66 tree; change with Thy mighty power | anti-dogmatic principle and its dethis visible world into that divine velopments." Peace of mind and world, which as yet we see not; de- a cheerful countenance are indeed stroy what we see, that it may pass the gifts of the Gospel, but they and be transformed into what we should follow zeal and faith; they believe." should follow a recognition of the severe and terrible side of religion. "I will not shrink from uttering my firm conviction," said Newman, "that it would be a gain to this country were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present it shows itself to be. Not, of course, that I think the tempers of mind herein implied desirable, which would be an evident absurdity, but I think them infinitely more desirable and more promising than a heathen obduracy, and a cold, self-sufficient, self-wise tranquility." The vital question with Newman, as he himself has said, was How were we to keep the Church from being liberalized." And the final answer was given in his own action-by accepting all truth, like a perplexed child, from the lips of the Queen of Saints, the Holy Roman Church, the mother of us all. "I come, he might have exclaimed, like Charles Reding of his own Loss and Gain, "O, mighty Mother, I come, but I am far from home. Spare me a little; I come with what speed I may, but I am slow of foot, and not as others, O mighty Mother." In the divine darkness of her bosom there was rest. Those who look upon Newman's solution of the difficulties of our time as an impossible solution need hardly trouble themselves with his singular reasonings. The title of the fifth chapter of his Autobiography, "Position of my mind since 1845," will suffice-as if during Newman and those who thought with him had little friendly feeling for the Puritans of the seventeenth century. It was noted by Clough in 1838 that assent could hardly be obtained at Oxford to an assertion of Milton's greatness as a poet. Yet Yet Newman was indeed in one sense, and a very real sense, a Puritan of the nineteenth century. He rose in the pulpit of St. Mary's not only to rebuke the worldliness of the world, but to protest against the religion of the day, which had dropped one whole side of the Gospel-its austere character; which included "no true fear of God, no fervent zeal for his honor, no deep hatred of sin, no horror at the sight of sinners, no indignation and compassion at the blasphemies of heretics, no jealous adherence to doctrinal truth, no especial sensitiveness about the particular means of gaining ends, if only the ends be good, no loyalty to the Holy Apostolic Church of which the Creed speaks, no sense of the authority of religion as external to the mind-in a word, no seriousness. These are the words of a Puritan―a Puritan who was also a Catholic, and here lay his power with higher minds in an age which had yielded to the sapping in of material influences, which had grown soft and self-indulgent, and which was bewildered by confused voices that seemed only to announce intellectual anarchy. "My battle," Newman writes, was with Liberalism; by Liberalism I meant the an half of a long lifetime a position | verses. Carlyle's prime influence, as I have written elsewhere, was a religious one. His heritage of faith was indeed transformed, but it was never cast away. To the last there remained in him much of the Puritan; but the intellectual fetters of Puritanism could not bind his growing intellect, nor could he be content to starve his emotions by excluding from view the passion and the beauty of the world. How to hold a steadfast course, how to live a spiritual life and yet be free, neither self-imprisoned in a system nor in bondage to outworn form and ceremony-this was the problem of problems with the young Carlyle. And in Goethe's life and teaching he found that problem solved. Im Ganzen, Guten, Schönen, resolut zu leben. Thus alone might the seriousness which is at the heart of Puritanism grow large, liberal, and beautiful. To attain serenity, as Goethe had attained, was indeed forbidden to him by his stormy sensitiveness and by that "intolerable sympathy with the suffering" of which an acute observer, Harriet Martineau, has spoken as character were desirable for a thinking being Our second prophet was laid to rest six years since under the green turf of Ecclefechan. A tomb of the prophet was built-built it may be with untempered mortar; and since then the amusement of his countrymen has been to pull out one stone and another, or scribble on their surface caricatures and insolent of Carlyle. But by finding his true work and by desperate adhesion to it, he could gain, if not serenity, at least a counterpoise to his own tempestuous feelings. He neededI quote some words of my own now altered and amended, from an article written in The Academy on the occasion of Carlyle's death-a vast background, Immensities, Eternities, through which might wander the passion-winged ministers of his thought, Wonder, and Awe. and Adoration. But in the foreground of clear perception and sane activity all was limited, definite, concrete From Goethe he had learnt what, indeed, his own shrewd Scottish head could well confirm, that to drift no whither in the inane is not the highest destiny of a human creat ure; that, on the contrary, all true expansion comes through right limitation, all true freedom through obedience. Hence the rule, "Do the work that lies nearest to your hand;" hence the preciousness of any fragment of living reality, any atom of significant fact. If Carlyle was an idealist he was an idealist in the service of what is real and positive. He did not pore perpetually with bent head and myopic vision on petty details; he could search for a fact as well as Dryasdust, but he did not wear Dryasdust's spectacles. The little illuminated spot on which men toil and strive, and love and sorrow, is environed, for Carlyle's prophetic vision, by the Immensities: the day, so bright and dear, wherein men serve or sin, is born from a deep eternity, which swiftly calls it back and engulfs it. From which contrast between great and little, the transitory and the eternal, spring many surprises of humor and of pathos, which in the end cease to surprise and become a humor and a pathos en permanence for those who see the universe through the sympathetic, sad, and yet, at the same time, the Aristophanic eyes of Carlyle. In whatever else Carlyle may have failed, he did not fail in impressing on those who took his teaching to heart a sense of the momentous issues of the time; a sense that a great social revolution was in progress; that it was attended with stupendous dangers, and called before all else for loyal, obedient, faithful, God fearing men. He would, if it were possible, have helped to discipline and train a regiment of modern Ironsides, and then have trusted to God to send a Cromwell to be their leader. He could not huzza for steam-engines, cotton, and oil, and coal, Crystal Palaces, the machinery or the shows of society, while society itself was ailing at the heart. Reverence, obedience, spiritual insight, fidelity to duty, honest work-did England possess more or less of these? If less, how vain and wicked was the modern cant of Progress! Progress-yes progress toward the devil and the black pit of Gehenna. Mr. John Morley has spoken of Carlyle's method for ascertaining truth as the method of Rousseau. "Each bids us look within our own bosoms for truth and right, postpones reason to feeling, and refers to introspection and a factitious something called Nature, questions only to be truly solved by external observation and history." And as it were in contrast with such a method leading only to pseudo-wisdom, we are told that the force of Mr. Mill's character and teaching lay in that "combination of an ardent interest in human improvement with a reasoned attention to the law of its conditions, which alone deserves to be honored with the high name of wisdom." But Carlyle, in truth, inspected society with a penetrating vision, and the observation of Mr. Mill-earnest, disinterested, admirable student as he was-too frequently is that of a one-eyed observer, or a man born color-blind. How should one whose feelings had never been cultivated in childhood and youth observe truly? How should a man whose right eye had been put out recog-in a beatific vision seated upon the nize, for example, the importance great white throne, but here and of religion as a factor in society? now, in this world of sinning, toiling, Mr. Mill reasoned. His reasonings suffering, striving men and women. were based on the principle that the "It is to you, ye workers," he writes, individual must take the general "who do already work, and are as happiness as his ultimate end; and grown men, noble and honorable in the reasoner is compelled to admit a sort, that the whole world calls for that questions of ultimate ends do new work and nobleness. Subdue not admit of proof in the straight- mutiny, discord, widespread despair forward sense of the term. He, the by manfulness, justice, mercy, and philosophical guide of the Liberal wisdom. Chaos is dark, deep as party, observed and reasoned, and Hell; let light be, and there is inproduced a Political Economy; and stead a green flowery world. Oh, it who have banished the orthodox is great, and there is no other greatPolitical Economy to Saturn and ness. To make some nook of God's Jupiter? No; Mr. Mill too often creation a little fruitfuller, better, observed insufficiently, or reasoned more worthy of God; to make some imperfectly, or started from princi- human hearts a little wiser, manples too hastily assumed. Carlyle fuller, happier, more blessed, less brought, at least, the complete na accursed!" Such words as these, ture of a devout and passionate man and the words-so different and yet to the aid of observing powers of not wholly alien-from the pulpit of extraordinary keenness and penetra- St. Mary's affected young and artion. And not without effect. dent spirits as words of genuine prophecy. "Early in the eighteenforties," writes Principal Shairp, "when the Miscellanies appeared, and became known to undergraduates here at Oxford, I remember how they reached the more activeminded, one by one, and thrilled them as no printed book ever before had thrilled them." And Mr. Froude's confession will not be forgotten: "I, for one (if I may so far speak of myself), was saved by Carlyle's writings from Positivism, or Romanism, or Atheism, or any other of the creeds, or no-creeds, which in those days were whirling us about in Oxford like leaves in an autumn storm." Mr. Froude, in a remarkable passage, has described the influence of Carlyle's writings on young men who felt painfully the trouble and difficulty of the time, and were agreed to have done with compromises and conventionalities. To the young, the generous, to everyone who took life seriously, who wished to make an honorable use of it, and could not be content with making money, his words were like the morning reveille." "Carlyle's doctrine," says Mr. Morley, "has all its foundations in the purest individualism." No; it is empirical utilitarianism, confessing that it cannot prove anything with respect to ultimate ends, which cannot pass beyond individualism; and Carlyle's doctrine has its roots in God-in God, not to be revealed after death, Organization of labor, if well understood, said Carlyle, is the problem of the whole future. A practical attempt toward its solution was made by Maurice, Kingsley, Mr. Ludlow, and others, who took the name of "Christian Socialists," and, having little in common with what now styles itself Socialism, beyond a sympathy with the hardships and wrongs of the toiling thousands, maintained as early as 1849 the principle of co-operation as opposed to competition. The literary side of the movement is represented by the disciple, Kingsley, rather than by the master, Maurice. In the gospel which Kingsley preached in tale and sermon there was none of what Mr. Maurice described as Carlyle's wild pantheistic rant, the "big inanity of Pantheism." He spoke of the fatherhood of God, and of the union of all men in and through Jesus Christ; and yet the old phrases seemed to be inspired with a new life and meaning. Temper had Temper had something to do with the effect produced by Kingsley's words: they were uttered in a voice so ringing and hearty that we felt them to be a portion of his very life. No spiritual man at the time seemed to have in him so much of the natural man, no natural man seemed to have so much of the spiritual man, as Kingsley.* Our Bible grew dearer to us, and our biceps. We had our modern ideals-the Chartist peer, the lord-loving democrat, the squirepriest; yet we felt ourselves far removed from Young England, and thought scorn of the stucco mediavalism of Coningsby and Sybil. Viewed from our less chivalrous elder days, the enthusiasm of that time seems somewhat of an enthusi * I make use of some portions of a review of the Eversley Edition of Charles Kingsley's Novels, contributed by me to the Pall Mall Gazette, Nov. 26, 1881. asm prepense and self-conscious; and yet it had a use and gallantry of its own. Charles Kingsley assuredly did not solve with a few hearty words the riddle of the Sphinx. He had not perhaps a single capital thought for his own age, but he brought that which is perennially fresh and inspiring-a vivid and kindling personality. Here was a human being alive at many points, with senses singularly keen, a kind of enthusiasm in the very blood, intellect quick and stirring, imagination not winged but swift of foot as a racer, a generous temper, a hand prompt in deeds of public good, and at the back of temperament a character which grew more close-knit as time went on. His teaching breathed courage, purity, love. His words rang bright and clear in the morning air. It was much to proclaim in a saculum realisticum, that the world is sacred for those whose purpose is high. It was not useless amid a Catholic reaction and a medieval revival to vindicate the rights of the natural man, to present ideals of a life more true to the time, more courageous and robust than that of the modern mediavalist, and to do honor to a great epoch of our national history which an attempt was made to discredit as Protestant and worldly. It was well to rouse public spirit and to set forth our duties to the toilers in great cities, even though the public spirit may have been somewhat headlong in its career. In any picture of the midmost years of the nineteenth century, the figure of Kingsley must attract attention among the high lights of the picture. With justice he was described by Mill as "a man who is himself one |