It is impossible to stop the growth of the mind. Here was Charles with
his thoughts turned away from religious controversy for two years, yet
with his religious views progressing, unknown to himself, the whole
time. It could not have been otherwise, if he was to live a religious
life at all. If he was to worship and obey his Creator, intellectual
acts, conclusions, and judgments, must accompany that worship and
obedience. He might not realize his own belief till questions had been
put to him; but then a single discussion with a friend, such as the
above with Carlton, would bring out what he really did hold to his own
apprehension--would ascertain for him the limits of each opinion as he
held it, and the inter-relations of opinion with opinion. He had not yet
given names to these opinions, much less had they taken a theological
form; nor could they, under his circumstances, be expressed in
theological language; but here he was, a young man of twenty-two,
professing in an hour's conversation with a friend, what really were the
Catholic doctrines and usages of penance, purgatory, councils of
perfection, mortification of self, and clerical celibacy. No wonder that
all this annoyed Carlton, though he no more than Charles perceived that
all this Catholicism did in fact lie hid under his professions; but he
felt, in what Reding put out, the presence of something, as he expressed
it, "very unlike the Church of England;" something new and unpleasant to
him, and withal something which had a body in it, which had a momentum,
which could not be passed over as a vague, sudden sound or transitory
cloud, but which had much behind it, which made itself felt, which
struck heavily.
And here we see what is meant when a person says that the Catholic
system comes home to his mind, fulfils his ideas of religion, satisfies
his sympathies, and the like; and thereupon becomes a Catholic. Such a
person is often said to go by private judgment, to be choosing his
religion by his own standard of what a religion ought to be. Now it need
not be denied that those who are external to the Church must begin with
private judgment; they use it in order ultimately to supersede it; as a
man out of doors uses a lamp in a dark night, and puts it out when he
gets home. What would be thought of his bringing it into his
drawing-room? what would the goodly company there assembled before a
genial hearth and under glittering chandeliers, the bright ladies and
the well-dressed gentlemen, say to him if he came in with a great-coat
on his back, a hat on his head, an umbrella under his arm, and a large
stable-lantern in his hand? Yet what would be thought, on the other
hand, if he precipitated himself into the inhospitable night and the war
of the elements in his ball-dress? "When the king came in to see the
guests, he saw a man who had not on a wedding-garment;" he saw a man who
determined to live in the Church as he had lived out of it, who would
not use his privileges, who would not exchange reason for faith, who
would not accommodate his thoughts and doings to the glorious scene
which surrounded him, who was groping for the hidden treasure and
digging for the pearl of price in the high, lustrous, all-jewelled
Temple of the Lord of Hosts; who shut his eyes and speculated, when he
might open them and see. There is no absurdity, then, or inconsistency
in a person first using his private judgment and then denouncing its
use. Circumstances change duties.
But still, after all, the person in question does not, strictly
speaking, judge of the external system presented to him by his private
ideas, but he brings in the dicta of that system to confirm and to
justify certain private judgments and personal feelings and habits
already existing. Reding, for instance, felt a difficulty in determining
how and when the sins of a Christian are forgiven; he had a great notion
that celibacy was better than married life. He was not the first person
in the Church of England who had had such thoughts; to numbers,
doubtless, before him they had occurred; but these numbers had looked
abroad, and seen nothing around them to justify what they felt, and
their feelings had, in consequence, either festered within them, or
withered away. But when a man, thus constituted within, falls under the
shadow of Catholicism without, then the mighty Creed at once produces an
influence upon him. He see that it justifies his thoughts, explains his
feelings; he understands that it numbers, corrects, harmonizes,
completes them; and he is led to ask what is the authority of this
foreign teaching; and then, when he finds it is what was once received
in England from north to south, in England from the very time that
Christianity was introduced here; that, as far as historical records go,
Christianity and Catholicism are synonymous; that it is still the faith
of the largest section of the Christian world; and that the faith of his
own country is held nowhere but within her own limits and those of her
own colonies; nay, further, that it is very difficult to say what faith
she has, or that she has any,--then he submits himself to the Catholic
Church, not by a process of criticism, but as a pupil to a teacher.
In saying this, of course it is not denied, on the one hand, that there
may be persons who come to the Catholic Church on imperfect motives, or
in a wrong way; who choose it by criticism, and who, unsubdued by its
majesty and its grace, go on criticizing when they are in it; and who,
if they persist and do not learn humility, may criticize themselves out
of it again. Nor is it denied, on the other hand, that some who are not
Catholics may possibly choose (for instance) Methodism, in the above
moral way, viz. because it confirms and justifies the inward feeling of
their hearts. This is certainly possible in idea, though what there is
venerable, awful, superhuman, in the Wesleyan Conference to persuade one
to take it as a prophet, is a perplexing problem; yet, after all, the
matter of fact we conceive to lie the other way, viz. that Wesleyans
and other sectaries put themselves above their system, not below it; and
though they may in bodily position "sit under" their preacher, yet in
the position of their souls and spirits, minds and judgments, they are
exalted high above him.
But to return to the subject of our narrative. What a mystery is the
soul of man! Here was Charles, busy with Aristotle and Euripides,
Thucydides and Lucretius, yet all the while growing towards the Church,
"to the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ." His mother had
said to him that he could not escape his destiny; it was true, though it
was to be fulfilled in a way which she, affectionate heart, could not
compass, did not dream of. He could not escape the destiny of being one
of the elect of God; he could not escape that destiny which the grace of
his Redeemer had stamped on his soul in baptism, which his good angel
had seen written there, and had done his zealous part to keep inviolate
and bright, which his own co-operation with the influences of Heaven had
confirmed and secured. He could not escape the destiny, in due time, in
God's time--though it might be long, though angels might be anxious,
though the Church might plead as if defrauded of her promised increase
of a stranger, yet a son; yet come it must, it was written in Heaven,
and the slow wheels of time each hour brought it nearer--he could not
ultimately escape his destiny of becoming a Catholic. And even before
that blessed hour, as an opening flower scatters sweets, so the strange
unknown odour, pleasing to some, odious to others, went abroad from him
upon the winds, and made them marvel what could be near them, and make
them look curiously and anxiously at him, while he was unconscious of
his own condition. Let us be patient with him, as his Maker is patient,
and bear that he should do a work slowly which he will do well.
Alas! while Charles had been growing in one direction, Sheffield had
been growing in another; and what that growth had been will appear from
a conversation which took place between the two friends, and which shall
be related in the following chapter.