'What you have a time, but shut the book for pain, as I used to do with CHAP. Renan's.' What revolted him was not the exhibition of the X. human nature of the central figure, but of a human nature Ær. 55-59. apart from and inconsistent with its divinity; the writer's admiring or patronising tone was loathsome. yourself written,' Pusey said, 'I like much. on Ecce Homo I can hardly divine, except by way of contrast.' Dr. Newman thought that here was a case where materiam superabat opus, and that Mr. Gladstone's observations were more valuable for their own sake, than as a recommendation or defence of the book :— Jan. 9, 1868.-I hope I have followed you correctly, says Newman: your main proposition seems to be, that whereas both Jew and Gentile had his own notion of an heroic humanity, and neither of them a true notion, the one being political, the other even immoral, the first step necessary for bringing in the idea of an Emmanuel into the world, was to form the human mould into which it 'might drop,' and thus to supplant both the Judaic and the heathen misconception by the exhibition of the true idea. Next, passing from antecedent probabilities to history, the order of succession of the synoptical and the fourth gospels does in fact fulfil this reasonable anticipation. This seems to me a very great view, and I look forward eagerly to what you have still to say in illustration of it. The only objection which I see can be made to it is, that it is a clever controversial expedient after the event for accounting for a startling fact. This is an objection not peculiar to it, but to all explanations of the kind. Still, the question remains-whether it is a fact that the sacred writers recognise, however indirectly, the wise economy which you assert, or whether it is only an hypothesis? As to the specific principles and particular opinions in Mr. Gladstone's criticism of what we now see to have been a not very effective or deeply influential book, we may think as we will. But the temper of his review, the breadth of its outlook on Christian thought, tradition, and society, show no mean elements in the composition of his greatness. So, too, does the bare fact that under the pressure of office and all the cares of a party leader in a crisis, his mind V. BOOK should have been free and disengaged enough to turn with large and eager interest to such themes as these. This was 1864-68. indeed the freedom of judgment with which, in the most moving lines of the poem that he loved above all others, Virgil bidding farewell to Dante makes him crowned and mitred master of himself-Perch' io te sopra te corono e mitrio.1 IV Other strong gusts swept the high latitudes, when Dr. Colenso, Bishop of Natal, published certain destructive criticisms upon the canonical Scriptures. His metropolitan at Cape Town pronounced sentence of deprivation; Colenso appealed to the Queen in council; and the Queen in council was advised that the proceedings of the Bishop of Cape Town were null and void, for in law there was no established church in the colony, nor any ecclesiastical court with lawful jurisdiction. This triumph of heresy was a heavy blow. In 1866 Bishop Colenso brought an action against Mr. Gladstone and the other trustees of the colonial bishoprics fund, calling upon them to set aside a sum of ten thousand pounds for the purpose of securing the income of the Bishop of Natal, and to pay him his salary, which they had withheld since his wrongful deprivation. We,' said Mr. Gladstone to Miss Burdett Coutts, 'founding ourselves on the judgment, say there is no see of Natal in the sense of the founders of the fund, and therefore, of course, no bishop of such a see.' Romilly, master of the rolls, gave judgment in favour of Colenso. These perplexities did not dismay Mr. Gladstone. 'Remembering what the churches in the colonies were some forty years back, when I first began (from my father's having a connection with the West Indies), to feel an interest in them, I must own that they present a cheering, a remarkable, indeed a wonderful spectacle.' 'I quite feel with you,' he says to Miss Burdett Coutts, 'a great uneasiness at what may follow from the exercise of judicial powers by synods 1 Purgatorio, xxvii. 126-42. 2 A concise account of this transaction is in Lord Selborne's Memorials Family and Personal, ii. pp. 481-7. See also Anson's Law and Custom of the Constitution, ii. p. 407. X. merely ecclesiastical, especially if small, remote, and unchecked CHAP. by an active public opinion. But in the American episcopal church it has been found practicable in a great degree to obviate any dangers from such a source.' Ten years after this, in one of the most remarkable articles he ever wrote, speaking of the protestant evangelical section of the adherents of the Christian system, he says that no portion of this entire group seems to be endowed with greater vigour than this in the United States and the British colonies, which has grown up in new soil, and far from the possibly chilling shadow of national establishments of religion."1 1 'The Courses of Religious Thought' in Gleanings, iii. p. 115. V. 1868. CHAPTER XI POPULAR ESTIMATES (1868) DIE Mitlebenden werden an vorzüglichen Menschen gar leicht irre; das Besondere der Person stört sie, das laufende bewegliche Leben verrückt ihre Standpunkte und hindert das Kennen und Anerkennen eines solchen Mannes.-GOETHE. The contemporaries of superior men easily go wrong about them. Peculiarity discomposes them; the swift current of life disturbs their points of view, and prevents them from understanding and appreciating such men. BOOK IT must obviously be interesting, as we approach a signal crisis in his advance, to know the kind of impression, right or wrong, made by a great man upon those who came nearest to him. Friends like Aberdeen and Graham had many years earlier foreseen the high destinies of their colleague. Aberdeen told Bishop Wilberforce in 1855 that Gladstone had some great qualifications but some serious defects. The chief, that when he has convinced himself, perhaps by abstract reasoning of some view, he thinks that every one else ought at once to see it as he does, and can make no allowance for difference of opinion.'1 About the same time Graham said of him that he was 'in the highest sense of the word Liberal; of the greatest power; very much the first man in the House of Commons; detested by the aristocracy for his succession duty, the most truly conservative measure passed in my recollection. . . . He must rise to the head in such a government as ours, even in spite of all the hatred of him.' Three years later Aberdeen still thought him too obstinate and, if such a thing be possible, too honest. He does not enough think of what other men think. Does not enough look out of the window. 'Whom 1 Life of Bishop Wilberforce, ii. p. 286. XI. will he lead?' asked the bishop.1 'Oh! it is impossible to say! CHAP. Time must show, and new combinations.' By 1863 Cardwell confidently anticipated that Mr. Gladstone must become ET. 59. prime minister, and Bishop Wilberforce finds all coming to the conclusion that he must be the next real chief.2 On the other side Lord Shaftesbury, to whom things ecclesiastical were as cardinal as they were to Mr. Gladstone, ruefully reflected in 1864 that people must make ready for great and irrevocable changes. Palmerston was simply the peg driven through the island of Delos: unloose the peg, and all would soon be adrift. 'His successor, Gladstone, will bring with him the Manchester school for colleagues and supporters, a hot tractarian for chancellor, and the Bishop of Oxford for ecclesiastical adviser. He will succumb to every pressure, except the pressure of a constitutional and conservative policy.' 'He is a dangerous man,' was one of Lord Palmerston's latest utterances, 'keep him in Oxford and he is partially muzzled; but send him elsewhere and he will run wild.' The long and short of our present position is,' said Shaftesbury, that the time has arrived (novus sæclorum nascitur ordo) for the triumph of the Manchester school, of which Gladstone is the disciple and the organ. And for the nonce they have a great advantage; for, though the majority of the country is against them, the country has no leaders in or out of parliament; whereas they are all well provided and are equally compact in purpose and action.' 4 Somewhat earlier cool observers 'out of hearing of the modulation of his voice or the torrent of his declamation' regarded him 'in spite of his eloquence unsurpassed in our day, perhaps in our century, in spite of his abilities and experience, as one most dangerous to that side to which he belongs. Like the elephant given by some eastern prince to the man he intends to ruin, he is an inmate too costly for any party to afford to keep long.' 5 'One great weight that Gladstone has to carry in the political race,' wrote his friend Frederick Rogers (Dec. 13, 1 Life of Bishop Wilberforce, ii. p. 412. 2 Ibid., iii. pp. 92, 101. Life of Lord Shaftesbury, iii. pp. 171, 188. 4 Ibid., iii. pp. 201-2. 5 Edinburgh Review, April 1857, p. 567. |