hasty way for checking the ardor of an associate; "very incapable, I know, of entering into the enthusiasm of better men, and often likely to discourage them greatly. The consciousness of this often keeps me aloof from them, as I feel I am doing them harm. But I have sometimes thought that I might be of use in warning those for whom I feel a deep and strong interest against a tendency which I feel in myself, and which I have seen producing most melancholy effects. I mean a tendency to be quick-sighted in detecting all errors in the schemes of other men, and to set up their own in opposition to them. Oh, the bitter scorn which I have seen Newmanites indulging at the schemes of Evangelicals! scorn in which I have been well inclined to join; and now the frost which has come on themselves, their incapacity of all healthy action! I could get the goodwill of you all very soon by flattering that habit of mind, and I am very often tempted to do it. But God will not let me, and therefore he will not let me ever be the leader or sub-leader of any school or party in this land. For the only condition of the existence of such a school or party is the denunciation and execration of every other. I find my self becoming more and more solitary. I see that I am wide as the poles from Hare about the baptismal question. He wishes to make every one comfortable in the church; and I want no one to be comfortable in it, so cross-grained am I. Yet I seek for unity in my own wild way." "I have laid a great many addled eggs in my time," he said once to his son, "but I think I see a connection through the whole of my life that I have only lately begun to realize; the desire for unity and the search after unity, both in the nation and the church, has haunted me all my days."

The ideal which a man sets before him is the measure of his life, if that ideal is never shattered by the man's own loss of faith. In Maurice's case, this

search for unity was carried on to the end, in spite of apparently overwhelming odds. His early days were spent in a religious society which was falling to pieces about him. His father's family went through a process of disintegration of faith which is dramatic in its singular rapidity and completeness. The figure of the Rev. Michael Maurice, deserted in succession by all the members of his household, is a most pathetic one. Yet all this experience lay at the basis of Frederick Maurice's passionate devotion to his ideal. It was out of this chaos that there arose in his mind a conception of order which never failed him. It centred in God, and found its expression in those terms, the Word of God, the Family, the Nation, the Church, which were to be constantly charged with a meaning in his writings and speech that made them a stumbling-block to men who were ready enough to use shibboleths as expressions of their creed. Scarcely had Maurice found his foothold in that large place, from which he never was moved, before he was brought into contact with a church which appeared to be breaking up into schools and parties, and with a society which was avowedly atheistic, as well as one more dangerously pharisaic. These conditions never shook his faith in unity, and his prophetic function was to declare a church and a nation which were witnesses to God. "If ever I do any good work," he writes, "and earn any of the hatred which the godly in Christ Jesus received and have a right to, it must be in the way I have indicated by proclaiming society and humanity to be divine realities as they stand, not as they may become, and by calling upon the priests, kings, prophets, of the world to answer for their sin in having made them unreal by separating them from the living and eternal God, who has established them in Christ for his glory. This is what I call digging; this is what I oppose to building. And the more I read the Epistle to the Corin

thians, the more I am convinced that this was St. Paul's work, the one by which he hoped to undermine and to unite the members of the Apollos, Cephas, Pauline, and Christian (for those who said We are of Christ' were the worst canters and dividers of all) schools. Christ the actual foundation of the universe, not Christ a Messiah to those who received him and shaped him according to some notion of theirs; the head of a body, not the teacher of a religion, was the Christ of St. Paul. And such a Christ I desire to preach, and to live in, and die in."

It is not surprising that Maurice, attempting, in his happy phrase, to undermine and unite all parties, found himself outside of all and attacked by all. He would not have been a prophet if he had not been driven into the wilderness more than once. That did not stop his prophesying, and every time that he was thus expelled multitudes followed him. His biographer, in speaking of the burst of recognition which Maurice's services received after his death, says, "It was said to me, by more than one man, at the time, that the spontaneity and universality of the feeling was so marked that there did not seem to them to have been anything like it in England since the Duke of Wellington's death." Similar outbursts came during Maurice's lifetime, on the occasion of his expulsion from his theological professorship in King's College, for example; but for the most part he was misrepresented and reviled by the religious press. it was against the bitter exclusiveness and arrogance which found their worst expression in these journals that Maurice waged an untiring warfare. The truth which he maintained was sharper than a two-edged sword, and made many divisions. He would not have been a prophet, again, if he had not possessed a fiery indignation against all who shut up God in any one of the cages of human insolence, or who would make traffic of

For

divine things. Colonel Maurice cites a striking instance of this indignation. His father was present at a club when the question under discussion was the subscription of the clergy.

"In the course of it a member of Parliament, a strict adherent of the religion of the hour, had been emphatically insisting upon the necessity of tightly tying down the clergy to their belief in the current dogmas of the day, and of his particular school; assuming throughout that just the creed of him and his friends was that which had always and everywhere been held by all. Pointing out the shocks which this form of faith had been of late receiving from many quarters, and suggesting a doubt whether the clergy were really giving their money's worth of subserviency for the money paid to them, he had said, 'Sometimes one would like to know what the clergy do believe nowadays!'

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Every sentence had added fuel to the passionate indignation with which my father listened. It seemed to him just that claim to bind the clergy at the chariot wheels of public opinion against which he believed that the creeds, the articles, the fixed stipends of the clergy, the order of bishops as fathers in God, were so many protests. It seemed just that convenient getting rid of all belief in a living God, and safely disposing of him under a series of propositions, to be repeated at so much an hour, which he looked upon as the denial of the day. His growing excitement became so manifest that a note was passed up to Mr. Kempe by one of those sitting by, begging Mr. Kempe to call next on Mr. Maurice. My father rose, as all those who saw him say, ' on fire.' • Mr. asks what the clergy believe in nowadays. I believe in God the Father Almighty,' continuing the Apostles' Creed. Then he went on passionately to declare that because he so believed he was bound by his orders to protest against all appeals to money, to the praise of

men, to the bargaining of the market, to the current run of popular feeling, as so many direct denials of truth, so many attempts to set up idols in place of the teaching of the living God. From all sides I have heard men say that it was one of the most striking things they had ever witnessed. Every one felt as if the place was in a blaze. No one else felt in any condition to speak, and the discussion abruptly ended."

"There were times," says his biographer elsewhere, "when he could make his words sting like a lash and burn like a hot iron. The very nature of his appeal, always to a man's own conscience, to his sense of right within the scope in which the man himself clearly discerned what was right and what was wrong, the full recognition of ability when he complained that it was being abused, the utter absence of any desire to dictate in details or to require any conformity to his own opinions, seemed, as it were, when he spoke indignantly, to carry the man addressed, then and there, unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,' before the tribunal with which rests 'the ultimate and highest decision upon men's deeds, to which all the unjustly condemned at human tribunals appeal, and which weighs not the deed only, but motives, temptations, and ignorances, and all the complex conditions of the deed.' There were some to whom he so spoke who never forgave him. The marvelous thing, considering the depth to which he sometimes cut, is that there were so few.

"Whenever something that he looked upon as morally wrong or mean excited his wrath, he began in a most violent manner to rub together the palms of his two hands. The fits of doing so would often come on quite suddenly, as a result of his reflections on some action, as frequently as not of the religious world, or of so-called religious people. He appeared at such moments to be entirely absorbed in his own reflections, and ut

terly unconscious of the terrible effect which the fierce look of his face and the wild rubbing of his hands produced upon an innocent bystander. A lady, who often saw him thus, says that she always expected sparks to fly from his hands, and to see him bodily on fire. Certainly the effect was very tremendous, and by no means pleasant."

This indignation appears more than once in Maurice's correspondence, but the prevailing impression upon the reader's mind is rather of the singular charity which he showed to all men, by virtue of which he frequently disconcerted those who were in opposition to him. For he would accept what his opponent said, place himself on the same side, and begin to argue the whole matter from a standpoint apparently inimical to himself. An amusing story of his gentleness and of his determination to recognize the good is told apropos of his inability to manage a number of wild colts in the lecture room of King's College. A boy was disturbing the lecture. Maurice looked up, and after watching him for a few moments said, “I do not know why that gentleman is doing what he is, but I am sure it is for some great and wise purpose; and if he will come here and explain to us all what it is, we shall be delighted to hear him." This shows a habit of mind which even in sarcasm falls into its natural form of speech.

He

The actual contribution which Maurice made to the development of philosophic or theologic thought does not consist in any treatise which may serve as an armory for polemic uses. wrote a great many books, but they were all, with possibly one exception, tracts of greater or less length, written to serve an immediate purpose; his books were always a means to an end, never an end in themselves. The great power which he exercised over the minds of men was in his varied application of a few simple, profound truths.

His distinction, for example, of the idea of eternal from that of everlasting, while not original with him, was in his hands a candle with which he lighted

many dark passages. His controversy

with Mansel showed him inferior to his antagonist in logical fence; but what with Mansel was a philosophic position was with Maurice a terribly practical truth, and he was constantly expressing it, not in terms of philosophy, but in terms of history, politics, and ethics. It was the illuminating power of truth which Maurice knew how to use. Many a student of his writings has gone to them for an exegesis of some passage of the Bible, and come away with a revelation which put to shame his small measures of textual truth. It is a favorite advice of commentators, Study the context; but Maurice's context was likely enough a piece of current English history, or an extract from Plato. No theologian of recent days has so broken down middle walls of partition in the minds of

men.

It has rarely been given to men to see a few large truths so vividly as Maurice saw them, and at the same time to apply them to conduct and study with such vehement energy. Nevertheless, the very width of his vision may have led him to overlook a very present and near truth. In his anxiety to divest the idea of eternity of any time element, he missed, we think, that instinctive, or if not instinctive, then highly educated, conception of another world as a future world. He was right when he called back men from the postponement of moral consequences to a consideration of them in their essential properties, but he made too little of that reinforcement of the idea of eternity which comes through the sense of futu

rity. That sense is so imbedded in the consciousness as to revolt at last against the exclusive terms of Maurice's definitions. After all, the predictive function of the prophet belongs to him, even if it be subordinate, and that Maurice should have disregarded its operation in his own case is all the more singular, since hope was so emphatically the keynote of his gospel.

men.

Colonel Maurice tells us that his father maintained that no man's life should be written until he has been dead twenty years. Maurice died ten years ago, but for American readers the half score is as good as a score. We are sufficiently removed from the smoke of the battle in which so much of his life was spent to be able to view the combat with serenity, and the figure of this remarkable man becomes one of the most conspicuous in the scene. He was not a leader of a party; he was a leader of Some one remarked a short time since that there were now only two outand-out Maurice disciples in London. The remark might easily be accepted as truth. Maurice himself would be eager to dissuade the two from fancying that he carried any banner under which they could be marshaled. It is equally true, and more important, that Maurice's thought has influenced a vast number of minds in England and America, not in theology alone, but in the interpretation of history and politics. The inspirer of Tennyson, Kingsley, Hughes, Ludlow, to name no others, was and remains a power. The life which presents him, under the manly guidance of his son, to multitudes on both sides of the Atlantic, who never saw him, will unquestionably reinforce his influence, for it will associate his teachings with a large, distinct, and luminous personality.

I HAVE been denied through life the satisfaction of some of my reasonable wishes for things I should greatly have enjoyed, could I have had them. I count among my smaller solaces for these deprivations the pleasure I have always taken in the companionship of my dogs. The best individuals of this species give proof of so much of what, if we were speaking of persons, we should call "heart" and "character" that I find it hard not to believe in a future and higher existence for the dear beasts. I feel sure that their intelligence is capable of more development than most people suppose. I do not care for the two-penny "tricks" that dogs are so often taught to perform, and have never tried to draw out my dogs' latent talents in this direction; but I have noticed with regard to my own and other persons' dogs that their general intelligence is educated or not according to the manner in which they are treated. Behave habitually toward a dog as though you expected him to conduct himself as a sensible creature, of goodbreeding and discretion, and ten to one he will arrive at an understanding of your mind about him, and endeavor to meet your expectations. Treat him, on the other hand, as a mere helpless lady's pet, and he becomes a toy, a canine nonentity. Tease him, or bully him, and he turns a cringing coward. I have a fancy that dogs sometimes come to partake of the dispositions of the people they live with. One instance, at least, occurs to me immediately of a dog whose traits are noticeably similar to those of his owners. Many persons profess a fondness for dogs whose actions toward them prove to me that they do not really know what it is to care for the animals in the way of a genuine dog-lover. I shall not forget how grateful I found the sympathy of

an elderly lady, a friend of our family, who on the occasion of the tragic death of our beautiful shepherd dog wrote us a letter of heartfelt condolence. She knew what the loss meant to us.

I heard a true story, not long ago, of a lady, fond of dogs and accustomed to them, who went to visit a friend, the owner of a splendid but most formidable animal, a mastiff, if I remember rightly. The visitor did not happen to meet with the dog till she suddenly came upon him in a doorway she was about to pass through. It chanced somehow that she did not see him, and, stepping hastily, she unfortunately trod upon his foot or his tail. The huge fellow instantly laid hold of her; but before the dog's master, a short distance off, could hasten to the rescue the lady had looked down, exclaiming quick as thought, “Oh, I beg your pardon!" whereupon the mastiff as quickly let go his grasp. It is plain that this lady had a proper respect for the feelings of dogs in general, prompting to an habitual kindly treatment of them, and instinct led her to apologize at once for the inadvertent injury, as she would have done to a person.

I confess that it is difficult for me to think really well of those who are averse or even indifferent to dogs; there is something lacking in the moral constitution of such persons, I am convinced. When I think of the way in which my dog lives with me; of the value he sets upon my society, so that liberty to range abroad with his canine acquaintance counts for nothing in comparison with the pleasure of a short walk with me; of the confidence he has in me, and the impulse to tell me in his fashion all he can of his inner sentiments, troubles, and satisfactions, I find in this something that not only pleases but touches me very much.