On Friday, the fifth of April, a noteworthy assemblage gathered round
an open vault in a corner of Highgate Cemetery. Some hundreds of
persons, closely packed up the steep banks among the trees and
shrubs, had found in that grave a common bond of brotherhood. I say,
in that grave. They were no sect, clique, or school of disciples,
held together by community of opinions. They were simply men and
women, held together, for the moment at least, by love of a man, and
that man, as they had believed, a man of God. All shades of opinion,
almost of creed, were represented there; though the majority were
members of the Church of England--many probably reconciled to that
Church by him who lay below. All sorts and conditions of men, and
indeed of women, were there; for he had had a word for all sorts and
conditions of men. Most of them had never seen each other before--
would never see each other again. But each felt that the man,
however unknown to him who stood next him, was indeed a brother in
loyalty to that beautiful soul, beautiful face, beautiful smile,
beautiful voice, from which, in public or in secret, each had
received noble impulses, tender consolation, loving correction, and
clearer and juster conceptions of God, of duty, of the meaning of
themselves and of the universe. And when they turned and left his
body there, the world--as one said who served him gallantly and long-
-seemed darker now he had left it; but he had stayed here long enough
to do the work for which he was fitted. He had wasted no time, but
died, like a valiant man, at his work, and of his work.
He might have been buried in Westminster Abbey. There was no lack of
men of mark who held that such a public recognition of his worth was
due, not only to the man himself, but to the honour of the Church of
England. His life had been one of rare sanctity; he was a
philosopher of learning and acuteness, unsurpassed by any man of his
generation; he had done more than any man of that generation to
defend the Church's doctrines; to recommend her to highly-cultivated
men and women; to bring within her pale those who had been born
outside it, or had wandered from it; to reconcile the revolutionary
party among the workmen of the great cities with Christianity, order,
law; to make all ranks understand that if Christianity meant
anything, it meant that a man should not merely strive to save his
own soul after death, but that he should live here the life of a true
citizen, virtuous, earnest, helpful to his human brethren. He had
been the originator of, or at least the chief mover in, working-men's
colleges, schemes for the higher education of women, for the
protection of the weak and the oppressed. He had been the champion,
the organiser, the helper with his own money and time, of that co-
operative movement--the very germ of the economy of the future--which
seems now destined to spread, and with right good results, to far
other classes, and in far other forms, than those of which Mr.
Maurice was thinking five-and-twenty years ago. His whole life had
been one of unceasing labour for that which he believed to be truth
and right, and for the practical amelioration of his fellow-
creatures. He had not an enemy, unless it were here and there a
bigot or a dishonest man--two classes who could not abide him,
because they knew well that he could not abide them. But for the
rest, those from whom he had differed most, with whom he had engaged,
ere now, in the sharpest controversy, had learned to admire his
sanctity, charity, courtesy--for he was the most perfect of
gentlemen--as well as to respect his genius and learning. He had
been welcomed to Cambridge, by all the finer spirits of the
University, as Professor of Moral Philosophy; and as such, and as the
parish priest of St. Edward's, he had done his work--as far as
failing health allowed--as none but he could do it. Nothing save his
own too-scrupulous sense of honour had prevented him from accepting
some higher ecclesiastical preferment--which he would have used,
alas! not for literary leisure, nor for the physical rest which he
absolutely required, but merely as an excuse for greater and more
arduous toil. If such a man was not the man whom the Church of
England would delight to honour, who was the man? But he was gone;
and a grave among England's worthies was all that could be offered
him now; and it was offered. But those whose will on such a point
was law, judged it to be more in keeping with the exquisite modesty
and humility of Frederick Denison Maurice, that he should be laid out
of sight, though not out of mind, by the side of his father and his
mother. Well: be it so. At least that green nook at Highgate will
be a sacred spot to hundreds--it may be to thousands--who owe him
more than they will care to tell to any created being.
It was, after all, in this--in his personal influence--that Mr.
Maurice was greatest. True, he was a great and rare thinker. Those
who wish to satisfy themselves of this should measure the
capaciousness of his intellect by studying--not by merely reading--
his Boyle Lectures on the Religions of the world; and that Kingdom of
Christ, the ablest "Apology" for the Catholic Faith which England has
seen for more than two hundred years. The ablest, and perhaps
practically the most successful; for it has made the Catholic Faith
look living, rational, practical, and practicable, to hundreds who
could rest neither in modified Puritanism nor modified Romanism, and
still less in scepticism, however earnest. The fact that it is
written from a Realist point of view, as all Mr. Maurice's books are,
will make it obscure to many readers. Nominalism is just now so
utterly in the ascendant, that most persons seem to have lost the
power of thinking, as well as of talking, by any other method. But
when the tide of thought shall turn, this, and the rest of Mr.
Maurice's works, will become not only precious but luminous, to a
generation which will have recollected that substance does not mean
matter, that a person is not the net result of his circumstances, and
that the real is not the visible Actual, but the invisible Ideal.
If anyone, again, would test Mr. Maurice's faculty as an interpreter
of Scripture, let him study the two volumes on the Gospel and the
Epistles of St. John; and study, too, the two volumes on the Old
Testament, which have been (as a fact) the means of delivering more
than one or two from both the Rationalist and the Mythicist theories
of interpretation. I mention these only as peculiar examples of Mr.
Maurice's power. To those who have read nothing of his, I would say:
"Take up what book you will, you will be sure to find in it something
new to you, something noble, something which, if you can act on it,
will make you a better man." And if anyone, on making the trial,
should say: "But I do not understand the book. It is to me a new
world;" then it must be answered: "If you wish to read only books
which you can understand at first sight, confine yourself to
periodical literature. As for finding yourself in a new world, is it
not good sometimes to do that?--to discover how vast the universe of
mind, as well as of matter, is; that it contains many worlds; and
that wise and beautiful souls may and do live in more worlds than
your own?" Much has been said of the obscurity of Mr. Maurice's
style. It is a question whether any great thinker will be anything
but obscure at times; simply because he is possessed by conceptions
beyond his powers of expression. But the conceptions may be clear
enough; and it may be worth the wise man's while to search for them
under the imperfect words. Only thus--to take an illustrious
instance--has St. Paul, often the most obscure of writers, become
luminous to students; and there are those who will hold that St. Paul
is by no means understood yet; and that the Calvinistic system which
has been built upon his Epistles, has been built up upon a total
ignoring of the greater part of them, and a total misunderstanding of
the remainder: yet, for all that, no Christian man will lightly shut
up St. Paul as too obscure for use. Really, when one considers what
worthless verbiage which men have ere now, and do still, take
infinite pains to make themselves fancy that they understand, one is
tempted to impatience when men confess that they will not take the
trouble of trying to understand Mr. Maurice.
Yet after all, I know no work which gives a fairer measure of Mr.
Maurice's intellect, both political and exegetic, and a fairer
measure likewise, of the plain downright common sense which he
brought to bear on each of so many subjects, than his Commentary on
the very book which is supposed to have least connection with common
sense, and on which common sense has as yet been seldom employed--
namely, the Apocalypse of St. John. That his method of
interpretation is the right one can hardly be doubted by those who
perceive that it is the one and only method on which any fair
exegesis is possible--namely, to ask: What must these words have
meant to those to whom they were actually spoken? That Mr. Maurice
is more reverent, by being more accurate, more spiritual, by being
more practical, in his interpretation than commentators on this book
have usually been, will be seen the more the book is studied, and
found to be what any and every commentary on the Revelation ought to
be--a mine of political wisdom. Sayings will be found which will
escape the grasp of most readers, as indeed they do mine, so pregnant
are they, and swift revealing, like the lightning-flash at night, a
whole vision: but only for a moment's space. The reader may find
also details of interpretation which are open to doubt; if so, he
will remember that no man would have shrunk with more horror than Mr.
Maurice from the assumption of infallibility. Meanwhile, that the
author's manly confidence in the reasonableness of his method will be
justified hereafter, I must hope, if the Book of Revelation is to
remain, as God grant it may, the political text-book of the Christian
Church.
On one matter, however, Mr. Maurice is never obscure--on questions of
right and wrong. As with St. Paul, his theology, however seemingly
abstruse, always results in some lesson of plain practical morality.
To do the right and eschew the wrong, and that not from hope of
reward or fear of punishment--in which case the right ceases to be
right--but because a man loves the right and hates the wrong; about
this there is no hesitation or evasion in Mr. Maurice's writings. If
any man is in search of a mere philosophy, like the neo-Platonists of
old, or of a mere system of dogmas, by assenting to which he will
gain a right to look down on the unorthodox, while he is absolved
from the duty of becoming a better man than he is and as good a man
as he can be--then let him beware of Mr. Maurice's books, lest, while
searching merely for "thoughts that breathe," he should stumble upon
"words that burn," and were meant to burn. His books, like himself,
are full of that [Greek], that capacity of indignation, which Plato
says is the root of all virtues. "There was something," it has been
well said, "so awful, and yet so Christ-like in its awful sternness,
in the expression which came over that beautiful face when he heard
of anything base or cruel or wicked, that it brought home to the
bystander our Lord's judgment of sin."
And here, perhaps, lay the secret of the extraordinary personal
influence which he exercised; namely, in that truly formidable
element which underlaid a character which (as one said of him)
"combined all that was noblest in man and woman; all the tenderness
and all the strength, all the sensitiveness and all the fire, of
both; and with that a humility which made men feel the utter
baseness, meanness, of all pretension." For can there be true love
without wholesome fear? And does not the old Elizabethan "My dear
dread" express the noblest voluntary relation in which two human
souls can stand to each other? Perfect love casteth out fear. Yes:
but where is love perfect among imperfect beings, save a mother's for
her child? For all the rest, it is through fear that love is made
perfect; fear which bridles and guides the lover with awe--even
though misplaced--of the beloved one's perfections; with dread--never
misplaced--of the beloved one's contempt. And therefore it is that
souls who have the germ of nobleness within, are drawn to souls more
noble than themselves, just because, needing guidance, they cling to
one before whom they dare not say or do, or even think, an ignoble
thing. And if these higher souls are--as they usually are--not
merely formidable, but tender likewise, and true, then the influence
which they may gain is unbounded, for good--or, alas! for evil--both
to themselves and to those that worship them. Woe to the man who,
finding that God has given him influence over human beings for their
good, begins to use it after awhile, first only to carry out through
them his own little system of the Universe, and found a school or
sect; and at last by steady and necessary degradation, mainly to feed
his own vanity and his own animal sense of power.
But Mr. Maurice, above all men whom I have ever met, conquered both
these temptations. For, first, he had no system of the Universe. To
have founded a sect, or even a school, would be, he once said, a sure
sign that he was wrong and was leading others wrong. He was a
Catholic and a Theologian, and he wished all men to be such likewise.
To be so, he held, they must know God in Christ. If they knew God,
then with them, as with himself, they would have the key which would
unlock all knowledge, ecclesiastical, eschatological (religious, as
it is commonly called), historic, political, social. Nay even, so he
hoped, that knowledge of God would prove at last to be the key to the
right understanding of that physical science of which he,
unfortunately for the world, knew but too little, but which he
accepted with a loyal trust in God, and in fact as the voice of God,
which won him respect and love from men of science to whom his
theology was a foreign world. If he could make men know God, and
therefore if he could make men know that God was teaching them; that
no man could see a thing unless God first showed it to him--then all
would go well, and they might follow the Logos, with old Socrates,
whithersoever he led. Therefore he tried not so much to alter men's
convictions, as, like Socrates, to make them respect their own
convictions, to be true to their own deepest instincts, true to the
very words which they used so carelessly, ignorant alike of their
meaning and their wealth. He wished all men, all churches, all
nations, to be true to the light which they had already, to
whatsoever was godlike, and therefore God-given, in their own
thoughts; and so to rise from their partial apprehensions, their
scattered gleams of light, toward that full knowledge and light which
was contained--so he said, even with his dying lips--in the orthodox
Catholic faith. This was the ideal of the man and his work; and it
left him neither courage nor time to found a school or promulgate a
system. God had His own system: a system vaster than Augustine's,
vaster than Dante's, vaster than all the thoughts of all thinkers,
orthodox and heterodox, put together; for God was His own system, and
by Him all thing's consisted, and in Him they lived and moved and had
their being; and He was here, living and working, and we were living
and working in Him, and had, instead of building systems of our own,
to find out His eternal laws for men, for nations, for churches; for
only in obedience to them is Life. Yes, a man who held this could
found no system. "Other foundation," he used to say, "can no man
lay, save that which is laid, even Jesus Christ." And as he said it,
his voice and eye told those who heard him that it was to him the
most potent, the most inevitable, the most terrible, and yet the most
hopeful, of all facts.
As for temptations to vanity, and love of power--he may have had to
fight with them in the heyday of youth, and genius, and perhaps
ambition. But the stories of his childhood are stories of the same
generosity, courtesy, unselfishness, which graced his later years.
At least, if he had been tempted, he had conquered. In more than
five-and-twenty years, I have known no being so utterly unselfish, so
utterly humble, so utterly careless of power or influence, for the
mere enjoyment--and a terrible enjoyment it is--of using them.
Staunch to his own opinion only when it seemed to involve some moral
principle, he was almost too ready to yield it, in all practical
matters, to anyone whom he supposed to possess more practical
knowledge than he. To distrust himself, to accuse himself, to
confess his proneness to hard judgments, while, to the eye of those
who knew him and the facts, he was exercising a splendid charity and
magnanimity; to hold himself up as a warning of "wasted time," while
he was, but too literally, working himself to death--this was the
childlike temper which made some lower spirits now and then glad to
escape from their consciousness of his superiority by patronising and
pitying him; causing in him--for he was, as all such great men are
like to be, instinct with genial humour--a certain quiet good-natured
amusement, but nothing more.
But it was that very humility, that very self-distrust, combined so
strangely with manful strength and sternness, which drew to him
humble souls, self-distrustful souls, who, like him, were full of the
"Divine discontent;" who lived--as perhaps all men should live--angry
with themselves, ashamed of themselves, and more and more angry and
ashamed as their own ideal grew, and with it their consciousness of
defection from that ideal. To him, as to David in the wilderness,
gathered those who were spiritually discontented and spiritually in
debt; and he was a captain over them, because, like David, he talked
to them, not of his own genius or his own doctrines, but of the
Living God, who had helped their forefathers, and would help them
likewise. How great his influence was; what an amount of teaching,
consolation, reproof, instruction in righteousness, that man found
time to pour into heart after heart, with a fit word for man and for
woman; how wide his sympathies, how deep his understanding of the
human heart; how many sorrows he has lightened; how many wandering
feet set right, will never be known till the day when the secrets of
all hearts are disclosed. His forthcoming biography, if, as is
hoped, it contains a selection from his vast correspondence, will
tell something of all this: but how little! The most valuable of
his letters will be those which were meant for no eye but the
recipient's, and which no recipient would give to the world--hardly
to an ideal Church; and what he has done will have to be estimated by
wise men hereafter, when (as in the case of most great geniuses) a
hundred indirect influences, subtle, various, often seemingly
contradictory, will be found to have had their origin in Frederick
Maurice.
And thus I end what little I have dared to say. There is much
behind, even more worth saying, which must not be said. Perhaps some
far wiser men than I will think that I have said too much already,
and be inclined to answer me as Elisha of old answered the over-
meddling sons of the prophets:
"Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head
to-day?"
"Yea, I know it: hold ye your peace."
Footnotes:
{0} The edition of "Literary and General Essays" that this
transcription was taken from also contained "Phaethon; or, Loose
Thoughts for Loose Thinkers" as the final part. This has been
released separately by Project Gutenberg and is not, therefore,
duplicated here.--DP.
{1} This Lecture was given at Harrow in 1873, and in America in
1874.
{35} Fraser's Magazine, November, 1853.
{61} "Poems," by Alexander Smith. London: Bogue. 1853. Fraser's
Magazine, October, 1853.
{103} Fraser's Magazine, September, 1850.--"In Memoriam." Moxon,
Dover Street. 1850.--"The Princess, a Medley:" by Alfred Tennyson.
Third Edition. 1850.--"Poems:" by Alfred Tennyson. 1852.
{127} North British Review, No. XXXI.--1.--"Elliott's Poems."
London, 1833.--2. "Poems of Robert Nicoll." Third Edition.
Edinburgh, 1843.--3. "Life and Poems of John Bethune." London,
1841.--4. "Memoirs of Alexander Bethune." By W. M'Combie.
Aberdeen, 1845.--5. "Rhymes and Recollections of a Handloom Weaver."
By William Thorn, of Inverury. Second Edition, London, 1845.--6.
"The Purgatory of Suicides." By Thomas Cooper. London, 1845.--7.
"The Book of Scottish Song." By Alexander Whitelaw. Edinburgh,
1848.
{187} Fraser's Magazine, March, 1849.--"Sacred and Legendary Art."
By Mrs. Jameson. 2 vols. London. 1848, Longman and Co.
{199} Since this was written, Mrs. Jameson's volume on the Legends
of the Madonna has succeeded excellently in giving us, if not a
complete, yet still a readable and modest picture of medieval
Mariolatry.
{210} We are sorry to see, however, that Mrs. Jameson has been so
far untrue to her own faculty as to join in the common mistake of
naming Raphael's well-known cartoon at Hampton Court, "Elymas the
Sorcerer struck Blind." On the supposition that this is its subject,
its method of arrangement is quite unworthy of the rest, as the
action would be split into the opposite corners of the picture, and
the post of honour in the centre occupied by a figure of secondary
importance; besides, the picture would lose its significance as one
of this great series on "Religious Conviction and Conversion." But,
strange to say, Raphael has all the while especially guarded against
this very error, by labelling the picture with a description of its
subject. Directly under the central figure is written, "Sergius
Paulus, Proconsul, embraces the Christian faith at the preaching of
Paul." Taking which simple hint, and looking at the face of the
proconsul (himself a miracle of psychology) as the centre to which
all is to be referred, the whole composition, down to the minutest
details, arranges itself at once in that marvellous unity which is
Raphael's especial glory.
{269} This Lecture was given at Chester in 1871.
{278} An arcade in the King's School, Chester.
{299} Fraser's Magazine, September, 1856.--"Hours with the Mystics."
By Robert Alfred Vaughan, B.A. Two Volumes. London: John W. Parker
and Son. 1856.
{309} Why has Mr. Vaughan omitted to give us a few racy lines on Sir
Matthew Hale's "Divine Contemplations of the Magnet," Sir Kenelm
Digby's "Weapon-Salve," and Valentine Greatrake's "Magnetic Cures"?
He should have told the world a little, too, about the strange
phenomenon of the Jesuit Kircher, in whom Popery attempted to recover
the very ground which Behmen and the Protestant Nature-mystics were
conquering from them.
{337} Macmillan's Magazine, May 1872.