FREDERICK DENISON MAITRICE.
TN Frederick Denison Maurice England has lost one of her
most striking and characteristic figures, and a not incon- siderable number of Englishmen one of those unique friends in whose sight men are apt to live as in the sight of a visibly higher nature not so remote from their own circumstances but that it is possible for them to conceive distinctly his judgments, and to forecast the tendency of his sympathies even when direct inter- course is impossible. George Eliot, in the last published part of her new tale, quotes some old author who said when his chief friend died, 'the theatre of all my actions is fallen,' and the novelist adds, that a great many strong men "hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love best." It would, perhaps, be truer to say that they hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they revere most, for there is plenty of love which has little relation to reverence, and which does not equally affect the secret standard of human action. At all events, though it might have pained Mr. Maurice to think so, there was perhaps no other man in England who was, in this sense, the theatre' of so many men's actions as himself ; for since Dr. Newman's conversion, his certainly was the most real of the higher and purer religious influences of our own day to English Protestants; he was the man recognised by almost all who knew him as combining most clearly spiritual principles which disowned all compromise with scepticism, and intel- lectual principles which disowned all compromise with bigotry or superstition,—as combining in their highest forms trust and love. Nor was his influence the less, but perhaps the more, that his meaning was not always very well apprehended ; for the want of apprehension was often felt to be, and sometimes known to be, a mere evidence that the thought of the speaker had its spring in a region quite above the mind of the hearer. There was such a mingled simplicity and depth of feeling in all he said, such a union of sweetness and severity, so deep a humility and so lofty a conviction, so passionate an irony and so pathetic a faith, that his voice, once heard, continued to sound in the ears of those who had not for long stretches of time been within its reach, and seemed more like the instrument of a message from the invisible world than any other voice of our generation. It was impossible to hear Mr. Maurice read the prayers, even in a Lincoln's Inn early morn- ing chapel, without feeling that to him they bore a far more real and living meaning than to the ordinary user of them. There was intensity—almost too thrilling—and something, too, of sad exulta- tion in every tone, as if the reader were rehearsing a story in which he had no part except his personal certainty of its truth, his gratitude that it should be true, and his humiliation that it had fallen to such lips as his to declare it. This was what made his cha- racter present itself so strongly to the mind as almost embodied in a voice. He seemed to be the channel for a communication, not the source of it. There was a gentle hurry, and yet a peremp- toriness, in those at once sad and sonorous tones, which spoke of haste to tell their tale, and of actual fear of not telling it with sufficient emphasis and force. "They hurried on as if impatient to fulfil their mission." They seemed put into his mouth, while he, with his whole soul bent on their wonderful drift, uttered them as an awe-struck but thankful envoy tells the tale of danger and deliverance. Yet though Mr. Maurice's voice seemed to be the essential part of him as a religious teacher, his face, if you ever looked at it, was quite in keeping with his voice. His eye was full of sweetness, but fixed, and, as it were, fascinated on some ideal point. His countenance expressed nervous, high- strung tension, as though all the various play of feelings in ordinary human nature converged, in him, towards a single focus, the declaration of the divine purpose. Yet this tension, this peremptoriness, this convergence of his whole nature on a single point, never gave the effect of a dictatorial air for a moment. There was a quiver in his voice, a tremulousness in the strong deep lines of his face, a tenderness in his eye, which assured you at once that nothing of the hard, crystallizing character of a dogmatic belief in the Absolute, had conquered his heart, and most men recognised this, for the hardest and most busi- ness-like voices took a tender and almost caressing tone in address- ing him. The more he believed in Christ, the less he confounded himself with the object of his belief, and the more pathetic was his self-distrust of his own power to see aright, or say aright what he saw. The only fault, as most of his hearers would think, of his manner, PM the perfect monotony of its sweet and solemn intonation. His voice was the most musical of voices, with the least variety and play. His mind was one of the simplest, deepest, humblest, and most intense, with the least range of illustration. He had humour and irony,—usually faculties of broad range,—but with him they moved on a single line. His humour and irony were ever of one kind, the humour and irony which dwell perpetually on the inconsistencies and paradoxes in- volved in the contrast between human dreams and divine pur- poses, and which derive only a kindlier feeling for the former from the knowledge that they are apparently so eager to come into hard collision with the latter. As an intimate friend very truly remarked, his irony was rather the irony of Isaiah than the irony of Sophocles, but it was gentler and less indignant. The most bitter flight of irony the present writer recollects is a very fine passage in one of the Lincoln's-inn sermons, on which he cannot at this moment lay his hand, wherein Mr. Maurice, speak- ing of the travestie which the popular theology makes of Revela- tion, in that it starts from the fundamental assumption of original sin rather than from God, suggested the clauses of an imaginary Te Diabolum Laudamus, in honour and propitiation of the powers of darkness, as the psalm, which, if it only rightly knew itself, it ought to substitute for the great song of Christian thankfulness. It could not but have suggested to many who heard it Isaiah's grim irony against the idolators who, after using some of their timber to cook their dinner, "with the residue thereof made them a god." But Mr. Maurice's irony was not often so keen. Gene- rally it was mixed with sweetness, and almost always double- edged, with one edge for himself and only one for his opponent. Sometimes, perhaps, he a little overdid the irony intended to be at his own expense. He was not insensible to the pleasure which some men find in underrating their own influence and power. When he assures the imaginary undergraduate of the prefatory dialogue to the new edition—which has only appeared since his death—of his "Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy," that even if he had rewritten it as he had been tempted to do, and had done once already, he should probably not have added a single reader "to the two or three who have been rash enough to spend their eyes upon it ;" and, moreover, that if he had rewritten it he should not have introduced "one question which would be likely to be put by a judicious examiner or one answer which a pupil could turn to any account," he is not merely having a sharp thrust at the technical character of the University-examination system, but indulging a Socratic taste for making sport of his own utter want of relation to the existing fashions and demands of the day,—a taste which he sometimes carried to excess. His humility was as sincere as it was profound ; but he seems to us to have derived something of fresh assurance for the great truths of which he was most sure, through unduly exaggerating the extent of his own personal short-
comings in setting them forth. It need hardly be said that no Mr. Maurice carried into moral and spiritual philosophy, never work on such a theme as the history of moral and metaphysical admitting that any portion of our nature was exhaustively known, philosophy—or indeed on any of Mr. Maurice's favourite subjects, though harping perpetually on the certainty that it is the subject —of which a second edition was called for,—and almost all his of a redeeming power that streams into it from above.
best books reached a second edition,—can have been very unsuc- The most difficult matter to understand in Mr. Maurice's cessful. Hardly any other theologian of the day who did such theology was his conception of the evidence of revelation. As to profound and solid work in mastering the details of an unpopular the higher truths, he held apparently, and no doubt truly, that subject, would have had to meet the demand for a second edition they were and must be their own evidence, when once fairly pre-
at all. sented to the conscience. Theoretically he held that all inspiration
It is not difficult, even in the short space at our command, to was subject to human conditions, and therefore that its records are give some notion of the principles of Mr. Maurice's theology, for liable to error ; but he was so apt to find deep truth in paradox and though he had a deep, almost a morbid dread of system,' in con- inconsistency of the deeper kind, that he found it very difficult to nection both with theology and philosophy, his was essentially a admit error in the most obvious discrepancies and inconsistencies theology of principles, and of principles not difficult to describe. of the minor kind. Usually he was thankful for these, as The Guardian, in a thoughtful note upon the death of Mr. pointing to something deeper, though perhaps almost only a guess, Maurice, has said of him very truly that he was "incapable from beyond. He was always so much on his guard against even first to last of accepting words as an exact measure of thoughts," desiring perfect consistency in human thought, that he was and if the writer had added that he was quite as incapable of unnaturally thankful for difficulties of all kinds,—sometimes accepting thoughts as an exact measure of either things or persons, almost seeming to go the length of finding in difficulties a fresh he would have touched on the very secret of Mr. Maurice's dread evidence of truth. The present writer can remember but one of system. The truth is that while he regarded words,—es- instance in which he could ever bring Mr. Maurice to admit pecially old words with a history,—with the greatest reverence, that there was a difficulty in Scripture which did not point as fixed buoys indicating, as it were, the site of eddies or the set of to some deeper secret of harmony, and that was the curious currents of thought, without a knowledge of which the mind would interpretation attributed by St. Matthew alone to our Lord, of be helpless, he regarded the currents of thought themselves as the saying that as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so was the mere indications more or less adequate of the presence of living Son of Man a sign to that generation. But even then, though Mr. influences and powers, of any exhaustive comprehension of which Maurice admitted that he could not " understand " the analogy there was little chance, though there was the greatest possible between Jonah's three days' burial in the fish and our Lord's danger of our persuading ourselves that we had achieved it. three days' burial in the heart of the earth, he would not admit Hence, while no thinker of our day was more conservative in his that he believed the evangelist to have made a mistake, and to have respect for the old landmarks of philosophic investigation, none attributed a fanciful analogy of his own to his master. Indeed, was so severe on those who imagined that by clearly defining he found so much that was in the highest degree instructive in these landmarks, theology and philosophy could be adequately the very aspects of Scripture that rationalistic critics had fixed upon mapped out. He held all names which had got deep root in any as embodying conspicuous error, that he shrank painfully from ad- human language to be indications of some central thoughts which mitting an error even where he was quite unable te find a truth. Of it was of the first importance to enter into, and all such thoughts most of the difficulties of the Bible he would say that even though he to be indications of some living permanent and divine influence, could not understand them, they had greatly helped him to under- which it was also of the first importance to recognise as wholly stand himself.
independent of our thinking power,—so that philosophy to And this great passion of humility, was in him not only a moral him was rather like a star-map with many bright points habit, and a principle of exegetical interpretation, and a doctrine distributed amidst groat tracts of darkness, and distributed conservative of most historical institutions—he often seemed to his in a manner for which we can hardly find a law, and friends to find something divinely vital in what they thought must be very careful not to invent one, while theology was to him the mere lingering shadows of the past, and often no doubt he God's partial answer to the search for truth,—not complete or syste- was right and they were wrong,—but also a wonderful spring of matic, which would be impossible considering the capacities of the practical fascination. In one of the preliminary meetings held before minis which require it,—but confirming and confirmed by our in- the commencement of the Christian Socialist movement to discuss tellectual constitution. He believed that God had revealed Himself with London operatives the scandals of the existing Trade system as the central good and the central power ; that He had created all and its remedies, one of the great unwashed delivered his mind things with reference to that central good, and with life deriving so freely and coarsely on the impostures of the clergy and the from it ; that freedom had brought evil into both the world of hopelessness of getting any good from their interference, that some spirits and the world of matter, and yet that through evil, freedom, of the hot Oxonians who started the movement were concerting taught by God, would find its way to greater good than any it the forcible ejection of the speaker from the meeting. But Mr. could have known without conflict ; —(Mr. Maurice, in his pro- Maurice, who was in the chair, met the speaker by confessing at found devotion to the strictly theological mode of thought, though once that his observations were only too well deserved by himself he fought hard for spiritual freedom and believed in it, and had and the order he attacked ; that no one could be more con- far too great a horror of system to admit that sin must either be scious of the practical inconsistencies of which they were but too independent of God or an accepted instrument of God's, always frequently guilty,—only that, he said, was no reason for not trying, seemed to lean perceptibly towards the faith which at all events with the help of those for whom they worked, to sweep away some of subordinates both freedom and evil to the divine purpose ;) further those inconsistencies, and restore a truer relation. The effect of this he held that all which is good in man has been revealed to be a mere practical application of Christ's exhortation to surrender the cloak pale shadow of something infinitely better in the life of God ; to one who had already stripped him of his coat, was remarkable, that love, which is of the divine essence, had a divine object and the speaker who had attacked him so coarsely frequently after- "before all worlds ;" that revelation has shown what that wards attended even the purely religious meetings which Mr. object was in displaying a divine Father and Son united in one Maurice held, and though never a complete convert, became one Spirit., and that it illuminated the whole universe in bringing down of the most wistful of the outer circle of his well-wishers. The to earth the divine spirit of victorious sacrifice in Christ's incarna- personal sacrifices which Mr. Maurice made for the Working- tion, life, death, and resurrection. Mr. Maurice believed that Men's College in Great Ormond Street were great, but there was there was hardly a corner of man's nature or history on which none of his great qualities which did so much for the movement as these revealed facts did not shed a bright, though often unequal the unfathomable depth of his personal humility.
light. He held Eternity itself to be apprehended in the apprehen- And his tastes were in singularly close keeping with his faith. sion of them ; for to him Eternity and Time were not distin- No one can read his works without noticing his intense enjoyment guished as disembodied life is distinguished from embodied, but of the style which makes the plainest and simplest matters of life were distinguished as spiritual life—here or there—is distinguished grand by tracing them direct to God. Of course the greatest illustra- from carnal life here or there ; and he who knew God lived in tion of that style is the Bible, but Cowper and Wordsworth were eternity even while dwelling here. He was fond even of regarding both great masters of it, and with Cowper and Wordsworth Mr. the successes of modern science as the triumph of the spiritual Maurice's memory was richly stored. He was catholic enough in principle of humility, which, instead of imposing our thoughts his poetic tastes, and would illustrate what he held to be the true and notions on the divine order, studied that order as a revelation meaning of the word ' eternal ' as freely from Byron as from St. running in a lower plane indeed, but still in perfect parallelism John. But it was always to the poets who saw divine meaning in with the divine revelation of moral and spiritual truth. The the simplest domestic relations—who were "true to the kindred natural philosopher's horror of preconceived exhaustive systems, , points of heaven and home,"—that his imagination most affection- comings in setting them forth. It need hardly be said that no Mr. Maurice carried into moral and spiritual philosophy, never work on such a theme as the history of moral and metaphysical admitting that any portion of our nature was exhaustively known, philosophy—or indeed on any of Mr. Maurice's favourite subjects, though harping perpetually on the certainty that it is the subject —of which a second edition was called for,—and almost all his of a redeeming power that streams into it from above.
best books reached a second edition,—can have been very unsuc- The most difficult matter to understand in Mr. Maurice's cessful. Hardly any other theologian of the day who did such theology was his conception of the evidence of revelation. As to profound and solid work in mastering the details of an unpopular the higher truths, he held apparently, and no doubt truly, that subject, would have had to meet the demand for a second edition they were and must be their own evidence, when once fairly pre-
at all. sented to the conscience. Theoretically he held that all inspiration
It is not difficult, even in the short space at our command, to was subject to human conditions, and therefore that its records are give some notion of the principles of Mr. Maurice's theology, for liable to error ; but he was so apt to find deep truth in paradox and though he had a deep, almost a morbid dread of system,' in con- inconsistency of the deeper kind, that he found it very difficult to nection both with theology and philosophy, his was essentially a admit error in the most obvious discrepancies and inconsistencies theology of principles, and of principles not difficult to describe. of the minor kind. Usually he was thankful for these, as The Guardian, in a thoughtful note upon the death of Mr. pointing to something deeper, though perhaps almost only a guess, Maurice, has said of him very truly that he was "incapable from beyond. He was always so much on his guard against even first to last of accepting words as an exact measure of thoughts," desiring perfect consistency in human thought, that he was and if the writer had added that he was quite as incapable of unnaturally thankful for difficulties of all kinds,—sometimes accepting thoughts as an exact measure of either things or persons, almost seeming to go the length of finding in difficulties a fresh he would have touched on the very secret of Mr. Maurice's dread evidence of truth. The present writer can remember but one of system. The truth is that while he regarded words,—es- instance in which he could ever bring Mr. Maurice to admit pecially old words with a history,—with the greatest reverence, that there was a difficulty in Scripture which did not point as fixed buoys indicating, as it were, the site of eddies or the set of to some deeper secret of harmony, and that was the curious currents of thought, without a knowledge of which the mind would interpretation attributed by St. Matthew alone to our Lord, of be helpless, he regarded the currents of thought themselves as the saying that as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so was the mere indications more or less adequate of the presence of living Son of Man a sign to that generation. But even then, though Mr. influences and powers, of any exhaustive comprehension of which Maurice admitted that he could not " understand " the analogy there was little chance, though there was the greatest possible between Jonah's three days' burial in the fish and our Lord's danger of our persuading ourselves that we had achieved it. three days' burial in the heart of the earth, he would not admit Hence, while no thinker of our day was more conservative in his that he believed the evangelist to have made a mistake, and to have respect for the old landmarks of philosophic investigation, none attributed a fanciful analogy of his own to his master. Indeed, was so severe on those who imagined that by clearly defining he found so much that was in the highest degree instructive in these landmarks, theology and philosophy could be adequately the very aspects of Scripture that rationalistic critics had fixed upon mapped out. He held all names which had got deep root in any as embodying conspicuous error, that he shrank painfully from ad- human language to be indications of some central thoughts which mitting an error even where he was quite unable te find a truth. Of it was of the first importance to enter into, and all such thoughts most of the difficulties of the Bible he would say that even though he to be indications of some living permanent and divine influence, could not understand them, they had greatly helped him to under- which it was also of the first importance to recognise as wholly stand himself.
independent of our thinking power,—so that philosophy to And this great passion of humility, was in him not only a moral him was rather like a star-map with many bright points habit, and a principle of exegetical interpretation, and a doctrine distributed amidst groat tracts of darkness, and distributed conservative of most historical institutions—he often seemed to his in a manner for which we can hardly find a law, and friends to find something divinely vital in what they thought must be very careful not to invent one, while theology was to him the mere lingering shadows of the past, and often no doubt he God's partial answer to the search for truth,—not complete or syste- was right and they were wrong,—but also a wonderful spring of matic, which would be impossible considering the capacities of the practical fascination. In one of the preliminary meetings held before minis which require it,—but confirming and confirmed by our in- the commencement of the Christian Socialist movement to discuss tellectual constitution. He believed that God had revealed Himself with London operatives the scandals of the existing Trade system as the central good and the central power ; that He had created all and its remedies, one of the great unwashed delivered his mind things with reference to that central good, and with life deriving so freely and coarsely on the impostures of the clergy and the from it ; that freedom had brought evil into both the world of hopelessness of getting any good from their interference, that some spirits and the world of matter, and yet that through evil, freedom, of the hot Oxonians who started the movement were concerting taught by God, would find its way to greater good than any it the forcible ejection of the speaker from the meeting. But Mr. could have known without conflict ; —(Mr. Maurice, in his pro- Maurice, who was in the chair, met the speaker by confessing at found devotion to the strictly theological mode of thought, though once that his observations were only too well deserved by himself he fought hard for spiritual freedom and believed in it, and had and the order he attacked ; that no one could be more con- far too great a horror of system to admit that sin must either be scious of the practical inconsistencies of which they were but too independent of God or an accepted instrument of God's, always frequently guilty,—only that, he said, was no reason for not trying, seemed to lean perceptibly towards the faith which at all events with the help of those for whom they worked, to sweep away some of subordinates both freedom and evil to the divine purpose ;) further those inconsistencies, and restore a truer relation. The effect of this he held that all which is good in man has been revealed to be a mere practical application of Christ's exhortation to surrender the cloak pale shadow of something infinitely better in the life of God ; to one who had already stripped him of his coat, was remarkable, that love, which is of the divine essence, had a divine object and the speaker who had attacked him so coarsely frequently after- "before all worlds ;" that revelation has shown what that wards attended even the purely religious meetings which Mr. object was in displaying a divine Father and Son united in one Maurice held, and though never a complete convert, became one Spirit., and that it illuminated the whole universe in bringing down of the most wistful of the outer circle of his well-wishers. The to earth the divine spirit of victorious sacrifice in Christ's incarna- personal sacrifices which Mr. Maurice made for the Working- tion, life, death, and resurrection. Mr. Maurice believed that Men's College in Great Ormond Street were great, but there was there was hardly a corner of man's nature or history on which none of his great qualities which did so much for the movement as these revealed facts did not shed a bright, though often unequal the unfathomable depth of his personal humility.
light. He held Eternity itself to be apprehended in the apprehen- And his tastes were in singularly close keeping with his faith. sion of them ; for to him Eternity and Time were not distin- No one can read his works without noticing his intense enjoyment guished as disembodied life is distinguished from embodied, but of the style which makes the plainest and simplest matters of life were distinguished as spiritual life—here or there—is distinguished grand by tracing them direct to God. Of course the greatest illustra- from carnal life here or there ; and he who knew God lived in tion of that style is the Bible, but Cowper and Wordsworth were eternity even while dwelling here. He was fond even of regarding both great masters of it, and with Cowper and Wordsworth Mr. the successes of modern science as the triumph of the spiritual Maurice's memory was richly stored. He was catholic enough in principle of humility, which, instead of imposing our thoughts his poetic tastes, and would illustrate what he held to be the true and notions on the divine order, studied that order as a revelation meaning of the word ' eternal ' as freely from Byron as from St. running in a lower plane indeed, but still in perfect parallelism John. But it was always to the poets who saw divine meaning in with the divine revelation of moral and spiritual truth. The the simplest domestic relations—who were "true to the kindred natural philosopher's horror of preconceived exhaustive systems, , points of heaven and home,"—that his imagination most affection- ately clung. This was not indeed a taste in him, but a faith, at least a taste moulded by a deeper faith. This it was that made him insensible to the admiration of religious coteries, and kept him perfectly simple amidst those flattering confidences which are given under the plea of the need of counsel, and which yet so much oftener change the counsellor than the counselled. And his whole life showed this strong unromantic preference for common duties as the true embodiment of high faiths. There is no more characteristic sermon amongst the scores he has published than one on the apparent bathos of that collect for Easter Sunday which entreats God, ' who through Christ has overcome death, and opened to us the gate of everlasting life,' that, as by his special grace preventing us, he has put into our minds good desires, so by his continual help we may bring the same to good effect.' Mr. Maurice admitted that this collect had often grated harshly on him, as if it contained but a poor logic, and drew a weak conclusion from a great recital ; but he thought so no longer, for he saw in it the assertion that it is only "the stooping of the Creator to the creature" which can save from death our best desires before they reach their only true end in action. The very homeliness of the prayer gave it to him a greater reality. And that was the lesson of his own life and death. No one who knew him doubted that it was the very homeliness of his life and teaching which was his best guarantee that he had not been merely dreaming grand dreams of things divine, and which extinguished the last doubt that that Easter season—in which he finally brought his noble, simple, and laborious life "to good effect,"—was indeed the commemoration of an event by which the secret of eternity had been unveiled.
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