Prophets, and Saints, holy men and women; and, as if this were not enough, to see Him as He is, in His essential perfections, and to know Him. One can't sustain the effort of such a thought, which shows how great a change must pass on one before the great Consummation. Well, the more one can think of dear Father and Mother, and dear dear Uncle James and Uncle Frank, and Cousin George, and Uncle and Aunt William, others too, uncles and aunts, and your dear Fanny, and your husband, though it would be untrue to say I knew him, taken so early-the more one thinks of them all the better. And I have, Sophy, so many very different ones to think of Edwin and Fisher, and so many Melanesians taken away in the very first earnestness and simplicity of a new convert's faith. How many have died in my arms-God be thanked-in good hope!
'If by His great mercy there be a place for me there, I feel persuaded that I shall there find many of those dear lads, whom indeed I think of with a full heart, full of affection and thankfulness.
'I have been reading the 'Memoir of Mr. Keble,' of course with extreme interest. It is all about events and chiefly about persons that one has heard about or even known. I think we get a little autobiography of our dear Uncle John in it too, for which I don't like it the less.
There are passages, as against going to Borne, which I am glad to see in print; they are wanted now again, I fear. I am glad you like Moberly's 'Bampton Lectures.' His book on 'The Great Forty Days,' his best book (?) after all, has the germ of it all. I am so thankful for his appointment to Salisbury. I dare say you know that he is kind enough to write to me occasionally; and he sends me his books, one of the greatest of the indirect blessings of being known to Mr. Keble. I do very little in the way of reading, save that I get a quiet hour for Hebrew, 5-6 A.M., and I do read some theology. In one sense it is easier reading to me than other books, history, poetry, because, though I don't know much about it, I know nothing about them.
'My pleasure would be, if with you, in talking over such little insight as I may have received into the wondrous harmony and symmetry of the whole Bible, by tolerably close examination of the text of the Greek, and to some extent of the Hebrew. The way in which a peculiar word brings a whole passage or argument en rapport with a train of historical associations or previous statements is wonderful; e.g., the verb of which Moses is formed occurs only in Exodus ii. 10, 2 Samuel xxii. 17, Psalm xviii. 16. See how the magnificent description of the Passage of the Red Sea in Psalm xviii. is connected with Moses by this one word. These undesigned coincidences, and (surely) proofs of inspiration are innumerable.
'I do delight in it: only I want more help, far more. We have great advantages in this generation. Dear Uncle James had no Commentary, one might almost say, on Old Testament or New Testament. Ellicott, Wordsworth, and Alford on the New Testament were not in existence; and the Germans, used with discrimination, are great helps. An orthodox Lutheran, one Delitzsch (of whom Liddon wrote that Dr. Pusey thinks highly of his Hebrew scholarship), helps me much in Isaiah. He has sucked all the best part out of Vitringa's enormous book, and added much minute, and I am told correct criticism. And how grand it is! This morning-it is now 6.15 A.M.-I have been reading part of that wonderful chapter xxvi.
'It strikes me that the way to teach a class or a congregation is to bring out the doctrine from the very words of Scripture carefully, critically examined and explained. Only think, Sophy, of the vague desultory way in which we all, more or less, read; and we have accepted a phraseology without enquiring to a great extent, and use words to which we attach no definite meaning. Few in the congregation could draw out in clear words what they mean when they talk of faith, justification, regeneration, conversion, All language denoting ideas and thoughts is transferred to the region of the mind from denoting at first only external objects and sensations. This is in accordance with the mystery of all, the union of mind and matter-which no pagan philosopher could comprehend-the extreme difficulty of solving which caused Dualism and Asceticism on the one hand, and neglect of all bodily discipline on the other. Mind and matter must be antagonistic, the work of different beings: man must get rid of his material part to arrive at his true end and perfection.
'So some said, 'Mortify, worry the body, which is essentially and inherently evil.' 'No,' said others, 'the sins of the body don't hurt the mind; the two things are distinct, don't react on one another.' (St. Paul deals with all this in the Colossians.) The Incarnation is the solution or the culmination of the mystery.
'What a prose! but I meant, that people so often use words as if the use of a word was equivalent to the knowledge of the thought which, in the mind of an accurate thinker, accompanies the utterance of the word.
'I should think that three-fourths of what we clergymen say is unintelligible to the mass of the congregation. We assume an acquaintance with the Bible and Prayer-book, thought, and a knowledge of the meaning of words which few, alas! possess. We must begin, then, with the little ones; as far as I see, all children are apt to fail at the point when they ought to be passing from merely employing the memory (in learning by heart, e.g., the Catechism) by exercising the reasoning and thinking faculty.
''Well now, you have said that very well, now let us think what it means.'
'How well Dr. Pusey says, in his Sermons, 'Not altogether intentional deliberate vice, but thoughtlessness is destroying souls.'
'I run on at random, dear Sophy, hoping to give you one and a half hour's occupation on a sick bed or couch, and because, as you say, this is the only converse we are likely to have on earth.
'I think I am too exclusively fond of this reading, very little else interests me. I take up a theological book as a recreation, which is, perhaps, hardly reverent, and may narrow the mind; but even Church history is not very attractive to me. I like Jackson and Hooker, and some of the moderns, of whom I read a good many; and I lose a good deal of time in diving into things too deep by half for me, while I forget or don't learn simple things.
'All this modern rage for reviews, serials, magazines, I can't abide. My mind is far too much distracted already, and that fragmentary mode of reading is very bad for many people, I am sure.
'Naturally enough at forty-two years of age ninety-nine hundredths of the 'lighter' books seem to me mere rubbish. They come to me occasionally. However, there are younger ones here, so it isn't sheer waste to receive such donations: they soon get out of my room. Not, mind you, that I think this the least evidence of my being wiser, or employing my time more carefully than other folk. Only I want you to know what I am, and what I think.
'Pena has sent me a nice book which I wanted: 1st. Because I have a great personal liking for Shairp, a simple-minded, affectionate man, with much poetical feeling and good taste-a kindly-natured man. 2nd. Because he writes in an appreciative kind of way, and is the very opposite of .... whom I can't stand with his insufferable self- sufficiency, and incapacity for appreciating the nobler, simpler, more generous natures who are unlike him. Well! that is fierce. But there is a school of men whom I can't stand. Their nature repels me, and I hardly wish to like them; which is an evil feeling.
'I shall add a line in a few days.
'My very dearest love to Aunty-dear Aunty; and if I can't write to Pena, give her my best love and thanks for her book.
'Dear Sophy, your loving Cousin,
'J. C. P.'
Two other letters, one to each of the sisters, were in progress at this time. To Joanna, who had been grieved for the poor girl whose transgression had occurred in the beginning of the year, he says:-
'About Semtingvat, you must be comforted about her. For a poor child who, two short years before, had assumed as a matter of course that a woman simply existed to be a man's slave in every kind of way, her fault could not, I think, be regarded as very great. Indeed, there was much comfort from the first; and since that time they not only have gone on well, but I do believe that their religious character has been much strengthened by the kind of revelation they then obtained of what Christianity really does mean. Anyhow, all notice the fact that U-- has improved very much, and they all sing Semtingvat's praises. I had no difficulty about marrying them after a little while. I spoke openly in chapel to everyone about it. Their wedding was not as other weddings-no festivity, no dressing of the chapel, no feast, no supper and fun and holiday. It was perfectly understood to be in all respects different from a bright, happy wedding. But it was quite as much for the sake of all, for the sake of enforcing the new teaching about the sanctity of marriage, that we made so very much of what (as men speak) was under the circumstances a comparatively light fault, less than an impure thought on the part of such as have been taught their duty from their childhood.
'I am almost confused with the accounts from England. All seems in a state of turmoil and confusion; all the old landmarks being swept away by a deluge of new opinions as to all matters civil and ecclesiastical. I don't think that we ought to refuse to see these signs of a change in men's mode of regarding great political and religious questions. A man left high and dry on the sand-bank of his antiquated notions will do little good to the poor folk struggling in the sea way, though he is safer as far as he is himself concerned by staying where he is than by
