CHAP. XI. Place in the Church than in the Nation.

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catholicity, should not become one of those sects which aim at its destruction, and which, as we trust, God intends it to destroy.

'I have thought it a duty to you, my Lords and Gentlemen, not to let my gratitude mar the good which this address of yours may do to a cause which is more important to the world than all of us together. You will believe that it has cost me some effort to restrain a more enthusiastic expression of the personal delight which your words have given me. And I may say in conclusion, that, trying to look upon them as impartially as I can, I do feel that your kindness to an individual man has not enfeebled your testimony to a great principle. The less important that individual man is, the more strikingly does your consideration for him illustrate your feeling of the nature and the width of our Church fellowship. It gives him a right to wish you, in your different spheres of labour, and in your own hearts, all the blessings which that fellowship implies.'

On Sunday, September 9, 1860, he "read himself in" at St. Peter's, and preached two sermons published immediately afterwards on 'The Faith of the Liturgy,' and 'The Doctrine of the Thirty-nine Articles.'

"I think," he writes to Mr. Macmillan, "it is fair to the Bishop, to the congregation, and to those who have so kindly joined in the address to me, that I should publish them. They contain a statement of the grounds on which I accept the Prayer Book and the Articles."

At this time he was frequently engaged in going about the country to different towns where an effort was being made to set up working men's colleges. They had been started at Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Salford, Ancoats, Sheffield, Halifax, Wolverhampton, Glasgow, Birkenhead, and Ayr.

To Mr. J. M. Ludlow.

'Prees, September 11, 1860.

I have just returned from Wolverhampton, where we had an excellent meeting at the Working Men's College, and after

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1860,

wards one of the Society of Arts, for which many of the men here got certificates. Langley and the new rector are working the thing admirably.

'And now what am I to say about the address, in which I can almost see you were a principal mover? I can only say that it was just like you to think of it; and that the words, exaggerated as they are, have been a greater comfort and encouragement to me, than I can express. I thank you for it from my heart. I only hope I may be more what you have always wished me to be, and tried to make me. I have a world of things to repent of at Lincoln's Inn. May God enable me to begin a new life.'

A short time before the breaking out of the civil war in America, the State of Maryland, fired by the passionate proslavery spirit which the excitement connected with the approaching struggle engendered in some of the southern States, passed a law, the practical effect of which was to enslave the whole free black population of the State. It happened that at the moment a considerable portion of my father's property was invested in the State funds. He was so horrified at the iniquity of the decree that he immediately had the money sold out, thereby, as it turned out, on very unbusiness-like principles, saving the whole of it from absolute loss.

To Rev. D. J. Vaughan.

'Lilleshall, Newport, September 18, 1860.

'The sermons I liked very much indeed. I am sure they are what was wanted, and that you have spoken the truth to some ears which will hear it; of course, to many which will be scandalised by it. There may be aspects of the Atonement, there must be, which you and I have not perceived; but that it is a duty to set it forth as a gospel to mankind, and not in a form which is not and cannot be a gospel, seems to me more certain every day. I have lately been preaching (at my reading

Is the "News" of the Atonement "Good News?" 379

in) on the Prayer Book and on the Articles.

It has been a

great comfort to me to feel how entirely one is speaking in the spirit of both when one is setting forth the full, perfect, sufficient sacrifice made for the sins of the whole world, and when one is not trying to reduce that sacrifice to earthly rules and measures.

'I was delighted to hear that you were making way among the Unitarians at Leicester. I am well convinced that what they require is a more complete statement of the full truth of the Trinity and the Atonement; that they want no dilution of either, that it is the popular dilution of both which has outraged their consciences. The entire union of the Father with the Son is what we have to assert if we would overcome the notion of a Son who changes the Father's will.

'I have been taking duty for Henry de Bunsen. His father, I fear, is dying. He will be a loss to the world and a greater to his friends. His gifts never seemed to me so remarkable as his heart, which is a most wide and tender one.'

In December, 1860, difficulties arose which caused the closing of the Women's classes at the "Working Men's College." Another subject was causing trouble. The effect of the mis-statements about him made by the religious newspapers-in leading men to join him simply on the ground of his supposed tendency to criticise or to modify the Christian faith-had made it a serious danger lest the College should be used for a purpose the exact opposite of that which he and his friends desired. His resolute determination not to excommunicate, his unwillingness to judge, his belief in the recognition of the voice of conscience by any man as a recognition of the presence and personal government of Christ, his sense that it was not for him to dictate the mode in which expression should be given in words to that recognition, and his dread of forming a party, if he once began to draw a line and to refuse those who were willing to follow the example of the great Sacrifice by making sacrifices themselves-all these feelings made such a situation peculiarly difficult for him, and con

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Practical Difficulties.

F. M. 55

tinually led him to look upon resignation as the only resource open to him.

The letter to Mr. Hughes which follows, will set forth his views. It is necessary, however, to remember always that which he never points out-that the difficulties in the way of this kind of Christian influence were in no way the result of the failure of the principles he advocated, but always the direct result of the misrepresentations and of the readiness of mankind to greedily devour second-hand gossip. He himself does not point this out in this letter or elsewhere, because he always looked upon it as his first duty to judge himself and to accuse himself of whatever went wrong.

To Mr. Hughes.

'5 Russell Square, W.C., January 3, 1861.

'I see with much satisfaction that Harrison's name does not appear in the new programme. Is that in consequence of any representations of yours? Still this omission does by no means meet the evil of which we were speaking the other day. I feel that I ought to make some frank and full statement of the principles which at all events govern my own mind in al thoughts and plans for education, and for the working-men. I wish it to be clearly understood that I do not plead for a modified Christianity, for one less strong and definite than that which is held by the extremest section of the Recordite School; that I find fault with their Christianity only because it seems to me to have nothing to do with Christ, to be a mere religious system constructed by human speculation, made up of crude philosophical notions and popular superstitions, and alien from that revelation of the living and true God which I find set forth in Scripture. I hold that for the reformation of the age, most especially for the elevation of the working classes, we want a firmer, fuller, more loving theology, such a theology as I find in the creeds of the Church. If that is vigorously set forth, I care not how many Records, Guardians. Essays and Reviews, Saturday Reviews, Westminster Reviews,

The Facts of the Creeds against the World. 381

set forth their theories, with how much scorn and bitterness any of them are mingled. All are necessary for the development and manifestation of the truth. Come one, come all, the truth if it can be spoken out will be too strong for them. It is only that which is not truth that trembles, at one statement or another, at one contradiction or another. But if we speak, as I have done, only in muttered accents, in cowardly whispers, our position must be mistaken. It must be supposed that we do not mean what we profess to mean, but are uttering lies in church, and modifying them as much as we can in the world. That Records and Westminster Reviews should hold one to be a mixture of rascal and fool selling one's soul for a bit of bread, is a thing of course; one ought not to be the least disturbed about that. But that the people, especially the people of our own College, should be in doubt about our sincerity, is more serious, for their own sake, not ours. This, therefore, I think we should earnestly labour to prevent.'

The next letter is in answer to one published in Miss Wynn's Memorials,' p. 279, referring to a sermon on the collect for the fourth Sunday in Advent.

To Miss Williams Wynn.

'January 4, 1861.

I am much delighted that the sermon met your difficulties. I find more and more how much we lose, either by taking up with the merely scholastical idea of satisfaction, or by simply throwing that aside as hard and ungenial, without seeking for the truth which is involved in it. The violence with which some are casting off all belief in mediation and intercession, because the popular representations of them are so bewildered, and often so inconsistent with the righteousness and truth of God, shocks, though it does not surprise me. I should suppose that every false conception is corrected and cured only by the principle which it contrasts and caricatures, never by a denial.'