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Theological Views

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the Welsh mountains) the eagerness with which he knelt down by the side of a tinkling waterfall, and said in a whisper of delight, 'Listen to the fairy bells!' And thus, again, I recall with tender sorrow an incident that occurred in one of the last walks he ever took, on those dark winter days which preceded his own illness, and when a great and overwhelming sorrow was hanging over him. We were passing along one of the Eversley lanes. Suddenly we came on a large tree, newly cut down, lying by the roadside. He stopped, and looked at it for a moment or so, and then, bursting into tears, exclaimed, 'I have known that tree ever since I came into the parish!'

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"Doubtless there is more or less truth in the assertion that Mr. Kingsley was a Broad Churchman. But assuredly in no party sense; and the only time I ever heard him approach to anything like an exact definition of his position, he described himself as an old-fashioned High Churchman.' It was his pride to belong to the Church of England, as by law established ;' — he was never tired of quoting the words, nor of referring to the Prayer Book on all disputed points. I have never known any one speak more emphatically and constantly of the value of the Creeds, and the efficacy of the Sacraments, to which he alluded in almost every sermon I heard him preach. The two most distinctive features of his religious teaching were, I think, that the world is God's world, and not the devil's, and that manliness is entirely compatible with godliness. Yet, whilst his name will indissolubly be associated with the latter doctrine, it must not be supposed that he was lacking in gentleness and delicate sympathy. There was in him a vein of almost feminine tenderness, which I fancy increased as life advanced, and which enabled him to speak with a peculiar power of consolation to the sad and suffering, both in private and from the pulpit.

With Puritanism he had little sympathy: with Ritualism none. The former was to his rich poetic imagination and warm chivalrous nature ludicrously defective as a theory of life. The latter was, in his opinion, too nearly allied in spirit to Romanism ever to gain his support or sanction in any way; and of Rome he was the most uncompromising opponent I have ever known. None of the great parties in the Church—it is an important fact could lay claim to him exclusively. Intrepid fearlessness in the statement of his opinions; a dislike to be involved in the strife of tongues; unexpected points of sympathy with all the different sections of the Church; a certain ideal of his own, both with regard to personal holiness and church regimen ;- these things always left him a free lance in the ecclesiastical field.

"The opinion may be taken for what it is worth, but it certainly is my opinion, that whilst Mr. Kingsley's convictions, during his career as a clergyman, remained substantially the same, as may be proved by a careful comparison of his later with his earlier writings, his belief in revealed truth deepened and increased, and his respect for the constituted order of things in Church and State grew more and more assured.

"Surely if ever room could be haunted by happy ghosts it would be his study at Eversley, peopled as it must ever be with the bright creations of his brain. There every book on the many crowded shelves looked at him with almost human friendly eyes. And of books what were there not?- from huge folios tine1 to the last treatise on fly-fishing. would he not talk?—classic myth and medieval romance, magic and modern science, metaphysics and poetry, West Indian scenery and parish schools, politics and fairyland, &c., &c.— and of all with vivid sympathy,

of St. AugusAnd of what

1 Once the property of John Sterling, and given to Mr. Kingsley by Thos. Carlyle.

The Book Lover

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keen flashes of humor, and oftentimes with much pathos and profound knowledge. As he spoke he would constantly verify his words. The book wanted- he always knew exactly where, as he said, it 'lived' — was pulled down with eager hands; and he, flinging himself back with lighted pipe into his hammock, would read, with almost boylike zest, the passage he sought for and quickly found. It was very impressive to observe how intensely he realized the words he read. I have seen him overcome with emotion as he turned the wellthumbed pages of his Homer, or perused the tragic story of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in his beloved Hakluyt. Nor did the work of the study even at such moments shut him in entirely, or make him forgetful of what was going on outside. It's very pleasant,' he would say, opening the door which led on to the lawn, and making a rush into the darkness, to see what is going on out here.' On one such occasion, a wild autumnal night, after the thrilling recital of a Cornish shipwreck he had once witnessed, and the memory of which the turbulence of the night had conjured up, he suddenly cried, 'Come out! come out!' We followed him into the garden, to be met by a rush of warm driving rain before a southwesterly gale, which roared through the branches of the neighboring poplars. There he stood, unconscious of personal discomfort, for a moment silent and absorbed in thought, and then exclaimed in tones of intense enjoyment, 'What a night! Drenching! This is a night on which you young men can't think or talk too much poetry.'

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"Nevertheless, with this appreciation of nature in her wilder moods, he possessed all a poet's love for her calmness. Indeed I think that anything that was savage in aspect was deeply alien to his mind. . . . Order and cultivation were of supreme value in his eyes; and, from a point of artistic beauty, I believe he would have preferred an English homestead to an Indian jungle.

Nay, even town scenes had a very great charm for him; and one bright summer day, after his return from America, whilst walking in Kensington Gardens, he declared that he considered they were as beautiful as anything he had seen in the New World. Looking at some photographs of bleak and barren mountain ranges, he said to a young painter who was admiring their grandeur: 'Yes; paint them, and send the picture to the Academy, and call it, "The Abomination of Desolation"!' I once ventured to ask him whether his scientific knowledge had not dulled the splendor and dissipated much of the mystery that fill the world for the poet's heart. A very sad and tender look came over his face, and for a little while he was silent. Then he said, speaking slowly: 'Yes, yes; I know what you mean; it is so. But there are times-rare moments -when nature looks out at me again with the old bridelook of earlier days.'

"I would speak of his chivalry-for I can call it nothing else in daily life; a chivalry which clothed the most ordinary and commonplace duties with freshness and pleasantness. I soon discovered that an unswerving resolution at all times, and under all circumstances, to spare himself no trouble, and to sustain life at a lofty level, was the motive power of this chivalry :and those who conscientiously set themselves to this task best know the innumerable difficulties that beset it. No fatigue was too great to make him forget the courtesy of less wearied moments; no business too engrossing to deprive him of his readiness to show kindness and sympathy. To school himself to this code of unfaltering, high, and noble living was truly one of the great works of his life; for the fulfilment of which he subjected himself to a rigorous self-discipline-a self-discipline so constant that to many people, even of noble temperament, it might appear Quixotic. He would have liked

Kingsley's Tolerance

251 that word applied to him. There was much in him of that knightly character which is heroic even to a fault; and which, from time to time, provokes the shafts of malice and ridicule from lesser men. That the persistent fortitude by which he gained and sustained this temper was one of the root-principles of his life was touchingly illustrated to me one day, when, seeing him quit his work to busy himself in some trivial matter for me, I asked him not to trouble about it then and there, and he, turning on me, said with unusual warmth, 'Trouble! Don't talk to me of that, or you will make me angry. I never allow myself to think about it.'

"I would speak of him as a friend. His ideal of friendship was very full and noble, tenderer, perhaps, than most men's. He took his friends as he found them, and loved them for what they really were, rather than for what he fancied or wished them to be. In this, as in other aspects of his nature, the beautiful boy-likeness was conspicuous. To the last he was ready to meet and to make new friends, to love and to be beloved with the freshness of youth. If there was anything at all admirable in a person he was sure to see and appreciate it. It was not that he was wanting in the critical faculty; nothing escaped his notice; speech, manner, dress, features, bearing, all were observed, but in the most kindly spirit, the good points alone were dwelt and commented upon. People are better than we fancy, and have more in them than we fancy;' so he has said in one of his sermons, and so I have heard him say again and again in his daily life. And here I must speak, with the deepest gratitude and love, of the friendship he bestowed on me, unwavering, helpful, exalting, tender, truthful. The memories of that friendship are too many and too sacred for me to dilate upon. Its sweetness and worth have made life a new thing to me, but cannot well be expressed in words."

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