To Sir William Cope ... 95 beneath their shoulders,' of Shakespeare, which he mentions there, are the Cynocephali, which he boldly says are animals, and no doubt he is right, the Cynocephalus being nothing but the great gregarious baboon of Africa. He speaks as having seen them, and doubtless had. I have run my eye over the miracles which he mentions as having occurred under his own eyes. . . . I find but three. . . . That he saw and believed these three there can be no doubt. The other stories which he tells rest on the same evidence as most other postscriptural ones. God forbid that I should deny them. How can I limit the wonders of grace, who find daily the wonders of nature beyond my comprehension or expectation? Only, knowing from medieval records, and still more from the stories of the Indian massacres (which, as fields for judging of evidence, I have looked into somewhat closely), how very difficult it is to get at truth, when people have once made up their minds what they would like to be true; knowing this, I say, I think one may, without irreverence, preserve a stoic epoché' on the matter, reserving one's judgment for more light, and meanwhile neither affirming nor denying." ... Christmas Eve, 1858.-"The Frobenius edition of 'St. Augustine,' which I have, says that all the 'Ep. ad Fratres in Eremo' are spurious. . . . The style is utterly unlike Augustine's, and in places very weak, which he never is. I am glad to find them spurious, for on receiving your second letter, I said to myself thusperhaps too much after the fashion of a German critic -I will not believe that the man who wrote the chapter on Monsters in the City of God,' ever wrote the passage *** attributes to him. I know from reason that passage to be a direct lie. I will not believe that Augustine ever told one. But the part of your letter which deserves a long answer, longer than I can give, is what you say about natural science and Buckland. It is exceedingly comfortable to me, who knew nothing of him, as proving him to have been the wise man I always believed him. As for the fact- my doctrine has been for years, if I may speak of myself— that 'omnia exeunt in mysterium' (a saying, I think, attributed to Augustine); that below all natural phenomena, we come to a transcendental in plain English, a miraculous ground. I argued this once with Professor H., who supported the materialist view, and is a consummate philosopher; and I did not find that he shook me in the least. This belief was first forced on me by investigating the generation of certain polypes of a very low order. I found absolute Divine miracle at the bottom of all; and no cause, save that of a supremely imaginative (if I may so speak), as well as Almighty mind, carrying out its own ideas; but gravitation, or the simplest law, will show the same truth. What efficient cause is there that all matter should attract matter? The only answer is, that God has so willed; and if we come to final causes, there is no better answer than the old mystic one, that God has imprest the Law of Love, which is the law of His own being, on matter, that it may be a type of the spiritual world when healthy, and of the kingdom of heaven. I am deeply touched by what you say as to the miracles of grace. is all true, and most necessary to be preached now to me as well as to others; for one is apt to forget grace in nature, the unseen in the seen. As you say, after the crowning miracle of this most blessed night, all miracles are possible. The miracle of this night was possible because God's love was absolute, infinite, unconquerable, able to condescend to anything, that good might be done; and who (who calls himself a true philosopher) dare limit that Love and power by any Laws of Time? Miracles, in the vulgar acceptation of the term, may have ceased. But only for a time. I It A Happy Christmas 97 cannot but believe that, should there come once more in the Church's history, a 'dignus Deo vindice nodus,' we should have miracles once more, and find them, not arbitrary infractions, but the highest development of that will of God whose lowest manifestations we call the Laws of Nature, though really they are no Laws of Nature, but merely customs of God; which He can alter as and when He will. "Excuse my thus running on. But this Christmas night is the one of all the year which sets a physicist, as I am, on facing the fact of miracle; and which delivers him from the bonds of sense and custom, by reminding him of God made man. That you and I and all belonging to us may reap the full benefit of that archmiracle is my prayer. What better one can I have?" On New Year's Eve he writes to Mr. Maurice: "We have had a most blessed Christmas. F. well enough to enjoy our Christmas parish party, and work in the garden again; and your godson come home with an admirable character and two prizes. My cup runs over. God grant that I may not throw it over, as I expect surely to do some day, by my own laziness, thanklessness, and self-indulgence." VOL. II.-7 CHAPTER XVIII 1859 AGED 40 SANITARY WORK-FIRST SERMON AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE QUEEN'S CHAPLAINCY - FIRST VISIT TO WINDSOR · LETTER TO AN ATHEIST-TO ARTISTS-CHARLES BENNETT, FREDERICK SHIELDS · LADIES' SANITARY ASSOCIATION EXHAUSTED BRAIN-POLLUTION OF RIVERS - THE ETERNITY OF MARRIAGE. "What would become of mankind if the arena where must be fought out the great battle of right against wrong should be deserted by the champions of the good cause with-disguise it as we may the selfish motive of rendering easier to their souls the struggle which all earnest men must wage to the end against their own infirmities? Rather did he emulate the heroism of those who, throwing themselves into the press of human affairs, strike with all their might, and to their last hour, against ignorance, folly, oppression, and are able to say with Sir Galahad: 'So pass I hostel, hall, and grange, By bridge and ford, by park and pale; And those who thus fight on to the end, content to die in their harness, and in the ranks of the faithful, will also be enabled to say with the pure knight : 'And stricken by an angel's hand This mortal armor that I wear, This weight and size, this form and eyes, LIFE OF SIR WILLIAM Napier. S years went on he devoted time, thought, and influence more and more to sanitary science; the laws of health, the deliverance of men's bodies and homes from disease and dirt, Sanitary Work 99 and their inevitable consequences of drunkenness, sin, and misery, physical and spiritual, became more important in his eyes than any Political reforms. "I am going to throw myself into this movement," he writes to a lady who had established a convalescent home for children. "I am tired of most things in the world. Of sanitary reform I shall never grow tired. No one can accuse a man of being sentimental over it, or of doing too much in it. There can be no mistake about the saving of human lives, and the training up a healthy generation. God bless you and all good ladies who have discovered that human beings have bodies as well as souls and that the state of the soul too often depends on that of the body." To J. B. Esq.]—"I see more and more that we shall work no deliverance till we teach people a little more common physical knowledge, and I hail the Prince's noble speech at Aberdeen as a sign that he sees his way clearly and deeply. I have refused this winter to lecture on anything but the laws of health; and shall try henceforth to teach a sound theology through physics." This year, 1859, was an altogether important one to him. On Palm Sunday he preached for the first time before the Queen and the Prince Consort at Buckingham Palace, and was shortly afterwards made one of Her Majesty's chaplains in ordinary. He now took his turn as preacher at the Chapels Royal, St. James's and Whitehall, and once a year before the Queen in the private chapel at Windsor. In the autumn he was presented to the Queen and the Prince Consort, and to the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, then |