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THOSE HOSE only who can look back to the Oxford of 1845 can estimate how tremendous was the reaction which followed Dr. Newman's secession to Rome. To all those who had adopted the views of the Tractarians, it was a day of trouble and rebuke. But the effect was hardly less visible in that large number of young men outside the movement, who, though they had not joined it, had still been practically influenced and restrained by its great moral power. If the pendulum had been strained too far towards asceticism, it now went full swing in the opposite direction. It was as though a strong yoke had been broken off men's necks, and they were free to take their own way. They had been cheated, as it seemed, too long of their legitimate enjoyment, and would now try what a course of "healthy animalism" would do for them. Young men began to cultivate the apolaustic life, as they called it, and to dance to the pipes which Goethe played. His gospel of art and cultivated enjoyment was for a time greatly in the ascendant, but the results it produced were not, as far as is known, more beneficial than those of the old and severer morality.

But while outsiders thus fell away, all who still clung to High Church views were in perplexity and dismay, and turned instinctively to Dr. Pusey for guidance. For with Newman gone, and Keble absent in his country cure, Pusey alone of the leaders now remained in Oxford. The position he then held cannot better be described than in words which Canon Liddon spoke at the meeting in November last, held to found the Pusey memorial.

After quoting Dr. Döllinger's estimate

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Pusey presents himself to me as a personality in whom are combined a great man of learning, a deeply pious Christian, a perfect gentleman, and a character of great mildness and lovableness,"" Canon Liddon goes on to say "He might have added of remarkable firmness and courage. In the sad autumn of 1845, when we lost the genius whom the world knows as Cardinal Newman-when men's hearts were failing, and every one was suspected-when friends who had gone were beckoning him to follow, and opponents who were exasperated were bidding him depart, Dr. Pusey stood firm. And the consequence of his firmness upon hundreds at that time, and upon much larger numbers since, cannot easily be calculated. Had it been otherwise-had he yielded to the pressure and panic of the time-the Church of Rome would have occupied a very different position in this country from that which she does at this moment, while the Church of England--"

I shall not finish with Canon Liddon's words, but will take leave to substitute for his overstrained statement, the Church of England would have been very different from what she now is.

Keenly as he must have felt his isolation, he did not shrink from occupying the place to which Providence seemed to call him. He maintained stoutly now, as he had done all along, that Romanism was not the logical and necessary result of Anglicanism. Whatever conclusions others may have drawn from it, to him the ground of patristic antiquity seemed a sufficient one still, and to this he firmly adhered. Once when he was reproached with disloyalty to his mother Church and longings after Rome, he publicly answered, that if a life given to the Church of England would not convince men of his faithfulness, perhaps death in that Church might.

From 1845 onward, for nearly forty years, his many-sided activity found numerous and ever-increasing channels for itself. In the

sequel of this paper we cannot attempt to give a continuous narrative, but only to indicate some of the most prominent of these channels.

neither can it be denied that it is beset with many and great dangers, not only to the confessing, but also to the confessor. But one remark must be made: Dr. Pusey's advocacy of the practice arose not, as is often alleged, from any vulgar desire for

viction of the prevalence of secret sin, and of the evil of it, than most clergymen care to entertain. Feeling keenly the existence of those evils hidden beneath the smooth surface of society, confession was the remedy by which Dr. Pusey proposed to meet them. In this he may have been right or wrong. Those who may care to look more closely into the whole subject will find some discussion of it in the correspondence already spoken of.

2. But for all his devotion to religious and theological subjects, Dr. Pusey never allowed his interest in University affairs to slumber. When the University Commission of 1854 began that series of changes which has continued for now nearly thirty years, and has revolutionised Oxford, he was fully on the alert, and came forward with a body of evidence which is as valuable as any recorded in the Commissioners' Report. For the ancient English Collegiate and Tutorial system he pled earnestly, in opposition to the newfangled admiration of the German and Scotch systems, which educate mainly by professorial lectures. His argument, though often unheeded, is as good now as it was then.

1. Besides the duties of his chair and the copious productions of his pen, the circumstances of the time now called him to under-priestly power, but from a much deeper contake a more difficult and delicate duty. Hundreds of persons, perplexed or downhearted, now flocked to him for guidance and comfort. Whether it were doubts as to the Catholicity of the English Church, or some more intimate and personal burden, they turned to Dr. Pusey, and he received them all. Probably no man in England became the depositary of so many heart-secrets as Dr. Pusey. This led to his recommending heavy-laden souls to seek the comfort of confession, and himself to become confessor to many. This practice, combined with other circumstances attending on Dr. Pusey's teaching, led in 1850 to a correspondence between Bishop Wilberforce and Dr. Pusey, which appears in the second volume of the Bishop's life. Although Dr. Newman had seceded alone and entirely on his own responsibility, and had refrained from alluring others to follow him, yet during the years that followed 1845, there had been a steady flow of converts toward Rome. One after another the more eminent of Dr. Newman's friends or associates, Oakley, Manning, Robert and Henry Wilberforce, William Palmer of Magdalen, and Dodsworth had followed. Besides these, many other lessknown persons, who had come under Dr. Pusey's influence, had gone the same road. In the correspondence above alluded to, Bishop Wilberforce charges Dr. Pusey with helping on the movement Rome-ward by his adaptations of Roman books of devotion, by some elements in his private ministry, and lastly, by his use of confession, From this time forward, Dr. Pusey took not in the restricted form allowable to an the lead in withstanding all the efforts then English clergyman, but in the habitual and begun, and since carried out, to separate almost compulsory way enforced by a Roman Oxford from the Church of England. The confessor. The Bishop maintained that ac- result of these efforts: what we now see cording to the Church of England private con--the comparative secularization of Oxford, fession and absolution should be confined to certain exceptional cases, that they should never be enjoined as necessary, and that they are dangerous as the rule. The confession which Dr. Pusey taught and practised was, the Bishop alleged, much more habitual, more of the nature of an ordinary means of grace than is sanctioned by the Church of England.

Öne knows well how abhorrent this practice is to the respectable English citizen;

"The gist of his case is that it is the primary object of the English Universities to make men, not scholars, and his personal experience of the German Universities gives value to his testimony. He was altogether in favour of what he calls the catechetical system as distinct from the mere lecture. He compared the effects of English and German University education on the higher classes in the two countries, and decided that for the formation of statesmen and men of affairs, our own was conspicuously superior."

a result which many who seldom agreed with Dr. Pusey in other things, lament as much as he did. Whether, as the late Archbishop of Canterbury held, much more might have been saved by some timely concessions, I know not. Against every proposed change, however, Dr. Pusey stood resolute in resistance, and sometimes had recourse to means which those who sympathized with his ends could not approve. It was a blunder to oppose the payment of

his salary to the Professor of Greek, because he was thought to be heretical in theology. No doubt Dr. Pusey believed that in doing so he was making a protest for the truth. Though after some years he withdrew his opposition and the salary was granted, it was not done until it had swelled the tide of the anti-clerical reaction, and turned many young hearts against the Church. About theological errors they knew and cared little; but they felt deeply the injustice of refusing to one of the ablest and most hardworking Professors in Oxford the salary that was due to him for the good work he had done for themselves. It was probably owing to Dr. Pusey's action in this and other University contests that his opponents have alleged that, in defending any cause he had at heart, he was capable of tortuous policy. This is the view taken by opponents. His friends, of course, put on his conduct a very different intrepretation.

3. At the meeting, already alluded to, on the 16th of November last, the Marquis of Salisbury is reported to have said of Dr. Pusey :

"His most earnest aims were not associated with

the controversies with which his name in public estimation was specially bound up; his mind was chiefly bent on this one thing, that in an age when Christian faith is exposed to many and dangerous attacks, the first duty of her sons, and of those whose learning could give her support, was to defend it in all its integrity. It was as a defender of the Christian Church as a whole,-as a defender of the faith once given to the saints, and as a champion of the Church of eighteen centuries, that he lived and worked." This was the light in which he wished to regard himself and the work of his life: it was in this capacity that he came forward, when the writings of Bishop Colenso and the appearance of "Essays and Reviews" startled the whole Church of England by the sense of a new danger. The current of rationalism, which though long dumb, was never wholly dead in England, had found vent in these publications, in which the hitherto accepted view of the inspiration of Holy Scripture was questioned, and the foundations of Christianity seemed to be assailed. Against the common foe, Dr. Pusey did not hesitate to appeal, through the pages of the Record, to the Evangelical party, to join him in defending the faith which both parties alike held dear. For this purpose, points of difference, too long insisted on, arising out of apostolical succession and the sacramental theory, had to be dropped, or at least left in the background. The truth is, the Oxford movement, confident in its assumed prin

ciples, had pushed on into the land of high doctrine and ecclesiastical usage, leaving its base of operations far in the rear, and wholly unprotected. Had it kept its communications open, and observed more closely the questionings which biblical criticism and physical science were engendering, it would not have been so taken aback when "Essays and Reviews" sprung a mine upon it. Against such questionings it was vain to appeal to the authority of the Primitive Church, for it was this very authority which was now challenged. In a day of doubt and denial it must go hard with any religious theory which has not kept intelligently open the passages from Natural to Revealed Religion, and which cannot give a good account of the basis of all religious belief. It was one of the weaknesses of the Oxford movement that, absorbed in doctrinal and ecclesiastical questions, it had neglected this. Another weakness was the isolation of its adherents from their fellow Christians. Rome disowned them, and they disowned Protestants at home and abroad. Dr. Pusey, it is said, while he thought the theology of the Evangelical school meagre and defective, had always felt a warm sympathy for the piety of the best of them. But the maintenance of apostolical succession as essential, is a great non-conductor of sympathy. the High Church party as a whole had certainly ignored all who did not hold this doctrine, whether within the English Church or beyond it. It is difficult to see why High Churchmen should not have adopted a more frank and generous policy; why they should not have sympathized with Low Churchmen on the ground of the great body of truth which they held in common, and in their insistence on personal religion, adding at the same time, "We think you lose much by neglecting the social and historical side of Christianity, and the great witness of Catholic antiquity. We agree with you in all that you hold, but there is much truth lying beyond you, which you have not yet appropriated, and this we shall try to show to you." But this is not the way in which great movements are conducted. It would seem, however, that from the time of " Essays and Reviews," Dr. Pusey showed more sympathy with the really religious men in all the Churches.

And

4. Another channel in which Dr. Pusey energised was in helping forward woman's work within the English Church. To him is due the recognised position which that work now holds. When Miss Sellon, under his guidance, opened her Sisterhood, no such

institution had been heard of in the Church In actual practice, neither Dr. Pusey, nor of England since the Reformation. There Dr. Newman, nor Mr. Keble were themselves were mistakes and extravagances, no doubt, Ritualists. The churches in which they wor at first, and these raised abundant outcry. shipped had a simple though reverent cere But Dr. Pusey, who was warden and chaplain monial, not externally differing from the of that earliest Sisterhood, nothing daunted, common usage of the Church of England. stood by Miss Sellon, all the more firmly for But though Dr. Pusey, as has been said, the clamour with which her too drastic dis-"knew little and cared less about ceremonial cipline was assailed. Whatever may have been the mistakes of Miss Sellon or of others, it cannot be doubted that the movement has on the whole worked for good. If any doubt it, he has only, as has been said, to penetrate the most squalid and poverty-stricken quarter in any city where a Sisterhood has been estab-eye lished, and he will ask no further testimony. Dr. Pusey not only patronised and pled for Sisterhoods, he joined in their labours. We read that in 1866, when the cholera raged in the north-east parts of London, Dr. Pusey "took lodgings near the City Road, to be in the immediate neighbourhood of the outbreak, and to cheer with his presence and counsel the charitable women who spent their days and nights among the sick." Sisterhoods are no doubt valuable as examples and centres of women's work. It would, however, be a great misfortune if people were to come to think that Sisterhoods were the only outlets in which devout Christian women can find scope for their ministrations. The late Bishop Wilberforce expressed the common English sentiment regarding these Sisterhoods, when he urged that no rag of Romanism should be left sticking to them, no vows, no regular confessional, no spiritual direction. Within these limits he gave them his decided approval.

Akin to the Sisterhoods are the Retreats which Dr. Pusey founded, to which overwrought clergymen and others might withdraw for meditation, prayer, and spiritual refreshment. The benefit they have derived from these has been acknowledged by devout persons, who, though not holding many of Dr. Pusey's views, have resorted to them. It has not often been seen that one man has been able deeply to influence his generation through so many varied forms of activity. A devoted student, a profound theologian, a controversialist prepared for every attack, he combined with these gifts the power of originating new institutions, and of spiritually guiding many souls, by his example, by his counsel, or by the books of practical discipline which he prepared for them.

5. It has often been asked, was Dr. Pusey the originator of Ritualism or not? In one sense he was not, in another sense he was.

details," and in practice did not differ from a Berkshire country clergyman, yet he saw clearly and acknowledged that his younger Ritualistic brethren were but carrying out in practice what he had taught in doctrine and theory. They were but making visible to the what he and his friends had spoken to the ear; and in their endeavour to do so, the younger men had disinterred from the Middle Ages symbols and vestments and usages which were startling to this generation. No doubt Dr. Pusey was at times disturbed by the extravagance of his youthful disciples, and thought that their zeal had outrun their discretion. He is even said on one occasion to have compared the most advanced Ritualists to Phlegethon (sic), charioteering the sun, and he did not shrink from warning those whom he thought to be courting destruction by their defiance of law. But when they were attacked, then Dr. Pusey at once came forward as their most strenuous defender. It was part of his chivalrous nature not to leave the feeblest or most mistaken of his followers to suffer, if he could by exposing himself divert the storm from them. His last public utterance, a few weeks before his death, was a letter in defence of the imprisoned Mr. Green. But while he defended such men, he also counselled them to moderation. It has been said, and I believe truly, that he did more "to control fanaticism, to soothe irritation, to inspire forbearance, than any number of his contemporaries put together could have done." Frequently during recent years his influence, more than anything else, prevented a Ritualistic secession, when that seemed imminent. Now that the heart on which those problems weighed so heavily has ceased to beat, shall there not be found among living churchmen and legislators wisdom enough to preserve unimpaired the vitality and comprehensiveness of the Church of England, the greatest bulwark, as Dr. Döllinger has called it, against infidelity and anarchy now existing in the world?

6. These are a few of the channels in which his immense and untiring energy poured itself forth. A glance over the list of his works published between 1850 and 1880 astounds.

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