Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/478

 454 STANLEY course of years, has raised up iu Europe," "on the most venerable growth of English history, the framework which has sheltered down to this time the freedom of the freest, the teaching of the most learned, and the reason of the most rational church in Christendom." He believed that the "success of such an attack would result in throwing away the best opportunity which the world affords for the growth side by side of intellectual activity and religious earnestness"; that to destroy it would be, as he slid of the Established Church of Scotland, "to destroy, so far as human efforts can destroy, the special ideas of freedom, of growth, of comprehension, which are inherent in the very existence of a national church"; that its destruction would only produce "an enslaved clergy amidst au indifferent lait} 7 ," and tend to degrade the Church of England from its historic position "to that of an illiterate sect, or a satellite of the Church of Rome." With such views it was impossible that Stanley could have found much sympathy from cither of the two great parties among the English clergy. Indeed it was impossible that any party, or any community, which placed the essence of Christianity in the careful guardianship of any circle of theological doctrines could feel in harmony with one who dwelt with such exceeding and growing emphasis on the secondary nature, not only of all that was cere- monial, but on much that was dogmatic, as compared with that which was spiritual and moral. By the "Evangelical" section of the religious world the bio- grapher of Arnold had been looked on from the first with more than suspicion. Later on, even the mode and form of his defence of their own side in the Gorham controversy, his avowed advocacy of a wide freedom of thought on many questions, especially those connected with Biblical criticism, his attitude towards such sub- jects as inspiration, justification, and future punishment, were more than distasteful. His loud acknowledgment of the debt owed by Christendom to German theology, " to the most laborious, truth- seeking, and conscientious of Continental nations," his persistent claims for a place within the Church of England for views that "went to the verge of Rome," the more than width the universality of his religious sympathies, his delight in placing, not AValter Scott only, or Tennyson, or the author of Ecce Homo, but Goethe, and Burns, and Matthew Arnold, and J. Stuart Mill in the ranks of religious teachers, were naturally repugnant to those who cared to read his works, and were not content to shrink in silent dismay from the warm sympathizer with Professor Maurice, the enthusi- astic admirer of F. Robertson, and the apologist in turn of Essays and Reviews and of Bishop Colenso. Against the feelings provoked by this aspect of his theological "position, neither his acknowledged services to Biblical study, nor his profound and entire belief in the true key to the difficulties of the future being involved in the prosecution of that study, nor his sympathy with their own views as to the relation of the individual soul to God, nor his repeated, his almost daily assertions of the sacredness and value of the gospel history, or of the regenerative power of the Divine life and person of Christ as the "one Master worth living for, worth dying for," could avail much. Whatever the feelings of individuals, the organs of the party of whose once imperilled claim to remain within the fold of the Church of England he had been the staunchest upholder spoke of him from first to last with almost unqualified aversion. He was, or became in due time, even more obnoxious to at least the more advanced section of the High Church party. Nor was this to be wondered at. The differences between him and them were vital and funda- mental; and, even where he defended their right at one time repeatedly challenged to maintain their distinctive views and observances in the Church of England, he rested their claim on grounds which would hardly win their approval or gratitude. The more clear-sighted of their leaders felt that, if the points of ceremonial, of dress, posture, attitude, ritual, on which they laid exceeding stress, were treated by him with toleration, they were regarded with an indifference that verged upon contempt, as tolerabilcs ineptiae, and that he delighted to trace their historical development, and to strip them of all that was essential, signi- ficant, or primitive. They felt even more strongly that in that which, to the leaders at least, gave their real interest and im- portance to all questions of vestments or observances, and even underlay some of the most important questions of religious doc- trine, the very existence of an order of priesthood as the divinely and exclusively commissioned channel of communication between God and man, the rejection on the part of Stanley of their most cherished and central dogma was absolute and uncompromising. And the difference of view was vital. Much else in his writings might have been welcomed or condoned. His love for the past, his deep and full sympathy with much in the mediaeval church, his warm admiration for many of its saints and heroes, his aversion to mere iconoclasm, his poetic and imaginative sensibility, had much to attract them. Even in his treatment of many important religious subjects it was often not so much his actual sentiments as the tendency the more than tendency, the avowed aim of all his writings to promote freedom, of inquiry and of thought, rather than submission to church authority, which provoked hostility. But on this question there was no room for compromise. That which they and he alike recognized as the fundamental tenet to which all their distinctive teaching pointed he spoke of as a belief "that they (the clergy) were the depositaries of mystical, super- natural, almost magical influence, independent of any moral or spiritual graces," and on this point he spoke with no doubtful voice. It was, he said, this belief in a " fixed, external, necessary medium on earth between the soul and God which, if he had rightly read the Psalms of David, the epistles of Paul and the gospel of Christ, true religion is always striving to dispense with," and "the more it can be dispensed with, the nearer and the higher is the com- munion of the human spirit with its Maker and its Redeemer." And this language (used in 1867) was in entire accordance with the manner in which in his latest volume (18S1) he hinted at the possi- bility of "the growing materialism of the ecclesiastic sacristy so undermining the spiritual element of almost the only external ordinance of Christianity (the Eucharist), unquestionably the greatest religious ordinance in the world," "as even to endanger the ordinance itself." In addition to this fundamental divergence of view, it must be remembered that it was to this party, as the representatives of one "always forgetful in its gratitude and im- placable in its vengeance," that he looked for the main danger to freedom of thought and width of comprehension in the future, and that he did not hesitate to remind them, even as he supported their claims to the largest possible interpretation of the Articles, that they "claimed a latitude themselves which they constantly refused to others." It will be easily understood therefore that whatever influence Stanley wielded in the church was wholly in- dependent of either of the two great parties into which he found it mainly divided, above all of that which at the time of his death appeared to be every year growing in power and confidence. What was the extent, what the permanent force of his own influence, is a question not easily answered at present. "Dean Stanley," said Dr Story, "stood higher in the respect and affection of a larger and more varied circle of members of many churches than any ecclesiastic in the world." It is not easy to disengage his personal and social charm, the affection borne him by all who had even momentarily passed within the circle of his striking and attractive individuality, the warm feelings which much in his life, much in his writings, had called forth from multitudes who never saw him, from the more abiding impression made during his lifetime and after his death by the writings which he has left behind him. Yet if, setting aside one single name, that of Prof. Maurice, he be taken as the most prominent, the most fertile, the most gifted, and the most impressive exponent and defender of liberal theology, some estimate may be formed even now of the mark which he made upon his age. It would be easy to under- value the effect of the work which he did. It might seem at first sight as if his own gloomier anticipations had been fulfilled. He spoke from time to time of a danger of the age being overwhelmed, now by "a general return of forgotten superstitions," now "by a general chaos of incredulity," and of himself as "having perhaps done no more than make good a starting point for those who come after us, perhaps in the 20th or 21st century." He might have seemed to enter into the spirit of his father's words, " My only hope and consolation is that I am a pioneer for better days, and that the seed which I aim, as far as can be, at sowing may bring forth fruit when I am gone to a better and more peaceful _world." But such a view would be to a large extent superficial. If the success achieved by the cause of which Stanley was the main representative is carefully weighed, it will be found to be great in solid and direct results, far greater probably in those which are less easily summed up and tabulated. On the questions which he had most at heart, the real and careful and critical study of the sacred records, the progress made since he first lectured as a tutor at Oxford on the Old and New Testaments has been enormous. The large majority of the works published have been written more or less in the spirit iu which he would have largely or entirely sympathized. It may be added that of these there are few which would not have encountered, if not fierce criticism, yet at least grave suspicion, some forty years ago. The combination of a reverent treatment of Holy Scripture with fearless inquiry into all questions connected with its criticism is a new birth in English literature. It is one in which he took a leading part, and in the defence of which he bore, sometimes in his own behalf, oftener in chivalrous defence of others, much of the brunt of the earlier and later contests. The impulse which he gave to the study alike of the Bible and church history was a great one. In each he may be recognized, not of course as the originator, but as the representative, of a new school of thought and of treatment, and those who are most familiar with his writings can hardly open a now book by any English theologian, hardly read a sermon of many preachers, above all on any portion of the Old Testament, in which they do not trace his immediate influence. He may be said in a very true sense to colour the writings of many of those who most differ from him. The subjects to which he looked as