Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume Ii Part 38

Much was made in those days of the "Christian evidences," and one statement then put forth, regarding the miraculous, produced a temporary effect upon me. This statement was that the claims of the religions opposed to Christianity did not rest upon miracles; that there was, at any rate, no real testimony to any except Christian miracles; and that, as a rule, other religions did not pretend to exhibit any. But when I, shortly afterward, read the life of Mohammed, and saw what a great part was played by his miracle at the battle of Beder, during which, on his throwing dust into the air, there came to his rescue legions of angels, who were seen and testified to by many on the field,--both by his friends and by his enemies; and when I found that miraculous testimonies play a leading part in all religions, even in favor of doctrines the most cruel and absurd, I felt that the "evidences" must be weak which brought forward an argument so ill grounded. Moreover, in my varied reading I came across mult.i.tudes of miracles attributed to saints of the Roman Catholic Church,--miracles for which myriads of good men and women were ready to lay down their lives in attestation of their belief,--and if we must accept one cla.s.s of miracles, I could not see why we should not accept the other.

At the close of this first year, for reasons given elsewhere, I broke away from this little college and went to Yale.

CHAPTER LIX

IN THE NEW ENGLAND ATMOSPHERE--1851-1853

At Yale I found myself in the midst of New England Congregationalism; but I cannot say that it helped me much religiously. It, indeed, broadened my view, since I was a.s.sociated with professors and students of various forms of Christianity, and came to respect them, not for what they professed, but for what they really were.

There also I read under an excellent professor--my dear friend the late President Porter--Butler's "a.n.a.logy"; but, though it impressed me, it left on my mind the effect of a strong piece of special pleading,--of a series of arguments equally valuable for any religion which had once "got itself established."

Here, too, a repellent influence was exercised upon me by a "revival." What was called a "religious interest" began to be shown in sundry student meetings, and soon it came in with a full tide. I was induced to go into one or two of these a.s.semblies, and was somewhat impressed by the penitence shown and the pledges given by some of my college friends. But within a year the whole thing was dead. Several of the men who had been loudest in their expressions of penitence and determination to accept Christianity became worse than ever: they were like logs stranded high and dry after a freshet.

But this religious revival in college was infinitely better than one which ran its course in the immediate neighborhood. Just at the corner of the college grounds was a Methodist Episcopal church, the princ.i.p.al one in New Haven, and, a professional revivalist having begun his work there, the church was soon thronged. Blasphemy and ribaldry were the preacher's great attractions. One of the prayers attributed to him ran as follows: "Come down among us, O Lord! Come straight through the roof; I'll pay for the shingles!" Night after night the galleries were crowded with students laughing at this impious farce; and among them, one evening, came "Charley" Chotard of Mississippi. Chotard was a very handsome fellow: slender, well formed, six feet three inches tall, and in any crowd a man of mark, like King Saul. In the midst of the proceedings, at some grotesque utterance of the revivalist, the students in the galleries burst into laughter.

The preacher, angrily turning his eyes upon the offenders, saw, first of all, Chotard, and called out to him: "You lightning-rod of h.e.l.l, you flag-staff of d.a.m.nation, come down from there!" Of course no such grotesque scenes were ever allowed in the college chapel: the services there, though simple, were always dignified; yet even in these there sometimes appeared incongruous features.

According to tradition in my time, an aged divine, greatly and justly beloved, from a neighboring city, had been asked to preach before the students. It was at the time when the whole English-speaking world had been thrilled by the story of the relief of Lucknow, and the cry of the Scotch la.s.sie who heard the defiant slogan and heart-stirring pibroch of the Highlanders coming to the relief of the besieged had echoed across all the oceans. Toward the close of his sermon the dear old doctor became very impressive. He recited the story of Lucknow, and then spoke in substance as follows: "So to-day, my young friends, I sound in your ears the slo-o-o-broch of salvation." The alliteration evidently pleased him, and he repeated it with more and more emphasis in his peroration. When he sat down another clergyman who was with him at the sacred desk reminded him of his mistake, whereupon the good old doctor rose and addressed the students as follows: "My young friends, you doubtless noticed a mistake in my final remarks. I said 'slo-o-o-o-broch'; of course I meant 'pi-i-g-a-a-an.'"

Then, too, it must be confessed that some of the weekday prayers made by lay professors lent themselves rather too easily to parody. One of my cla.s.smates--since known as a grave and respected judge--was especially gifted in imitating these pet.i.tions, with the very intonations of their authors, and these parodies were in great demand on festive occasions. The pet phrases, the choice rhetoric, and the impressive oratory of these prayers were thus made so familiar to us in caricatures that the originals were little conducive to devotion.

The influence at Yale of men like Goodrich, Taylor, Woolsey, and Porter, whom I saw in their professors' chairs, was indeed strong upon me. I respected and admired them; but their purely religious teaching took but little hold on me; I can remember clearly but two or three sermons which I heard preached in Yale chapel. One was at the setting up of the chapel organ, when Horace Bushnell of Hartford preached upon music; and another was when President Woolsey preached a baccalaureate sermon upon "Righteous Anger."

The first of these sermons was very beautiful, but the second was powerful. It has had an influence--and, I think, a good influence--on my thoughts from that day to this; and it ought to be preached in every pulpit in our country, at least once a year, as an antidote to our sickly, mawkish lenity to crime and wrong.

In those days conformity to religious ideas was carried very far at Yale. On week-days we had early prayers at about six in the morning, and evening prayers at about the same hour in the afternoon; but on Sundays we had not only morning and evening prayers in the chapel, but morning and afternoon service at church. I attended St. Paul's Episcopal church, sitting in one of the gallery pews a.s.signed to undergraduates; but cannot say that anything that I heard during this period of my life elevated me especially. I joined in the reading of the Psalter, in the singing of the chants and hymns, and, occasionally, in reciting part of the creeds, though more and more this last exercise became peculiarly distasteful to me.

Time has but confirmed the opinion, which I then began to hold, that, of all mistaken usages in a church service, the most unfortunate is this demand which confronts a man who would gladly unite with Christians in Christian work, and, in a spirit of loyalty to the Blessed Founder of Christianity, would cheerfully become a member of the church and receive the benefit of its ministrations;--the demand that such a man stand and deliver a creed made no one knows where or by whom, and of which no human being can adjust the meanings to modern knowledge, or indeed to human comprehension.

My sympathies, tastes, and aims led me to desire to enter fully into the church in which I was born; there was no other part of the service in which I could not do my part; but to stand up and recite the creeds in all their clauses, honestly, I could not. I had come to know on what slender foundations rested, for example, the descent into h.e.l.l; and, as to the virgin birth, my reading showed me so weak a basis for it in the New Testament taken as a whole, and so many similar claims made in behalf of divine founders of religions, that when I reflected upon the reasons for holding the doctrine to be an aftergrowth upon the original legend, it was impossible for me to go on loudly proclaiming my belief in it. Sometimes I have refrained from reciting any part of the creed; but often, in my reverence for what I admire in the service, in my love for those whom I have heard so devoutly take part in it in days gone by, and in my sympathy with those about me, I have been wont to do what I could,--have joined in repeating parts of it, leaving out other parts which I, at least, ought not to repeat.

Various things combined to increase my distrust for the prevailing orthodoxy. I had a pa.s.sion for historical reading,--indeed, at that time had probably read more and thought more upon my reading than had most men of my age in college,--and the more I thus read and thought, the more evident it became to me that, while the simple religion of the Blessed Founder of Christianity has gone on through the ages producing the n.o.blest growths of faith, hope, and charity, many of the beliefs insisted upon within the church as necessary to salvation were survivals of primeval superst.i.tion, or evolved in obedience to pagan environment or Jewish habits of thought or Greek metaphysics or mediaeval interpolations in our sacred books; that most of the frightful systems and events in modern history have arisen from theological dogmatism; that the long reign of hideous cruelty in the administration of the penal law, with its torture-chambers, its burnings of heretics and witches, its cruelties of every sort, its repression of so much of sane human instinct and n.o.ble human thought, arose from this source, directly or indirectly; and that even such ghastly scenes as those of the French Revolution were provoked by a natural reaction in the minds of a people whom the church, by its theory of divine retribution, had educated for ages to be cruel.

But what impressed me most directly as regards the whole orthodox part of the church was its virtual support of slavery in the crisis then rapidly approaching. Excellent divines, like Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, the Rev. Dr Parker of New Jersey, and others holding high positions in various sects throughout the country, having based elaborate defenses of slavery upon Scripture, the church as a whole had acquiesced in this view. I had become bitterly opposed, first to the encroachments of the slave power in the new Territories of the United States, and finally to slavery itself; and this alliance between it and orthodoxy deepened my distrust of what was known about me as religion. As the struggle between slavery and freedom deepened, this feeling of mine increased. During my first year at college the fugitive-slave law was pa.s.sed, and this seemed to me the acme of abominations. There were, it is true, a few religious men who took high ground against slavery; but these were generally New England Unitarians or members of other bodies rejected by the orthodox, and this fact increased my distrust of the dominant religion.

Some years before this, while yet a boy preparing for college, I had met for the first time a clergyman of this sort--the Rev.

Samuel Joseph May, pastor of the Unitarian church in Syracuse; and he had attracted me from the first moment that I saw him.

There was about him something very genial and kindly, which won a way to all hearts. Though I knew him during many years, he never made the slightest effort to proselyte me. To every good work in the community, and especially to all who were down-trodden or oppressed, he was steadfastly devoted; the Onondaga Indians of central New York found in him a stanch ally against the encroachments of their scheming white neighbors; fugitive slaves knew him as their best friend, ready to risk his own safety in their behalf.

Although he was the son of an honored Ma.s.sachusetts family, a graduate of Harvard, a disciple of Channing, a man of sincere character and elegant manners, he was evidently dreaded by the great majority of the orthodox Christians about him. I remember speaking to him once of a clergyman who had recently arrived in Syracuse, and who was an excellent scholar. Said Mr. May to me, "I should like to know him, if that were possible." I asked, "Why not call upon him?" He answered, "I would gladly do so, but do you suppose he would return my call?" "Of course he would," I replied; "he is a gentleman." "Yes," said Mr. May, "no doubt he is, and so are the other clergymen; yet I have called on them as they have come, and only two or three of them all have ever entered my house since." Orthodox fanatics came to remonstrate and pray with him, but these he generally overcame with his sweet and kindly manner. To slavery he was an uncompromising foe, being closely a.s.sociated with Garrison, Phillips, and the leaders of the antislavery movement; and so I came to see that there was a side to Christianity not necessarily friendly to slavery: but I also saw that it was a side not welcomed by the churches in general, and especially distrusted in my own family. I remember taking to him once an old friend of mine, a man of most severe orthodoxy; and after we had left Mr. May's house I asked my friend what he thought of the kindly heretic. He answered, "Those of us who shall be so fortunate as to reach heaven are to be greatly surprised at some of the people we are to meet there."

As a Yale student I found an additional advantage in the fact that I could now frequently hear distinguished clergymen who were more or less outside the orthodox pale. Of these were the liberal Congregationalists of New York, Brooklyn, and Boston, and, above all, Henry Ward Beecher, Edwin Chapin, and Theodore Parker. At various times during my college course I visited Boston, and was taken by my cla.s.smate and old friend George Washburn Smalley to hear Parker. He drew immense crowds of thoughtful people. The music-hall, where he spoke, contained about four thousand seats, and at each visit of mine every seat, so far as I could see, was filled. Both Parker's prayers and sermons were inspiring. He was a deeply religious man; probably the most thorough American scholar, orthodox or unorthodox, of his time; devoted to the public good and an intense hater of slavery. His influence over my thinking was, I believe, excellent; his books, and those of Channing which I read at this time, did me great good by checking all inclination to cynicism and scoffing; more than any other person he strengthened my theistic ideas and stopped any tendency to atheism; the intense conviction with which men like Channing, Parker, and May spoke of a G.o.d in the universe gave a direction to my thinking which has never been lost.

As to Beecher, nothing could exceed his bold brilliancy. He was a man of genius; even more a poet than an orator; in sympathy with every n.o.ble cause; and utterly without fear of the pew-holders inside his church or of the mob outside. Heresy-hunters did not daunt him. Humor played over much of his sermonizing; wit coruscated through it; but there was at times a pathos which pervaded the deep places of the human heart. By virtue of his poetic insight he sounded depths of thought and feeling which no mere theological reasoning could ever reach. He was a man,--indeed, a great man,--but to the end of his life he retained the freshness of youth. General Grant, who greatly admired him, once said to me, "Beecher is a boy--a glorious boy."

Beecher's love of nature was a pa.s.sion. During one of his visits to Cornell University, I was driving through the woods with him, and he was in the full tide of brilliant discourse when, suddenly, he grasped my hand which held the reins and said peremptorily, "Stop!" I obeyed, and all was still save the note of a bird in the neighboring thicket. Our stop and silence lasted perhaps five minutes, when he said, "Did you hear that bird? That is the----(giving a name I have forgotten). You are lucky to have him here; I would give a hundred dollars to have him nest as near me."

During this visit of his to my house, I remember finding, one morning, that he had been out of doors since daylight; and on my expressing surprise at his rising so early after sitting up so late, he said, "I wanted to enjoy the squirrels in your trees."

Wonderful, too, was his facility, not merely in preaching, but in thinking. When, on another visit, he stayed with me, he took no thought regarding his sermon at the university chapel, so far as one could see. Every waking moment was filled with things which apparently made preparation for preaching impossible. I became somewhat nervous over this neglect; for, so far as I could learn, he had nothing written, he never spoke from memory, and not only the students, but the people from the whole country round about, were crowding toward the chapel.

Up to the last moment before leaving my house for the morning service, he discussed the best shrubs for planting throughout our groves and woods, and the best gra.s.ses to use in getting a good turf upon the university grounds. But, on leaving the house, he became silent and walked slowly, his eyes fixed steadily on the ground; and as I took it for granted that he was collecting his thoughts for his sermon, I was careful not to disturb him. As we reached the chapel porch, a vast crowd in waiting and the organ pealing, he suddenly stopped, turned round, lifted his eyes from the ground, and said, "I have been studying your lawn all the way down here; what you need is to sow Kentucky blue-gra.s.s." Then he entered the chapel, and shortly was in the midst of a sermon evidently suggested by the occasion, his whole ma.n.u.script being a few pencilings on a sheet or two of note-paper, all the rest being extemporized in his best vein, both as to matter and manner.

Chapin, too, was brilliant and gifted, but very different in every respect from Beecher. His way was to read from ma.n.u.script, and then, from time to time, to rise out of it and soar above it, speaking always forcibly and often eloquently. His gift of presenting figures of speech so that they became vivid realities to his audience was beyond that of any other preacher I ever heard. Giving once a temperance address, and answering the argument as to the loss of property involved in the confiscation of intoxicants, he suddenly pictured a balance let down from the hand of the Almighty, in one scale all the lucre lost, in the other all the crimes, the wrecks, the miseries, the sorrows, the griefs, the widows' groans and orphans' tears,--until we absolutely seemed to have the whole vast, terrific ma.s.s swaying in mid-air before us.

On another occasion, preaching from the text, "Now we see through a gla.s.s darkly, but then face to face," he presented the picture of a man in his last illness, seeing dimly, through a half-transparent medium, the faint, dim outline of the Divinity whom he was so rapidly nearing; and then, suddenly, death,--the shattering of the gla.s.s,--and the man, on the instant, standing before his Maker and seeing him "face to face." It all seems poor when put upon paper; but, as he gave it, nothing could be more vivid. We seemed to hear the sudden crash of the translucent sheet, and to look full into the face of the Almighty looming up before us.

Chapin was a Universalist, and his most interesting parishioner was Horace Greeley, whose humanitarian ideas naturally inclined him to a very mild creed. As young men, strangers to the congregation, were usually shown to seats just in front of the pulpit, I could easily see Mr. Greeley in his pew on a side aisle, just behind the front row. He generally stalked in rather early, the pockets of his long white coat filled with newspapers, and, immediately on taking his seat, went to sleep. As soon as service began he awoke, looked first to see how many vacant places were in the pew, and then, without a word, put out his long arm into the aisle and with one or two vigorous scoops pulled in a sufficient number of strangers standing there to fill all the vacancies; then--he slept again. Indeed, he slept through most of the written parts of Dr. Chapin's sermons; but whenever there came anything eloquent or especially thoughtful, Greeley's eyes were wide open and fixed upon the preacher.

Greeley's humanitarianism was not always proof against the irritations of life. In his not infrequent outbursts of wrath he was very likely to consign people who vexed him to a region which, according to his creed, had no existence.

A story told of him in those days seemed to show that his creed did not entirely satisfy him; for one day, when he was trying, in spite of numberless interruptions, to write a "Tribune" leader, he became aware that some one was standing behind his chair.

Turning around suddenly, he saw a missionary well known in the city slums,--the Rev. Mr. Pease,--and asked in his highest, shrillest, most complaining falsetto, "Well, what do YOU want?"

Mr. Pease, a kindly, gentle, apologetic man, said deprecatingly, "Well, Mr. Greeley, I have come for a little help. We are still trying to save souls in the Five Points." "Oh," said Mr. Greeley, "go along! go along! In my opinion, there ain't half so many men d.a.m.ned as there ought to be."

But though Chapin's influence did not restrain Greeley at all times, it undoubtedly did much for him, and it did much for us of the younger generation; for it not only broadened our views, but did something to better our hearts and raise our aims.

In this mention of the forces which acted upon my religious feelings I ought to include one of a somewhat different sort.

There was one clergyman whose orthodoxy, though not of an extreme type, was undoubted, and who exercised a good and powerful influence upon me. This was the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon, pastor of the First Congregational church in New Haven. He was a man of great intellectual power, a lover of right and hater of wrong, a born fighter on the side of every good cause, at times pungent, witty, sarcastic, but always deeply in earnest. There was a general feeling among his friends that, had he not gone into the church, he would have been eminent in political life; and that is my belief, for he was by far the most powerful debater of his time in the councils of his church, and his way of looking at great questions showed the characteristics of a really broad-minded statesman. His sermons on special occasions, as at Thanksgiving and on public anniversaries, were noted for their directness and power in dealing with the greater moral questions before the people. On the other hand, there was a saying then current, "Dull as Dr. Bacon when he's nothing but the Gospel to preach"; but this, like so many other smart sayings, was more epigrammatic than true: even when I heard him preach religious doctrines in which I did not at all believe, he seemed to me to show his full power.

Toward the end of my college course I was subjected to the influence of two very powerful men, outside of the university, who presented entirely new trains of thought to me. The first of these was Dr. Alonzo Potter, Bishop of Pennsylvania, who had been the leading professor at Union College, Schenectady, before his elevation to the bishopric, and who, both as professor and as bishop, had exercised a very wide influence. He was physically, intellectually, and morally of a very large pattern. There was something very grand and impressive about him. He had happened to come to Syracuse during one of my vacations; on a Sat.u.r.day evening he gave a lecture upon the tendencies to loose supernaturalism as shown in what were known as "spiritualistic"

phenomena; and on the following day he preached a simple, plain, straightforward sermon on Christian morals. Both these utterances impressed me and strengthened my conviction that every thinking young man and woman ought to maintain relations with some good form of religious organization just as long as possible.

Toward the end of my Yale course came an influence of a very different sort. It was at the consecration of a Roman Catholic church at Saratoga. The ma.s.s was sung by an Italian prelate, Bedini, who as governor and archbishop at Bologna had, a few years before, made himself detested throughout the length and breadth of Italy by the execution of the priest patriot Ugo Ba.s.si; and he was now, as papal nuncio to Brazil, environed by all the pomp possible. The ma.s.s did not greatly impress me, but the sermon, by Archbishop Hughes of New York, I shall always remember. His subject was the doctrine of transubstantiation, and, standing upon the altar steps, he developed an argument most striking and persuasive. He spoke entirely without notes, in a straightforward way, and at times with eloquence, though never with any show of rhetoric: voice and bearing were perfect; and how any one accepting his premises could avoid his conclusions I could not see then and cannot see now. I was proof against his argument, for the simple reason that I felt the story of the temptation of Jesus by Satan, which he took for his text, to be simply a legend such as appears in various religions; still, the whole was wonderfully presented; and, on my return to the hotel, my father was greatly encouraged as to my religious development when I gave to him a synopsis of the whole sermon from end to end.

Next day there resulted a curious episode. Notices were posted throughout Saratoga that Father Gavazzi, the Italian patriot and heretic, famous for his oratory, would hold a meeting in the grove back of Congress Hall Hotel, at three in the afternoon, and would answer the archbishop's argument. When the hour arrived an immense crowd was a.s.sembled, and among them many Catholics, some of whom I knew well,--one of them a young priest to whom I had become strongly attached at school. Soon appeared the orator. He was of most striking presence--tall, handsome, with piercing black eyes and black hair, and clad in a long semi-monastic cloak. His first line of argument was of little effect, though given with impa.s.sioned gestures and a most sympathetic voice; but soon he paused and spoke gently and simply as follows: "When I was a priest in Italy I daily took part in the ma.s.s. On festivals I often saw the fasting priest fill the chalice as full as he dared with strong wine; I saw him p.r.o.nounce the sacred words and make the sacred sign over it; and I saw, as everybody standing round him clearly saw, before the end of the service, that it flushed his face, thickened his voice, and enlivened his manner.

My fellow-Christians" (and here his voice rang out like a trumpet), "who is the infidel, who is the blasphemer,--I who say that no change took place in the wine before the priest drank it, and that no miracle was performed, or the man who says that his fellow-man can be made drunk on the blood of the blessed Son of G.o.d?"

The effect was startling, even on Protestants: but on the Roman Catholics present it was most thrilling; and I remember that an old Irishwoman, seated on the steps of the platform as these words were uttered, clapped her hands to her ears and ran from the place screaming. I must confess that my sympathies were with her rather than with the iconoclast, despite his gifts and graces.

CHAPTER LX

IN THE EUROPEAN ATMOSPHERE--1853-1856

Leaving Yale in 1853, I pa.s.sed nearly three years in Europe; and observation of the effects resulting from the various orthodoxies in England, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy developed my opinions in various ways. I was deeply susceptible to religious architecture, music, and, indeed, to the n.o.bler forms of ceremonial. I doubt whether any man ever entered Westminster Abbey and the various cathedrals of Great Britain--and I have visited every one of them of any note--with a more reverent feeling than that which animated me; but some features of the Anglican service as practised at that time repelled me; above all, I disliked the intoning of the prayers, as I then heard it for the first time. A manly, straightforward pet.i.tion made by a man standing or kneeling before his Maker, in a natural, earnest voice, has always greatly impressed me; but the sort of whining, drawling, falsetto in which the Anglican prayers were then usually intoned simply drove out all religious thoughts from my mind. I had a feeling that the Almighty must turn with contempt from a man who presumed thus to address him. Some prayers in the church service had from a very early period taken a deep place in my heart: the prayer of St. Chrysostom in the morning service, the first prayer in the ante-communion service, the prayer "for the whole state of Christ's church militant," and some of the collects had become, as it were, part of me; so much the more disappointed and disgusted was I, then, to hear prayer made in what seemed to me a sickly, unmanly whine.

Although the feelings thus aroused by religious observances in England and other parts of Europe were frequently unedifying, there was one happy exception to the rule. Both in the Church of England and in the Roman Catholic churches of the Continent I always greatly enjoyed the antiphonal chanting of the Psalter. To me this has always been--the imprecatory psalms excepted--by far the n.o.blest feature in Christian worship as worship; for, coming down as it does from the Jewish Church through the whole history of the Christian Church, and being practised by all the great bodies of Jews and Christians, it had, and still has, to me a great significance, both religious and historic. In the cathedrals of the continent of Europe--and I have visited every one of note except those of Spain--I cared little for what Browning's bishop calls "the blessed mutter of the ma.s.s," but the chanting of the Psalter always attracted me. Many were the hours during which I sat at vespers in abbeys and cathedrals, listening to the Latin psalms until they became almost as familiar to me as the English Psalter. On the other hand, I was at times greatly repelled by perfunctory performances of the service, both Protestant and Catholic. The "Te Deum" which I once heard recited by an Anglican clergyman in the chapel at the castle of Homburg dwells in my memory as one of the worst things of its kind I ever heard, and especially there remains a vivid remembrance of the invocation, which ran as follows:

"Ha-a-ow-ly, Ha-a-a-ow-ly, Ha-a-ow-ly: La-a-rd Gawd of Sabbith!"

But this was not the only thing of the kind, for I have heard utterances nearly, if not quite, as bad in various English cathedrals,--as bad, indeed, as the famous reading, "He that hath yeahs to yeah, let him yeah."

As to more important religious influences, I had, during my first visit to Oxford in 1853, a chance to understand something of the two currents of thought then showing themselves in the English Church. On a Sunday morning I went to Christ Church Cathedral to hear the regius professor of Hebrew, Dr. Jacobson, whom, years afterward, I saw enthroned as bishop in the cathedral at Chester.

It is a church beautiful in itself, and consecrated not only by the relics of mediaeval saints, but by the devotions of many generations of scholars, statesmen, and poets; and in front of the pulpit were a body of young men, the most promising in Great Britain; yet a more dull, mechanical discourse could not be imagined. The preacher maundered on like a Tartar praying-mill; every hearer clearly regarding his discourse as an Arab regards a sand-storm.

In the afternoon I went to St. Mary's, and heard the regular university sermon, before a similar audience, by Fraser, a fellow of Oriel College. It was not oratorical, but straightforward, earnest, and in a line of thought which enlisted my sympathies.

The young preacher especially warned his audience that if the Church of England was to remain the Church of England, she must put forth greater efforts than any she had made for many years; and he went on to point out some of the lines on which these exertions should be made,--lines which, I am happy to say, have since been taken by great numbers of excellent men of the Anglican communion.