a general view of the history of the canonical books of Scripture,
their dates, authorship, and reception by the Christian Church, became
a turning-point in his life. The propositions he stated regarding the
origin of parts of the Old Testament, particularly the Pentateuch,
excited alarm and displeasure in Scotland, where few persons had
become aware of the conclusions reached by recent Biblical scholars in
Continental Europe. The article was able, clear, and fearless, plainly
the work of a master hand. The views it advanced were not for the most
part due to Smith's own investigations, but were to be found in the
writings of other learned men. Neither would they now be thought
extreme; they are in fact accepted to-day by many writers of
unquestioned orthodoxy in Britain and a (perhaps smaller) number in
the United States. In 1876, however, these views were new and
startling to those who had not studied in Germany or followed the
researches of such men as Ewald, Kuenen, and Wellhausen. The Scottish
Free Church had theretofore prided itself upon the rigidity of its
orthodoxy; and while among the younger ministers there were a good
many able and learned scholars holding what used to be called
"advanced views," the mass of the elder and middle-aged clergy had
gone on in the old-fashioned traditions of verbal inspiration, and
took every word in the Five Books (except the last chapter of
Deuteronomy) to have been written down by Moses. It was only natural
that their anger should be kindled against the young professor, whose
theories seemed to cut away the ground from under their feet.
Proceedings were (1876) taken against him before the Presbytery of
Aberdeen, and the case found its way thence to the Synod of Aberdeen,
and ultimately to the General Assembly of the Free Church. In one form
or another (for the flame was lit anew by other articles published by
him in the _Encyclopaedia_) it lingered on for five years. So far from
yielding to the storm, Robertson Smith defied it, maintaining not only
the truth of his views, but their compatibility with the Presbyterian
standards as contained in the Confession of Faith and the Longer and
Shorter Catechisms. In this latter contention he was successful,
proving that the divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
had not committed themselves to any specific doctrine of inspiration,
still less to any dogmatic deliverance as to the authorship of
particular books of Scripture. The standards simply declared that the
Word of God was contained in the canonical books, and as there had
been little or no controversy between Protestants and Roman Catholics
regarding the date or the authorship or the divine authority of those
books (apart of course from disputes regarding the Apocrypha), had not
dealt specifically with those last mentioned matters. As it was by
reference to the Confession of Faith that the offence alleged had to
be established, Smith made good his defence; so in the end, finding it
impossible to convict him of deviation from the standards, and thereby
to deal with him as an ordained minister of the Church, his
adversaries fell back on the plan of depriving him, by an executive
rather than judicial vote, not indeed of his clerical status, but of
his professorship, on the ground of the alleged "unsettling character"
of his teaching.
Meanwhile, however, there had been an immense rally to him of the
younger clergy and of the less conservative among the laity. The main
current of Scottish popular thought and life had ever since the
Reformation flowed in an ecclesiastical channel; and even nowadays,
when Scotland is rapidly becoming Anglicised, a theological or
ecclesiastical question excites a wider and keener interest there than
a similar question would do in England. So in Scotland for four years
"the Robertson Smith case" was the chief topic of discussion outside
as well as inside the Free Church. The sympathy felt for the accused
was heightened by the ingenuity, energy, and courage with which he
defended his position, showing a power of argument and repartee which
made it plain that he would have held a distinguished place in any
assembly whatever. If his debating had a fault, it was that of being
almost too dialectically cogent, so that his antagonists felt that
they were being foiled on the form of the argument before they could
get to the issues they sought to raise. But while he was an
accomplished lawyer in matters of form, he was no less an accomplished
theologian in matters of substance. Although the party of repression
triumphed so far as to deprive him of his chair, the victory virtually
remained with him, not only because he had shown that the Scottish
Presbyterian standards did not condemn the views he held, but also
because his defence and the discussions which it occasioned had, in
bringing those views to the knowledge of a great number of thoughtful
laymen, led such persons to reconsider their own position. Some of
them found themselves forced to agree with Smith. Others, who
distrusted their capacity for arriving at a conclusion, came at least
to think that the questions involved did not affect the essentials of
faith, and must be settled by the ordinary canons of historical and
philological criticism. Thus the trial proved to be a turning-point
for the Scottish Churches, much as the _Essays and Reviews_ case had
been for the Church of England eighteen years earlier. Opinions
formerly proscribed were thereafter freely expressed. Nearly all the
doctrinal prosecutions subsequently attempted in the Scottish
Presbyterian Churches have failed. Much feeling has been excited, but
the result has been to secure a greater latitude than was dreamt of
forty years ago. At first the rigidly orthodox section of the Free
Church, now almost confined to the Highlands, thought of seceding from
the main body on the ground that tolerance was passing into
indifference or unbelief. But the new ideas continued to grow, and the
sentiment in favour of letting clergymen as well as lay church members
put a lax construction on the doctrinal standards drawn up in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has spread as widely in Scotland
as in England. The Presbyterian Churches in America and the Roman
Catholic Church now stand almost alone among the larger Christian
bodies in retaining something of the ancient rigidity. Even the Roman
Church begins to feel the solvent power of these researches. It may be
conjectured that as the process of adjusting the letter of Scripture
to the conclusions of science which Galileo was not permitted to
apply in the field of astronomy has now been generally applied in the
fields of geology and biology, so all the churches will presently
reconcile themselves to the conclusions of historical and linguistic
criticism, now that such criticism has become truly scientific in its
methods.
Having no longer any tie to Scotland, as he had never desired a
pastoral charge there, since he felt his vocation to lie in study and
teaching, Smith was hesitating which way to turn, when the offer of
the Lord Almoner's Readership in Arabic, which had become vacant in
1883, determined him to settle in Cambridge. He had travelled in
Arabia a few years earlier, thereby adding a colloquial familiarity to
his grammatical mastery of the language. He was an ardent student of
Arabic literature, and indeed devoted more time to it than to Hebrew.
Though he had felt deeply the attacks made upon him, and was indignant
at the mode of his dismissal, he was not in the least dispirited; and
his self-control was shown by the way in which he resisted the
temptation, to which controversialists are prone, of going further
than they originally meant and thereby damaging the position of their
supporters. Still, he was weary of controversy, and pleased to see
before him a prospect of learned quiet and labour, although the salary
of the Readership was less than L100 a year. Fortunately he had come
to a place where gifts like his were appreciated. The Master and
Fellows of Christ's College elected him to a fellowship with no duties
of tuition attached to it--a wise and graceful recognition of his
merits which did them the more credit because they had very little
personal knowledge of him, while he had possessed no prior tie with
the University. Christ's is one of the smaller colleges, but has
almost always had men of distinction among its fellows, and has
maintained a high standard of teaching. In the list of its alumni
stand the names of John Milton, Isaac Barrow, Ralph Cudworth, and
Charles Darwin. Robertson Smith dwelt in it for the rest of his days,
entering into the life of hall and common-room with great zest, for he
was of an extremely sociable turn, and the College became proud of
him. When a vacancy occurred in the office of University Librarian, he
was chosen to fill it. His knowledge of and fondness for books fitted
him excellently for the place, but the details of administration
worried him, and it was a change for the better when (in 1889), on the
death of his friend, William Wright, he became Professor of
Arabic.[49] His efforts to build up a school of Oriental studies on
the foundations laid by Wright, and with the help of an eminent Syriac
scholar, Bensley, were proving successful, and a considerable number
of able young men were gathering round him, when (in 1890) the hand of
disease fell upon him, obliging him first to curtail and afterwards to
intermit his lectures. The last year of his life was a year of
suffering, borne with uncomplaining fortitude.
What with work on the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, with the distractions
of his prolonged trial, with the time spent in oral teaching, and with
the physical weakness of his latest years, Smith's leisure available
for literary production was not large, and the books he has left do
not adequately represent either his accumulated knowledge or his
faculty of investigation. The earlier books--_The Old Testament in the
Jewish Church_ and _The Prophets of Israel_ (the latter a series of
lectures delivered at Glasgow)--are comparatively popular in handling.
The two later--_Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_ and _The
Religion of the Semites_--are more abstruse and technical, and also
more original, dealing with topics in which their author was a
pioneer, though he had been influenced by, and acknowledged in the
amplest way his obligations to, his friend John F. Maclennan, the
author of _Primitive Marriage_. _The Religion of the Semites_, though
masterly in plan and execution, and though it has excited the
admiration of the few Oriental scholars competent to appraise its
substantial merit, suffers from its incompleteness. Only the first
volume was published, for death overtook the author before he could
put into final shape the materials he had collected for the full
development of his theories. As the second volume would have traced
the connection between the primitive religion of the Arab branches of
the Semitic stock (including Israel) and the Hebrew religion as we
have it in the earlier books of the Old Testament, the absence of this
finished statement is a loss to science. Changes had passed upon his
views since he wrote the incriminated articles, and he said to me (I
think about 1888) that he would no longer undertake any clerical
duties. He had a sensitive conscience, and held that no clergyman
ought to use language in the pulpit which did not express his personal
convictions.
What struck one most in Robertson Smith's writings was the easy
command wherewith he handled his materials. His generalisations were
based on an endlessly patient and careful study of details, a study in
which he never lost sight of guiding principles. With perfect lucidity
and an unstrained natural vigour, there was a sense of abounding and
overflowing knowledge which inspired confidence in the reader, making
him feel he was in the hands of a master. On all that pertained to the
languages and literature of the Arabic branch of the Semitic races,
ancient and modern (for he did not claim to be an Assyriologist), his
knowledge was accurate no less than comprehensive. Full of deference
to the great scholars--no one spoke with a warmer admiration of
Noeldeke, Wellhausen, and Lagarde than he did--he was a stringent
critic of unscientific work in the sphere of history and physics as
well as in that of philology, quick to expose the uncritical
assumptions or loose hypotheses of less careful though more
pretentious students. He used to say that when he had disposed of the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, he might undertake a "Dictionary of
European Impostors." Oriental lore was only one of many subjects in
which he might have achieved distinction. His mathematical talents
were remarkable, and during two sessions he taught with conspicuous
success the class of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh
as assistant professor. He had a competent acquaintance with not a few
other practical arts, including navigation, and once, when the
compasses of the vessel on which he was sailing in the Red Sea got out
of order, he proved to be the person on board most competent to set
them right. In metaphysics and theology, in ancient history and many
departments of modern history, he was thoroughly at home. Few, indeed,
were the subjects that came up in the course of conversation on which
he was not able to throw light, for the range of his acquirements was
not more striking than the swiftness and precision with which he
brought knowledge to bear wherever it was wanted.
There was hardly a line of practical life in which he might not have
attained a brilliant success. But the passion for knowledge made him
prefer the life of a scholar, and seemed to have quenched any desire
even for literary fame.
Learning is commonly thought of as a weight to be carried, which makes
men dull, heavy, or pedantic. With Robertson Smith the effect seemed
to be exactly the opposite. Because he knew so much, he was interested
in everything, and threw himself with a joyous freshness and keenness
into talk alike upon the most serious and the lightest topics. He was
combative, apt to traverse a proposition when first advanced, even
though he might come round to it afterwards; and a discussion with him
taxed the defensive acumen of his companions. Having once spent five
weeks alone with him in a villa at Alassio on the Riviera, I observed
to him when we parted that we had had (as the Americans say) "a lovely
time" together, and that there was not an observation I had made
during those weeks which he had not contested. He laughed and did not
contest that observation. Yet this tendency, while it made his society
more stimulating, did not make it less agreeable, because he never
seemed to seek to overthrow an adversary, but only to get at the truth
of the case, and his manner, though positive, had about it nothing
either acrid or conceited. One could imagine no keener intellectual
pleasure than his company afforded, for there was, along with an
exuberant wealth of thought and knowledge, an intensity and ardour
which lit up every subject which it touched. I once invited him and
John Richard Green (the historian) to meet at dinner. They took to one
another at once, nor was it easy to say which lamp burned the
brighter. Smith had wider and more accurate learning, and stronger
logical power, but Green was just as swift, just as fertile, just as
ingenious. In stature Smith, like Green, was small, almost diminutive;
his dark brown eyes bright and keen; his speech rapid; his laugh ready
and merry, for he had a quick sense of humour and a power of enjoying
things as they came. The type of intellect suggested a Teutonic Scot
of the Lowlands, but in appearance and temperament he was rather a
Scottish Celt of the Highlands, with a fire and a gaiety, an abounding
vivacity and vitality, which made him a conspicuous figure wherever he
lived, in Aberdeen, in Edinburgh, in Cambridge. Even by his walk, with
its quick, irregular roll, one could single him out at a distance in
the street.
When a man is attractive personally, he is all the more attractive for
being unlike other men, and he often becomes the centre of a group.
This was the case with Smith. His numerous friends were so much
interested by him that when they met their talk was largely of him,
and many friendships were based on a common knowledge of this one
person. Indeed, the geniality, elevation, and simplicity of his
character gave him a quite unusual hold on those who had come to know
him well. Few men, leading an equally quiet and studious life, have
inspired so much regard and affection in so large a number of persons;
few teachers have had an equal power of stimulating and attracting
their pupils. He loved teaching hardly less than he loved the
investigation of truth, and he was the most faithful and sympathetic
of friends, one who was felt to be unique while he lived and
irreplaceable when he had departed.
I have spoken of the courage he had shown in confronting his
antagonists in the ecclesiastical courts. That courage did not fail
him in the severer trials of his last illness. The nature of the
disease of which he died was disclosed to him by his physician in
September 1892, while an international Congress of Orientalists, in
which he presided over the Semitic section, was holding its meetings.
A festival dinner was being given in honour of the Congress the same
afternoon. When the physician had spoken, Smith simply remarked, "This
means the death my brother died" (one of his brothers had been struck
by the same malady a few years before). He went straight to the
dinner, and was throughout the evening the gayest and brightest of the
guests.
Fancy sometimes indulges herself in imagining what part the eminent
men one has known would have played had their lot been cast in some
other age. So I have fancied that Archbishop Tait (described in an
earlier chapter) ought to have been Primate of England under Edward
the Sixth or Elizabeth. He would have guided the course of reform more
prudently and more firmly than Cranmer did; he would have shown a
broader spirit than did Parker or Whitgift. So Cardinal Manning, had
he lived in the seventeenth century, might haply have become General
of the Jesuit Order, and enjoyed the secret control of the politics of
the Catholic world. So Robertson Smith, had he been born in the great
age of the mediaeval universities, might, like the bold dialectician of
whom Dante speaks, have "syllogised invidious truths"[50] in the
University of Paris; or had Fortune placed him two centuries later
among the scholars of the Italian Renaissance in its glorious prime,
the fame of his learning might have filled half Europe.
-----
[48] No life of Robertson Smith has yet been written, but it is hoped
that one may be prepared by his intimate friend, Mr. J.
Sutherland Black. A portrait of him (by his friend Sir George
Reid, late President of the Royal Scottish Academy) hangs in
the library of Christ's College, Cambridge, to which Smith's
collection of Oriental books was presented by his friends, and
another has been placed in the Divinity College of the United
Free Presbyterian Church at Aberdeen. A memorial window has
been set up in the chapel of the University of Aberdeen, where
he won his first distinctions. I have to thank my friend Mr.
Black for some suggestions he has kindly made after perusing
this sketch.
[49] There was an aged Jewish scholar who came now and then to
Cambridge in those days, and who, as sometimes happens,
disliked other scholars labouring in the same field. He was (so
it used to be said) one of the few who knew exactly how the
word which we write Jehovah or Iahve ought to be pronounced,
and it was believed that he had solemnly cursed Wright, Smith,
and a third Semitic scholar in the Sacred Name. All three died
soon afterwards.
What would have been thought of this in the Middle Ages!
[50] _Parad._ x. 136, of Sigier, "Sillogizzo invidiosi veri."
HENRY SIDGWICK
Henry Sidgwick was born at Skipton, in Yorkshire, where his father was
headmaster of the ancient grammar school of the town, on 31st May
1838.[51] The family belonged to Yorkshire. He was a precocious boy,
and used to delight his brothers and sister by the fertility of his
imagination in inventing games and stories. Educated at Rugby School
under Goulburn (afterwards Dean of Norwich), he was sent at an
unusually early age to Trinity College, Cambridge. His brilliant
University career was crowned by the first place in the classical
tripos and by a first class in the mathematical tripos, and he was
speedily elected a Fellow of Trinity. Intellectual curiosity and an
interest in the problems of theology presently drew him to Germany,
where he worked at Hebrew and Arabic under Ewald at Gottingen, as well
as with other eminent teachers. After hesitating for a time whether to
devote himself to Oriental studies or to classical scholarship, he was
drawn back to philosophy by his desire to investigate questions
bearing on natural theology, and finally settled down to the pursuit
of what are called in Cambridge the moral sciences--metaphysics,
ethics, and psychology; becoming first a College Lecturer and then (in
1875) a University Praelector in these subjects. In 1869 he resigned
his fellowship, feeling that he could no longer consider himself a
"_bona fide_ member of the Church of England," that being the
condition then attached by law to the holding of fellowships in the
Colleges at Cambridge. This step caused surprise, for the test was
deemed a very vague and light one, having been recently substituted
for a more stringent requirement, and there had been many holders of
fellowships who were at least as little entitled to call themselves
_bona fide_ members of the Established Church as he was. But, as was
afterwards said of him by Mrs. Cross (George Eliot), Sidgwick was
expected by his intimate friends to conform to standards higher than
average men prescribe for their own conduct. Taken in conjunction with
the fact that several English Dissenters and Scottish Presbyterians
had won the distinction of a Senior Wranglership and been debarred
from fellowships, though they were in theological opinion more
orthodox than some nominal members of the Established Church who were
holding fellowships, Sidgwick's conscientious act made a great
impression in Cambridge and did much to hasten that total abolition
of tests in the Universities which was effected by statute in 1871;
for in England concrete instances of hardship and injustice are more
powerful incitements to reform than the strongest abstract arguments,
and Sidgwick was already so eminent and so respected a figure that all
Cambridge felt the absurdity of excluding such a man from its honours
and emoluments. In 1883 he was appointed Professor of Moral
Philosophy, and continued to hold that post till three months before
his death in 1900, when failing health determined him to resign it.
His life was the still and tranquil life of the thinker, teacher, and
writer, varied by no events more exciting than those controversies
over reforms in the studies and organisation of the University in
which his sense of public duty frequently led him to bear a part.