CHAPTER IV.

BETWEEN GRAMMAR SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY.

next

HE next eight months-from May, 1867, to January, 1868 ---Alfred spent in studying at home, in accordance with the advice of the Principal of his College. I had thus an opportunity of noting his intellectual and spiritual progress. His mental state struck me as corresponding to the sweet season of the year at which he came to us :

'Half pranckt with Spring, with Summer half embrowned.'

His imagination put forth a flowery luxuriance; his understanding gave promise of a fast-ripening fruitfulness; his conversation sparkled with genuine wit. I may give two

instances :

One day he heard me preach on the text, 'I will be glad in the Lord,' and thought some of my remarks, as to the bounds which should be set by Christian prudence and propriety to the indulgence of the comic either in speech or song, were rather narrow and Puritanical. In self-defence, I quoted St. James Is any merry? let him sing psalms.' 'Ay,' said Alfred, 'that'll cure him; if they are such psalms as I have often heard sung.'

About the same time we were both reading Ruskin's Construction of Sheepfolds, and came upon the passage in which he insists that a Bishop ought to know every little boy in every court in his diocese. 'He mistakes an epi-scope for a microscope,' said Alfred.

The great book of the day was Ecce Homo. Alfred read a paper on it before the Stockwell Wesleyan Young Men's Discussion Society. I was present at the reading, and the

AGE 17.]

'ECCE HOMO.'

57

paper is now in my possession. As this is the history of a mind and heart, I give a few extracts from it, as indicating the stage of mental and spiritual development at which he had arrived at the age of seventeen, and the range and quality of his thought and feeling. The sentiments and principles embodied have a wider application than to that particular book. He gives Professor Seeley credit for a commendable motive in writing the book; he insists on judging it from the author's own point of view; he emphasizes its excellencies, and throughout breathes the spirit of the charity which 'hopeth all things, believeth all things.' Alas! how far is Seeley's second volume from fulfilling these hopes! He says:

'I regard it as the work of one who has long fluctuated in doubt and confusion on the matter of the Christian faith, and has not arrived at the full truth yet. On many most important points he is in grave error. I fear that his forthcoming work will contain much heresy. At the same time, I should not be very much surprised if a few years' more study bring him into a substantial agreement with the truth. The book is not addressed to the Church, as the recantation of a heretic, or the thank-offering of a new convert. He writes to those who are in the condition he was in, to help them to come to an independent decision. With this end he accommodates himself to their state: he will not assume the truth of any received doctrine of the Church, but to the sceptics he becomes as a sceptic, that he may gain the sceptics. Looking at Christianity as a great historical phenomenon to be accounted for, he sets to work to explain it from the data of historic documents. He writes neither for the confirmed believer nor for the professed infidel. I would not have the book read by the weak in intellect; by those who are unable to appreciate an argument, and to see where it fails. To those whose faith is firm, or whose mind is in good training, the book need do no harm, and may do much good.'

He maintains that the author's view of the Sacraments, though very superficial and very seriously defective, is not unscriptural so far as it goes. He regards the part of the book which

treats of 'Christian morality: how a man behaves when and while he is a Christian,' as the best; though its author fails to see that 'the spring of a man's actions lies in his altered relations to God.' Alfred puts his finger on the deficiencies and errors of the work:

It

'Besides failing to account for the origin of Christianity, he does not adequately explain its propagation. His theory is that it is due to the influence of the enthusiasm for the ideal man in every individual man. . . . This enthusiasm succeeds in spreading itself by appealing to a faculty that is a mere creature of Seeley's brain: "a natural loyalty to goodness," which is what he understands by Faith. Where did he get that idea, or what support has he for it? would have been well if, professing to be superior to popular conceptions, he had been superior to the popular misconception of Faith; and, instead of seeking for some abstruse and impalpable process to designate by that name, had taken the obvious meaning of the word itself. "Faith can mean nothing else but faith, belief. It is so simple that you cannot explain it, for there is no simpler term to be used in explaining it. . . . Taking, then, this view of Faith,—the principal agent in the spread of Christianity,--that it is a belief of what you are told, the secret of its wide-spread success must lie in the nature of its declarations, and therefore, mainly, if not exclusively, in its Theology. Accordingly, any view of Christianity omitting, as Seeley professedly does, all reference to Theology, is necessarily incomplete. And Ecce Homo confesses its incompleteness. But even it cannot dispense with Theology. Its theory of Christ's work in founding His kingdom rests upon the theological dogmas that the Messiah represented Jehovah, and that the theocracy was a fact, not a figure of speech; and in the third part the Legislation is built upon the theological doctrine of the common derivation of mankind from God.

...

'Seeley does not distinguish between the state of the kingdom before and after the death of Christ; in fact, gives no explanation of the meaning of that death. That he feels this, and is embarrassed by it, is clear. Instead of defining the position of Christ's first disciples, he pleads for toleration of those who have not a perfect creed, on the ground

CHRISTIANITY DEPENDS ON ITS THEOLOGY. 59

that it is not indispensable, which is trenching on theological ground. . . . I would suggest that the change in their state after Christ's death is that expressed by the change in their name; when "the disciples" became "believers."

'Misconception of Faith is the fundamental mistake of the book. It is this that has led him to separate the Theology of the Church from its constitution and morality. That separation could not fail to confuse and mislead his readers; and by stamping his work a fragment, it destroys nearly all its practical value---till the promised work on Theology appears, and then the latter book should be read first. Had Seeley, knowing that Faith is that to which Christianity mainly appeals, seen what Faith is, he would have perceived how Christianity depends entirely on its Theology; how its constitution and morality flow from that, and if they are to be looked at apart, the Theology must come first. As Carlyle says-no professional theologian or timid believer he :--"The thing men are taught and get to believe, that is the thing they will infallibly do; the kind of Gospel you settle or do not settle the root of all is there."

'We find that Seeley can neither account for the origin of Christianity without a Divine Founder, nor for its spread without a Divine Propagator.'

He then tells us to what the book owes its fascination :

'Originality of style, not originality of matter; we have found in it no truth that the Church has not taught for ages. When mankind have been talking and writing a long time about any subject, the phrases employed, either generally or by distinct parties, will from continual use lose much of their force, if not of their meaning, and are in danger of becoming mere conventionality and cant. This is to a great extent the case with our religious vocabulary. Repentance, faith, conversion, pious, edify, and many another word honest and straightforward enough as first used by our Lord and His apostles, or by the early adherents of various schools of religious thought and feeling,--words taken from the speech of every-day life-have now acquired a meaning that has to be elaborately explained to the uninitiated. The words have their use still; you can scarcely carry on a religious conversation without them. But many

who care
not for their hidden meaning are repelled by
what they think a jargon as dry as the technicalities of the
Law Courts, or the Latin of a doctor's prescription; and so
they leave it to "the parsons in disgust. To men in their
case we may say of Christ's religion as of Christ Himself:
its visage is so marred; and when they shall see it, there
is no beauty in it that they should desire it. Here, then, is
the value of Seeley's originality. Laying aside all conven-
tionalism and technicality, and bringing to his aid the force of
learning and eloquence, and the charm of a style elsewhere
almost unequalled, he shows us, through a new medium, the
beauty of holiness. And a fair picture he makes of it; so
fair that from this alone we may argue its divinity: "Thou
art fairer than the children of men."

'This very freshness is imputed to it as a fault. . . . But if you will look at the hobgoblin, gentlemen, you will find it nothing but the old finger-post. "The enthusiasm of humanity" is but a philosophical way of expressing the law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Where's the ghost?'

The following lyric was composed during this period, though it describes a simple incident which occurred, and a mood of mind which he experienced, when left behind in Manchester, and still in suspense as to the Shakespeare Scholarship :

A CITY-RAINBOW.

I left my home a month agone,
Eager to taste my liberty,
And, when we parted, I alone

Was glad, while others wept for me.

I scorned my father's prescient fears,
My mother's fond anxiety,
Marked not my sister's gathering tears;
I only thought that I was free.

But now, as weary and alone

I passed along the noisy mart,
The poetry of life was gone,

And the dull fact oppressed my heart.

Buoyant and light no more my tread,
The footsteps of a soul elate;
With shoulders bent and bowed head,
I moved with slow, ungainly gait