JOWETT AND MAURICE.

[To Tax EDITOR 01 THE " SPECTATOR."]

SIR,—Althongh I have not yet read the "Life of Jowett," I hope I may offer a few remarks on your very suggestive article in the Spectator of April 3rd. In my youth I heard my uncle, the late Mr. Cowper-Temple (afterwards Lord Mount Temple)—himself a warm admirer of Maurice— express strong disapproval of the " Essays and Reviews ; " and on another occasion, some forty years ago, I met at his table one of Maurice's leading disciples, who, probably without weighing his words, called Jowett "a loose infidel sort of man." If I am now not less shocked by this remark than I then was, I am certainly less surprised by it ; for the difference between Jowett and Maurice seems to me funda- mental.

At the risk of seeming egotistical, I should like to illustrate my opinion by quoting Jowett's criticism on a volume of reprinted essays which I long ago foolishly called "Stones of Stumbling." To my juvenile defence of euthanasia, at least in its original form, he expressed the strongest antipathy, pronouncing that " cure for incurables " to be opposed to all the best instincts of our nature. But of the other essays contained in the volume (instead of saying of the entire book " Burn it and try again") he used language which has been treasured up in my memory. " They are," he said, "extremely interesting. I wish you would write more." The volume, in attacking the belief in eternal punishment, employs negative arguments, a sample of which may be thus broadly expressed :—" The Gospels undoubtedly contain passages which make for the belief in eternal punishment. But they contain equally plain passages which tended to produce—nay, which actually did produce— the belief that the Day of Judgment was at hand. If our Lord was either fallible or liable to be misreported in regard to the end of the world, why not in regard to the endlessness of hell ?" I am not here concerned with the soundness of this and similar arguments, about which indeed I should now assume a very different tone from that which I assumed twenty years ago.

My point is that with their main scope Jowett was in sympathy. This, indeed, might have been inferred from what I state in my Memoir of him (p. 3),—namely, that when I asked him how he reconciled the right of divorce with certain texts in the Gospels, he gave me to understand that persons who lay stress on those texts ought to lay equal stress on the injunction to "swear not at all," so that, in fact, they ought to refuse to take judicial oaths. Sometimes he even went the length of saying that he would be sorry for his faith to be dependent on anything that was said or done eighteen centuries ago. Truly between him and Maurice there was a great gulf fixed!

Perhaps the views of these two remarkable men may be thus roughly distinguished from each other, and also from the view of one of the ablest of their orthodox assailants. In Mansel the moralist was subordinated to the Christian. In Maurice the Christian and the moralist were fused to- gether. In Jowett the Christian was subordinated to the moralist; and the subordination became more complete as he grew older. Towards the close of his life he became more and more,of a devout Theist, but less and less of a dogmatic Christian.—I am, Sir, &c., LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE, Athenwum Club, Pall Mall, April 5th.

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SIR,—Agreeing entirely with many of your remarks in the Spectator of April 3rd on Jowett and Maurice, and believing that they were both of them men who have done good service to their generation, I feel that there are some very important points of difference as to their belief and influence as teachers, to which it may be desirable to call further attention. This influence in the case of Jowett was a very peculiar one, for it would be difficult to point to any one who for nearly fifty years, and at a remarkable time, bad such extraordinary opportunities of influencing a great College, and whose devo- tion to his pupils enabled him, in spite of some singular peculiarities, to obtain such a hold upon their respect and admiration; and if this, in some of its most important points, differed entirely from the spirit of Maurice, it may be well to bring out its character more distinctly.

The most remarkable feature in the life and teaching of Maurice I believe to have been his entire confidence in the historical truth of Christianity; and though the warmth of his faith may sometimes have led him into what Jowett rather contemptuously describes as " mysticism," his one object was to impress upon his readers the entire certainty of the life, the miracles, the Resurrection of Jesus. Now it certainly would not be just to say that Jowett had not a deep reverence for the character of Christ, or that he was not what Professor Campbell calls " profoundly attached to Christianity." But what are we to call that Christianity which discards all belief in miracles, including, of course, the Birth and Resurrection of Christ, which in speaking of him, "feels it impossible to concentrate our attention on a person scarcely known to us, who lived 1,800 years ago," and of whom he asks, " Did not SL Paul idealise Christ, and do we suppose that all which he says of Him is simply matter of fact ? " and adds, "How far can we individualise Christ, or is He only the perfect image of humanity ? " I certainly doubt whether Maurice would not have received such an account of Christianity with the same " torrent of indignation " with which you mention his having received Sir E. Strachey's description of Jowett's definition of "Justification by Faith."

The above passages, however, are far from giving an idea of the spirit of universal doubt which pervades Jowett's theology. He has given himself a very curious collection of many of these in "Notes on Religious Subjects," written some years before his death, in which, beginning by saying that "this is an age of facts which are disproved, e.g., miracles or a belief in dogmas which are mere words," he proceeds to give some "intellectual forms in which this new Christianity will be presented." Let us take a few of these :—

(1) " That we know as much as Christ did, or might know if we had given ourselves for men."

(2) " That neither St. Paul nor Christ had any knowledge of a truth, which can be described under the conditions of space or time different from our own."

(3) "That the language of the Prophets has a much nearer relation to our feelings than the language of St. Paul, and in- finitely nearer than the language of dogmatic theology."

(4) "That Christianity is fast becoming one religion among- many. We believe in a risen Christ, not risen, however, in the

sense in which a drowning man is restored to life nor in any sense which we can define or explain."

It would be easy if your space allowed it to increase these

quotations ad infinitum, for in fact Jowett hardly ever. speaks of Christian belief without a demurrer; but I have given you the above passages solely for two reasons,—first, because I think it only just to show how entirely unlike Jowett's teaching was to that of one who may certainly be called a great teacher of this generation, Frederick Maurice ; and secondly, because it is certainly a dangerous feature in. writings of great ability and attractiveness when on the most important of subjects they teach nothing but doubt. I gladly indeed recognise that Jowett's belief in God was real and intense, even though he suggests that " the personality of God, like the immortality of man, may pass into an idea ;" but that the utter uncertainty of his belief in every definite- doctrine of Christianity must have had a most unfortunate effect on many of his ablest pupils is no matter of doubt.. It was indeed a matter of surprise, even to many of his friends, that he thought it right to minister and preach in a church when he disagreed with every creed, and almost every doctrine, which it believed.—I am, Sir, &c., OxoNIENsts..

[To TER EDITOR 0/ THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Your article on these two men reminds me of a saying by the one about the other. Some one having quoted Maurice, Jowett remarked, " Maurice thinks that every- body is right, and everybody is wrong ; and that he- himself is more right and more wrong than anybody." If my memory is right, this was after a correspondence. between Dr. Pusey, Bishop Tait, and Maurice, in which, after Tait had administered a stern rebuke to both parties, Maurice wrote thanking him for his reproof, and saying how much he felt that he himself needed it. I do not know whether this story appears in Jowett's Life, which I have not yet seen; but I have reason to believe that one of the biographers could vouch for its authenticity. It expresses admirably the combination of deep humility with strong conviction which was so characteristic of Maurice, and it illustrates your-

remark that "Maurice was always conscious of his own shortcomings; indeed he had a singular habit of feeling responsible for the shortcomings of others as if they were due to his own default."—I am, Sir, &c.,

Chelmsford, April 5th. R. E. BARTLETT.

[TO THE EDITOR OF TIE *SPECTATOR."] SIR, —I hope you will allow a few words of protest, a propos of your article on Maurice and Jowett, against your ascrip- tion (for you seem to adopt it from Sir E. Strachey) to the former of " severity in belabouring opponents whom he found insensible to the grandest features of the Christian theology," and your assertion that he "expressed his impatience in the midst of the severe discipline he inflicted in something like the question, Why is he so stupid then P ' " If there were any possibility of misunderstanding the words I have cited, I should feel sure I must have misunderstood them, so utterly false do they appear to me. The only opponent I can think of whom he attacked with anything of the ferocity you suggest was Dean Mansel, and unquestionably the animus of that attack was the exact reverse of irritation against stupidity. It was indignation against what he thought a perversion of logic and learning, and I do not think he ever felt indignation without seeing or imagining something of the kind. I believe that if you were to peruse all the volumes he has left behind him, you would not find a single sentence which could be construed as indignation with stupidity. It was made impossible both by his strength and his weakness, by that sympathy with weakness and poverty which was so noble, and also by that suspicion of logical coherence which I think was not altogether admirable.

—I am, Sir, &c., JULIA. WEDGWOOD.