint, and confine it to his own blackened world ; 
 and they exclaimed that he was a misanthrope ! 
 
 In considering the works of any powerful and sincere 
 thinker, it is well to give a close attention to what in them 
 is defective or erroneous. In tracing the line beyond which, 
 by being pressed too far, truth becomes of no avail, or even, 
 as extremes meet, rushes off to embrace error, we can mark 
 well the lineaments of the truth itself, and comprehend, more 
 fully than before, the work done by him whose writings we 
 inspect. The mistakes, also, of a sincere man, and one of 
 great influence in the world of mind, are more apt to obtain 
 currency and produce evil, than those of one of slighter 
 I)uild : from gold it is worth while to separate the clay. I 
 proceed, therefore, to state a few important defects in Foster's 
 opinions and teaching, and to endeavour to evolve the full 
 truth in each case. 
 
 It is not difficult to enunciate in general terms the one 
 :great want alike in Foster's powers, knowledge, and opinions. 
 
280 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 In one word, he wanted completeness. His imagination, 
 powerful, amazingly powerful, to draw a single figure, or a 
 single spectacle, could not produce a full and harmonized pic- 
 ture. Passages in his works are, perhaps, not to be sur- 
 passed for lurid distinctness, for happy metaphor, or for clear 
 force ; but he could not produce a complete book, or design 
 a complete essay ; and what Dr Cheever says of his composi- 
 tions, that they commence and end by no rule, and are go- 
 verned by no principles of symmetry, is accurately true. 
 His knowledge was various, and in its separate parts appa- 
 rently exact ; but it was fatally deficient in method, it form- 
 ed no complete system or series, beautiful to behold and 
 easily referred to : it was like a museum packed up in the 
 hold of a ship. His strictly intellectual power and his strict- 
 ly reasoned opinions have the same characteristic. We are 
 able to express in his own words the great principle, that " the 
 conjunction of truths is of the utmost importance for pre- 
 serving the genuine tendency, and securing the appropriate 
 efficacy, of each j" yet his system of opinion was by no means 
 symmetrical. Each separate doctrine which he enforces has 
 an aspect of truth, but often this aspect, by being made to 
 fill the field of view, implies error. After all his pondering, 
 he had reached no explaining theory, even of certain facts 
 of history, which can, within limits, be accounted for, and 
 whose allied good and evil can be discriminated. The truth 
 of these general remarks will become manifest in the sequel. 
 Of the meaning and function, in the present stage of man's 
 history as a species, of certain agencies, which must always, 
 in their ultimate relations, be regarded with sorrow, but 
 which subserve important purposes in the present dispensa- 
 tion, Foster had no clear conception. Of these agencies, by 
 far the most remarkable is war. If all other arguments in 
 proof of the fact that the species is fallen were swept away, 
 the one great fact of war would put it beyond my power to 
 
JOHN FOSTEIU 281 
 
 conceive a man deliberately believing his species still in that 
 state of perfection in which God created it. But if war 
 came with sin, it came as the red-hot iron comes with poi- 
 son j to scarify and blacken, but yet to prevent pain from 
 becoming death. When sin entered, a great severance took 
 place ; right and might parted company. One in the bygone 
 eternity, again to be one in the coming eternity, in the little 
 vexed strait of time, tossing and weltering and never at rest, 
 which lies between the two, they severed. To say might 
 and right are one " in the long run," is to enunciate a truism; 
 to say might and right are one in time, traceably and ex- 
 actly one in human history hitherto, or to be so ere the spe- 
 cies is restored to its native condition, is to deny that ever a 
 Helot was murdered or a child oppressed. When might 
 and right become one. War will unbrace his annour, and lie 
 down and die. But till then. War has functions to per- 
 form. These are various, but perhaps the most important 
 among them is this : either, in a rough and rude manner, to 
 vindicate outraged justice and let the oppressed go free ; or, 
 in the blood of the lost battle-field, to inscribe a perpetual 
 testimony to the right, and a stern and dumb appeal to Hea- 
 ven. 
 
 How did Foster think and speak of war 1 He looked over 
 human history with a searching and a loving eye ; he saw 
 war followed by a pale host of woes, and moving through all 
 time to a music of bitter wail, making man its prey : he broke 
 into a shriek of sorrow and indignation, and never went fur- 
 ther or altered his tone. !N'ow, it cannot be asserted, in proof 
 of any man's being a thinker, that he has perceived the evil 
 of war. Since themes began to be written in academies, 
 that was known and discoursed of Every schoolboy has a 
 set of tropes to illustrate it. But a profound and deliberate 
 thinker should see farther. A mere recognition of that great 
 necessity which has been refen-ed to were enough to silence 
 
282 
 
 JOHN FOSTER, 
 
 a scarce manly and perpetual whining over tlie woes of war; 
 but a conception even of this is not to be found in Foster. 
 Much less did he see how war has in many ages subserved 
 other and benign purposes. Dear-bought, indeed, have been 
 the harvests which its red rain has made to grow, but it has 
 made them grow. Look upon Europe at the time of the 
 breaking up of the Koman empire ; it is a case precisely in 
 point. The appearance presented is inexpressibly awful : 
 one scene of horror, of devastation, of tumult, from the gates 
 of Constantinople to the pillars of Hercules. How far better 
 had it seemed, how far higher had been the sentimental beauty, 
 if things had continued as they were, if Rome's soft licentious 
 slaves had gone on dawdling and lolling till now. But on 
 that Europe God had other nations to be planted ; new blood 
 had to be introduced ; and the northern hordes came down, 
 sword in hand. It is an undeniable ethnological fact that, 
 by the agency of the fearful wars which ensued, by the com- 
 mingling of races resulting therefrom, the puny, emasculated 
 subjects of Rome were exchanged for those nations which 
 now, for more than a thousand years, have reared their moun- 
 tain-like forms on Europe. Say, if you will, that God in that 
 case overruled the horrors of war for the advancement of 
 mankind ; this is, indeed, the more accurate mode of ex- 
 pression ; only learn to discern the mode in which He does 
 overrule it, and say not that the devil alone liad a hand in 
 the matter. 
 
 Often amid the shakings of the nations, when men s hearts 
 were failing them for fear, and in the bosoms of all the noble 
 there was a speechless yearning for rest, God's Providence 
 has been at work, the cloud seeming to veil love has been 
 "itself love," and in the course of centuries the light of that 
 love has beamed out perceptibly to all. What a profound 
 {significance now attaches to the following words of Milton, 
 uttered in reference to that tumultuous time when " faithful 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 283 
 
 and free-bom Englishmen and good Cliristians" were driven 
 in multitudes, from home and country, to seek shelter in " the 
 wide ocean and the savage deserts of America :" — "Oh, Sir, 
 if we could but see the shape of our dear mother England, 
 as poets are wont to give a personal form to what they please, 
 how would she appear, think ye, but in a mourning weed, 
 with ashes upon her head, and tears abundantly flowing from 
 her eyes." Were the eye of John Milton now to rekindle 
 in its dry socket, what a gleam of glory would flash from it, 
 as he gazed over to the " savage deserts of America !" How 
 would he now robe in poetic life the figure of England, look- 
 ing to the mighty nation to which she gave birth in pains 
 like those of dissolution ! How proudly would he now re- 
 gard the Island-mother and her Titan son, entrusted by God, 
 with the high commission of bearing the standard of freedom 
 in the front of the peoples ! Would he not at least bow his 
 head in wondering praise, and declare that, clearer and more 
 powerful than ever song of bard, to justify the ways of God 
 to man, is the silent roll of the ages ? 
 
 There might be adduced considerations of a nature some- 
 what similar to these, to show that pestilence and famine are 
 not unmingled evils, that even their steps are watched of 
 God. Nations spring again with fresh vigour to their feet, 
 after having been cast down. Through the branches of the 
 pruned forest rushes the stream of life with wilder energy, 
 and gushes forth in a fresh magnificence of foliage. "No fact 
 seems more likely to be soon unfolded to the careful student 
 of history, than that after every period of winter has come a 
 period of spring. 
 
 With such thoughts as these Foster had no acquaintance. 
 He could nowise see his way through history. 
 
 It were foolish to conclude, from aught that has been said, 
 that any pleading is intended on behalf of war, famine, and 
 pestilence. These are doomed, and the sooner they go the 
 
284 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 better ; tliey point to a fearful chronic disease in the sydt^^m 
 of human affairs ; in the evolution of man's history, of CtocI s 
 plan in man's creation, they will vanish. Welcome shall 
 science be, with her mild methods, thrice welcome. As war 
 was the agency by which a sufficiently wide field was pre- 
 pared for first planting the foundations of Christ's kingdom 
 on earth ; as it was the sword of Rome which, all unconsci- 
 ously of the end to be accomplished, fitted the world for 
 Christianity in its troubled militant state ; it may be hoped 
 that, when that kingdom is to be fully established, and the 
 golden battlements of Zion are to cover the whole earth, the 
 preparing agencies will be no longer those of war, but those 
 of peace. Meanwhile, nothing is to be gained from imma- 
 ture attempts or Utopian expectations. Humanity is a patient 
 difficult to deal with, and may require to be bled several 
 times yet ; it will bleed no longer than until bleeding ceases 
 to be a necessary agent of cure. 
 
 Reflections such as have been indicated are of great mo- 
 ment. They enlarge our apprehension of the wisdom of God, 
 and show how deeply, yet unmistakeably. His designs pene- 
 trate the general framework of things : they foster a child- 
 like, yet manful, confidence in the Almighty, and hint au- 
 dibly, however the floods rage, that He sits King for ever : 
 lastly, and in especial application to our day, they prevent 
 men from fancying, as even earnest and able men are apt to 
 do, that their time is the worst of times, and that the world 
 is falling to wreck around them. They impart 
 
 *' That severe content 
 That comes of thought and musing :" 
 
 they might have whispered to Southey, Arnold, and Carlyle, 
 to possess their souls in patience. To proceed. 
 
 In all Foster's performance as a Christian instructor, theie 
 is no circumstance meriting deeper admiration than his down- 
 right advocacy of Christianity within the courts of iiteratiuw. 
 
JOHN FOSTER, 285 
 
 He will have a Christian to be one in thought, word, and 
 deed : he will listen to no compromise ; he will hear of no 
 palliation ; him who is not with Christ he will declare to be 
 against Him. So far well. As the old Judaistic preaching 
 of law is obsolete, so the old philosophic preaching of virtue 
 is obsolete ; law and virtue are both embraced, and, as it 
 were, transfigured, in the doctrine of Christ crucified. But 
 here, also, Foster's view was narrow and erroneous. He felt 
 two powers contending within him. Gifted by nature with 
 a fine sympathy for all that is beautiful and elevating, he 
 could not but experience a thrill of richest enjoyment when 
 any tint of real beauty met his eye, any tone of real beauty 
 fell upon his ear ; but he had often met such in the spacious 
 fields of literature, both ancient and modern, where he had 
 extensively wandered, and these were, for the most part, un- 
 christian ; the sovereign voice of religion seemed to say, that 
 in these regions it was sinful to expatiate, and that every 
 fruit to be plucked there, however clear and golden its beauty, 
 must be an apple of Sodom. He took his determination. 
 He uttered a voice of warning and condemnation. On all 
 literature commonly called profane, he laid his ban. How- 
 ever pure the joy appeared, however distinctly it was from 
 inner and native fountains of sympathy that the rapture 
 seemed to flow, it was to be curbed, thwarted, cast aside, if 
 the object of beauty which evoked it was not within some 
 enclosure distinctly marked off for Christian purposes. In 
 this his procedure is open to exception. 
 
 Two great departments of truth may be categorized and 
 looked at in parallel lines, under the respective titles of laws 
 of mathematics and laws of beauty. The limits of these de- 
 partments, their points of divergence and of coalescence, are 
 not our present concern. I have to speak of the laws of 
 beauty, and introduce the laws of mathematics, for the sake 
 of illustration. Both of them are absolute and self-depend- 
 
286 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 ent. No one witli whom men would reason doubts the a^ 
 solute character of mathematical truth : it has been ques- 
 tioned, but is here assumed as a fact, that the laws of beauty 
 — what is commonly called sesthetic, and what E-uskin calls 
 theoretic, truth — are also absolutely true. In other words, 
 however much they may seem to man to fluctuate, these laws 
 are the writing of the Eternal mind, and are more stable than 
 the created universe. This is now, so far as I know, the 
 belief of all our higher thinkers ; its being questioned so 
 largely during last century was merely the exhibition, in the 
 region of criticism, of that scepticism characteristic of the 
 time. The natural and usual connection between sensational 
 theories of morals and associative theories of beauty has been 
 ably noted by Dr M^Yicar. The ancient and noble faith is, 
 that the laws of beauty are independent of man and removed 
 above circumstance, precisely as the truths of geometry. The 
 laws by which the colours of the rainbow are mingled, — by 
 which the draped elm-branch hangs, — ^by which the long 
 sweeps of mountain curve are drawn, — ^by which the waves 
 bend, and wreathe, and dance, with the grace of new-born 
 Cytheras, — are as firmly established in the mind of God as 
 the laws by which He has hung the world on nothing. Sup- 
 posing this granted, let us next inquire how the human mind, 
 in its present shattered and enfeebled condition, looks at the 
 respective provinces of mathematic and sesthetic truth. The 
 process by which man has unfolded the truths of mathematics 
 is comparable to the gradual removal of the clay, limestone, 
 or chalk, from a fossil. Line by line, the encasing substance 
 is removed, the plates of the old scales, the forms of the old 
 bones, are displayed ; the instant a new portion is uncovered, 
 it is seen perfectly, and without mistake ; nothing farther is 
 to be learned regarding it. Exactly so in mathematics : as 
 each new proposition is unfolded, the attainment is perfecfc, 
 removed from the possibility at once of doubt and improvcv 
 
JOHN FOSTEll. 28T 
 
 ment. The human mind has retained power, by however 
 long a process, to unveil mathematical truth perfectly. It 
 has not been so with the laws of beauty. These may be com- 
 pared rather to immoveable stars, fixed in the heavens, while 
 far below there is a cloudy atmosphere, kept in perpetual 
 turmoil by tempests, through which they can but gleam at 
 moments ; up into the vault men gaze and gaze with their 
 sin-dimmed eyes ; so wildly do the clouds roll and toss, and 
 so feeble is their vision, that at times men are apt to turn 
 away, and exclaim that those stars are not fixed at all, that 
 they are mere stray meteors wandering through the cloud-rack. 
 As yet no man has so clearly and conclusively fixed what 
 their position and relative magnitude are, as to command 
 universal assent ; but in no age has the eyesight of men been 
 so dim, that stray gleams from them have not been noted, 
 and sure though partial tidings of what they are obtained. 
 The grand fact, however, to be remembered is this : That 
 every gleam really discerned has been seen by man, not created 
 by him ; has been a glimpse of a light of which God is the 
 eternal fountain. For some reason, which we may well leave 
 to His wisdom, neither the laws of mathematics nor the laws 
 of beauty are in this world revealed specially to those who 
 seek a re-attainment of sonship in God's house through Jesus 
 Christ ; but, as the Christian believes in, and derives intel- 
 lectual nourishment from, a new truth in mathematics, dis- 
 covered by a blasphemer, he may rightfully and with good 
 conscience look upon every beam of real beauty, though seen 
 by an infidel, as a revelation of the thoughts and workings 
 of his God. And the truths of beauty seem to be of a higher 
 sort than those of mathematics. These last are the laws by 
 which God fixed the pillars of his universe ; but beauty, we 
 may reverently say, is His very garment ; and our greater igno- 
 rance of its laws than of the laws of mathematics is, no doubt, 
 because, as fallen children, we cannot see our Father s face. 
 
288 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 Truly glorious is the prospect opened up by the simple and 
 sublime truth now feebly enunciated. It enables the Chris- 
 tian to go round the garden of poetry, separating the Satanic 
 slime from paradaisal flowers, claiming all that is beautiful 
 for his God. Thus is that teeming sympathy with loveliness, 
 which Foster thought it necessary to restrain, nurtured to 
 full fruition and perfect bloom. Thus all that the human 
 imagination has in every age framed of true beauty, returns 
 to the Christian in a new relation, and with new significance; 
 every form of grace that the Greek saw in the dusky wood, 
 or rising from the ocean; every fair mythic youth of Eastern 
 song; every impersonation of summer dawn by Northern bard. 
 The vessels of the Pagan temples, the notes of Pagan choirs, 
 may be turned to the service of God, and even from the sterile 
 desert of atheism be gathered angels' food. We shall see 
 the stars though the night is around them. 
 
 The devil is darkness and defilement, but he never can 
 cast his livery over, and compel into his service, one ray of 
 God's light ; the fact of a beautiful object's being beautiful, 
 is equivalent to the fact that its beauty is from God ; what- 
 ever opposition to beauty, whatever defilement, is exhibited 
 by it, cannot extinguish its vital element ; to say otherwise 
 were Manichean. The flower that grows on the battle-field 
 is as truly the work of God, and as perfectly reveals His 
 beauty, as the flower that wreathes the Christian cottage ; 
 the beauty, where it is real, which has been seen and sung 
 of by a Byron or a Shelley, may be taken by the Christian, 
 with clear open mind, as a plant of God's rearing, though ou 
 an unwilling human soil. 
 
 The evil one must be beaten into his own grounds, and 
 permitted to vindicate as his no spot of the territory of our 
 Father. The earth was cursed in its relation to man ; it was 
 degraded from what it was to Adam, — a grand written scrol I, 
 its words the cloud, and flower, and mountain, the light by 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 289 
 
 which it was read that of the sun and stars, wherein, as his 
 own heart thrilled with the angelic joy that springs from rapt 
 sympathy with loveliness, he saw the glory and the beauty 
 of God, — into a field and workshop of toil, where man cannot 
 1 ise, on the wings of pure emotion, into the heaven of love- 
 liness, because of the brassy dome of labour. Yet the lilies 
 of the field were not cursed in themselves, or made less beau- 
 tiful j their beauty was only veiled to men, so that they 
 saw it not, nor were moved by it to a sacred joy ; and we 
 may be absolutely certain, both that every thrill of rapture 
 awakened in us by true beauty is a noble emotion, and that, 
 when our nature is restored to what it was, or raised higher 
 than before, a beauty will beam upon us from every part of 
 God's universe, till then scarce dreamed of 
 
 Foster's conception of the fallen state of human nature, 
 shadowing, as it did, the whole range of his opinions, led him 
 into views respecting the means available and hopeful for the 
 amelioration of humanity, which seem of so dangerous ten- 
 dency as to require a word of comment. He looked for light 
 from heaven in a way in which it is not now to be expected, 
 and in which it would do little good if it came. Casting his 
 eye upon man as an agency for the regeneration of* the world, 
 his feeling of the depth of human corruption made him al- 
 most turn from the reforming teacher or preacher in despair. 
 True, as we have seen, he never actually flinched, but he con- 
 sidered the world so bad, that no terrestrial mechanism hitherto 
 known could save it ; he desired therefore, and expected, vi- 
 sible supernatural assistance. It is interesting to observe the 
 eagerness with which he grasps at any appearance of super- 
 natural influence to account for an extraordinary religious 
 movement ; the look of susjncion with which he regards any 
 act of general heroism is by no means so pleasing. He strongly 
 insinuates supernatural aid in the case of Whitefield ; per- 
 haps the coldest and smallest remark be ever made is that in 
 
 u 
 
^^0 JOHis" FOSTEK. 
 
 which he seems to cling to the idea that the minis tei^ of the 
 Church of Scotland who left their manses in 1843 would give 
 way when it came to the point. Foster had by no means an 
 adequate idea of man, of his countless capabilities and count- 
 less diversities ; how, borrowing a hint from a clever writer, 
 one might say he suggested the idea of a cross between an 
 angel and a demon ; how the heaven-light and the hell-light 
 mingle in his eye. And, for one thing, he had no clear idea 
 of the mighty influence of man on man. He looked, to use 
 his own words, for the " inteiference of angelic, or some other 
 extraordinary and yet unknown, agency." 
 
 The influence, both for good and evil, that may be exerted 
 by man upon man, it were extremely difficult to overrate. 
 The light from the human eye flashes along a column in the 
 battle-day like a gleam of sunlight on the bayonets ; read the 
 history of the " Little Corporal," and you will know that to 
 be a fact. The light of the human eye will set continents 
 ablaze for centuries ; read the history of Mahomet and Islam 
 for the proof of that. That light will bring the men of one- 
 half of the world upon those of another, as the moon leads 
 the tidal wave of ocean ; witness Peter and his. Ci-usades. 
 Think of the influence of Luther on the world, and of White- 
 field upon immense bodies of men ; think of the sway of Knox 
 in Scotland, and of his true successor Chalmers ; reflect, in 
 a word, upon human history in its w^hole course ; and own 
 the irresistible force of the conviction that the human eye 
 and voice are the mightiest agencies which have acted there, 
 whether directly as instruments of the Highest, or indirectly 
 as such. Supe^-natural agency for the regeneration of the world 
 is, indeed, to be looked for ; but such agency will not neces- 
 sarily be in any other sense supernatural than it is in the con- 
 version of every believer. Conceive the eflect of a band of 
 men with the ardour, the rapt earnestness, the immoveable 
 valour of Paul, and tlie sacred enthusiasm of John ; by the 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 291 
 
 laws of human nature, they would move the world as it has 
 never yet been moved ; and what, save such giaces as may 
 be drawn down by prayer, do Christians now require, to be 
 such 1 Our Saviour set the human for ever on a level witli 
 visible, supeniatuml agency, by his declaration that, " If nien 
 heard not Moses and the Prophets, neither would they be 
 persuaded though one rose from the dead." This truth is 
 of very grave import ; for, if it is our first duty to avail our- 
 selves of all aid to be had, it is our second to ascertain in what 
 case it is hopeless to look for assistance. 
 
 These exceptions to Foster s teaching may be brought to 
 a conclusion by a bnef glance at the subject of amusements. 
 These, as is well known, were, on the whole, an eyesore to 
 him : even the sports and dances of children he looked on 
 with a scowl of disapproval and discontent. It was not, in- 
 deed, always so : of that we have had satisfactory proof; but 
 he did not feel at rest respecting them ; any appearance of 
 lightness, any approach to frivolity, in so earnest a world 
 as ours, he could not meet with the kind indulgence of sym- 
 pathy. He saw what is bad in amusements, but not what 
 is good ; he perceived not the end they serve in the present 
 economy, if not perfect or altogether excellent themselves, in 
 yet averting worse evils, and at lowest finding something 
 harmless for idle hands and feet to do. He ^xed his eye too 
 exclusively on the hollowness of worldly courtesy, and, while 
 he sneered it away, he told us not what to put in its place. 
 The present fabric of society is, indeed, crazy and infirm, 
 rottenness in its rafters, flaws in its iron- work, cracks in its 
 pillars ; but all must be better and stronger ere these can 
 be dispensed with ; pull them out with the i^ash hand now, 
 and all will go into a heap of rubbish. 
 
 What is the rationale of noble amusement ? what its me- 
 thod, and what its end ] In the mirthful meeting, it is in- 
 tended, and should be, so far as is possible, attained, that 
 
292 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 the social instincts come into healthful and cheering play; 
 that the latent fire of affection for our brethren and sisters, 
 simply as such, by, as it were, the pleasing friction of con- 
 course and converse, evolve itself on all faces in genial smil- 
 ing or free laughter ; that the frame, physical and psychal, 
 sportively vmbend itself without sinking into torpor, drawing- 
 refreshment and invigoration from a certain active rest, mid^ 
 way between sleep and labour. Such is needful for poor 
 man, and nature has kindly given it. 
 
 Three radical errors, in three respective ways, may vitiate 
 the philosophic perfection of amusement. The entertainment 
 may be simply and exclusively animal ; then it is ignoble in 
 man : it may be simply mental ; then it defeats its purpose : 
 it may be destitute of true kindness, of trustful, friendly con- 
 fidence ; then it is false. 
 
 How do our public ball-rooms and large formal dancing 
 parties stand the tests thus provided ? Not remarkably well. 
 True geniality is well-nigli absent. The kindness consists in 
 becks, and bows, and ceremonies ; in lispings, and simpers, 
 and smiles ; all of which were accurately put down in the 
 dancing-master s bill. As in a farce, better or worse played, 
 men and women act kindness. It is highly distinctive of 
 the kind of entertainments now referred to, that mind is 
 wanting. Was it not Hook who observed that dancing and 
 intellect are in our island in an inverse ratio? It was a 
 shrewd remark ; and one thing upon which frequenters of 
 ball-rooms, of both sexes, seem unanimous, is, that the parti- 
 cular persons with whom they have happened to dance were 
 remarkably silly. All the inferior tribes have their amuse- 
 ments. Crows wheel round in the sky, sweeping in full cir- 
 cle, evidently in joyous sport ; kittens and dogs are familiar 
 examples ; donkeys, be it known, are remarkably frisky when 
 it is their own amusement they have to attend to ; even sheep 
 have been observed clumsily gamboling and kicking about 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 293 
 
 ill their tliick woolly vestures, and have suggested the idea 
 of a ball-room of ladies and gentlemen threading the wreath- 
 ed dance in flannel dressing-gowns. The recreation of a 
 ball-room may produce that quickened gallop of the blood, 
 and consequent exhilaration of animal spirits, which attend 
 the sports of the sheep and the donkey ; and the music and 
 champagne may be allowed, in philosophic fairness, to set the 
 ball-room, considered as a place of animal sport, perceptibly 
 above the playgrounds of the last- mentioned creatures ; but, 
 when you have no friendliness, no all-persuasive play of mirth, 
 no unlaced ease and freedom, — when you stand to each other 
 merely in the relation of necessaries to the dance, — the plea- 
 sure, however heightened, is animal in essence, and ignoble. 
 
 Belaxing amusement, however, is noble and proper, when- 
 ever it bides the tests proposed. When you can trustfully 
 grasp the hand extended to yours ; when you know the smile 
 on the lip that addresses you to be the speechless voice of the 
 viewless spirit of kindness ; when you can be assured that 
 the tongue, now tuned to soft geniality and friendliness, will 
 not to-morrow slander your name ; when mirth flows in its 
 natural channels, and trustful heart leaps in sympathy with 
 trustful heart ; then all is right. And if, in such an assem- 
 blage, the joyous exhilaration will be increased by moving to 
 harmonious sound, with gestures of beauty and vivacious grace, 
 let no one object to the dance : the buoyant leaping of the 
 blood is nature's ; the laws of beauty in sound and sight are 
 nature's, — ^w^ho can say they are wrong 1 The rain falls no 
 less cheeringly because the sunbeams painted the cloud with 
 gold and vermilion ; industry and action flourish all the bet- 
 ter for this sporting in the sunlight of mirth and gladness. 
 
 I seriously invite all persons to consider the essential ac- 
 cordance of this with Christianity, with the example of our 
 Master. Never smile passed from human countenance as 
 He entered the abode j never child ceased to frolic because 
 
294 JOHN FOSTER. 
 
 He was near. I speak seriously, deliberately, and reverent- 
 ly, when I say tliat if, in the degenerate state of the Jews 
 at the time, they still retained any noble melodies comme- 
 morative of the days and deeds of the first Asmoneans, He 
 would have listened while they were sung, without command- 
 ing silence, and would have sanctioned by His sacred approval 
 the flow of manly mirth. Because worldly amusement, as we 
 in general find it, is unworthy of men, let us not forget that 
 the relaxing and yet re-invigorating enjoyments of social en- 
 tertainment were never frowned upon by Him whose sym- 
 pathy embraced eveiything beautiful and true in this universe. 
 
 True and legitimate amusement may assume many forms. 
 Our tests exclude what ought to be excluded, but make room 
 for all else. In the freest and best relaxation, the heart will 
 naturally turn to what draws it most, and the devout Chris- 
 tian may find every essential of recreating social enjoyment 
 in sharing with others the feelings of gratitude or in-epres- 
 sible love to his God which fill his own bosom. As true re- 
 creation, as pure enjoyment, may be derived from the sharing 
 of Christian feeling, as from any other outgoing of the heart, 
 or rather far truer and purer. Were the hymns which, at 
 early morning, the primitive Christians sung to Jesus, less 
 joyful than the bacchantic choruses that had made night hide- 
 ous a few hours before 1 Nay, this form of enjoyment will 
 ultimately swallow up all others. Meanwhile, it is bootless 
 to scowl upon amusements ; by no single edict can they be 
 removed or reformed. Only let us always keep the end in 
 view, and strive to be in the path of improvement. As the 
 human mind becomes gradually elevated, and the human 
 heart gmdually deepened, this and many other reforms will 
 come in their season. 
 
 We have thus found not a little to qualify and supplement 
 in the works of Foster. It were quite an erroneous idea, 
 however, if these exceptions were taken as illustrative of the 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 295 
 
 tenor of his works, or as testing their general value. The 
 intention is rather to bear witness to their worth by endea- 
 vouring to free it of excrescence, and making it moi'e ac- 
 cessible. His books are precious in a high and perennial 
 sense. You cannot read any paragiaph of them without per- 
 ceiving thaian earnest and lofty mind is at work. Earnest- 
 ness was perhaps Foster's distinguishing characteristic ; over 
 his page you seem to see bendiug the knit brow and in- 
 domitable eye of the thinker. This man, you feel, is con- 
 scious that it is a great and awful thing to be alive — to be 
 bom to that dread inheritance of duty and destiny which 
 awaits every man that arrives on earth. He shakes from 
 him the dust of custom; he little heeds the sanctions of re- 
 putation ; afar off and very still, compared with a voice com- 
 ing from above, he hears the trumpetings of fame : calm, 
 determined, irresistible, his foot ever seems to press down till 
 it reaches the basal adamant. This earnestness is made the 
 more impressive from the manifest leaning of his mind towards 
 the gloomy and mysterious. Of habits of thought deeply re- 
 flective, he retired as it were into the inner dwelling of his 
 mind, there to ponder the insoluble questions of destiny ; like 
 dim curtains, painted with shapes of terror, of gloom, and of 
 weird grandeur, that hang round a dusky hall, waving fitfully 
 in the faint light, these questions appear to have been ever 
 present to his mind, filling it with solemn shadow : he looked 
 upon them as on mystic hieroglyphs, but when he asked, 
 their secret, they remained silent as Isis ; he ever turned 
 away, saying, in baffled pride, I will compel your answer 
 in eternity, yet always turned again, fascinated by their 
 sublime mystery, stung by their calm defiance. No word 
 of frivolity escapes him ; he tells men sternly what they 
 have to dare, and do, and suffer ; he never says the burden 
 is light or the foe weak, but the one must be borne and 
 the other must be met. You feel in perusing his works as 
 
296 JOHN FOSTEIi. 
 
 ill going through a inigged region, where nature, forgetting 
 her gentler moods, desires to write upon the tablet of the 
 world her lessons of solemnity and of power ; you perceive 
 that only hardy plants can breathe this atmosphere, that here 
 no Arcadian lawns can smile, no Utopian palaces arise ; there 
 awakens in you that courage, you seem to be conscious of 
 that sense of greatness, which the strong soul knows in the 
 neighbourhood of crags and forests, where the torrent blends 
 its stern murmur with the music of the mountain blast. 
 
 Foster is one of the best representatives of that literary 
 Christian priesthood which is arising in these days. He did 
 not leave his Christianity in the pulpit ; in his every book, 
 and his every ai-ticle, he speaks as one fully conscious that, 
 by ceasing to preach his religion, he has not obtained any 
 dispensation from the duty of proclaiming it. If asked to 
 indicate what I would deem a fair specimen of that Chiis- 
 tianized literature to which I earnestly look as to a fountain 
 of blessedness for these latter times, I know not whither I 
 could point with more decision than to John Foster s contri- 
 butions to the Eclectic Review, 
 
 It cannot perhaps be alleged that there is any positively 
 new revelation of truth in the writings of Foster. But they 
 have the originality of spirit and the oiiginality of applica- 
 tion : the grain is the ancient grain of Christian truth, of 
 manly sentiment, and of free loyalty ; but it has gi-own green 
 in the sliowei"s of a new spring, and yellow under the suns 
 of a new summer, and it yields a rich harvest, wholesome 
 and pleasant as before, for the food of man. In an age when 
 severe teaching was perhaps more than usually required, Fos- 
 ter recalled the public mind to those stern aspects and rea- 
 lities of our lot which it is never well to forget. His en- 
 forcement of the great doctrine of human depravity is in it- 
 self sufficient to render his works permanently valuable. And 
 he was perhaps the first distinctly to apprehend and point 
 
JOHN FOSTER. 297 
 
 out how certain of the gi-eat influences of the age are to be 
 clealfc witli : he fairly understood the French Revohition, and 
 proclaimed the necessity of universal education. 
 
 To criticise his separate works is beyond our scope, and 
 would be superfluous. His style, even in its ultimate form, 
 was unquestionably and definably defective. It never became 
 capable of expressing delicate, sprightly, or buoyant emotion ; 
 it wants variety, light graceful force, easy-stepping familiar 
 elegance ; it has always something of an elephantine tread, 
 and its gaiety is apt to remind one rather of the jingling of 
 an elephant's trappings, than of the laughter of children ; oi*, 
 to change the figure, it never spreads out into wide islanded 
 shallows, rippling to the breeze, and sparkling in the sun- 
 beams, but is always a massive, stately, slow-rolling river. 
 Yet it possesses very rare and excellent qualities. It is re- 
 markably rich and expressive ; you cannot skim along it. 
 Almost strangely, too, considering its mass, it is by no means 
 fatiguing. Continually and unexpectedly, as if nourished by 
 hidden fountains, the flowers of a deeply poetic nature bloom 
 forth on the page. And though it cannot be said to possess 
 sprightliness, yet there is not wanting a pleasantly caustic 
 wit, a quiet, earnest humour. Foster possessed a true vein 
 of humour. Perhaps no style so deeply serious was ever so 
 widely popular. 
 
 Foster's biography is essentially that of a thinker ; his ex- 
 ternal life was that of a thousand Englishmen. He was a 
 shrewd, somewhat sarcastic, but friendly man, loving his 
 friends and social converse, and deeply happy in his family. 
 He excelled in conversation when in a genial atmosphere, and 
 especially when any friend whom he loved and honoured — 
 Hall, Fawcett, Hughes, or such othei' — was present. He 
 took a deep interest in politics, lending all his influence to 
 the side of freedom. 
 
 We noticed Foster's marriage ; we may venture to cast 
 
298 JOHN FOSTER* 
 
 one look upon him as lie lays his Maria, mourning, in the 
 grave. It was in 1832, and he was now sinking into the 
 vale of years. No description of the joy of a long married 
 life, where perfect love and perfect friendship have blended 
 mortal and immortal joys in one pure harmony, could more 
 pathetically body forth its felicity than the following words, 
 written by him when first the light of the present drew away, 
 to rest, like a sunset, on the past : — " I have returned hither ^ 
 but have an utter repugnance to say, — returned home ; that 
 name is applicable no longer. .... There is a weight 
 on the heart which the most friendly human hand cannot 
 remove. The melancholy fact is, that my beloved, inesti- 
 mable companion has left me. It comes upon me, — in evi- 
 dence how various and sad ! And yet, for a moment, some- 
 times I feel as if I could not realize it as true. There is 
 something that seems to say, can it be that I shall see her 
 no more ; that I shall still, one day after another, find she 
 is not here ; that her aifeccionate voice and look will never 
 accost me ; the kind grasp of her hand never more be felt ; 
 that when I would be glad to consult her, make an observa- 
 tion to her, address to her some expression of love, call her * my 
 dear wife,' as I have done so many thousand times, it will be 
 in vain, — she is not here? Several times, a considerable num- 
 ber, even since I followed her to the tomb, a momentaiy sug- 
 gestion of thought has been, as one and another circumstanco 
 has occurred, * I will tell Maria of this.' " One treads with 
 silence and tears in the sacred neighbourhood of such a sorrow. 
 As Foster's life drew near its end, the sadness which had 
 ever characterized him became more deep. He never wavered 
 in his trust in God ; but he felt ever the more profoundly 
 that this world is one of sorrow and darkness : he looked 
 wistfully into the future, pondering upon the intermediate 
 state and such subjects; he walked sadly and solemnly, ga- 
 thering up questions for eternity. 
 
JOHN FOSTEE. 299 
 
 At last he came to die; it was October 1844. On his 
 death-Led he showed the same tremulous sensibility to the 
 distress or annoyance of others which had always characterized 
 him. He would permit no servant to sit up with him dur- 
 ing the night, and if it was insisted upon, he could not sleep. 
 The fact is little in itself, hut of singular interest in the case 
 of Foster. 
 
 The substantial peace which he had attained did not de- 
 sert him in his dying hours. He died as one can die who 
 has well acquitted him in the far sterner duty of living a true 
 and godly life. As he felt his strength gradually stealing 
 away, he remarked on his increasing weakness, and added, 
 "But I can pray, and that is a glorious thing." Truly a glo- 
 rious thing ; more glorious than atheist or pantheist can even 
 pretend to. To look up to an Omnipotent Father, to speak 
 to Him, to love Him ; to stretch upwards as a babe from 
 the cradle, that He may lift His child in his everlasting arms 
 to the resting-place of His own bosom ; this is the portion 
 of the dying Christian. Foster was overheard thus speaking 
 with himself : — " O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, 
 where is thy victory 1 Thanks be to God, who giveth us the 
 victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ !" The eye of the 
 terror-crowned was upon him, and thus he defied him. 
 
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