BISHOP WILSON'S MAXIMS.*
WE think it very likely that the majority of readers who know anything of Bishop Wilson have been introduced to Wm through Matthew Arnold, whose constant references to Wilson have frequently provoked curiosity about one of whom Bo little was known, but who, it was supposed, must be worth consideration seeing that he had impressed so fastidious a mind as that of Arnold. Those who know Wilson only at second hand through Arnold may be assured that the old Bishop of Sodor and Man is worth knowing for himself, and that the quotations from his maxims in Arnold's writings are genuine examples of the religions aphorisms of a singularly fine spirit. Wilson himself was born in 1663, was educated at Dublin University, and, after holding a curacy and a chaplaincy, was made Bishop of the Manx diocese in 1697, holding the bishopric for fifty-eight years. He was an untiring worker, helping the secular as well as the spiritual life of the islanders. He not only preached and visited, he built, planted, improved agriculture, promoted libraries, exer- cised hospitality, made efforts to found colleges, and published the first book in the Manx language. His bishopric was a somewhat stormy one. At that time the Bishop was a kind of civil as well as religious authority in the island, and sins were dealt with by him in his civil capacity as well as offences against the State. The upshot was that the Bishop's spiritual jurisdiction and his attempt to enforce penalties for sins culminated in organised opposition and the imprisonment of the Bishop in a dark and dreary dungeon. While there he made his translation of the Bible into the Manx language. He was, however, liberated, took up his work once more, refused thrice over an English bishopric, and died in 1755 at the age of ninety-two. It is interesting to know that the coloured steps at the entrance to St. Paul's Cathedral were the gift of Bishop Wilson, having been quarried in the Isle of Man.
We should not, perhaps, go to the episcopal class for the very finest instances of absolute Christian devotion and the most intimate acquaintance with the mind of Christ and the heart of the Christian Gospel. Bishops, like Martha, are usually cumbered with too much serving, and a Fenelon or an Anselm is apt to be a rare phenomenon in the episcopal rank. But Wilson was also an exception to the rule. He lived entirely for ideal Christian ends, turned aside absolutely horn the spirit and maxims of the world, would hold no re- lations whatever with the spirit of secularity, modelled his life on the precepts of Christ, and taught others to do so. There is no attempt in these maxims at evasion, there is no gloss put on the commands of Christ for the sake of making the Christian life comfortable. Wilson did not believe that it was comfortable, or could ever be so. Most of us to-day are trying to stretch formulas to the bursting-point, to arrange agreeable relations between God and what is called in the New Testament "the world " ; we repeat with the Apostle that the things which are seen are temporal, and those which are unseen are eternal ; but we scarcely believe it,—certainly, with our intense devotion to the seen, we act as though we did not believe it. But Bishop Wilson would have no divided allegiance. Either you are living in accord- ance with the mind of Christ, or you are not, and if you are not, nothing can save you. Better, in that case, be an honest pagan ; for the greater the pretences you make, the worse is the doom awaiting you. We have one, in short, who really lives in the light of unseen realities, and who looks at the secular affairs of the world in a way that seems unnatural to the average sensual man with what Arnold called his " bloodthirsty clinging to life." "Nor love thy life nor hate, but what thou liv'st, live well," said Milton ; and Wilson agrees,—" A true Christian is neither fond of life, nor weary of it." Life is not in itself a specially glorious or attractive thing ; it is to be lived through for discipline, and it is a vestibule to the larger and more real life beyond.
Such a view modifies profoundly the whole of life; it makes our conduct quite different from what it otherwise would be. He who lives this life will not worry about trifles. "Strive not," says Wilson, "about little things, lest you lose the sight of the mark of your high calling." You will do your work, and
'Maxims of Piety and of Christianity. By Thomas Wilson, D.D., Bishop of or and Man. New Edition, with Preface and Notes, by Frederic Belton, inir of St. Andrew's, Stoke Newington. London Macmillan and Co.
seek a modest competence, but you will give no thought to the accumulation of riches. Like his Master, Bishop Wilson has much to say on this head,—indeed, more than on any other. It is the energy spent, the time consumed, on getting riches, not so much the heaped-up result that, according to Wilson, wars against the soul. You cannot be serving God and Mammon at the same time. We are made for divine ends, not for this present world, and " we reproach our Maker when we act as if we were made only for little ends." The greater our ends, there- fore, the less we shall trouble ourselves with those things that the mass of men seek after,—wealth, reputation, fame, sensual ease. "The fewer desires, the more peace." And if there is no peace, there is no salvation. Nor shall we care for what men say. "Affect contempt rather than applause." It may be said in general that there are three great aims of most men,—to have, to know, and to be. The first is the vulgar ideal of the pushing, struggling mass. The more you accu- mulate, the less satisfied you are, the less disposed you are for the pure inward treasure. To know is a more exalted ideal, and yet it is rightly condemned as an ideal by Bishop Wilson, who would scarcely have approved of Browning's Grammarian. " Affect not knowledge any farther than it is serviceable to virtue and a holy life. There is an in- temperance in seeking after higher things, as much as after high feeding." The same idea is still better expressed:—" An eager desire of knowledge ought to be governed and restrained, being as dangerous and sinful as any other inordinate appe- tite, even as those that are confessedly sensual. Happiness is promised, not to the learned, but to the good." That is a lesson needful in a high degree to our age, when the thirst for knowledge in and for itself has become a disease of the most dangerous kind. The third ideal—to be—is the true one, and this is only attained by belief in the Christian Revelation ; not lip or mere mental belief, not in assenting to intellectual propositions, but in a new life, a renewed will, and a resolute intention to live in daily life as though the cardinal facts of the Revelation were true.
It must not be supposed that Bishop Wilson was, on the one hand, a mere ascetic, or, on the other, a kind of Boanerges, calling down fire from heaven on a wicked, sensual world. He thinks, as do most sane men, that we should use the world, but as not abusing it. He is no Simon Stylites, but rather of the temper of Francis of Assisi, enjoying this beautiful earth, but yet " making his moral being his prime care." So far from being a zealot, he warns us against any mere zeal with- out the knowledge that directs it into an agency for good. There is nothing of the " bray of Exeter Hall" here, nothing of the moral banalities to which so many excellent men are prone. It was, indeed, his delicacy that endeared Bishop Wilson to Matthew Arnold, the delicacy rather of the finest Catholic spirit than that which we are accustomed usually to associate with Protestantism. Wilson was kept from mere quietism by his charitable and useful secular work, but the bias of his nature leant to that side. While his nature was intensely spiritual, his intellect was keen, and he held to a faith which we believe to be true, that obedience to right living assists the intellect. The man who lives straight is apt to think right. One is, therefore, struck by the clear thinking of these maxims,—by their simple, yet often pro- found utterance, clad in terse language sometimes as fine as the sayings of the greatest religions thinkers. How excellent is this, e.g. : " Moral virtue consists in a temper of mind, and conformity of manners to right reason and the will of God." And this : " There is a danger in being persuaded before one understands." Or this : " He that takes all the liberty he may, will certainly repent of it. In all earthly pleasures be satisfied with a little, and you will never repent of doing KC This is quite Greek, in its insistence on the doctrine of "not too much." The following also is admirable : " It is one thing for a man to fill his understanding and memory with truths, and another to nourish his heart with them." It is exactly because one feels always that Wilson's heart was in full accord with his mind, and that the great Christian ideas of which he is the exponent had not only taken posses- sion of his intellect, but had been received into a " good and honest heart," that we are able to feel with Arnold that here is a real guide and helper in the inner life. Bacon's Essays have been called "a little Bible of earthly wisdom." Wilson's Maxims are a manual of the wisdom from above.
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