Addresses and sermons : delivered during a visit to the United States and Canada in 1872

Preface

I have been asked by my kind friends in America to leave with them a record of the utterances which, whether in the reception of their generous hospitalities or in the more solemn form of addresses from the pulpit, have been drawn from me during my brief journey through the United States and Canada. It will be evident that the speeches delivered on the social occasions which led to them were sometimes entirely unpremeditated, and always deficient in that preparation which I could have wished. But as they truly expressed, in however imperfect a form, the feelings inspired by the new experiences with which my rapid survey of American life for the first time brought me into contact, I have not scrupled to recall them. Some of these are reproduced from the reports, more or less exact, of the American journals. In two instances (the addresses to the

PREFACE.

Episcopal Clergy of Boston and of New York) no report was given, and what is here printed can but represent the substance so far as it was retained by memory.

The Addresses, as will be seen, were delivered to very various audiences, some of them consisting chiefly of the great communions of the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Baptists, which have played so large a part in the religious development of the American people. The Sermons, on the other hand, were all delivered in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The limitations of time were of themselves quite sufficient to preclude any attempt at wider ministrations, and the liberality with which the various sections of that Church offered to me the opportunity of speaking from its pulpi.s to the people of America, rendered any further effort unnecessary.

Two additions I have ventured to make to the Sermons preached in the United States. One is that which was delivered in the Cathedral of Quebec. The common interest which attaches to the whole Northern Continent will enable the reader to enter into the grateful farewell which that Sermon was intended to express to the departing Governor, who has done so much for Canada, as well as the respectful greeting

PREFACE.

to the coming Governor, from whose peculiar vantageground so much is expected. I have also added, as a preface to the whole collection of Sermons, the substance of one preached in England, which indicates in a more systematic form than was possible in these discourses the general conditions of religious inquiry, applicable equally to the theological students of both countries. It also bears directly on the subject of the two last discourses in New York.

I commend these pages to the indulgence of the American public, with the humble hope that they may tend in some measure to forward those higher principles of Christian civilisation, on which the future progress alike of the British Empire and of the United States so largely depends.

Table Of Contents

ADDRESSES :

PAGE

Salem— "Our Old Homes" ..... 3

II. The Prospects Of Liberal Theology

THE SUBSTANCE OF A REPLY AT A RECEPTION OF THE CLERGTT OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND. AT BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 2^, 1878.

You have asked me to give a brief account of the prospects of Liberal Theology in England. It is not altogether a view of unmixed rejoicing. During the last thirty years there have been many reverses, on which I will not dwell. Still, there have been successes achieved which justify us in hoping that, if not now, at any rate years or generations hence, Liberal Theology may resume its natural ascendency over the minds of educated men. By Liberal Theology, I mean a theology which, whilst comprehending all the wholesome elements of thought at work in the world, yet holds that the Christian belief is large enough to contain them ; which insists not on the ceremonial, the

IT.] PROSPECTS OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY. 9 dogmatic, or the portentous, but on the moral side of religion ; which insists on the spirit, not on the letter — on the meaning, not on the words — on the progressive, not on the stationary character of Christianity.

Let me take four groups of instances in which the public opinion of the clerg); has been deeply changed in this direction even during the last few years.

(1.) First, as regards the Bible. The crude notions which prevailed twenty years ago on the subject of inspiration have been so completely abandoned, as to be hardly anywhere maintained by theological scholars. Of the eleven thousand English clergy who set their hands to a declaration in favour of those crude notions fifteen years ago, there are probably not fifty who would now do it again.

As regards the interpretation of the sacred books, questions of criticism and authorship which were formerly considered to be entirely closed are now fully and freely discussed. The non-Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the~ Hebrews, which thirty years ago is said to have excluded a candidate from a theological professorship, is now maintained by no one of any name or fame. The second .Isaiah, if not eo^ally

recognised, can be at any rate mentioned without exciting alarm or scandal. The composite character of the Pentateuch, in like manner, on which the Bishop of Natal found such extraordinary difficulty in obtaining a patient hearing, is now, in principle, assumed almost as certain. The complexity of the mutual relation of the four Gospels, although still agitated, without arriving, as perhaps we never shall arrive, at any fixed solution, is yet so deeply impressed on the theological mind that no scholar can for the future avoid considering it. The Biblical criticism, begun so admirably at Oxford by Professor Jowett, and continued in a more cautious spirit, though with more visible results, at Cambridge, by Professor Lightfoot, is full of promise for the future.

(2.) Secondly, as regards social and ecclesiastical questions. In spite of the retrograde influences which have prevailed within or without the Church, it may be safely asserted that never has the Liberal doctrine of the relations of Church and State been more thoroughly ventilated than in these later years. The doctrine laid down by Hooker, which has always more or less animated the policy of enlightened statesmen and divines in England, received a new elucidation in the writings of Arnold, and has on

II.] PROSPECTS OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY. n the whole successfully held its ground. If the Church of England perishes, it will not be, as might have been the case forty years ago, for want of a thoroughly reasonable and philosophical vindication of the principles of a National Church. The good relations between Churchmen and Nonconformists, though they have lost much, have also gained much. The admission of the Dissenters to the universities, their association with the revision of the translation of the Bible, are points which, once achieved, will 'not be surrendered.

(3.) Our dogmatical expositions have undergone a modification so extensive, as that probably no treatise on any of them would now be written with the phraseology current forty years ago. The doctrine of the Atonement will never again appear in the crude form common both in Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in former times. The doctrine of the more merciful view of future punishment, and of the hope of a universal restitution, has been gradually advancing, and the darker view gradually receding. The doctrine of the Trinity has been more and more resolved into its Biblical character; the Athanasian creed, by half of the English clergy has been condemned, and by the Irish Church has been silenced ;

12 ADDRESSES.— BOSTON. [n.

and though there are many who insist on retaining the old repulsive scholastic forms, the main stumblingblocks involved in them have lost their general interest. The quarrels about Predestination and Justification, which a hundred years ago filled the whole mind of the Scottish and English Nonconformists, have, even with them, almost disappeared. The question of miracles has at least reached this point — that no one would now make them the chief or sole basis of the evidence for religious truth. In this intermediate position the contending parties may surely rest for a time.

In all these and many like respects, Liberal Theology, instead of standing on the merely apologetic ground of defending itself against the attacks of its assailants, ought itself to claim an orthodoxy (if we like so to call it), a Biblical, Evangelical, Catholic character, which its opponents have never reached. On many of the essential doctrines of Christianity, the universality of the Divine Love, the^ justification of the good heathens, the supreme importance of morality, the possibility of human perfection, the divinity of conscience, the identification of the Church with the laity, of things secular and things sacred, the Bible and the best voices of Christendom are on

II.] PROSPECTS OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY. 13 our side and not on theirs; and though, on account of the many-sidedness of truth, and the imperfection of human language, there is much to be forgiven on both sides, yet, on the whole, it is they, not we, whose extravagances need to be tolerated, and whose errors need to be condoned.

(4-) The general relations of Theology to Literature have gained immensely. In ecclesiastical history, Milman and Lecky, with many lesser works on special periods, have admirably filled the waste places. Tennyson's poems and Max Miiller's researches are a storehouse of wise theology. With all the objections that may be made to Matthew Arnold, he has— in his father's spirit, though in a different direction — left an enduring mark in the light he has thrown not only on the controversy with Puritans, but on the importance of the Bible, and in the call to every theological formula to cast off its provincial and scholastic form and take the literary and universal form, which is the test of ultimate permanence.

One word in conclusion. Whatever the relapses to which I referred at the beginning of these remarks, whatever the failures in store for us in the future, I am persuaded that what is called Liberal Theology is the backbone of the Church of England, and will be

ADDRESSES.— BOSTON.

found to be the backbone of its daughter Church in America. The fact that a large portion of the world and the Church is against us ought not to alter our conviction that, in the main, we are right. We must still hold by our colours. We have made good a starting-point for those who come after us, perhaps in the twentieth or the twenty-first century, and no deeper impression will have been left upon this age than by those who have followed in the broad track opened by the great philosophic divines of the seventeenth century; an impress, it may be, all the deeper, even if, which I do not venture to anticipate, it shall come to pass that we shall be remembered as the last of the Liberal Theologians, the last of those who in England did not despair of their religion and their Church.

Of your future in America, it is not for me to speak. Any stranger who comes to your country for the first time must be awestruck by the vastness of the destiny before it. But, perhaps, he may be allowed to express his hopes in the form of an earnest entreaty that you, the clergy, will remember the greatness of your profession — great in itself, and great in its relation to the other churches and communions around you ; that you will remember how much of that greatness

II.] PROSPECTS OF LIBERAL T. JEOLOGY. 15 belongs to the large and liberal conceptions of Christianity which, in America as well as in England, and in New England especially, have been breathed into youi minds by the genial influences of the earlier part of this century.

When I see hereafter in Westminster Abbey the memorial which in its most beloved spot contains a faint representation of Boston harbour, when' I listen there once more, as I trust I shall, to the eloquent voice which I have already twice heard within those walls, and now, with renewed pleasure, in Trinity Church, the scenes of this first welcome to your shores will recur with delight to my thoughts. May the grateful sense of the kindness which I have received from you shape itself into the sincere prayer that God may bless you with the fulness of His blessing.

TIL

ADDRESS

AT AN EVENING MEETING OF THE STUDENTS OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BALTIMORE, SEPTEMBER 30, l8,3.

I am no speaker, but I must return a few words of thanks for the kind language with which I have been received. When I see an institution like this in its first beginnings, I am carried back to the time when my own university in England was begun, perhaps a thousand years ago, in the fabulous obscurity of the age of Alfred, or the more recent historic times of Walter of Merton or Devorguilla of Bailiol ; and I observe the repetition of the same yearnings after a distant future of improvement, as those which were before the minds of those old mediaeval founders. The same spirit is needed for that improvement on this side of the ocean and on the other. I am led to think of the in.] JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 17 description given by Chaucer, in that inestimable Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, which I hope you will all read one day or other, of the Good Scholar and the Good Pastor, bred in Oxford in his time ; and I see how, in spite of all the vast changes which have passed over the minds of men since that age, the same qualities are still necessary to make a good and sincere scholar, a good scientific student, an efficient medical or legal adviser, an efficient spiritual pastor. Simplicity, sincerity, love of goodness, and love of truth, are as powerful and as much needed in our day as they were in the days long ago, which formed the great professions that are still the bulwarks of society. The President and the Professor who have spoken have both referred to the influence of my beloved teacher in former times — Thomas Arnold. The lapse of years has only served to deepen in me the conviction that no gift can be more valuable than the recollection and the inspiration of a great character working upon our own. It is my hope that you may all experience this at some time of your lives as I have done. I entreat you to cherish this hope, and to remember that on your making the best of any such influences, and also of the remarkable resources provided for you in this noble institution, depends your use in

c i8

ADDRESSES.— BALTIMORE. \\u.

life and the effect which you may produce on the future generations of this great county There are many evils, many difficulties, individual apd national, with which you will have to contend j but it may possibly cheer you in your efforts to recall these words of an Englishman who now sees you for the first time, and who will in all probability never see you again. May God bless you all.

REPLY TO A SPEECH OF THE REV. DR. ADAMS,

President of the Presbyterian Union Seminary at New York,

AT THE HOUSE OF CYRUS W. FIELD, ESQ., IRVINGTON, ON THE HUDSON, OCTOBER 8, 1878.

There is one criticism which Dr. Adams's kind words suggest to my mind — namely, that Americans are inclined to believe that Englishmen have the same extraordinary fluency of speech that they have themselves. But there is one consolation. When on the eve of starting for America, I said to a young Englishman who had visited this country that my heart almost sank at the prospect of so long and difficult a journey, and I asked him, "What do you think is the chief pleasure of travelling in America?"

C 2

ADDRESSES.— IR V1NGT0N.

[IV.

He said : " The pleasure in travelling there is being

in a foreign country, and yet being able to talk in

our own language." It is so. I feel that, however

difficult it is to attempt to make a speech in English

to Americans, it would be much more difficult if I

had to do so in bad French or worse Spanish. The

relation between the two countries has not only been

cemented by the cable — of which there are so many

natural mementoes in this house — but also by this

intercommunity of sentiment and speech. As has been

said by Keble :

Brothers are brothers evermore ; No distance breaks the tie of blood.

You remember the beautiful classical legend of Arethusa plunging into the sea, and coming up again in the form of the fountain at Syracuse ; which was a sign that although the colonists of that city had bidden a final adieu to their parent city in Greece, they had not forgotten that they were the same people under a different sky. I have already found, while travelling here, in every city and town I visit, under every hill and in every stream, such springs of Arethusa breaking forth and welcoming me. Your Washington Irving, whose home was here in this neighbourhood, and whose tomb is among you, is iv.] REPLY TO THE REV. DR. ADAMS.

still, we may consider, in Westminster Abbey, where Poets' Corner not only comprises those whose bodies lie there, but also in a wider sense the distant poets and authors who lie elsewhere. He was the first American who spoke of that venerable building with the fond respect which has now become part of yourselves; he was among the first to create that feeling of affection between England and your own country after the great separation, which must still grow with the growth of years, and make the two nations one in feeling, in affection, and in hope for future advancement.

There seems to me nothing more foolish than for strangers hastily to express opinions upon problems that can only be settled by yourselves. But one word I maysay. You are still young, and will have all the difficulties forced upon you that we have encountered. You will, however, have the advantage of the experience of our past ages to assist you in overcoming them. The conditions of our two countries are so different that each must judge charitably of each other. There are, perhaps, no Scotsmen here, but all Presbyterians understand Scotch, and will appretiate what an old minister of the Church of Scotland said to a young Scottish Dissenter who was full of complaints: "When your lum (chimney) has reeked as long as ours, perhaps

22 ADDRESSES.— IRVINGTON. [iv.

it will have as much soot;" and I hope that your chimney-sweepers may be as effective as ours have been. May God's blessing rest upon all endeavours to bring together our different Churches in unity of spirit, however parted in form.

V.

AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR.

AN ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS* OF THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF AMERICA, AT THE SEMINARY IN NEW YORK, OCT. 20, 1878.

It gives me great pleasure, not only to hear the kind words of your President, but to see the faces of so many young students, who are called to work in this seminary and to carry out in their several spheres the destinies, so far as in them lies, of the Church to which they belong and of the vast Republic of which that Church forms so large a part. Your President has spoken of the contrast between the youth of this country and the age of mine. That, of course, is a contrast which strikes everyone who comes from the other side of the Atlantic to this ; but there is one element which is common to both sides of the Atlantic

* This Address is printed almost verbatim from an unusually faithful report made by the students themselves.

ADDRESSES.— NEW YORK.

one spring of 'youth which is perpetual, and that is the sight of the young generation rising up and the inspiration which that sight gives to anyone who looks upon them. I remember a friend* of mine, a poet, who has visited America, and whose name is dear to both countries, once quoting those lines of Wordsworth's,

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky ;

"and," he added — we were speaking about colleges

"my heart leaps up when I behold an undergraduate." Well, that is very much my feeling when I look upon you. Young men all over the world are very much the same ; and what I would say to young men at Oxford or Cambridge I believe I may fairly say to you.

I would wish, as far as I can, to concentrate my remarks, so as not to lose myself in those vague commonplaces into which one is liable to fall when speaking in the midst of an institution of which one knows very little, and to persons who of necessity are strangers. This I will endeavour to effect by recalling to you and to myself a debt of gratitude which for many, many years I have owed to Union Seminary.

• The late Arthur H. Clough.

AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR.

My first acquaintance with American theological literature— I might almost say my first exact acquaintance with American literature at all — was in reading the works of a Professor of Union Seminary. I mean the "Biblical Researches" of Dr. Robinson. Whether any of you have ever embarked on the study of those four, volumes it is not for me to ask ; but they are amongst the very few books of modern literature of which I can truly say that I have read every word. I have read them under circumstances which riveted my attention upon them (though, no doubt, not conducive to a very profound study of them) — while riding on the back of a camel in the Desert ; while travelling on horseback through the hills of Palestine; under the shadow of my tent, when I came in weary from the day's journey. These were the scenes in which I first became acquainted with the work of Dr. Robinson. But to that work I have felt that I and all students of Biblical literature owe a debt that never can be effaced. Those books are not such as any theological student in America, or elsewhere, will be likely to read through unless he has some special stimulus to do so. But I cannot help recalling them on this occasion, not only for the special personal reason which I have mentioned, but also because they appear to me to furnish a kind of framework for some remarks which are applicable to all theological students everywhere.

There are three characteristics of the "Biblical Researches" of Dr. Robinson which apply far more widely than to the study of sacred geography. The first is the devotion with which he applied himself to one particular portion of the study of the Bible— the outer framework of it— without any fear or hesitation as to any consequences which might be derived from it. Dr. Robinson, I believe it is not too much to say, was the first person who ever saw Palestine with his eyes open as to what he ought to see. Hundreds and thousands of travellers had visited Palestine before— pilgrims, seekers after pleasure, even scientific travellers— but there was no person before his time who had come to visit that sacred country, with all the appliances ready beforehand which were necessary to enable him to understand what he saw; and he also was the first person who came there with an eye capable of observing, and a hand capable of recording, all that with these appliances he brought before his vision. Now, this is a part of his work which applies to many other subjects than to the geography of Palestine or the geography of Arabia. It is the same principle which I endeavour to impress upon all theological

V.] AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 27

students — the great difference between having eyes to observe and not having eyes to observe. You may travel through a country ; you may travel through a book ; you may travel' through the Bible itself, either with eyes to see what is in that book or in that land, or with the dull, unreasoning, unobserving blindness which sees nothing at all. You ought to cultivate as much as possible this habit of observation. You ought to cultivate it, I say, without fear of the consequences. There are some people who, I believe, are afraid even of sacred geography. They are afraid of having the outward facts and circumstances connected with sacred history brought close to them. I rem ,, >ber hearing of an old Scotswoman — no doubt an old Scottish Presbyterian — who, on being told that some one had been to Jerusalem, said : " You will na make me believe that. There is na such place as Jerusalem on airth ! " Well, that feeling of the old Scotswoman is, I believe, very common with a large part of the community. They cannot bring themselves to believe that the events of which we read in the Bible really occurred amongst persons like ourselves ; and it is one great advantage of such a faithful, accurate study of Palestine as Dr. Robinson gave to us, that we are almost forced to remember that such is the case — that there was a real geography ; there was a real

28 ADDRESSES.— NEW YORK. [v.

history ; there were real men and women, who are described in the Old and New Testaments, and whom we must approach with all reverence and with all humility, but still with the firm conviction that they lived in the same humble kind of way, and with the same human passions and infirmities, or at least with the same outward surroundings as ourselves.

The second lesson which I would wish you to derive from this work of your celebrated Professor is this : —

A friend of mine, at Oxford, once paid a visit to a very old man, who was regarded as a kind of oracle, for he lived to his hundredth year; and the longer he lived the more people went to inquire of him, as if he were an infallible oracle. My friend went to him, and said : " Would you kindly give me some advice in regard to reading theology ? " And he was rather discomfited at the old man's saying, after a long pause : " I will give you my advice. It is, Verify your references." Well, I will not confine myself to so homely a piece of advice as that, although it was very good ; but I will say : Verify your facts. That was what Professor Robinson did, with the greatest care. One value of his book on Palestine is its extreme accuracy. I travelled with those four volumes through the country, and at the end of the time I wrote to him v.] AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 29

at New York, to say that the greatest compliment that I could pay him, after having read his books under such circumstances, was that I had found in them only three small, insignificant errors. This accuracy, this verification of facts, this sifting of things to the bottom, is a thing which all students ought to cultivate, and which theological students ought especially to cultivate, because it is something which theological students are especially apt to neglect. Do let me entreat of you to look facts in the face, whether the facts of the Bible, or the facts of science, or the facts of scholarship. Do not be afraid of them. Go as far as you possibly can in the language of Greek and Hebrew, in the comparison of the sacred volumes of the Old and New Testaments with the sacred volumes of other religions. Make the most thorough and searching investigation that you can, with light from whatever quarter, as to the origin of the sacred books : and in this way you will be discharging your duty, as students and as pastors, to your Church and to your country, in this great and stirring age in which our lot is cast.

The third characteristic which distinguishes Dr. Robinson's writings is this : I have said that they are books which we are not likely to read through for ourselves, unless under some special temptation

ADDRESSES.— NEW YORK.

to study sacred geography ; but there is one characteristic of them which we may all take as lessons to ourselves — that is, their style. The style of Dr. Robinson's book is characterised by its extreme simplicity, combined with an elevation of description and of feeling whenever the subject demands it. There are books on theology which we sometimes read, where, first of all, there is no style at all, and also where whatever style there be is all couched in the same uniform tone, cither of dulness or of exaggeration. Now in Dr. Robinson's book there may be pages, no doubt, which we should call dull, because they never rise above the actual facts which he has to teach us ; but whenever he does come within sight of some great and impressive scene—when he comes, for example, within sight of Mount Sinai or within sight of Jerusalem— his style, simple and massive as it is, is adorned with a native eloquence which at once arrests our attention and calls forth our admiration. It is this style— this union of simplicity where simplicity is desirable, and of elevation where elevation is desirable — which produces upon our minds that sense of proportion so difficult for theological students to obtain, so distinctive yet so important, whether as regards writing or preaching. To write on all sorts