Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
crowded church, the long array of scarlet-robed doctors, the preacher's
beautiful face looking down from the high pulpit, with anxious brow and
wistful gaze. And then the rolling Latin hymn, and then the Bidding
Prayer, and then the pregnant text--_He that believeth on the Son hath
everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life;
but the wrath of God abideth on him_. Are we listening to St. John the
Baptist or St. John the Evangelist? The preacher holds that we are
listening to the Evangelist, and says that the purpose of St. John's
Gospel is condensed into his text. "If to believe in Him is life, to
have known and yet to reject him is death. There is no middle term or
state between the two.... In fact, this stern, yet truthful and
merciful, claim makes all the difference between a Faith and a theory."
And now there is a moment's pause. Preacher and hearers alike take
breath. Some instinct assures us that we are just coming to the crucial
point. The preacher resumes: "A statement of this truth in other terms
is at present occasioning a painful controversy, which it would be
better in this place to pass over in silence if too much was not at
stake to warrant a course from which I shall only depart with sincere
reluctance. Need I say that I allude to the vexed question of the
Athanasian Creed?" The great discourse which was thus introduced, with
its strong argument for the retention of the Creed as it stands, has
long been the property of the Church, and there is no need to
recapitulate it. But the concluding words, extolling "the high and rare
grace of an intrepid loyalty to known truth," spoke with a force of
personal appeal which demands commemoration: "To be forced back upon the
central realities of the faith which we profess; to learn, better than
ever before, what are the convictions which we dare not surrender at any
cost; to renew the freshness of an early faith, which affirms within us,
clearly and irresistibly, that the one thing worth thinking of, worth
living for, if need were, worth dying for, is the unmutilated faith of
Jesus Christ our Lord,--these may be the results of inevitable
differences, and, if they are, they are blessings indeed."[13]
The same Sunday was marked by another unforgettable experience--my first
visit to St. Barnabas'. The church was then just three years old. Bishop
Wilberforce had consecrated it on the 19th of October, 1869, and made
this characteristic note in his diary:--"Disagreeable service. Acolyte
running about. Paste squares for bread, etc., but the church a great
gift." Three years later, a boy fresh from Harrow, and less sensitively
Protestant than the good Bishop, not only thought "the church a great
gift," but enjoyed the "acolyte running about," and found the whole
service the most inspiring and uplifting worship in which he had ever
joined. My impressions of it are as clear as yesterday's--the unadorned
simplicity of the fabric, emphasizing by contrast the blaze of light and
colour round the altar; the floating cloud of incense; the expressive
and unfussy ceremonial; the straightforward preaching; and, most
impressive of all, the large congregation of men, old and young, rich
and poor, undergraduates and artisans, all singing Evangelical hymns
with one heart and one voice. It was, if ever there was on earth,
congregational worship; and I, for one, have never seen its like. The
people's pride in the church was very characteristic: they habitually
spoke of it as "our Barnabas." The clergy and the worshippers were a
family, and the church was a home.
At the Dedication Festival of 1872, there was a strong list of
preachers, including W. J. E. Bennett, of Frome, and Edward King, then
Principal of Cuddesdon. But the sermon which made an indelible
impression on me was preached by R. W. Randall, then vicar of All
Saints, Clifton, and afterwards Dean of Chichester. It was indeed a
memorable performance. "Performance" is the right word, for, young as
one was, one realized instinctively the wonderful art and mastery and
technical perfection of the whole. There was the exquisitely modulated
voice, sinking lower, yet becoming more distinct, whenever any specially
moving topic was touched; the restrained, yet emphatic action--I can see
that uplifted forefinger still--and the touch of personal reminiscence
at the close, so managed as to give the sense that we were listening to
an elder brother who, thirty years before, had passed through the same
experiences, so awfully intermingled of hope and tragedy, which now lay
before us on the threshold of our Oxford life. It was, in brief, a
sermon never to be forgotten; it was "a night to be much remembered unto
the Lord."
Some thirty years later, I was introduced to Dean Randall at a London
dinner-party. After dinner, I drew my chair towards him, and said, "Mr.
Dean, I have always wished to have an opportunity of thanking you for a
sermon which you preached at St. Barnabas', Oxford, at the Dedication
Festival, 1872." The Dean smiled, with the graceful pleasure of an old
man honoured by a younger one, and said, "Yes? What was the text?" "The
text I have long forgotten, but I remember the subject." "And what was
that?" "It was the insecurity of even the best-founded hopes." "Rather a
well-worn theme," said the Dean, with a half-smile. "But not, sir," I
said, "as you handled it. You told us, at the end of the sermon, that
you remembered a summer afternoon when you were an undergraduate at
Christ Church, and were sitting over your Thucydides close to your
window, grappling with a long and complicated passage which was to be
the subject of next morning's lecture; and that, glancing for a moment
from your book, you saw the two most brilliant young Christ Church men
of the day going down to bathe in the Isis. You described the gifts and
graces of the pair, who, between them, seemed to combine all that was
best and most beautiful in body and mind and soul. And then you told us
how, as your friends disappeared towards Christ Church Meadows, you
returned to your work; and only were roused from it two hours later,
when a confused noise of grief and terror in the quadrangle below
attracted your attention, and you saw the dead bodies of Gaisford and
Phillimore borne past your window from their 'watery bier' at Sandford
Lasher."
On Advent Sunday, December 1, I saw and heard Dr. Pusey for the first
time. He was then in broken health; but he gathered all his physical and
mental energies for a great sermon on "The Responsibility of Intellect
in Matters of Faith." The theme of this sermon was that Intellect is a
great trust confided to us by God; that we are responsible to Him for
the use of it; and that we must exercise it in submission to His
revealed Will. What He has declared, that it is our duty to believe. Our
Lord Himself had uttered the most solemn warning against wilful
unbelief; the Athanasian Creed only re-echoed His awful words; and the
storm which assailed the Creed was really directed against the revealed
Truth of God. "This tornado will, I trust, by God's mercy, soon pass; it
is a matter of life and death. To remove those words of warning, or the
Creed because it contains them, would be emphatically to teach our
people that it is _not_ necessary to salvation to believe faithfully the
Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, or in One God as He has made
Himself known to us."
Immediately after delivering himself of this great apology for the
Faith, Pusey went abroad for the benefit of his health, and did not
return to Oxford till the Summer Term. I well remember the crowd of
ancient disciples, who had missed their accustomed interview at
Christmas, thronging his door in Christ Church, like the impotent folk
at the Pool of Bethesda.
Another reminiscence, and of a very different kind, belongs to my first
Term. Dean Stanley had been nominated as Select Preacher, and the
old-fashioned High Churchmen made common cause with the Low Churchmen to
oppose his appointment. There was a prodigious clamour, but Dr. Pusey
held aloof from the agitation, believing--and in this he was
conspicuously right--that "opposition would only aggravate the evil by
enlisting the enthusiasm of the young." The vote was taken, in an
unusually crowded Convocation, on the 11th of December. It was a
noteworthy and rather an amusing scene, and was well described by an
eyewitness.[14] "Oxford was fairly startled from the serenity which
usually marks the fag-end of the Michaelmas Term by a sudden irruption
of the outer world. Recognitions took place at every street-corner. The
hotels were put upon their mettle. The porters' lodges of the Colleges
were besieged, and Boffin's Refreshment Rooms ran over with hungry
parsons from the country. As an evidence of the interest which the
question of Dean Stanley's appointment excited beyond the walls of the
University, I may mention that even the guards and porters at the
railway hallooed to each other to know "the state of the betting"; but
even they did not seem quite to have calculated on the matter being so
warmly taken up in London and by the country at large." At half-past one
o'clock the bell of St. Mary's gave notice to the combatants to prepare
for the fray, and immediately the floor of the Theatre was sprinkled
with representative men of all the schools. The non-residents appeared
in gowns of various degrees of rustiness, some with chimney-pot hats and
some with wide-awakes. The early comers conversed in small groups,
hugging instinctively those sides of the building on which were written
respectively _Placet_ or _Non-Placet_, giving thereby an inkling of how
they meant to vote. The gathering increased every moment, and soon the
Doctors in their scarlet began to dot the seats around the
Vice-Chancellor's chair. Prince Leopold, by right of his royalty,
entered the sacred enclosure with Dr. Acland, and afterwards took his
seat among the Doctors. Before two o'clock every inch of the floor was
full, the occupants standing in anticipation of the coming encounter.
"Still they gravitated towards their respective voting-doors, and on the
_Placet_ side one descried the scholarly face of Professor Jowett, the
sharply-cut features of the Rev. Mark Pattison, and the well-known
physiognomy of Professor Max Mueller. On the opposite side Mr. Burgon was
marshalling his forces, and Dean Goulburn, from the Doctors' benches,
looked out over the seething mass of M.A.'s below him." At two o'clock
the Vice-Chancellor arrived, and forthwith commenced proceedings in
Latin, which must have been extremely edifying to the ladies who, in
large numbers, occupied the Strangers' Gallery, backed by a narrow
fringe of Undergraduates. The object of the Convocation was stated as
being the appointment of Select Preachers, and the names were then
submitted to the Doctors and Masters for approval. "_Placetne igitur
vobis huic nomini assentire?_" being the form in which the question was
proposed.
The name first on the list was that of the Rev. Harvey Goodwin; and a
faint buzz in the assembly was interpreted by the Vice-Chancellor,
skilled in such sounds, as an expression of approval. Thereupon he
passed on to name number two, which, with some agitation, but with
clear, resonant voice, he read out as "Arthurus Penrhyn Stanley."
Immediately there ensued a scene of the wildest confusion. On the
_Placet_ side, cheers and waving of trencher-caps; on the _Non-Placet_
side feeble hisses; and from all sides, undergraduate as well as
graduate, mingled shouts of _Placet_ and _Non_, with an accompaniment of
cheers and hisses; until the ringing voice of Dean Liddell pronounced
the magic words _Fiat scrutinium_. Thereupon the two Proctors proceeded
first of all to take the votes of the Doctors on their benches; and,