nature which make me always unwilling to undergo the responsibility of advising any man to send his son to a public school. There has been a system of persecution carried on by the bad against the good; and then, when complaint was made to me, there came fresh persecution on that very account; and, likewise, instances of boys joining in it out of pure cowardice, both physical and moral, when, if left to themselves, they would have rather shunned it; and the exceedingly small number of boys who can be relied on for active and steady good on these occasions, and the way in which the decent and respectable of ordinary life (Carlyle's "shams") are sure on these occasions to swim with the stream and take part with the evil, makes me strongly feel exemplified what the Scripture says about the strait gate and the wide one-a view of human nature which, when looking on human life in its full dress of decencies and civilizations, we are apt, I imagine, to find it hard to realize; but here, in the nakedness of boy-nature, one is quite able to understand how there could not be found even ten righteous in a whole city. And how to meet this evil I really do not know; but to find it thus rife after I have been years fighting against it, is so sickening that it is very hard not to throw up the cards in despair, and upset the table. But then the stars of nobleness which I see amid the darkness are so cheering, that one is inclined to stick to the ship again, and have another good try at getting her about.

NEED OF INCREASED FAITH.

To an old pupil at Oxford-1833,

I believe that the one great lesson for us all is, that we should daily pray for an "increase of faith." There is enough of iniquity abounding to make our love in danger of waxing cold; it is well said, therefore, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, · believe also in Me." By which I understand that it is not so much general notions of Providence which are our best support, but a sense of the personal interest, if I may so speak, taken in our welfare by Him who died for us and rose again. May his Spirit strengthen us to do His will, and to bear it in power, in love, and in wisdom. God bless you.

TRUE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL.

To his sister Susannah-1830.

No one seems to me to understand our dangers, or at least to speak them out manfully. One good man, who sent a letter to the Times the other day, recommends that the clergy should preach subordination and obedience. I seriously say, God forbid they

should: for, if any earthly thing could ruin Christianity in England, it would be this. If they read Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos and Habakkuk, they will find that the prophets, in a similar state of society in Judea, did not preach subordination only or chiefly, but they denounced Oppression, and amassing overgrown properties, and grinding the laborers to the smallest possible pittance; and they denounced the Jewish high-church party for countenancing all these iniquities, and prophesying smooth things to please the aristocracy. If the clergy would come forward as one man, from Cumberland to Cornwall, exhorting peaceableness on the one side, and justice on the other, denouncing the high rents and the game laws, and the carelessness which keeps the poor ignorant, and then wonders that they are brutal, I verily believe they might yet save themselves and

the state.1

INTERCOURSE WITH THE POOR.

To J. C. Vaughan, Esq.-1835.

I am glad that you have made acquaintance with some of the good poor. I quite agree with you that it is most instructive to visit them, and I think that you are right in what you say of their more lively faith. We hold to earth and earthly things by so many more links of thought, if not of affection, that it is far harder to keep our view of heaven clear and strong; when this life is so busy, and therefore so full of reality to us, another life seems by comparison unreal. This is our condition, and its peculiar temptations; but we must endure it, and strive to overcome them, for I think we may not try to flee from it.

TORYISM.

To A. P. Stanley, Esq.-1835.

Of one thing I am clear, that if ever this constitution be destroyed, it will be only when it ought to be destroyed; when evils long neglected, and good long omitted, will have brought things to such a state, that the constitution must fall to save the commonwealth, and the church of England perish for the sake of the church of Christ. Search and look whether you can find that any constitution was ever destroyed from within by factions or discontent,

How would the pure, independent, Christ-like spirit of Dr. Arnold indignantly rebuke those clergymen of our own country, who recently have exhorted obedience to a most iniquitous law a law that has been so oppressive to a large portion of our population, and is so in conflict with the "higher law" of God. Is he in any true sense a minister of the "gospel" (cvayyektor, “good news" to man) who virtually takes sides with the oppressor against the eppressed, and throws the weight of his influence in favor of what degrades and brutalizes his brother man? Sad, indeed, and most promotive of infidelity is it when the mass of unre newed men feel that the teachings of their own natural conscience are higher than inany of the sentiments they hear from the pulpit!

without its destruction having been, either just penally, or necessary, because it could not any longer answer its proper purposes. And this ripeness for destruction is the sure consequence of Toryism and Conservatism, or of that base system which joins the hand of a reformer to the heart of a Tory, reforms not upon principle, but upon clamor; and therefore both changes amiss, and preserves amiss, alike blind and low principled in what it gives and what it withholds. And therefore I would oppose to the utmost any government predominantly Tory, much more one exclusively Tory, and most of all a government at once exclusively Tory in heart, and in word and action simulating reform.

POPISH AND OXFORD VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY.

To T. S. Pasley, Bart.-1836.

The Popish and Oxford view of Christianity is, that the church is the mediator between God and the individual: that the church (i. e. in their sense, the clergy) is a sort of chartered corporation, and that by belonging to this corporation, or by being attached to it, any given individual acquires such and such privileges. This is a priestcraft, because it lays the stress, not on the relations of a man's heart toward God and Christ, as the gospel does, but on something wholly artificial and formal,-his belonging to a certain so-called society and thus,-whether the society be alive or dead,-whether it really help the man in goodness or not,-still it claims to step in and interpose itself as the channel of grace and salvation, when it certainly is not the channel of salvation, because it is visibly and notoriously no sure channel of grace. Whereas, all who go straight to Christ, without thinking of the church, do manifestly and visibly receive grace, and have the seal of His Spirit, and therefore are certainly heirs of salvation. This, I think, applies to any and every church, it being always true that the salvation of a man's soul is effected by the change in his heart and life, wrought by Christ's Spirit; and that his relation to any church is quite a thing subordinate and secondary although, where the church is what it should be, it is so great a means of grace, that its benefits are of the highest value. But the heraldic or succession view of the question I can hardly treat gravely there is something so monstrously profane in making our heavenly inheritance like an earthly estate, to which our pedigree is our title. And really, what is called succession, is exactly a pedigree, and nothing better; like natural descent, it conveys no moral nobleness-nay, far less than natural descent; for I am a believer in some transmitted virtue in a good breed, but the succession notoriously conveys none. So that to lay stress upon it, is to make the Christian church worse, I think, than the Jewish: but the sons

of God are not to be born of bloods, (i. e. of particular races,) nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, (i. e. after any human desire to make out an outward and formal title of inheritance,) but of God, (i. e. of Him who can alone give the only true title to His inheritance, the being conformed unto the image of his Son.) I have written all this in haste as to the expression, but not at all in haste as to the matter of it. But the simple point is this: does our Lord, or do his apostles, encourage the notion of salvation through the church? or would any human being ever collect such a notion from the Scriptures? Once begin with tradition, and the so-called Fathers, and you get, no doubt, a very different view. This the Romanists and the Oxfordists say is a view required to modify and add to that of the Scripture. I believe that, because it does modify, add to, and wholly alter the view of the Scripture, it is therefore altogether false and anti-christian.

NATURE OF CONSERVATISM.

To J. C. Platt, Esq.-1836.

There never was such folly as talking about a reform in the House of Lords, when it is very doubtful whether, if Parliament were dissolved, the Tories would not gain a majority even in the House of Commons. It is nonsense to talk of its being a struggle between the aristocracy and the people; if it were so, it would be over in a week, provided they mean by the aristocracy the House of Lords. It is really a great contest between the adherents of two great principles, that of preserving, and that of improving; and he must have studied history to very little purpose, who does not know that in common circumstances the former party is always the most numerous and the strongest. It gets occasionally overpowered, when it has had rope enough given it to hang itself; that is, when it has carried its favorite Conservatism to such a height, that the mass of unreformed evil becomes unendurable, and then there comes a grand reform. But that grand reform once effected, the conservative instinet again regains its ascendency, and goes on upon another lease; and so it will ever do, unless some rare circumstances enable a thoroughly enlightened government to remain long in power; and as such a government cannot rely on being popular,-for reform of evil in the abstract is gall and wormwood alike to men's indolence, and love of what they are used to, as to their propensities for jobbing,so it is only accident or despotism that can keep it on its legs. This is the secret of the Tory reaction; because men are all Tories by nature, when they are tolerably well off, and it is only some monstrous injustice or insult to themselves, or some atrocious cruelty, or some great reverses of fortune, that ever make them otherwise.

LIVELINESS ESSENTIAL FOR A SCHOOLMASTER.

To H. Balston, Esq.-1839.

Another point to which I attach much importance is liveliness. This seems to me an essential condition of sympathy with creatures so lively as boys are naturally, and it is a great matter to make them understand that liveliness is not folly or thoughtlessness. Now I think the prevailing manner among many valuable men at Oxford is the very opposite to liveliness; and I think that this is the case partly with yourself; not at all from affectation, but from natural temper, encouraged, perhaps, rather than checked, by a belief that it is right and becoming. But this appears to me to be in point of manner the great difference between a clergyman with a parish and a schoolmaster. It is an illustration of St. Paul's rule, Rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep.' A clergyman's intercourse is very much with the sick and the poor, where liveliness would be greatly misplaced; but a schoolmaster's is with the young, the strong, and the happy, and he cannot get on with them unless in animal spirits he can sympathize with them, and show them that his thoughtfulness is not connected with selfishness and weakness.

OLD ENGLISH DIVINES-BUNYAN-MILTON.

To Mr. Justice Coleridge-1836.

I have left off reading our divines, because, as Pascal said of the Jesuits, if I had spent my time in reading them fully, I should have read a great many very indifferent books. I never yet found one of them who was above mediocrity. But if I could find a great man among them, I would read him thankfully and earnestly.1 As it is, I hold John Bunyan to have been a man of incomparably greater genius than any of them, and to have given a far truer and more edifying picture of Christianity. His Pilgrim's Progress seems to be a complete reflection of Scripture, with none of the rubbish of the theologians mixed up with it. I think that Milton,-in his "Reformation in England," or in one of his "Tracts," I forget which,-treats the church writers of his time, and their show of learning, utterly uncritical as it was, with the feeling which they deserved.

His admiration of the Pilgrim's Progress was very great:-"I cannot trust myself." he used to say, "to read the account of Christian going up to the Celestial gate, after his passage through the river of Death." And when, in one of the foreign tours of his later years, he had read it through again, after a long interval, "I have always," he said, "been struck by its piety; I am now struck equally, or even more, by its profound wisdom."