MR. OXENHAM'S SHORT STUDIES.*
WE question whether Mr. Oxenham has done wisely in republishing his Short Studies, Ethical and Religious, from the Saturday Review, in their present form, although we prefer to have them as they stand to losing them altogether. They bear, however, unmistakable signs of the purpose for which they were originally designed—of slight sketches, calling attention in most cases to books or articles of interest at a particular time,
with jest sufficient of original reflection and comment to arouse the reader's interest, and to lead him to pursue the matter further in the work under review if he has a mind to. Such essays are necessarily cast in a form which is naturally ephemeral. They touch too lightly on the questions with which they deal to be considered serious contributions to the literature of any subject. And although the book before us presents excellent specimens of this class of writing, that fact only serves to remind us how essentially unsuited the best of such work is for permanent life. The easy style, the abundance of acute remarks, the frequency of epigrammatic expressions, and at the same time the constant evidence that the writer is unable or unwilling to get to the bottom of the questions he raises, are plain indications of the original and fitting purpose of the essays. A well-known editor of one of our quarterly reviews was once engaged in an argument with an editor of a weekly paper. The latter was so much the readier with repartee, and with answers sufficient for the moment, though not reaching the root of the matter in debate, that his opponent found him self worsted, but not in the least convinced. " I am sure I am right," he said, " but you are too quick for me. The fact is that you have a weekly mind, and I have a quarterly." And so we say that there are unmistakable signs, not, indeed, in Mr.
Oxenham, but in his book, of the weekly mind.
We have said that the publication of these essays seems to us unadvisable " in their present form," because we should naturally be the last to deny that very important and useful matter may be contained in such articles ; and there is abundance of such matter in Mr. Oxenham's book. We believe that, reduced to about half its bulk, in order to avoid repetitions, and rewritten to some extent, with a view to connecting the thoughts and giving them more definite purpose, the book would have been a good one. And it abounds in suggestive and happily expressed passages ; but the vagueness of its raison d'être, and the lack of definiteness in its design, may be gathered from the unsatisfactory nature of the author's own attempt at explanation on the subject. He remarks in his pre face that " there can be little doubt that much of the vague Agnosticism prevalent among us just now in various forms, and professed with various degrees of eager or otiose assent, may be traced to the failure or refusal to realise distinctly what is meant by such terms as belief, dogma, religion, theism, revelation." That modern Agnostics in some degree travesty Theism in their account of it, may be true enough ; but to suppose that definitions of belief, dogma, revelation, would be of any assistance in the Agnostic controversy, seems to us so preposterous, as only to make the absence of unity in the book more apparent from so far-fetched an attempt to find a common object for the various sketches. Agnosticism deals entirely with questions antecedent to dogma and revelation ; and it is of little use to speak to those who consider the human faculties radically incompetent to obtain certain or coherent knowledge of any supersensible existence of the details of dogma and revelation. It is the principle of knowledge, and not the matter known, which needs definition in their minds.
Judged, however, by the merits of its detached thoughts, the book is undoubtedly a good one ; and we proceed to place before our readers some of the passages which struck us in the course of our reading as containing in embryo very fruitful and valuable suggestions. Here, for example, is a good prima facie view of the contrast between the spirit of generous unquestioning belief and the sceptical temper :
"In the first place, then, the most rigid critic will hardly venture to maintain that the world could afford to dispense with the temper of ardent, if you will, unreasoning belief. Undoubtedly, every religion which deserves the name has put a high price upon it, and none so emphatically as the religion of the New Testament. Undoubtedly, also, we owe to it much, if not most of what is' lovely and of good report ' in human character, and noble in human deeds. Our cathedrals, our creeds, our liturgies, our varied ministries of compassion for every form of human suffering, are a bequest from the age of faith, the spirit of chivalry was its special creation, and we could ill spare those elements in modern society which are more or leas directly traceable to that spirit. Even in matters of purely secular interest we owe much to the same source. It is now pretty generally admitted that the Crusades were, to use the words of a modern writer, far removed from sympathy with any form of Christian belief, dictated by wise and statesmanlike instincts, and essential for the defence of European civilisation against the inroads of the Turk ; but the motive-impulse was derived from the passionate exhortation of Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard, not from considerations of worldly policy. Consider, again, how much that is loveable and praiseworthy, and energetic for good in individaals, springs
from the trustful and affectionate element in our nature. It is the element of friendship, the root of self-sacrifice, the impetus to every species of philanthropic effort; it finds expression in the familiar
proverb, Noblesse oblige Faith and scepticism stand to each other much in the relation of poetry and criticism. The purely sceptical spirit can no more produce heroic acts than the most admirable German commentators on Homer or Shakespeare could have written the Iliad or Macbeth. Scepticism tests ; but faith alone creates. And more than that, we feel intuitively that there is something not only imperfect, but absolutely repulsive, in the purely sceptical spirit—der Geist der stets verneint—which is satisfied with nothing, is always detecting latent evil under the form of good, and
withholds its love from whatever it cannot fully understand The great and pressing danger lies not in the spirit of faith or the spirit of scepticism in themselves, but in the unnatural antagonism of what should be natural allies Let it be fairly admitted that in religion, as in knowledge and in life, the spirit of devotion and the spirit of enquiry have each their proper sphere and their work, and that neither can attain its proper end without the assistance of the other."
The analogy touched upon in the course of this passage between faith and human love has always seemed to us especially suggestive. Both have, as a necessary part of them, the element of generosity. It has been said that the essence of a man's love is devotion ; of a woman's, trust. " J'ai son amour, it a ma foi," sings the heroine of the " Chanson de Florian?' But both the devotion of the man and the trust of the woman become im possible if it is attempted to base them upon a cold and critical scrutiny. They rest upon considerations which would not have their due weight with one whose temper in the matter was critical.
An acute writer has observed that a man's happiest thought, if he loves a woman, is not "how she loves me," but "how good she is ;" and it is the appreciation and love of what is beautiful in her character which makes him devote himself to her in spite of her faults. The critical spirit, on the contrary, so readily sees the faults, and has so little sympathy with that which was so much to the other that the faults did not with him weigh one feather against it, as to be fatal to real devotion. And so, too, with a woman's trust ; it is a keen sense of being deeply caredfor by one who she knows would do anything for her, which is generally at the root of her feeling. A critical weighing of every quality would kill that generous and grateful instinct which is the natural and sufficient basis for her love. Religions faith may be said to partake in some sense of the nature of a man's love and a woman's alike,—that is to say, it contains in it the elements alike of devotion and of trust. And it is surely true to say, by parity of reasoning, that just as in both the instances we have named, so much only of the sceptical temper is needed as to show that devotion and trust are not misplaced,—that the devotion is to one who is grateful and good, that trust is placed in one who is trustworthy and devoted,—but not that excess of sceptical caution which feels more keenly the faults than the goodness, the shortcomings than the devotion, and so dulls the perception of what is most important ; so, too, in religions inquiry, the first object should be generously to appreciate all that is worthy and great in religion,—not, it is true, without some wariness, lest you should give your whole heart to what is unworthy of it, but with an eye rather for what is noble and truthful than for what is defective, remembering that as there is nothing perfectly good under the sun, so there is no system of belief under the sun which does not present some apparent spots, though they be in the highest creeds but as the spots in the sun himself.
And now let us give one more specimen of our author's style from an essay of a very different class from the one we have just been noticing. In the study on "The Power of Tinsel" Mr. Oxenham thus humorously describes the path to fortune and reputation of the successful physician, who earns his success rather by the showy gifts of manner, tact, and appearance, than by those qualities which should properly be distinctive of those most eminent in their profession
" Manners maketh man,' according to the proverb. Manners make wealthy physicians and influential bishops in very sober fact. Who are they that enjoy the largest practice and the highest reputation for medical skill, whose word is law to a whole host of dyspeptic dowagers and anxious mothers, whose visits are regarded as a favour, and their saloons thronged by a crowd of expectant votaries, and who suck thereont no small advantage P Not always the men who have most completely mastered the secrets of medical science, or who have cared the greatest number of their patients. Few people inquire or care about that. The velvet tread, the unctuous pressure of the baud, the silvery intonation, the sympathetic yet reassuring smile, these are the infallible passports to many hearts, and, what is more, to many pockets. The Job's-comforter who insists with obtrusive honesty on telling disagreeable truths, who pronounces with merciless fidelity the death-warrant of the patient whom no human skill can save, and refuses to be fee'd by the interesting
hypochondriac who likes to combine the luxury of valetudinarianism with the luxury of health, will too often at best be treated with cold respect. Ho will not be trusted or employed. Far other is the lot of the pompous scioliet, who knows, in a different sense from the apostles, how to become all things to all men, and more especially to all women. His cares, where any cure was needed, will be few. But he can whisper bland nothings into the doting mother's ear, as he suggests some new remedy, as futile as the last, to mock the last agonies of her dying child. He is never at a loss when all is over to account for his skill being baffled by circumstances over which he had no control. The case was exceptional, or he was called in too late; and in the meantime, by the chronic) treatment of imaginary ailments, ho has won his income and his name. We have heard of a physician receiving fifteen guineas each time for a visit, repeated every other day for years, his only real business being to condole in a professional manner with the wife of his osteusible patient, who was a hopeless invalid:'
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