Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/36

 coming to see, not only in His ruling of His Church in her spiritual character but in His overruling of the world to which His act of redemption has given a new and all-interesting character to His own people, a hand of justice and mercy, a hand of progress and order, a kind and wise disposition ever leading the world on to the better, but never forcing, and out of the evil of man's working bringing continually that which is good. I do not fear to put it before you in this shape; I state my own belief, and it is well that you should know it from the first.

The study of History is in this respect, as Coleridge said of Poetry, its own great reward, a thing to be loved and cultivated for its own sake. If there are few who do really love and care for history, and I remember with sorrow that such was the remark of Dr. Shirley the last time that I had any lengthened conversation with him, is it not the result of a neglect of the principles which I have tried to express to you as the ideal of the study to my mind? It has not been well used of late years; it has been taught as a task to children; it has been valued only as an instrument to strengthen the memory; it has been under- valued in its true character of mental training; it has been learned to qualify men to make effective speeches to ignorant hearers, and to indite brilliant articles for people who only read periodicals; it has been begun from the standing point of popular infatuation; it has been begun from the advanced ground of ecclesiastical or political partisanship; it has been made an embellishment for wordy eloquence, a source of subjects for pictorial talent that has evolved grouping, features and circumstances, from its own consciousness; it has been written as a poem, but without the inspiration of poetry, as philosophy without the thoughtfulness or humility of the true philosophic spirit; it has been written for readers already known, counted and pandered to. What wonder that there are few who love it for its own sake, when there are so few who know it as it is! In this respect, as I have said, I hope and trust that the better time is coming, when the universality of the training