に IX FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE 193 -the latter 'a bastard form of reason,' which had cut the heart out of all religion and reduced it to a caput mortuum. His religion was practical holiness, not theology. He was not a professed scholar or theologian; but his personality gave him influence and authority. Hare and Maurice. Hare stood between the 'Bibliolaters' and the 'Ecclesiolaters,' opposed to both as making religion mechanical. is the old antagonism of the letter and the spirit, which shows itself in infinite variety. He too, as well as Maurice, would not bind the Spirit to a book, a church, or an ordinance. 'In Christ Jesus neither episcopacy availeth anything, nor non-episcopacy, but a new creature.' His limitations may be seen in his attacks upon Newman. It is easy to show that Newman was inconsistent— his own Retractations fill many pages; that he was a master of deductive logic; that he argued from assumptions as if they were proved facts; that he used invective, sarcasm, and equivocal terms in the place of sound reasoning; but Hare was not able to take in the vast idea of Catholicism, or see that the Roman system must be attacked, not by opposing to it the variety and dissension of Protestant systems, but by meeting its extreme assumptions with the negative of antecedent improbability. Frederick Denison Maurice. Opinions are spread and schools of thought formed as much by the personal intercourse of friends as from books. Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), set on his way by Hare, was himself a stronger and more subtle spirit; he went beyond his teacher, and by the magnetism of his character coloured the thought of all with whom he came in contact. He carried on and added to the thought of Coleridge and Erskine. With Coleridge he upholds the Church, though in no sectarian spirit; with the Evangelicals he finds in the Bible an answer to human needs, but he does not, as they did, deify the letter. His Theological Essays, addressed to the Unitarian community, in which he had himself been brought up, raised many questions by asserting ancient doctrines in such a manner that to readers who did not look far below the surface he seemed to contradict them. Because he set forth the character of God in Scripture as love, he seemed to deny the wrath of God against sin. Sin, according to the orthodox, is an act of the will; Maurice represented it as a condition of humanity, and found in man not only a natural depravity but a natural righteousness, owing to the indwelling of the Son of God. According to Maurice, the Atonement is not the acceptance by the offended Creator of a vicarious victim, the innocent for the guilty, but the fulfilment of the law of righteousness by the perfect obedience of the Son, whose will is one with the Father's, and who shares the sufferings of those whose Head he is. Baptism is the declaration of sonship, not the introduction of a new relation between Creator and creature. Eternal death is not punishment continued through unending time, but the essential alienation of man from God by unrepented sin. The word 'eternal' has nothing to do with time, but belongs to another order of ideas. Revelation is not the laying down of a law by an exterior authority, but the unveiling of the nature of God to the soul of man, in aid of the intuitive knowledge of God which exists, or may exist, in the soul. Thus Maurice restated ancient formulas in a new sense, and claimed, like Hampden, to be orthodox. The difficulty or obscurity of Maurice's language exposed him to misrepresentation, which his elucidations did not always clear up. Bishop Wilberforce, who took an active part in his defence in 1853, put before him in writing his own interpretation of Maurice's doctrine, viz. that to speak of torments through never-ending extensions of time is to transfer to the eternal world the conditions of this world, since eternity is not time prolonged, but rather time abolished, and thus to misrepresent the character of God, and open a way to the introduction of unwarranted palliations for sin; that the happiness of the creature consists in his will being brought into harmony with the will of God; that free will wrongly used leads to misery in body and soul here, and that our state here is the seminal principle of what it is to be in the world to come; that hardened separation from God with its consequent torments is the 'death eternal' spoken of in the Scriptures, concerning which we must not dogmatise as if it were subject to earthly conditions, nor therefore on the one hand forget to contemplate God's exceeding love, nor on the IX MAURICE'S OPINIONS 195 other hand to conclude that after a certain period God's vengeance would be satisfied and further suffering remitted. Maurice accepted these definitions as 'a full and most satisfactory exposition' of his meaning. There was no confusion in Maurice's mind. But when he dealt with 'plain men,' and seemed to be following the same object with them, it often appeared that he was on a different quest, finding their formulas at variance with one or another of the principles which were sacred to him. He was misunderstood in his hostility to utilitarianism, which substitutes success or happiness for the sense of right and wrong as declared by conscience; in his dislike of all parties, sects, and systems, which divide under pretext of uniting; in the strong distinctions which he drew between such terms as religion and theology, system and method, system and science, Protestantism and Anglicanism, catholicity and catholicism, regeneration and change of nature, historical religion and Church history, ecclesiastical system and Christian Church, critical faculty and criticising spirit, terms which to careless hearers seemed not opposite but identical; in his maintenance of paradoxes such as these, that subscription is no bondage, but a defence of liberty; that Broad Church is Narrow Church; that submission of the reason is good for the reason's sake; that the spirit of liberty is incompatible with the lust for independence; that episcopacy is essentially necessary to the idea of a church, and yet that the Scots were right in resisting it; that the difficulty of believing arises from the necessity of believing; that he himself was to be a man of war against all parties, in order that he might be a peacemaker between all men. This temper of mind isolated him, though he was severally claimed by the Evangelicals, the Tractarians, and the Latitudinarians as their own, till he showed that he would subscribe to none of their formulas; it would have isolated him more, had it not been for his sincerity and ardency, and the need of all who came into contact with him to drink from his perpetual well-spring of fresh thought and sympathy. Maurice's writings and personal intercourse were felt in a wide circle of friends and disciples, among whom Frederick Robertson, Kingsley, Hort, and Westcott were conspicuous. His influence has not changed the spirit of religion, but has contributed to modify the form of theology. Much thought has travelled over the bridge which he helped to build between old beliefs and new. What he wrote on Baptism, Vicarious Suffering, and the Last Judgment, by its action upon the thought of his time, did something to bring about the profound difference which exists between the current belief on these topics now and that which prevailed in the middle of the nineteenth century. It would be idle to inquire how much these men of the later generation owed to Carlyle. Though he constructed little, his early writings may be reckoned among the greatest forces of liberation working in those years. Whilst the schools of the economists were laboriously demolishing, brick by brick, the homes of prejudice and superstition, Carlyle's battering-ram made such a noisy assault upon them that all were bound to listen. His discordant summons was not merely a menace; it conveyed a promise also, the condition. of which was honesty of thought. The prophet was true to his message. His stimulating influence pervaded all the thought of the time, rousing bitter opposition and fervent discipleship, bidding all men 'nor sit, nor stand, but go.' AUTHORITIES: GENERAL.-As before. Works of Julius Charles Hare, Thos. Erskine of Linlathen; F. D. Maurice, Theological Essays. BIOGRAPHIES: Bishops Marsh, Watson, Bathurst, Stanley; Pusey, by Liddon; S. T. Coleridge, by Traill; F. D. Maurice, by Maurice; Thos. Arnold, by Stanley. CHAPTER X NATIONAL EDUCATION, 1833-1843 Parlia AFTER Brougham's Bill in 1820,1 no further progress in national education was made for more than ten years. The abolition of slavery, the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic Emancipation, and Parliamentary Reform occupied the mind of the nation. It was not till 1833 that Roebuck, seconded by George Grote, asked the House of Commons to pledge itself for the next session to a scheme of national education. As this move was likely to embarrass the Government, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Althorp, himself proposed that a grant of £20,000 for national education should be made, the sum to be divided between the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society. This mentary vote was the first public money voted for the purpose' for education, of education; 'a small fraction of the revenue of one day,' said Carlyle. No sum was to be contributed from the grant, unless an equal amount were raised by voluntary contributions. The principle of religious equality was stated by one party, and controverted by the other; the old rivalry of the Societies broke out: but it was said then, as it might be said at this day, that 'there is not practically that exclusiveness among the Church Societies nor that indifference to religion among those who exclude dogmatic instruction, which their mutual accusations would lead bystanders to suppose.' It should be remembered that this was the era of the 'Useful Knowledge' movement, set on foot by Brougham 1 See p. 97. 1833. |