DR. PUSEY.*

SONE biographies derive their interest mainly from their subject; others from the literary skill of the biographer. Both desiderata would have been fulfilled in Pusey's Life if Dr. Liddon had lived to finish the work which he began. Pusey was not only himself an interesting character, but was, in addition, intimate with some of the most interesting men of our time, and lived through one of the most exciting and dramatic periods of English history, in which, moreover, he played a conspicuous part. And Dr. Liddon was just the man to write his biography. He possessed in an unusual degree two gifts which do not often go together,—the oratorical and the literary; and behind his literary talent was a rich fund of humour and great dramatic power, with a keen appreciation of picturesque effect. According to his own scheme, the biography of Pusey was to be, in fact, a history of the Oxford Movement, with Pusey as its central figure. "It would fall," the compiler of the present volume tells us, "into four parts, to be entitled The Preparation ; The Movement ; The Struggle; The Victory.' " Dr. Liddon collected materials for all the parts, but incompletely for this volume; and he wrote most of the first volume, though without the final revision, which, owing to his fastidious taste, almost in- variably involved recasting a considerable portion of what he had written. Nor did even this preliminary carefulness satisfy him ; for his critical eye was wont to detect so many faults in the printed proof that his printers used to say that it would sometimes have been easier to distribute the type and reset it than to insert Liddon's numerous corrections. This will give an idea of the loss, even to the first volume, of Dr. Liddon's premature death. To the remaining three volumes that loss, of course, has been incalculable. The materials of the second volume had been arranged by Dr. Liddon, and parts of it written in the rough. For the third volume Dr. Liddon left only ample materials and copious notes, while "his only contribution to this volume," we are told in the preface, "is the touching description of Dr. Pusey's last days and of his death-bed." This volume also has suffered another great loss through the death of Dr. Wilson, the Warden of Seble College, to whose "careful re-

• Life of Eduard Bouverie Plumy , D.C., Canon of Christ Church, Regius Pro- fessor of Hebrew in the University of Orford. By Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.O.L., LL.D. With Portraits sad Illustrations. Vol. 1V. Londos : Longman' and Co.

vision throughout the other three volumes owe so much." Nevertheless, the volume is intensely interesting, partly because the events which it relates are closer to our own generation and concern us more obviously, and partly because the three most influential Tractarian converts to Rome play a prominent part in it—Newman, Manning, and Ward— besides other distinguished men. Newman appears in a most attractive light ; full of affection towards his old friends, Pusey and Keble, and of sympathy for their efforts to bring about a union between the Anglican and Roman Churches, though seeing the practical difficulties much more clearly than they did, and having very little hope of any successful result. The volume contains a great many of Newman's letters, all fall of that literary charm beyond their subject which marks everything that he wrote. Another distinguished man who plays a conspicuous and a most en- gaging part in this volume in connection with the subject of reunion is Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, afterwards brutally murdered by the Communists.

The volume begins by calling attention to the great change which the legislation of 1851 wrought in the University of Oxford. "It represented," the editor tells us, "far more than a change in the outward arrangements of Academical life; it was coincident with the dominance of a new spirit in the thought of the University." The Tractarian Movement was not started to counteract the Evangelicals, although that "was its immediate and most practical result." Newman was the animating and directing spirit of the Movement, though it owed its originating impulse to Keble's famous sermon and Christian Year ; and Newman himself has told us that the spectre which haunted him at that time, and hurried him home from Southern Italy for the purpose of .organising a movement in opposition to it, was Liberalism ; not the Liberalism of party politics, but the spirit of free- handling in matters of faith, combined with an Erastian policy towards the Church, which had at the period of the first Reform Bill begun to be imported from Germany.

It was to the University Act of 1854 that Dr. Liddon attributed all the mischief, as he deemed it, of the new regime at Oxford,—that Liberalism in matters of faith which held nothing too sacred or settled for critical analysis and over- throw; and he gave expression to his views and fears in an article in the Church Quarterly Review the year after Pusey's death. That article Mr. Gladstone read with surprise. Although he did not share Liddon's fears as to the future of religion in the University, he was disappointed at the results of the Act of 1854. For that Act, in his belief and intention, did but restore self-government to the University by liberating her from the tyranny of an oligarchy. The practical government of the University had been till then in the hands of the heads of Colleges, who were too prone to use their power tyrannically, as in the case of Newman and Pusey. It is not generally known that the Bill of 1854, though founded on the recommendations of a Royal Commission, was largely moulded by Mr. Gladstone, who induced Lord John Russell to let him have charge of it in the House of Commons, that he might thus be enabled the more effectually to safe- guard the rights and interests of the University, for which he was then the senior Member. Whatever evils followed from the restoration of self-government to the University must therefore, in Mr. Gladstone's opinion, be credited to the previous system rather than to the legislation of 1854.

But the truth is that the collision with "Germanism," as the new critical method was called, was bound to come, and It may be doubted whether greater evils would not have ensued from a system which could find no place for such men as Newman, Keble, and Pusey, than any that have followed from the legislation of 1854. The volume of Essays and Reviews was the product of the old system more than of the sew. Most of the " Essays " would now be thought crude and shallow where they are not harmless, and they owed their reputation at the time to the fierce onslaught made upon them, rather than to any intrinsic merits of their own. The two points brought to the test of a legal decision were the • inspiration of the Bible and the doctrine of eternal punish- ment, and few thoughtful Churchmen would now deny that the judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, apart from the offensive form in which Lord Westbury clothed it was wise as well as just. The conviction of the defendants would have fettered the freedom of Churchmen

on questions which the Church of Christendom has left unde- fined; and we should have had the Church of England com- mitted to a view of Biblical inspiration and the destiny of men after death which would have been infinitely more injurious than any temporary evils resulting from the acquittal of the incriminated essayists.

Bat there was one eminent man among the clergy—another of those wise and judicial divines who were ostracised by the oligarchy which ruled Oxford University before 1851—who

held aloof from the hurly-burly caused by Essays and Reviews. This was Dean Church. While condemning the rashness and

crudeness of some of the essayists, who had "not got their thoughts and theories into such order and consistency as to warrant their coming before the world with such revolu- tionary views," he adds : "But there has been a great deal of unwise passion and hasty abuse ; and people who have not an inkling of the difficulties which beset the questions are for settling them in a summary way, which is perilous for every one."

But the controversy about Essays and Reviews had one unexpected result, which fills a large part, and the most interesting, of this volume. Dr. Manning, who was not yet Archbishop, addressed to Dr. Pusey a. letter in pamphlet form in which be declared that the Church of England, so far from being considered by any Roman Catholics, an Posey had said, "a bulwark against infidelity," was be- lieved, on the contrary, "to be itself a source of un- belief because of the truths which it rejected." The pamphlet was so aggressive and so unfair to the Church of England that Posey determined to answer it, in spite of Newman's significant question, "Why should you answer him?" And he began his answer in the form of a letter to Keble, very much on the lines of Newman's Tract 90_ But he had not proceeded far when he changed his plan, and instead of writing, as he bad intended, a defence of the Church of England, he turned his letter to Keble into a plea for re- union between the Churches of England and Rome, and published it in an octavo volume bearing the title of The Church of England a Portion of Christ's One Holy Catholic- Church, a Means of Restoring Visible Unity : an Eirenicon. But an eirenicon implies terms, conditions; and the purpose of' Pusey's Eirenicon was to ascertain the terms on which Rome weuld agree to reunion. He therefore drew up the minimum of what he thought Rome might aceept, and the maximum which the Church of England might agree to concede. He thought the latter might accept the decrees of Trent with explanations, and allow the Pope's supremacy if understood in the sense of primacy; provided that Rome would make an authoritative declaration that some prevalent opinions and practices were not de fide, and would not be imposed on Anglicans. Believing that "the chief hindrance" for English Churchmen was the invocation of saints, and especially "the system in regard to the Blessed Virgin," he compiled a long catena of prayers, addresses, and devotions to the Virgin, which startled moderate Roman Catholics, and which was to Dr. Newman, as he expressed it, "like a bad dream."

Pusey's book was received by the British public in a manner which was as surprising as it was gratifying to its author.. The Times greeted it with a respectful review of five columns, which probably represented average opinion. Doubtless this was tine in part to the formidable case which Pusey had made out against the position assigned to the Virgin in the popular devotions of the Roman Church, and even in some authorita- tive treatises,—a position which the decree in favour of her Immaculate Conception seemed to countenance. But the goodwill with which the Eirenicon was generally received marked also the widespread influence of the Oxford Movement since the frantic outcry raised against Newman's Tract 90.

Pusey was so encouraged by the favourable reception of his book that he made up his mind to lay his case for reunion before the Vatican Council, which was then in preparation, though it did not meet till five years later. With this view he determined, after consultation with Newman and others, to take counsel with some Catholic ecclesiastics of eminence on the Continent. Of these the most eminent were Donpanloup (the illustrious Bishop of Orleans) and Darboy (Archbishop of Paris). He received much sympathy and encouragemeift from both. Darboy recognised the difficulties in the way of a successful issue to Pusey's project, "but he saw no reason why it should not be." But nothing came of Pusey's efforts, as Newman, with his knowledge alike of the -Vatican and of the English Church, had forewarned him. With the exception of Darboy himself and a few others, it turned out that what Rome wanted was the submission of iadviduals, not the

corporate reunion of Churches.

This last volume of Pusey's Life would richly repay perusal were it only for the varied light which Newman's letters, of which there are many, cast upon his singularly attractive character. But the whole volume is full of interest from beginning to end. It is a record of the part played by Dr. Pusey in the principal controversies which affected the Church of England daring the last forty years, and this of necessity brings upon the scene other distinguished persons besides Newman, and other incidents than those arising out of the question of reunion. The central figure of the whole is of course Pusey himself, and the impression which he leaves upon the mind is that of a character of great force, intel- lectual power, rare learning and industry, childlike simplicity and unworldliness, and, above all, saintliness ; together with that deficiency in the tactics of controversy which often goes with such a character, and that sanguine devotion to a cause which is so set on the end that it often overlooks the difficulties of the process. It was with a true instinct that the popular judgment fixed the name of Pusey rather than Newman's on the Tractarian Movement.

We have in this volume a most engaging picture of the saintly side of Dr. Pusey's character during the virulent out- break of cholera in the East End of London in the year 1866. Piney, who was then busy on his second volume on the ques- tion of reunion, presented himself one day unexpectedly at the Rectory of Bethnal Green, and "offered," says the ex- cellent rector, the late Septimus Hansard, "to act as my assistant curate, to visit the sick and dying, whom I could not visit, in my stead, and to minister to their spiritual wants. And he did so. Quietly and unobtrusively this trite gentle- man, this humble servant of Christ, assisted me in this most trying duty of visiting the plague-stricken houses of the poor in Bethnal Green." Piney, in addition, established "a large

temporary home for cholera patients" at Ascot, under the direct management of Miss Sellon, the Mother Superior of the Devonport Sisterhood. Mr. Hansard's description of Pusey working hard among the poor and afflicted, while snatching such momenta as he could for his literary labours, reminds one of Saint Francis. "If the word ' sweet ' had not become somewhat canting," says Mr. Hansard, "I should say there was something inexpressibly sweet in the smile and quiet laughter which so brightened his face when he was pleased and hopeful." And he gives a charming picture, with which this long notice may fittingly close, of Dr. Pusey waiting on the rector and parish doctor one day at luncheon at the hospital:

"I remonstrated, and made efforts to wait on myself. No, he said, he must wait on me. When I said, perhaps someu hat con- ventionally, that that was an honour I must not let him pay me, he said, No, it was an honour, a pleasure, to wait on a clergyman who, &c., &c., &c. And so he handed me the potatoes and the bread, poured out the beer, and made it froth, and helped us to the cutlets, &c., Ace., smiling all the time, and saying all sorts of little playful things of kindness to us, which made us all the more refreshed and encouraged."