From ‘The British Critic,’ Jan., 1838, Vol. xxiii., pp. 200 et seq., by Frederic Rogers, Esq., M.A., afterwards Lord Blachford.[341]

‘… The first volume of this book, to which the following observations will be confined, presents an unusually perfect history of as remarkable a mind as it is often our lot to fall in with. It is remarkable, not merely for its talent, energy, and depth of religious feeling, but because the character in which these qualities issue, is one almost new to the eyes of this generation; and with this unusual tone of thought and feeling, is joined a deep reality and consistency which forces attention, and perhaps deference, even when the author’s views least coincide with our own settled prejudices….

‘… There is a wide intermediate range of character among those who neither neglect nor rest in their fellow-men. With some, those feelings of reverence and admiration, which seem like the voice of God assigning to every man his province, are more deeply touched by the quiet holiness of domestic life, its little delicate self-sacrifices, its affectionate attentions and glad confidence. The idol of their hearts is one whom men love even when he is most severe, or, if they love him not they dare not avow it, knowing that the world would hold them self-condemned; whose enjoyment it is to confer enjoyment, who moves about with a heart and sympathies open to all he meets, expecting no evil; and, when encountered by vice, rebukes it with a mixture of horror, pity, and simplicity, which, if they fail to convince, at least never irritate or harden. Not that such an one need be wanting in the expression of just indignation, but he shows no intention to punish, no assumption of superiority. He speaks either by way of affectionate remonstrance, or to disburden his own conscience; and those who are too bad to be affected by mere goodness, only say of him “that he is as kind-hearted a man as can be; pity he should let his fancies run away with him.”

‘It need hardly be said that this is Christian love, but not its only form. Minds more bitterly alive to the unsatisfying nature of earthly things, will thirst after some more immediate form of self-devotion to God: and the same feelings which render their brethren less adequate representatives of their Heavenly Father in their hearts, imply capacities which render them less necessary. They will press as close to God as He will let them, anxious, if it were possible, to anticipate His purposes concerning them, watching for permission to throw away earthly comforts in His service, if He will give them the signal to take to themselves that honour; laborious, by meditation and mortification of the flesh, to root out from their hearts every idle desire that interferes with His presence there, and to bend to His direct service every high taste and faculty which He has given them: who would sing songs to His glory though there were none to hear them, and would adorn holy places though there were none to see them; anxious for no result, but for the mere happiness of devoting heart, head, and hand to His honour, if they have but an instinct or a word of His to tell them that He will be pleased with their little offering. These men will no more forget their brethren than the others will forget God; they will have their words of encouragement for the penitent, of courtesy for the stranger, of deep affection for their friends. But they do not go about, overflowing with kindness and confidence to all men. Perhaps circumstances have thrown upon them one of those great works which ever lie about the world unappropriated, and they are “straitened till it be accomplished.” Perhaps the work of their own salvation lies heavier on their spirits than on theirs who live and die in happy, quiet, uniform thankfulness. Perhaps their own renunciation of the lesser pleasures of life makes them less understand the value which others set on them. At any rate, their constant endeavour to realise within themselves their own high aspirations, tends to unfit them for sympathising with buoyant earthly merriment, or sanguine earthly wishes, except it be with the passing interest which we give to the careless gaiety of a child.

‘Now of these two characters it would perhaps be overbold to say which is holiest; at any rate, the loveliness of one is very different from the majesty of the other: different, not indeed in essentials, but in the hopes, fears, tastes, and sentiments, which it forces uppermost…. The later Church of England character is very decidedly of the former cast. Ours is the Church of Walton and Herbert, not of Athanasius and Ambrose. And truly we have been born into a beautiful inheritance. Our fathers have bequeathed to us the appreciation of a kindly and a holy spirit; a spirit of affectionate unobtrusive meekness, of considerate friendliness, of calm cheerfulness. And these are in their measure not only appreciated but realised amongst us: the domestic and social virtues of our clergy are in the mouths of every panegyrist of the Church of England, and are hardly denied by her enemies…. And it is true, that there are passages of Scripture which address themselves to a very different class of minds: passages which ὁ δυνάμενος χωρεῖν, χωρείτω, which “all men cannot receive, but they to whom it is given.” There are a whole class of expressions in the New Testament, which though surely they do not condemn the English Church, yet seem somehow not to have received their natural development in it.[342] “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast … and come, follow Me.” “Blessed are ye when men shall hate you.” “Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep.” “Κάλον ἀνθρώπῳ γύναικος μὴ ἅπτεσθαι.” “Every one that hath forsaken brethren or sisters, or father or mother, or wife or children, for My Name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” We seem afraid of these.

*   *   *   *   *

‘Within our own Church, we are over-careful to soothe enthusiasm, and somewhat helpless in directing it. In judging foreign Churches, or other ages, we talk of a “misguided zeal for what they consider the glory of God,” “the fantastic rigours by which men render themselves callous to the sufferings of others,” “the extinction of the domestic affections to aggrandise one ambitious Church,” words which may be true or not, as they are applied, but which, as commonly used, are rather rashly bandied about, considering all the hints and recommendations that Scripture contains.[343] We can be warm enough in our censures of those who would call down fire from Heaven, or sit at the right hand of Christ, but have perhaps too much fellow-feeling with him who went away sorrowful when he found he must not only obey the law, but sell his property. The book now before us is, most unquestionably, not of the peculiar Church of England character, but of that cast which we are somewhat apt to depreciate, or to look on as a romantic unreality….

‘But this book derives its commanding interest from the stern self-chastisement of body and mind, from which both reason and imagination receive their tone and substance. With this the Journal acquaints us; and there is something which really cows an ordinary reader, in the unsparing steadiness with which faults are sought for, the bitter self-abasement with which they are felt, and the unrelenting determination with which they are punished; all being recorded, except when addressed to God, with a plain and sometimes contemptuous homeliness of expression, which seems as if the author wished to do dishonour to himself and his thoughts, or held that a feeling which claimed to be deep and true, should not disdain to buy, by humiliation, the privilege of utterance….

‘“I have been meaning to write to you every day for a long time, and I do not suppose you would wish me to be influenced in putting off longer by the sad thing we have just heard.[344] At least, if I may judge from myself, there is so little difference between what are called real afflictions and imaginary ones, that it seems just as rational to go on in the common way when under the former as the latter. With me, this last summer, both at the time, and looking back on it, seems to have gone very strangely; and I do not see any ground why my reason should contradict my feelings, because the things which affect me are either, in their nature, confined to the person who feels them, or are thought trifles by people in general. I have been trying almost all the Long [Vacation] to discover a sort of common-sense romance: I am convinced there must be such a thing, and that Nature did not give us such a high capacity for pleasure without making some other qualification for it besides delusion. But the speculation has got much more serious, and runs out into many more ramifications than I expected at first; and it seems to me as if I might make it the main object of a long course of reading, the first step of which would be to follow your advice in learning Hebrew and reading the early Fathers. This I have determined upon doing immediately upon my return to Oxford; and the intervening space I shall pass away as I can, with I. and P.,[345] among the mountains and waterfalls. Since I wrote this in the morning, I have been walking with P., whose quietness of mind makes me quite ashamed of my speculations, and I hardly like sending you this letter; however, if I have been making myself a fool all the summer, it is better I should not go on brooding on it by myself; for letting somebody know the state of my thoughts is the only way of keeping them straight; and I know no one but you who would make sufficient allowance for me to venture on such things with. Perhaps you may think it very odd, but this is the first time I have had resolution to ask for the papers which they found of my mother’s after her death.”

‘The writer seems to have shrunk from allowing this letter to reach his friend. In its stead, the following was sent:

‘“I have made three attempts to write, but all of them ran off into something wild, which, upon reflection, I thought would be better kept to myself. The fact is, that I have been in a strange way all the summer, and having had no one to talk to about the things which have bothered me, I have been every now and then getting into fits of enthusiasm or despondency. But the result has been in some respects a good one, and I have got to take very great pleasure in what you recommended me when we were together at F.,[346] the evening before I left you, our first summer, i.e. good books; and I feel [I] understand places in the Psalms in a way I never used to. I go back to Oxford with a determination to set to at Hebrew and the early Fathers, and to keep myself in as strict order as I can: a thing which I have been making ineffectual attempts at for some time, but which never once entered my head for a long time of my life….

‘“And now I must drop back to myself. I wish you would say anything to me that you think would do me good, however severe it may be. You must have observed many things very contemptible in me, but I know worse of myself, and shall be prepared for anything. I cannot help being afraid that I am still deceiving myself about my motives and feelings, and shall be glad of anything on which to steady myself.”

‘It is exceedingly interesting to trace in the Journal the actual working day by day of the feelings to which these letters refer. The following extract is, in effect, its opening:

‘“July 1, 1826.—I think it will be a better way to keep a Journal for a bit, as I find I want keeping in order about more things than reading. I am in a most conceited way, besides very ill-tempered and irritable. My thoughts wander very much at my prayers, and I feel hungry for some ideal thing of which I have no definite idea. I sometimes fancy that the odd bothering feeling which gets possession of me is affectation, and that I appropriate it because I think it a sign of genius: but it lasts too long, and is too disagreeable to be unreal.”

‘“July 5.—I do not know how it is, but it seems to me as if the consciousness of having capacities for happiness, with no objects to gratify them, seems to grow upon me, and puts me in a dreary way. Lord, have mercy upon me!”

‘These feelings continue occasionally to appear, assuming, more and more, a distinct and practical shape, till his return to Oxford in October, 1826 (the period when the Letters before quoted were written), when they gave rise to the following resolutions:

‘“I have been coming to a resolution, that as soon as I am out of the reach of observation, I will begin a sort of monastic austere life, and do my best to chastise myself before the Lord; that I will attend Chapel regularly; eat little and plainly, drink as little wine as I can, consistently with the forms of society; keep the fasts of the Church, as much as I can, without ostentation; continue to get up at six in the winter; abstain from all unnecessary expenses, in everything; give all the money I can save in charity, or for the adorning of religion. That I will submit myself to the wishes of the [Provost?] as to one set over me by the Lord, but never give in to the will or opinion of anyone from idleness, or false shame, or want of spirit. That I will avoid society as much as I can, except those I can do good to, or from whom I may expect real advantage; and I will, in all my actions, endeavour to justify that high notion of my capabilities of which I cannot divest myself. That I will avoid all conversation on serious subjects, except with those whose opinions I revere, and content myself with exercising dominion over my own mind, without trying to influence others. The studies which I have prescribed to myself are Hebrew and Ante-Nicene Fathers….”

‘“Dec. 1, 7, and 17.—It is the object of our lives, by patient perseverance in a course of action prescribed to us, so to shape and discipline our desires that they may, through habit, be excited to the same degree by the objects which are presented to our understanding, as they would by nature, if we had senses to relish them; that is, that the degree of our appetites for these objects should so far exceed that which we feel for sensible objects, as the known value of the former exceeds that of the latter. The former field of existence is what I think St. Paul had in his mind when he spoke (Heb., vi. 19) of ‘that which is within the veil,’ into which Jesus Christ had gone before us: the veil signifying our unconsciousness, in spite of which, ‘by two immutable things, in which it was impossible that God should lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled to lay hold of the hope set before us.’ All this seems the real meaning of faith, as insisted on so much in the New Testament.

‘“Of the objects which we pursue or avoid, some we immediately perceive to be either present or absent; some we only believe to be so through the intervention of the understanding. The various dispositions of our fellow-creatures towards us are of the latter sort. We have no faculties for perceiving love or admiration; but being conscious of the feeling ourselves, and recognising in others the effects which we know to proceed from them, we believe their presence upon evidence, and are affected therewith. Of being in society we cannot be conscious, if by society we mean not that of certain shapes doing certain things, but of beings which feel in some respects as we do. The existence of such beings we only believe on evidence, having observed effects like those which proceed from our own feelings, in so many instances as to make it appear that the causes are likewise similar. The same sort of evidence we have of the existence of other beings, in some respects like, and in others different from ourselves. That a Being exists endued with power and wisdom, the limits of which we cannot reach to, is, I think, more certain than that we have fellow-creatures.[347] All men, whether they know it or not, act as if they believed in a Being endued with intelligence and power and will, superior to any interference. They count on the course of Nature continuing as it is, because they know that what they have long continued to do they go on with; and rely without any doubt on its skill and ability for perfecting their undertaking, where their own skill and ability fall short. That this Being has any other attributes, we have not the same evidence. These are the ‘things within the veil’; they are κυρίως, the objects of faith. But consideration will show that the difference is not in kind but in degree, and that among what we call the things visible, motives are proposed to us to be acted on, approaching to it by degrees imperceptible.”

‘“Isa. xxv. 7, 9. ‘And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations…. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for Him: we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation….’

‘The impression left on the mind after a first perusal of the Journal is doubtless a depressing one, both from the unhappiness which it records, and (it may be) from a fear that if we would exercise the same strict vigilance over our own hearts, or would aim at the same high mark, we might find cause for disquiet too. It is a real satisfaction to find, both at the end of the Journal that the author considers himself to have passed into a happier state, and in his Letters, that he gradually ceases to speak of his own despondency, either openly to his nearest friend, or in those half-jesting hints of which his other friends must only now feel the meaning. His external demeanour, both from natural disposition and from his contempt for any display of feeling, seems always to have been so full of life and energy, that from it alone, perhaps, no change in this respect could have been inferred. This despondency we have not attempted to show in the extracts, though it does slightly appear there; but rather his high desires to “enter within the veil,” to be “hidden in the presence of the Lord,” and the mode which he took to realise them. This forms a remarkable contrast with the self-confidence and unreality which too frequently springs from the consciousness of high views. It is, unfortunately, not often that we see men of bold and independent minds, subtle and comprehensive powers of reasoning, and romantic desires, giving up, till they shall be fit for it, all notion of “influencing others”; checking, without throwing aside, their own high feelings; subduing, with a systematic humility, their impulses to express them, and submitting to learn their duty by the slow and common-sense process of “following great examples,” “studying Hebrew and the Ante-Nicene Fathers,” and in the meantime obeying scrupulously the voices of those whom they feel to be better than themselves….

‘The volume before us touches the magic keys with a bold hand; and though some of the notes which come forth are rather startling, and may be untruly struck, yet there is a meaning in them which deserves to be analysed by those defenders of the English Church who are looking about for weapons to wield, and ground to stand on. Two principal wants, then, the author seems to have felt in the English Church: authority, and richness; and that not in the spirit of a dreaming philosopher, but of one who knew that we were here not to think only, but to act; that evil was given us that we might strive against it; Truth, that we might uphold or restore it; Revelation and moral instincts, that we might know both one and the other; Talent and energy, that we might form projects, recommend, and execute them. Nor would the restraints he set on his impulses to influence others, till circumstances and a conscious fitness should call him to it, make him likely to shrink from his task when he felt it given him. He seems early to have thought that his powers would enable him to serve the Church more effectually as a reader and writer than as a parochial clergyman: by acting on those minds which are to guide the masses, [rather] than on the masses themselves. To this his position as College Fellow seemed also to invite him; and the following extracts illustrate part of the spirit in which he devoted himself to this task, and the tastes he sacrificed to it.

‘“July 28.—This stagnant effusion was enough for one day, and I must not put off any longer,” etc.

‘“Sept. 9, 1832.—Also I am getting to be a sawney, and not to like the dreary prospects which you[348] and I have proposed to ourselves. But this is only a feeling; depend upon it, I will not shrink, if I buy my constancy at the expense of a permanent separation from home.”

‘“Sept. 27.—As to my sawney feelings, I own that home does make me a sawney, and that the first Eclogue runs in my head absurdly; but there is more in the prospect of becoming an ecclesiastical agitator than in—At nos hinc, alii,” etc.

‘And this introduces us to a side of his character on which we have as yet scarcely touched: the fertility, buoyancy, boldness, and versatility of his mind. It has been left unnoticed, partly because no one who was ever so little acquainted with the author, or who would read ever so cursorily the book before us, could well overlook it, partly because the peculiarities on which we have dwelt seem to have exercised a far deeper influence in making him what he was. Both the Journal and the Occasional Thoughts, though principally interesting as showing the processes by which his character and opinions formed themselves, and the depth of thought and determination of purpose on which they were based, cannot but in part show those too; but in the Letters we are flooded with the pointed suggestions, the bold historical views of a keen-sighted politician, the vigorous statements and earnest queries of one who was seeking and contending for divine Truth, and the ingenious hints, on questions of taste or science, of a man of genius who thought nothing unworthy to employ his powers which could be pressed into the service of religion….

‘From what has been already said, some general notion may be gained of the author’s formal opinions. It may be added, that he was one of those who, feeling strongly the inadequacy of their own intellects to guide them to religious Truth, are prepared to throw themselves unreservedly on Revelation wherever found, in Scripture or Antiquity. Any more definite account it would be difficult to give without unfairness either to the author or to the reader: to the reader, if we omitted his more startling views; to the author, if we stated them detached and unsupported. His Letters seem to show that his opinions ran somewhat in advance of those to whom he was most closely bound. Still less should we venture to pledge ourselves to every statement and suggestion contained in the two volumes; yet we cannot but express our hope that they will be very generally read and weighed, as likely to suggest thoughts on doctrine, on Church policy, and on individual conduct, most true, and most necessary for these times.’