thought our dear boy greatly improved when he was last with us. How
delightful will it be to me in my declining years to hear that my
dearest Samuel is doing credit to his name and family!"
"_May 25, 1819._
"I do not like to write merely on the _outside_ of this cover, though I
have time to insert very little within, yet as when you were a little
boy I used to delight in taking a passing kiss of you, so now it is
quite gratifying to exchange a salutation with you on paper, though but
for a minute or two. The sight of my handwriting will call forth in the
mind of my dear, affectionate Samuel all those images of parental and
family tenderness with which the Almighty permits us to be refreshed
when children or parents are separated from each other far asunder. You
have a Heavenly Father, too, my dearest boy, who loves you dearly, and
who has promised He will never leave you nor forsake you if you will
but devote yourself to His service in His appointed way. And so I trust
you are resolved to do. I hope you got your parcel safe, and that the
lavender-water had not oozed out of the bottle; the cork did not seem
tight. Farewell, my very dear Samuel."
"_September 17, 1819._
"MY DEAR BOY,--It is a great pleasure to me that you wish to know your
faults. Even if we are a little nettled when we first hear of them,
especially when they are such as we thought we were free from, or such
as we are ashamed that others should discover, yet if we soon recover
our good-humour, and treat with kindness the person who has told us
of them, it is a very good sign. It may help us to do this to reflect
that such persons are rendering us, even when they themselves may not
mean it, but may even only be gratifying their own dislike of us, the
greatest almost of all services, perhaps may be helping us to obtain an
eternal increase of our happiness and glory. For we never should forget
that though we are reconciled to God through the atoning blood of
Christ, altogether freely and of mere undeserved mercy, yet when once
reconciled, and become the children of God, the degrees of happiness
and glory which He will grant to us will be proportioned to the degree
of holiness we have obtained, the degree (in other words) in which we
have improved the talents committed to our stewardship."
"WEYMOUTH, _September, 1820_.
"I have this day learned for the first time that there were to be
oratorios at Gloucester, and that some of the boys were to go to them.
I will be very honest with you. When I heard that the cost was to be
half a guinea, I greatly doubted whether it would be warrantable to
pay such a sum for such a performance for such _youth_. This last
consideration has considerable weight with me, both as it renders
the pleasure of the entertainment less, and as at your early age the
sources of pleasure are so numerous. But my difficulties were all
removed by finding that the money would not merely be applied to the
use of tweedledum and tweedledee (though I write this, no one is fonder
than myself of music), but was to go to the relief of the clergy widows
and children. I say therefore yes. Q.E.D."
"_September 4, 1820._
"I am persuaded that my dear Samuel will endeavour to keep his
mind in such a right frame as to enable him to enjoy the pleasures
of the scenes through which he is passing, and to be cheered by the
consciousness that he is now carrying forward all the necessary
agricultural processes in order to his hereafter reaping a rich and
abundant harvest. Use yourself, dear boy, to take time occasionally for
reflection. Let this be done especially before you engage in prayer,
a duty which I hope you always endeavour to perform with all possible
seriousness. As I have often told you, it is the grand test by which
the state of a Christian may always be best estimated."
"BATH, _September 23, 1820_.
"Did you ever cross a river with a horse in a ferry boat? If so, you
must have observed, if you are an observing creature, which if you are
not I beg you will become with all possible celerity, that the said
horse is perfectly quiet after he is once fairly in the boat--a line
of conduct in which it would be well if this four-footed navigator
were imitated by some young bipeds I have known in their aquatic
exercitations. And so said animal continues--the quadruped I mean,
mind--perfectly quiet until he begins to approach the opposite shore.
Then he begins to show manifest signs of impatience by dancing and
frisking sometimes to such a degree as to overset the boat, to the
no small injury of others (for whom he very little cares) as well as
himself. This is what may be well called making more haste than good
speed. None the less, though I am fully aware that the same frisking
quadruped is a very improper subject of imitation, not only to an
old biped but to an experienced M.P. of forty years' standing, yet I
find myself in a state of mind exactly like that of the horse above
mentioned, though it has not the same effects on my animal powers, and
though, being on dry land and in a parlour, not a boat, I might frisk
away if I chose with perfect impunity to myself and others. But to
quit metaphor which I have fairly worn out, or, rather, rode to death,
when I was a hundred miles from my dear Samuel, though my affection
for him was as strong and my sentiments and feelings as much employed
in him as now, yet these are now accompanied with an impatient longing
to extinguish the comparatively little distance that is between us,
and to have my dearest boy not only in my heart but in my arms, and
yet on reflection this very feeling is beneficial. I recollect that
our separation is an act of self-denial, and I offer it up to my
Saviour with a humble sense of His goodness, in subjecting me to such
few and those comparatively such easy crosses. My dearest Samuel will
remember to have our blessed Lord continually in remembrance, and by
associating Him thus with all the little circumstances of life, it is
that we are to live in His love and fear continually."
"_November 20, 1820._
"We quite enjoyed your pleasure in Robert's visit. In truth the
gratification we parents derive from our children's innocent, much more
their commendable, enjoyments is one of the greatest of our pleasures."
"BATH, _November 18, 1820_.
"MY DEAR SAMUEL.--I am sorry to hear that your examination is, or
part of it at least, disadvantageous to you. Does not this arise in
part from your having stayed with us when your school-fellows were at
Maisemore? If so, the lesson is one which, if my dear boy duly digests
it and bottles it up for future use, may be a most valuable one for
the rest of his life. It illustrates a remark which I well remember
in Bishop Butler's 'Analogy,' that our faults often bring on some bad
consequence long after they have been committed, and when they perhaps
have been entirely banished from our memory. Some self-indulgence
perhaps may have lost us an advantage, the benefit of which might have
extended through life. But it is due to my dear Samuel to remark that,
though his stay was protracted a very little out of self-indulgence (as
much ours as his), yet it was chiefly occasioned by the necessity of
his going up to London on account of his ancle. (By the way, tell me in
two words--ancle better or worse or _idem._) But my Samuel must not vex
himself with the idea of falling below the boy who has commonly been
his competitor, owing to his stay having prevented his reading what
is to be in part the subject of the examination. It would really be
quite wrong to feel much on this account, and that for several reasons.
First, everybody about you will know the disadvantages under which you
start, and will make allowances accordingly. Next, if you do as well
or better in the parts you _have_ read, you will show the probability
of your having done well in the other also, if you had possessed with
it the same advantage. And what I wish my dearest boy seriously to
consider is, that any uneasiness he might feel on account of this
circumstance would deserve no better a name than emulation, which the
apostle enumerates as one of the lusts of the flesh. You should do your
business and try to excel in it, to please your Saviour, as a small
return for all He has done for you, but a return which He will by no
means despise. It is this which constitutes the character of a real
Christian: that, considering himself as bought with a price--viz., that
of the blood of Jesus Christ--he regards it as his duty to try and
please his Saviour in everything. And to be honest with you, my very
dear boy, let me tell you that it appears to me very probable that
the Heavenly Shepherd, whose tender care of His people is, you must
remember, described to us as like that of a shepherd towards the tender
lambs of his flock, may have designed by this very incident to discover
to you that you were too much under the influence of emulation, and
to impress you with a sense of the duty of rooting it out. Emulation
has a great tendency to lessen love. It is scarcely possible to have
a fellow-feeling (that is, duly to sympathise) with anyone if we are
thinking much about, and setting our hearts on, getting before him, or
his not getting before us. This disposition of mind, which includes
in it an over-estimation of the praise of our fellow-creatures, is
perhaps the most subtle and powerful of all our corruptions, and that
which costs a real Christian the most trouble and pain; for he will
never be satisfied in his mind unless the chief motive in his mind and
feelings is the way to please his Saviour. The best way to promote
the right temper of mind will be after earnest prayer to God to bless
your endeavours, to try to keep the idea of Jesus Christ and of His
sufferings, and of the love which prompted Him willingly to undergo
them, in your mind continually, and especially when you are going to
do, occasionally when you are doing, your business. And then recollect
that He has declared He will kindly accept as a tribute of gratitude
whatever we do to please Him, and call to mind all His kindness, all
His sacrifices; what glory and happiness He left, what humiliation and
shame and agony He endured; and then reflect that the only return He,
who is then, remember, at that very moment actually looking upon you,
expects from you, is that you should remember His Heavenly Father who
sent Him, and Him Himself, and (as I said before) endeavour to please
Him. This He tells us is to be done by keeping God's commandments.
And my dear Samuel knows that this obedience must be universal--all
God's commandments. Not that we shall be able actually to do this;
but then we must wish and desire to do it. And when, from our natural
corruption, infirmities do break out we must sincerely lament them, and
try to guard against them in future. Thus a true Christian endeavours
to have the idea of his Saviour continually present with him. To do his
business as the Scripture phrases it, unto the Lord and not unto men.
To enjoy his gratifications as allowed to him by his merciful and kind
Saviour, who knows that we need recreations, and when they are neither
wrong in kind nor excessive in degree they may and should be enjoyed
with a grateful recollection of Him who intends for us still nobler and
higher pleasures hereafter. This is the very perfection of religion;
'Whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, do all to the glory of God.'
"All I am now contending for is that my dearest Samuel may at least
endeavour to do his school business with a recollection of his Saviour,
and a wish to please Him, and when he finds the feeling of emulation
taking the place of this right principle look up and beg God's pardon
for it, and implore the Holy Spirit's help to enable you to feel as you
ought and wish to feel. But let me also ask my dear Samuel to reflect
if he did not stay too long at home in the last holidays. Too much
prosperity and self-indulgence (and staying at home may be said to be a
young person's indulgence and prosperity) are good neither for man nor
boy, neither for you nor for myself."[48]
"DOWNING STREET, _December 11, 1820_.
"Three words, or, rather, five lines, just to assure you that in the
midst of all our Parliamentary business I do not forget my very dear
Samuel; on the contrary, he is endeared to me by all the turbulence of
the element in which I commonly breathe, as I thereby am led still more
highly to prize and, I hope, to be thankful to God for domestic peace
and love. Pray God bless you, my dearest boy, and enable you to devote
to Him your various faculties and powers."
The mutual affection of father and son is touchingly shown in many
passages scattered through their letters. Two may serve as specimens:--
"_February 24, 1821._
"Perhaps at the very time of your being occupied in reading my
sentiments, I may be engaged in calling you up before my mind's eye and
recommending you to the throne of grace."
"_September 5._
"Probably at the very same time you will be thinking of me and holding
a conversation with me."
"LONDON, _June 30, 1821_.
"MY VERY DEAR BOY,--I congratulate you cordially on your success, and I
rejoice to hear of your literary progress. But I should have been still
more gratified, indeed beyond all comparison more, had Mr. Hodson's
certificate of your scholarship been accompanied, as it formerly was,
with an assurance that you were advancing in the still more important
particulars of self-control, of humility, of love--in short, in all
the various forms and phases, if I may so term them, which St. Paul
ascribes to it in his beautiful eulogium (1 Cor. xiii.). Oh, my dear
boy, I should be even an unnatural father instead of what I trust I
am, an affectionate one, if, believing as I do, and bearing in mind
that you are an immortal being who must be happy or miserable for
ever, I were not, above all things, anxious to see you manifest those
buds and shoots which alone are true indications of a celestial plant,
the fruits of which are the produce of the Garden of God. My dear
Samuel, be honest with yourself; you have enjoyed and still enjoy many
advantages for which you are responsible. Use them _honestly_; that is,
according to their just intention and fair employment and improvement.
Above all things, my dearest boy, cultivate a spirit of prayer. Never
hurry over your devotions, still less omit them. Farewell, my dearest
boy."
"_1821._
"In speaking of the pros and cons of Maisemore, you spoke of one
great boy with whom you disagreed. I always meant to ask you about
the nature, causes, and extent of your difference. And the very idea
of a standing feud is so opposite to the Christian character that I
can scarcely understand it. I can, however, conceive a youth of such
crabbed and wayward temper that the only way of going on with him
is that of avoiding all intercourse with him as much as possible.
But, nine times out of ten, if one of two parties be really intent
on healing the breach and preventing the renewal of it, the thing
may be done. Now, my dear Samuel, may not you be partly in fault? If
so, I beg of you to strive to get the better of it. I have recently
had occasion to observe how much a frank and kind demeanour, when we
conceive we have really just cause for complaint, disarms resentment
and conciliates regard. Remember, my dearest boy, that you have
enjoyed advantages which probably R. has not, and that therefore more
Christian kindness and patience may be expected from you than from him.
Again, you would be glad, I am sure, to produce in his mind an opinion
favourable to true religion, and not that he should say, 'I don't see
what effect Christianity has produced in Samuel Wilberforce.' Oh, my
dear Samuel, I love you most affectionately, and I wish you could see
how earnestly I long hereafter (perhaps from the world of spirits) to
witness my dearest boy's progress into professional life that of a
growing Christian, 'shining more and more into the perfect day.' My
Samuel's conduct as it respects his studies, and, what I value much
more, his disposition and behaviour, has been such for some time as
to draw on him Mr. Hodson's eulogium, and so I trust he will continue
doing."
"_October 12, 1821._
"It is quite delightful to me to receive such an account of you as is
contained in the letter Mama has this day had from Mr. Hodson. Oh that
I may continue to have such reports of my dear Samuel wherever he may
be. They quite warm his old father's heart, and melt his mother's."
"_February 20, 1822._
"You never can have a friend, your dear affectionate mother alone
excepted, whose interests and sympathies are so identically the
same. Yet I have known instances in which, though children have been
convinced in their understandings of this being the case between them
and their parents, yet from not having begun at an early period of life
to make a father a confidant, they could not bring themselves to do it
when they grew older, but felt a strange shrinking back from opening
their minds to the parent they cordially loved, and of whose love to
them they were fully satisfied. I hope you will continue, my dear
Samuel, to speak to me without constraint or concealment.
"The two chief questions you ask relate to Repentance and to
Predestination. As to the former--sorrow for sin is certainly a part
of it, but the degree of the feelings of different people will be as
different as their various tempers and dispositions. If the same person
whose feelings were very tender and susceptible on other topics and
occasions were very cold in religion, that doubtless of itself is no
good sign. But remember, repentance in the Greek means a change of
heart, and the test of its sincerity is more its rendering us serious
and watchful in our endeavours to abstain from sin and to practise
known duty, than its causing many tears to flow, which effect may be
produced in a susceptible nature with very little solid impression
on the heart and character. The grand mark, I repeat it, of true
repentance, is its providing a dread of sin and a watchfulness against
it. As for Predestination, the subject is one the depths of which no
human intellect can fathom. But even the most decided Predestinarians I
have ever known have acknowledged that the invitations of God were made
to all without exception, and that it was men's own fault that they
did not accept these invitations. Again, does it not appear undeniably
from one end of Scripture to the other that men's perishing, where they
do perish, is always represented as their own bringing on? Indeed the
passage in Ezekiel, 'As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in
the death of a sinner, but that he should repent and live.' Again, do
compare the ninth of Romans, in which that awful passage is contained:
'Hath not the potter power over the clay to make one vessel to honour,
and another to dishonour? What if God,' &c., &c.; and compare this with
Jeremiah, I think xviiith, to which passage St. Paul manifestly refers,
and you will see there that the executing or remitting a threatening
of vengeance is made to depend on the object of the threats turning
from his evil way or continuing in it. This is very remarkable. Only
pray, my dearest boy, and all will be well; and strive not to grieve
the Holy Spirit. Before you actually engage in prayer always pause
a minute or two and recollect yourself, and especially practise my
rule of endeavouring to imagine myself in the presence of God, and to
remember that to God all the bad actions, bad tempers, bad words of my
whole life are all open in their entire freshness of circumstances and
colouring; and when I recollect how I felt on the first committing of
a wrong action, and then call to mind that to God sin must appear in
itself far more hateful than to me, this reflection I often find to
produce in me a deep humiliation; and then the promise is sure--the
Lord is nigh to them that are of a contrite heart, and will save such
as be of a humble spirit. I rejoice that it has pleased God to touch
your heart. May I live, if it please God, to see you an honour to your
family and a blessing to your fellow-creatures."
"_March 30, 1822._
"It is scarcely possible for children to have an adequate conception of
the delight it gives to a parent's heart to receive a favourable report
of a dear child. And of late God has been very gracious to me in this
particular. I trust I shall continue to enjoy such gratification, and
that the day will come when my dear Samuel will in his turn become a
parent and be solaced and cheered with such accounts as he himself will
now furnish. And then, when I am dead and gone, he will remember his
old father, and the letter he had from him on Sunday, 31st March, 1822."
"_April, 1822._
"Though honestly my purse is in such a state that I cannot buy books
except very sparingly, I beg you will buy Hume and Smollett, 13 vols.
large 8vo, for £5 10s., and Gibbon's 'Rome' you may also purchase, if
you wish it, for £4 10s., 12 vols. But you must take these two birthday
presents for Scotch pints--each double. Had I as much money as I have
good will you should wish for no book that I would not get you."
"_October 22, 1822._
"The train of your idea and feelings is precisely that which I believe
is commonly experienced at the outset of a religious course. It was
my own, I am sure; I mean specially that painful apprehension of
which you speak, lest your sorrow for sin should be less on account
of its guilt than its danger, less on account of its hatefulness in
the sight of God, and its ingratitude towards your Redeemer, than on
that of its subjecting you to the wrath and punishment of God. But, my
dear Samuel, blessed be God, we serve a gracious Master, a merciful
Sovereign, who has denounced those threatenings for the very purpose
of exciting our fears; and thereby being driven to flee from the wrath
to come and lay hold on eternal life. By degrees the humble hope of
your having obtained the pardon of your sins and the possession of the
Divine favour will enable you to look up to God with feelings of filial
confidence and love, and to Christ as to an advocate and a friend. The
more you do this the better. Use yourself, my dearest Samuel, to take
now and then a solitary walk, and in it to indulge in these spiritual
meditations. The disposition to do this will gradually become a habit,
and a habit of unspeakable value. I have long considered it as a great
misfortune, or rather, I should say, as having been very injurious to
your brother William, that he never courted solitude in his walks, or
indeed at any time. Some people are too much inclined to it, I grant;
they often thereby lose the inestimable benefit which results from
having a friend to whom we open our hearts, one of the most valuable
of all possessions both for this world and the next. When I was led
into speaking of occasional intervals of solitude ('when Isaac, like
the solitary saint, Walks forth to meditate at eventide,' you remember
the passage, I doubt not), I was mentioning that holy, peaceful,
childlike trust in the fatherly love of our God and Saviour which
gradually diffuses itself through the soul and takes possession of it,
when we are habitually striving to walk by faith under the influence
of the Holy Spirit. When we allow ourselves to slacken or be indolent
in our religious exercises, much more when we fall into actual sin,
or have not watched over our tempers so as to be ashamed of looking
our Heavenly Father in the face (if I may so express myself, I am sure
with no irreverent meaning), then this holy confidence lessens and
its diminution is a warning to us that we are going on ill. We must
then renew our repentance and supplications, and endeavour to obtain
a renewed supply of the blessed influences of the divine Spirit; and
then we shall again enjoy the light of God's countenance. There are
two or three beautiful sections in Doddridge's 'Rise and Progress'
on these heads, and I earnestly recommend especially to you that,
the subject of which is, I think, the Christian under the hiding of
God's presence. I have been looking, and I find the section, or rather
chapter I allude to, is that entitled, 'Case of spiritual decay and
languor in religion.' There is a following one on 'Case of a relapse
into known sin,' and I trust you have a pretty good edition of this
super-excellent book.