Viewed in the large, as they are seen in India, and when abstracted from the questions of particular countries, I hold that one form of Church government is exactly as much according to Christ's will as another; nay, I consider such questions as so indifferent, that, if I thought the government of my neighbour's Church better than my own, I yet would not, unless the case were very strong, leave my Church for his, because habits, associations, and all those minor ties which ought to burst asunder before a great call, are yet of more force, I think, than a difference between Episcopacy and Presbytery, unless one be very good of its kind, and the other very bad. However, whether you think with me or not, the question at any rate is one of importance to a man going as missionary to India. Let me hear from you again when you can. CCXXIX. TO CHEVALIER BUNSEN. (Then Prussian Minister at Berne.) Rugby, February 25, 1840. It rejoices me indeed to resume my communication with you, and it is a comfort to me to think that you are at least on our side of the Alps, and on a river which runs into our own side, in the very face of Father Thames. May God's blessing be with you and yours in your new home, and prosper all your works public and private, and give you health and strength to execute them, and to see their fruits beginning to show themselves. I am going on in my accustomed way, in this twelfth year of my life at Rugby, with all about me, thank God, in good health. I have determined, after much consideration, to follow the common chronology for convenience. To alter it now seems as hopeless as Hare's attempt to amend our English spelling; and besides I cannot satisfy myself that any sure system of chronology is attainable, so that it does not seem worth while to put all one's recollections in confusion for the sake of a result which after all is itself uncertain. I have written the naval part of the first Punic War with something of an Englishman's feeling, which I think will make you find that part interesting. I have tried also to make out a sort of Domesday Book of Italy after the Roman Conquest, to show as far as possible the various tenures by which the land was held. I am seriously thinking of going southwards. I hesitate between two plans, Marseilles and Naples, or Trieste and Corfu. Corfu -Corcyra-would be genuine Greece in point of climate and scenery, and if one could get a sight of the country about Durazzo, it would greatly help the campaign of Dyrrhachium. Then, in going to Trieste, we should see Ulm, Augsburg, Munich and Salzburg, and might take Regensburg and Nurnberg on our return. Naples in itself would be to me less interesting than Corfu, but if we could penetrate into the interior, nothing would delight me more. Niebuhr's third volume is indeed delightful; but it grieved me to find those frequent expressions, in his later letters, of his declining regard for England. I grieve at it, but I do not wonder. Most gladly do I join in your proposal that we should write monthly. Will you send me your proper address in German, for I do not like directious to you in French. A passage has been here omitted relating to the question between the Judges and the House of Commons, on Breach of Privilege, in consequence of the statement of his opinion being mixed up with a statement of facts which he had intended eventually to reconsider. But it was a subject on which, at the time, he felt very strongly in favour of the House of Commons, in the belief that " the leading statesmen of all parties took one` side, and the lawyers and the ultra-Tories the other side," and that "Peel's conduct on this occasion does him more credit than any part of his political life." CCXXX. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ. Rugby, March 13, 1840. I do not often venture to talk to you about public affairs, but surely you will agree with me in deprecating this war with China, which really seems to me so wicked as to be a national sin of the greatest possible magnitude, and it distresses me very deeply. Cannot any thing be done by petition or otherwise to awaken men's minds to the dreadful guilt we are incurring? I really do not remember, in any history, of a war undertaken with such combined injustice and baseness. Ordinary wars of conquest are to me far less wicked, than to go to war in order to maintain smuggling, and that smuggling consisting in the introduction of a demoralizing drug, which the Government of China wishes to keep out, and which we, for the lucre of gain, want to introduce by force; and in this quarrel are going to burn and slay in the pride of our supposed superiority. CCXXXI. TO W. LEAPER NEWTON, ESQ. Rugby, February 19, 1840. It is with the most sincere regret that I feel myself unable to give an unqualified support to the resolution which you propose to bring forward at the next general meeting of the proprietors of the North Midland Railway Company. Of course, if I held the Jewish law of the Sabbath to be binding upon us, the question would not be one of degree, but I should wish to stop all travelling on Sundays as in itself unlawful. But holding that the Christian Lord's Day is a very different thing from the Sabbath, and to be observed in a different manner, the question of Sunday travelling is, in my mind, quite one of degree; and whilst I entirely think that the trains which travel on that day should be very much fewer on every account, yet I could not consent to suspend all travelling on a great line of communication for twenty-four hours, especially as the creation of railways necessarily puts an end to other conveyances in the same direction; and if the trains do not travel, a poor man, who could not post, might find it impossible to get on at all. But I would cheerfully support you in voting that only a single train each way should travel on the Sunday, which would surely enable the clerks, porters, &c., at every station, to have the greatest part of every Sunday at their own disposal. Nay, I would gladly subscribe individually to a fund for obtaining additional belp on the Sunday, so that the work might fall still lighter on each individual employed. CCXXXII. TO THE SAME. Rugby, February 22, 1840. It would be absolutely wrong, I think, if I were not to answer your question to the best of my power; yet it is so very painful to seem to be arguing in any way against the observance of the Sunday, that I would far rather agree with you than differ from you. I believe that it is generally agreed amongst Christians that. the Jewish Law, so far as it was Jewish and not moral, is at an end; and it is assuming the whole point at issue to assume that the Ten Commandments are all moral. If that were so, it seems to me quite certain that the Sabbath would have been kept on its own proper day; for, if the Commandments were still binding, I do not see where would be the power to make any alteration in its enactments. But it is also true, no doubt, that the Lord's Day was kept from time immemorial in the Church as a day of festival; and connected with the notion of festival, the abstinence from worldly business naturally followed. A weekly religious festival, in which worldly business was suspended, bore such a resemblance to the Sabbath, that the analogy of the Jewish Law was often urged as a reason for its observance; but, as it was not considered to be the Sabbath, but only a day in some respects like it, so the manner of its observance varied from time to time, and was made more or less strict on grounds of religious expediency, without reference in either case to the authority of the fourth commandment. An ordinance of Constantine prohibits other work, but leaves agricultural labour free. An ordinance of Leo I. (Emperor of Constantinople) forbids agricultural labour also. On the other hand, our own Reformers (see Cranmer's Visitation Articles) required the Clergy to teach the people that they would grievously offend God if they abstained from working on Sundays in harvest time; and the Statute of Edward Vl., 5th and 6th chap. iii. (vol. iv. part i. p. 132 of the Parliamentary edition of the Statutes, 1819,) expressly allows all persons to work, ride or follow their calling, whatever it may be, in the case of need. And the preamble of this statute, which was undoubtedly drawn up with the full concurrence of the principal Reformers, if not actually written by them, declares in the most express terms that the observance of all religious festivals is left in the discretion of the Church, and therefore it proceeds to order that all Sundays, with many other days named, should be kept holy. And the clear language of this Statute,--together with the total omission of the duty of keeping the Sabbath in the Catechism, although it professes to collect our duty towards God from the four first commandments,-proves to my mind that in using the fourth commandment in the Church Service, the Reformers meant it to be understood as enforcing to us simply the duty of worshipping God, and devoting some portion of time to His honour, the particular portion so devoted, and the manner of observing it, being points to be fixed by the Church. It is on these grounds that I should prefer greatly diminishing public travelling on the Sunday to stopping it altogether; as this seems to me to correspond better with the Christian observance of the Lord's Day, which, while most properly making rest from ordinary occupations the general rule, yet does not regard it as a thing of absolute necessity, but to be waived on weighty grounds. And surely many very weighty reasons for occasionally moving from place to place on a Sunday are occurring constantly. But if the only alternative be between stopping the trains on our railway altogether, or having them go frequently, as on other days, I cannot hesitate for an instant which side to take, and I will send you my proxy without a moment's hesitation. You will perhaps have the goodness to let me hear from you again. CCXXXIII. TO THE SAME. Rugby, April 1, 1840. I should have answered your last letter earlier, had I not been so much engaged that I assure you I do not find it easy to find time for any thing beyond the necessary routine of my employments. I agree with you that it is not necessary with respect to the practical point to discuss the authority of the command to keep the Sunday. In fact, believing it to be an ordinance of the Church at any rate, I hold its practical obligation just as much as if I considered it to be derivable from the fourth commandment; but the main question is, whether that rest, on which the commandment lays such exclusive stress, is really the essence of the Christian Sunday. That it should be a day of greater leisure than other days, and of the suspension, so far as may be, of the common business of life, I quite allow; but then I believe that I should have much greater indulgence for recreation on a Sunday than you might have; and, if the railway enables the people in the great towns to get out into the country on the Sunday, I should think it a very great good. I confess that I would rather have one train going on a Sunday than none at all; and I cannot conceive that this would seriously interfere with any of the company's servants; it would not be as much work as all domestic servants have every Sunday in almost every house in the country. At the same time, I should be most anxious to mark the day decidedly from other days, and I think that one train up and down would abundantly answer all good purposes, and that more would be objectionable. I was much obliged to you for sending me an account of the discussion on the subject, and if it comes on again, I should really wish to express my opinion, if I could, by voting against having more than one train. I am really sorry that I cannot go along with you more completely. At any rate, I cannot but rejoice in the correspondence with you to which this question has given occasion. Differences of opinion give me but little concern; but it is a real pleasure to be brought into communication with any man who is in earnest, and who really looks to God's will as his standard of right and wrong, and judges of actions, according to their greater or less conformity. * Rugby, February 25, 1840. With regard to Welsh, I am anxious that people should notice any words which may exist in the spoken language of old people, or in remote parts of the country, which are not acknowledged in the written language. Welsh must have its dialects, I suppose, like other languages, and these dialects often preserve words and forms of extreme antiquity, which have long since perished out of the written language, or rather were never introduced into it. You know Dr. Prichard's book, I take it for granted, the only sensible book on the subject which I ever saw written in English. This and Bopp's Vergleichende Grammatik, should be constantly used, I think, to enable a man to understand the real connexion of languages, and to escape the extravagances into which our so-called Celtic scholars have generally fallen. CCXXXV. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ. April, 1840. My wish about the bill is this, if it could be done; that the Athanasian creed should be rejected altogether, that the promise to use the Liturgy should be the peculiar subscription of the clergy,-that the Articles should stand as articles of peace, in the main draft of each Article, for clergy and laity alike;-and that for Church membership there should be no other test than that required in Baptism. I think you may require fuller knowledge of the clergy than of the laity; and, as they have a certain public service in the Church to perform, you may require of them a promise that they will perform it according to the law of our Church; but as to the adhesion of the inner man to any set of religious truths,-this, it seems to me, belongs to us as Christians, and is in fact a part of the notion of Christian faith, which faith is to be required of all the Church alike, so far as it can be or ought to be required of any one. And therefore, so long as the clergy subscribe to the Articles, so long do I hope that they will be required at taking degrees in Oxford or Cambridge, of all who are members of the See p. 218, for his further view of the fourth commandment. Church. If they are a burden, all ought to bear it alike; if they are a fair test of church membership, they should extend to all alike. CCXXXVI. TO THE SAME. April, 1840. I would not willingly petition about the Canons, except to procure their utter abolition; I have an intense dislike of clerical legislation, most of all of such a clergy as was dominant in James the First's reign. And, if the Canons are touched ever so lightly, what is left untouched would acquire additional force, an evil greater to my mind than leaving them altogether alone. I think that I should myself prefer petitioning for a relaxation of the terms of Subscription, and especially for the total repeal of the 36th Canon. Historically, our Prayer Book exhibits the opinions of two very different parties, King Edward's Reformers, and the High Churchmen of James the First's time and of 1661. There is a necessity, therefore, in fact, for a comprehensive Subscription, unless the followers of one of these parties are to be driven out of the Church; for no man, who heartily likes the one, can approve entirely of what has been done by the other. And I would petition specifically, I think, but I speak with submission, for the direct cancelling of the damnatory clauses of the anonymous Creed, vulgarly called Athanasius'-(would it not be well in your petition to alter the expression "Athanasius' Creed?") leaving the creed itself untouched. CCXXXVII. TO THE SAME. May 16, 1840. I have sent a copy of this petition' to Whately; if he approves of it, I will ask you to get it engrossed, and put into the proper forms. My feeling is this; as I believe that the tide of all reform is at present on the ebb, I should not myself have come forward at this moment with any petition, but, as you have resolved to petition, I cannot but sign it; and then, signing your petition, I wish also to put on record my sentiments as to what seems to me to be a deeper evil than any thing in the Liturgy or Articles. I wish that the signatures may be numerous, and may include many Laymen; it is itself a sign of life in the Church that Laymen should feel that the Articles and Liturgy belong to them as well as to the Clergy. * CCXXXVIII. TO J. P. GELL, ESQ. April 12, 1840. I do not like to let my wife's letter go without a word from me, if it were only to express to you my earnest interest about the beginnings of your great work, which I imagine is now near at hand. It is very idle for me to speculate about what is going on in states of society, of which I know so little; yet my knowledge of the Jacobinism of people here at home, makes me full sure that there must be even more of it out with you, and it fills me with grief when I think of society having such an element ouvrooqov § dozñs..... I often think that nothing could so rouse a boy's energies as 1 i. e. for the restoration of Deacons. His wish for the revival of any distinct ecclesiastical government of the clergy at this time, was checked by the fear of its countenancing what he held to be erroneous views concerning the religious powers and duties of the State. |