CHAPTER XI

THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

Last quarter of the

century.

THE English nation had in the last quarter of the eighteenth century received such impression as it could take of the destructive and constructive philosophism which preceded the French Revolution, and of the equalitarian doctrines of 1789. The nation, as a rule, rejected all serious eighteenth negation of Christian doctrine, though a latitudinarian and sceptical tendency underlay the mode of thinking which prevailed in educated society, which was to have its development later under the wing, not of philosophy but of science, in Agnosticism without the religious pale, within it, in liberal or Broad Church theology. A natural reaction against this sympathy with a philosophy which had been seen to culminate in the orgies of the Goddess of Reason tightened the bands of religious dogma and a regulated morality; and hatred of the French Revolution, and its principles and their results in action, made serious people combine to resist the attacks of infidelity and immorality. Religion was defended not so much now, as fifty years earlier, on the evidential side, but as a safeguard of morality and social order; and the religious world became at once more fervent and less argumentative.

The Oxford

It is impossible to tell anew in fitting terms a story which has been told by Newman and Church, and with which the world still rings. The motive power in the Oxford Movement of 1833 was the feeling expressed by Movement the principal actor in the following sentence, a feeling which makes all intelligible, and without which all that was done must seem extravagant or puerile: 'I have

of 1833.

ever kept before me,' writes Newman in the Apologia, 'that there was something greater than the Established Church, and that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up from the beginning, of which she was but the local presence and organ.' The earlier school of High Church reformers, Watson, Knox, Sikes, and others mentioned above, were pioneers of a larger movement than they could foresee.

The need of action to men who thought like this was, it seemed to themselves, forced upon them from without. They were not innovators; stare super antiquas vias was their ideal: but a new force had arisen in the world, the spirit of Liberalism; new it appeared to be, but new it was not, for it was only another name for the old spirit of rebellion, against which the Church had always testified. The Oxford Movement had its roots in the past, in the depositum fidei preserved by the High Church school; but, like all political and religious movements, it owed its form and colour to contemporary events. Pre-eminent among these was the growth of Liberalism, aggressive and combative, demanding of each settled institution to show its right to exist.

'I thought,' says Newman, 'that it was both incumbent on us, and profitable to us, to meet that onset of Liberal principles, of which we were all in immediate anticipation, whether in the Church or in the University.'

Keble,

The conjunction of Keble, Hurrell Froude, and Newman produced the Oxford Movement of 1833. Other men, Hugh James Rose, William Palmer of Worcester College, Froude, Arthur Perceval, and many others counted for something but without these three it would not have been, or would have been wholly different.

and Newman.

A course of public action such as that which has received the name of the Oxford Movement owes so much to its leaders that it seems necessary to introduce here some notice of the individuals whose teaching or personal character gave impulse or direction to the course of events. Among the first of these, according to Newman the 'true and primary John Keble. author of it,' was John Keble (1792-1866), the son of a Gloucestershire rector, sprung from a family in which traditional High Church principles animated a very sincere and somewhat Puritan form of religion, and himself a man

XI

JOHN KEBLE

215

of strong and impressive character. John Keble went up to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, with no training but that of his father, who himself had been scholar and fellow of the same college, and gained a scholarship there at the age of fourteen in December 1806. Before he was twenty he had obtained a double First Class, and was made Fellow of Oriel, his friend Richard Whately being elected at the same time. Even at that early age great deference was paid to Keble in the Common Room; a deference which he retained throughout his life, based less upon the brilliancy of his intellectual power, though that would have accounted for it, than the purity and saintliness of his nature. We are reminded of Milton at the same age, called 'the Lady' of his college, and of Father Paul Sarpi, called 'la Sposa,' in whose presence no unfitting word was ever spoken.

There was also in John Keble, as in the Puritan poet and the Venetian friar, a sternness of fibre. He calls for 'due severity in our religion'; 'without a severe religion,' he says, 'I fear our Church will practically fail.' His intimate friend, Sir John Taylor Coleridge, tells us that the intensity of his spirit and the authority of his character made it difficult to argue with him; a tendency to think that he was probably right was strengthened by the conviction that he was most completely in earnest, whatever his playful manner might seem to say. His shrinking modesty could on occasion give way to fiery zeal, and his gentle and playful courtesy to words of grave rebuke spoken in public or in private. Of the sterner side of his mind a few instances may be given. He called the Divorce Bill of 1856-57 'a Bill for legalising adultery.' He had no tolerance for Bishop Colenso, or the writers of Essays and Reviews. He took part in all the action of his friends in their attacks upon Hampden in 1836 and 1848. He held the strongest possible view of eternal punishment, asking, 'Where is then the stay of contrite hearts?' whose hope departs with the sinner's fear, and he printed a Litany of Our Lord's Warnings, which startled many who did not push things to conclusions. Keble never shrank from conclusions ; it was characteristic of the tractarian school and of himself personally. Things which might seem trifles to others were 'stuff of the conscience' to him. Absolute sincerity was the

foundation of his character, a quality which implies courage no less than clearness of vision. No one who knew Keble could doubt that if a question presented itself to him he would take pains to understand it and to state it clearly—his Aristotelian training had taught him this,-that he would judge it by the light of principle and religion, hold his opinion strongly and act upon it fearlessly. The only apparent exception to absolute truthfulness, and that this was only apparent his own letters testify, is his consistent belittling of himself, which sometimes in a person of such high gifts, so highly appreciated, borders on Socratic eipwveía.

It has been said that to the Oxford Movement Newman gave genius, Pusey learning, and Keble character. The whole spirit of The Christian Year, Keble's appearance from time to time at a crisis, coming out from the retirement of his parsonage, the tone of authority which breathes through his letters of counsel as well as in the sermons which he preached before the world, show him to have been a man whose advice was widely sought, and who deemed it his duty never to avoid responsibility, but who knew also how not to be too busy. It is characteristic of these two aspects of his mind that he would not read Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, written immediately before the author's secession to Rome, till questions were asked him, which made him feel it to be his duty to study what he would rather have left alone. His natural impulse was neither to controversy nor speculation. He says himself that the influence of his father and his brother Thomas had saved him from eclecticism. He moved in a narrow path, securely; holding fast to the apostolical tradition according to the ancient Anglican acceptation of it, and to the belief that the Church. of England, though fallen on evil days, had God's blessing, and that the saints of that communion had died or were living in God's favour. It was the knowledge of Keble's stability in one set of opinions, which is also evidence of want of elasticity of mind and narrowness of view, that made so many turn to him as an oracle.

Keble's brilliant career at Oxford and his action in the tractarian movement might have been forgotten, but for the wide authority and reverence which came to him through

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RICHARD HURRELL FROUDE

217

The Christian Year, and the confidence, which his steadfast character inspired, that he would remain true to the Church of England, whatever others might do. He was deeply pained by the secession of his friends to Rome, and above all of Newman, whose loss he never recovered; and although he would look wistfully in the direction of Rome and unity, there is nothing to show that he had at any time of his life the smallest temptation to leave the Church of England. He thought that political events might necessitate a secession like that of the Nonjurors, for whose doctrine and practice he had a strong affinity; but his mind had been formed by the study of the Fathers, Hooker, and the other English divines, and he wanted no more. Modern extensions of dogma, such as the Vatican definitions, merely repelled him, and Newman's Essay on Development, though the method of argument was one with which he could sympathise, left him unmoved. There were principles in his mind which were unshakable, and he never looked beyond them.

manners the

Richard

Froude.

Richard Hurrell Froude (1803-1836) was, by the account of all who knew him, one of the most beloved and loving of men. His friend Frederick Oakeley describes 'a form of singular elegance; a countenance of peculiar Hurrell and the highest kind of beauty most refined and engaging.' He was master of the hearts of his friends; and though he could not compare in loftiness of intellect and authority with Newman, nor with Keble in steadiness of character, nor in learning and industry with Pusey, his audacity and combativeness, his uncompromising love of what he held to be truth, his brilliancy of reasoning power-for he was a mathematician and scientific inquirer as well as a logician-his poetic insight and wide reach of imagination marked him as a man of unusual gifts. Froude was less moved than Newman, much less than Keble, by personal and historical associations: he was more hardheaded, but also more impulsive, assertive, and paradoxical. The men exercised a various influence upon each other. Froude himself said, 'Keble is my fire, but I may be his poker.' 'His influence over Keble's fearless intelligence,' says his biographer, Miss Guiney, 'felt from the first, was ultimately very great.' The same writer compares Froude and

As