JOHN KEBLE, two years older than his friend Dr. Arnold of Rugby, three
years older than Thomas Carlyle, and nine years older than John Henry
Newman, was born in 1792, at Fairford in Gloucestershire. He was born in
his father’s parsonage, and educated at home by his father till he went
to college. His father then entered him at his own college at Oxford,
Corpus Christi. Thoroughly trained, Keble obtained high reputation at
his University for character and scholarship, and became a Fellow of
Oriel. After some years he gave up work in the University, though he
could not divest himself of a large influence there for good, returned
home to his old father, who required help in his ministry, and undertook
for his the duty of two little curacies. The father lived on to the age
of ninety. John Keble’s love for God and his devotion to the Church had
often been expressed in verse. On days which the Church specially
celebrated, he had from time to time written short poems to utter from
the heart his own devout sense of their spiritual use and meaning. As
the number of these poems increased, the desire rose to follow in like
manner the while course of the Christian Year as it was marked for the
people by the sequence of church services, which had been arranged to
bring in due order before the minds of Christian worshippers all the
foundations of their faith, and all the elements of a religious life. A
book of poems, breathing faith and worship at all points, and in all
attitudes of heavenward contemplation, within the circle of the Christian
Year, would, he hoped, restore in many minds to many a benumbed form life
and energy.
In 1825, while the poems of the Christian Year were gradually being
shaped into a single work, a brother became able to relieve John Keble in
that pious care for which his father had drawn him away from a great
University career, and he then went to a curacy at Hursley, four or five
miles from Winchester.
In 1827—when its author’s age was thirty-five—“The Christian Year” was
published. Like George Herbert, whose equal he was in piety though not
in power, Keble was joined to the Church in fullest sympathy with all its
ordinances, and desired to quicken worship by putting into each part of
the ritual a life that might pass into and raise the life of man. The
spirit of true religion, with a power beyond that of any earthly feuds
and controversies, binds together those in whom it really lives. Setting
aside all smaller questions of the relative value of different earthly
means to the attainment of a life hidden with Christ in God, Christians
of all forms who are one in spirit have found help from “John Keble’s
Christian Year,” and think of its guileless author with kindly affection.
Within five-and-twenty years of its publication, a hundred thousand
copies had been sold. The book is still diffused so widely, in editions
of all forms, that it may yet go on, until the circle of the years shall
be no more, living and making live.
Four years after “The Christian Year” appeared, Keble was appointed (in
1831) to the usual five years’ tenure of the Poetry Professorship at
Oxford. Two years after he had been appointed Poetry Professor, he
preached the Assize Sermon, and took for his theme “National Apostasy.”
John Henry Newman, who had obtained his Fellowship at Oriel some years
before the publication of “The Christian Year,” and was twenty-six years
old when it appeared, received from it a strong impulse towards the
endeavour to revive the spirit of the Church by restoring life and soul
to all her ordinances, and even to the minutest detail of her ritual.
The deep respect felt for the author of “The Christian Year” gave power
to the sermon of 1833 upon National Apostasy, and made it the
starting-point of the Oxford movement known as Tractarian, from the issue
of tracts through which its promoters sought to stir life in the clergy
and the people; known also as Puseyite because it received help at the
end of the year 1833 from Dr. Pusey, who was of like age with J. H.
Newman, and then Regius Professor of Hebrew. There was a danger, which
some then foresaw, in the nature of this endeavour to put life into the
Church; but we all now recognise the purity of Christian zeal that
prompted the attempt to make dead forms of ceremonial glow again with
spiritual fire, and serve as aids to the recovery of light and warmth in
our devotions.
It was in 1833 that Keble, by one earnest sermon, with a pure life at the
back of it, and this book that had prepared the way, gave the direct
impulse to an Oxford movement for the reformation of the Church. The
movement then began. But Keble went back to his curacy at Hursley. Two
years afterwards the curate became vicar, and then Keble married. His
after-life continued innocent and happy. He and his wife died within two
months of each other, in the came year, 1866. He had taken part with his
friends at Oxford by writing five of their Tracts, publishing a few
sermons that laboured towards the same end, and editing a “Library of the
Fathers.” In 1847 he produced another volume of poems, “Lyra
Innocentium,” which associated doctrines of the Church with the lives of
children, whom he loved, though his own marriage was childless.
The power of Keble’s verse lies in its truth. A faithful and pure
nature, strong in home affections, full of love and reverence for all
that is of heaven in our earthly lot, strives for the full consecration
of man’s life with love and faith. There is no rare gift of genius.
Keble is not in subtlety of thought or of expression another George
Herbert, or another Henry Vaughan. But his voice is not the less in
unison with theirs, for every note is true, and wins us by its purity.
His also are melodies of the everlasting chime.
“And be ye sure that Love can bless
E’en in this crowded loneliness,
Where ever moving myriads seem to say,
Go—thou art nought to us, nor we to thee—away!”
“There are in this loud stunning tide
Of human care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime;
Who carry music in their heart
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart,
Plying their daily task with busier feet,
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.”
With a peal, then, of such music let us ring in the New Year for our
Library; and for our lives.
_January_ 1, 1887.