Bishop Lightfoot
Reprinted from the Quarterly
Review
with a prefatory note by Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D.
London: Macmillan, 1894.
PREFATORY NOTE
All the friends of Bishop Lightfoot must be
grateful to Mr. Murray for allowing the striking sketch of the
Bishop's character and work which appeared in the Quarterly
Review in January, 1893, to be republished separately. Though
the writer has not thought fit to reveal himself, it is clear
that he had exceptional advantages for fulfilling the task which
he undertook; and the description of the life in Durham shows
throughout personal and intimate knowledge. Though my own
intercourse with the Bishop during this period was necessarily
less close and continuous than during earlier years, I recognise
the student, the colleague, the friend whom I knew at Cambridge
in every trait, but presented, so to speak, on a larger scale;
and I can well believe that while Dr. Lightfoot loved his College
and his University with perfect devotion, the busy episcopate,
full of great designs and great achievements, was his happiest
time. Cambridge, as I often said to him, seemed to be forgotten,
and wisely forgotten, in the new interests of Durham; and even I,
who was the chief loser, felt that I could rejoice in a greater
gain.
In Bishop Lightfoot's case the works were
the man. What he did was a true expression of himself; and if I
may venture to speak from my experience during the last three
years, I believe that his greatest work was the brotherhood of
clergy whom he called to labour with him in the Diocese, and bear
his spirit to another generation--greater than his masterpieces
of interpretation and criticism, greater than his masterpieces of
masculine and yet passionate eloquence. I could wish indeed that
there was some adequate record of his part in University affairs.
When I returned to Cambridge in 1870 I found him possessed of
commanding influence, trusted and revered alike by all. But from
that time he withdrew more and more from public business, though
his authority was never found to be less when he was pleased to
use it. If he could persuade another to take up what he had
prepared, that seemed to be his chief delight.
I have often spoken of the circumstances
which attended my own recall to Cambridge; and perhaps I may
repeat the story here, for I think that it reveals the man. As
soon as it was known that the Regius Professorship of Divinity
would shortly become vacant, he bade me lose no time in arranging
for my candidature. I naturally replied that the office was his
by right: that his past work led up to it by universal consent:
that I might then aspire to be his successor as Hulsean Professor.
He acknowledged the force of what I said, "but" he
added, "I could not retain my fellowship with it, and that
consideration is decisive: I must not give up my place on the
Governing Body of the College." I could not resist the
argument, so in due time I was appointed. About three months
after Dr. Lightfoot came to my rooms and put in my hands a very
remarkable letter from Mr. Gladstone containing the offer of the
Canonry at St. Paul's. "What could be better," I said,
"if it were possible? But, unhappily you cannot hold your
fellowship with it." "Ah," he replied, and I can
see now his merry smile at my discomfiture, "I have done all
I can for the College."
Bishop Lightfoot's works, I have said, show
what he was, and this sketch seems to me to add just those
touches of life which give to his writings a personal interest.
It tells a stranger how he grew and moved among his fellows and
won them, and, from a stranger, makes him also in some sense a
friend.
B. F. DUNELM.
AUCKLAND CASTLE,
October 11, 1893.
BISHOP LIGHTFOOT
+ IN MEMORIAM JOSEPHI BARBER LIGHTFOOT
S.T.P. EPISCOPI DUNELMENSIS NATUS A.D. MDCCCXXVIII. OBIIT A.D.
MDCCCLXXXIX. QUALIS FUERIT ANTIQUITATIS INVESTIGATOR
EVANGELII INTERPRES ECCLESLE RECTOR TESTANTUR OPERA UT
AEQUALIBUS ITA POSTERIS PROFUTURA + AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM.
AM. PON. CVR. +
Such is the inscription encircling the
monument which was disclosed to view in the Cathedral Church of
Durham on Thursday, the twentieth day of October, 1892, when, in
the presence of the Lord Chancellor of England, the Archbishop of
the Province, the Bishop of the Diocese, the Speaker of the House
of Commons, and a large congregation of dignitaries and commoners
of all classes, lay as well as clerical, the Lord-Lieutenant of
the county unveiled the effigy of the late Bishop Lightfoot. The
monument itself is said to be in every way worthy of the place
near the sanctuary which has been assigned to it, of the great
prelate whom it commemorates, and of the great artists who
devoted to it of their best. Sir Edgar Boehm is known to have
worked at the model in the last hours of his life, and Mr.
Gilbert has generously completed the unfinished task with a
result which reflects honour alike on his master and on himself.
It is not, however, with the monument but with the thoughts which
the inscription suggests that we propose to deal. It is said to
have come from the hand of Bishop Lightfoot's friend and
successor, and may be intended to indicate that, as while he was
with us so now that he has been taken from us, the retiring man
is to be known only by his works. We have seen no announcement of
any forthcoming biography, but we cannot help thinking that to a
large circle of readers some presentation of the main facts of
this great life would be welcome; and in the absence of a fuller
record we believe that such a brief sketch as the limits of an
article can afford will not be unacceptable. We shall find the
chief lines of this sketch in the Bishop's works; but let us look
for a moment at the boy who was father to the man. Joseph Barber
Lightfoot was the younger son of Mr. John Jackson Lightfoot, a
Liverpool accountant, and was born at his father's house, 84 Duke
Street, in that city, on April 13th, 1828. His mother was a
sister of Mr. Joseph Vincent Barber, a Birmingham artist of
considerable repute, who had married the only daughter of
Zaccheus Walker, eldest son of the "wonderful" Walker
of Seathwaite, who is immortalised in Wordsworth's Excursion.
Of the three other children an elder brother became a good
Cambridge scholar, and was for many years Master of the Grammar
School at Basingstoke. The younger brother was indebted to him
for many acts of kindness which removed difficulties from his
early course. One sister was married to the Rev. William Harrison,
of Pontesbury, and left an only son, who is a curate in the
Diocese of Durham. The other survives, and is the only Lightfoot
of this branch now remaining. It has been not unnatural to seek
to establish a connexion between this family and that of Dr. John
Lightfoot, the seventeenth-century theologian and Hebraist, but
there is, we believe, no true ground for doing so. The young '
Joe,' as he was familiarly called at home and at school, was a
delicate lad, and was privately educated until he was about
thirteen. His first year of school life was under the care of Dr.
Iliff, at the Royal Institution in Liverpool, which claims also
among its distinguished pupils Dr. Sylvester the mathematician
and the present Bishop of Ripon. He soon found his way to the
"First Class," which consisted of boys far beyond his
own years, and among the more or less legendary stories which
have gathered around the early boyhood--such as "How is Joe
getting on with his German?" "Oh! he has finished
German! he is now doing Anglo-Saxon"--one stands out on
clear evidence. The boy's health gave way, and under medical
advice the anxious and now widowed mother had all books removed
from his room. The little patient grew rapidly worse, and pleaded
so earnestly for his books that the mother's heart could not
refuse to grant them. They naturally proved the best tonic for
the restless mind, and the lad grew as rapidly better.
But the chief step in the boy's education
was taken in 1844, when the mother, attracted by the advantages
of the Birmingham Grammar School, determined to move to the
neighbourhood of her relatives in that town. The picture of the
great High Master, Dr. Prince Lee, afterwards first Bishop of
Manchester, surrounded by his group of brilliant pupils, has
often been drawn, and we must look at it only in connexion with
our immediate subject. The streams of influence which have flowed
from this centre have, however, been so important in their effect
upon our subject and upon the history of religious thought and
action during the last and the present generations, that we must
for a while place ourselves at the feet of this great teacher.
"Three boys," it has been said, "Prince Lee loved
more than any one else in the world," and of one of them of
whom we are now writing, he is reported to-have said, in the
winter of 1869, a few days before his own death, "I should
like to live to lay my hands on Lightfoot's head once more."
Each of the three became a great teacher, and each has given a
record of the way in which he was himself taught, which has all
the strength of the experience of minds that have had not many
equals either as learners or as teachers.
Among the words in which the late Bishop of
Durham has himself testified to the influence of Dr. Prince Lee
are the following:--
I have sometimes thought that, if I
were allowed to live one hour only of my past life over again,
I would choose a Butler lesson under Lee. His rare eloquence
was never more remarkable than during these lessons. I have
heard many great speakers and preachers since, but I do not
recollect anything comparable in its kind to his oratory,
when, leaning back in his chair and folding his gown about
him, he would break off at some idea suggested by the text,
and pour forth an uninterrupted flood of eloquence for half
an hour or more, the thought keeping pace with the expression
all the while, and the whole marked by a sustained elevation
of tone which entranced even the idlest and most careless
among us. I suppose that it was this singular combination of
intellectual vigour and devotional feeling which created his
influence over the character of his pupils. "Hesitation
in all its forms was alien alike to his nature and to his
principles. When I wrote to him, stating my intention of
taking orders, but representing myself as undecided what
branch of the ministry to follow out, he replied
characteristically, 'beseeching' me 'to decide at once: at
once to seek a curacy or a mastership,' if I looked to
practical work in either line; 'at once to begin to read and
edit or write,' if I looked to theology; 'for' he added, 'Virtus
in agenda constat?
Such was the master who sent from a school
small and undistinguished as compared with our present great
public schools, five Senior Classics and eight Fellows of his own
beloved Trinity in a period of nine years, and of whose thirteen
First Classmen twelve became clergymen. Such were the powers
which in master and in pupil moulded and throughout his life
influenced the character and the work of Joseph Barber Lightfoot.
The Cambridge life commenced in October,
1847, when Lightfoot went up to Trinity and was placed on
Thompson's side. From the end of his first year he read with his
old schoolfellow Westcott, who had preceded him to Trinity, and
was Senior Classic in 1848. He obtained a Trinity scholarship in
1849, and though he is said to have been some way behind in the
University scholarship examinations, his steady devotion to work
and his great development of power placed him easily first in the
Tripos, and men talked commonly of papers which had not been
equalled and were absolutely free from mistake. In addition to
being Senior Classic of his year (1851) he was thirtieth wrangler
and first Chancellor's medallist. A Fellowship of Trinity came
naturally in the following year, and the Norrisian Prize was
gained in 1853. It was gained but not claimed for with
characteristic modesty he was dissatisfied with an essay which
the examiners had decided to be first, and he never fulfilled the
condition of publishing it. In 1854 the young Fellow was ordained
by his old master, Dr. Prince Lee, who had now become Bishop of
Manchester, at St. John's Church, Heaton Mersey. In February,
1857, when only twenty-eight years of age, he became Tutor of the
College. The impression left upon his pupils is told by such
words as these, which some of them have furnished:--
As a tutor, he was very shy, but gave
assurance by his ways of readiness to help. One was certain
of strong and kind assistance if one needed it.
Lightfoot never made any one ashamed of
asking him questions.
He looked round at his pupils, longing
for one of them to give him a chance of being kind to him,
helping him out in an effort at conversation or advising him.
But his temperament did not let him often take the initiative
in seeking out and seizing hold of those who wanted help,
restraint, or encouragement. He did not thrust his arms out
to them, but stood with open arms for those who would come to
him.
As a private tutor he had a singular
power of inspiring us with a belief in the duty and the
pleasure of hard work, not so much by his brilliance, but by
letting us know that his great .attainments had been won by
sheer diligence. At the same time he was full of humour, and
ready to join in any excursion; and he never lost sight of a
pupil.
To have known him in those lighter
moods [of reading parties] is a possession for a lifetime.
During the early years of the Trinity
Fellowship the four volumes of the Journal of Classical and
Sacred Philology appeared (1854-9), and they contained
frequent contributions from the pen of Mr. Lightfoot, who was one
of the founders and editors. Now he writes a minute criticism of
the editions of Hyperides; now short notices of Schaff's History
of the Apostolic Church, and of Falkener's "A
Description of some important Theatres and other Remains in Crete;"
now an article on "The Mission of Titus to the Corinthians;"
now notes on Müller's Denkmaler der Alten Kunst, or
Webster and Wilkinson's Greek Testament, or the translations of
the American Bible Union; and in immediate contiguity with these
last, a notice of Mr. Blew's Agamemnon. To the third
volume he contributes, two months before his election to the
Tutorship, the remarkable article on "Recent Editions of St.
Paul's Epistles," a review of Paley's edition of Mschylus,
and another article "On the Style and Character of the
Epistle to the Galatians." The fourth volume contains
articles from the same hand on "They that are of Caesar's
household," "On some corrupt and obscure passages in
the Helena of Euripides," "On the Long Walls at Athens,"
and a review of Conybeare and Howson's Life and Epistles of St.
Paul. These exercises of the young giant in the first
freshness of his full and free strength are in some respects of
permanent value as contributions to their subjects; and they are
of special interest both as a harvest of the seed sown by Dr.
Prince Lee's teaching, and as themselves seeds to bear a more
abundant harvest of developed fruitfulness in Dr. Lightfoot's
later work. The unwearied but concealed labour, the investigation
of all available sources of information--inscriptions, MSS.,
topography--the minute acquaintance with the literature of the
subjects, foreign as well is English, the exact scholarship
present everywhere and felt especially in emendations of texts,
the firm grasp of the laws of language and the laws of mind, the
wide outlook on the whole field, the very choice of the subjects,
at once recall the schoolroom at Birmingham, and foreshadow the magna
opera of the life. He is already entering on the field in
which he is to gain such marked eminence. Qualis fuerit
antiquitatis investigator, evangelii interpret--even these
works do testify.
The ease with which the writer passes in
these articles from one subject to another, from a review of
commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles to an emendation of the text
of Euripides, from an investigation of the meaning of "Caesar's
household" to the position of the "Long Walls at Athens,"
represents the work of the Senior Classic and Private Tutor, who
at the same time, in the spirit of his own early lessons, regards
the New Testament as the goal of all his studies. These articles
created so profound an impression in the University that when a
vacancy occurred in the Hulsean Professorship of Divinity in 1860,
many of Mr. Lightfoot's friends earnestly hoped that he might be
appointed to the Chair. He consented at their entreaty to become
a candidate, but he felt it was natural that one who, as he
modestly said, had done much more for the interpretation of the
New Testament than himself should be selected. At the same time
the decision seemed to him to bring with it another decision. The
time had come for his studies to concentrate and shape themselves
in a definite form. The Orestean trilogy of Aeschylus had
fascinated him as it has fascinated many great minds. He resolved
that night to edit it. Some progress was made in this work, when
in 1861 the Hulsean Chair was again vacated, and Mr. Lightfoot
was chosen to fill it. We regard this selection as one of the
turning-points not only in the history of the University of
Cambridge, but also in the wider history of Christianity in this
country, and from this country throughout the world. Few persons
with competent knowledge will be disposed, we think, to challenge
this opinion. If any are, we invite them to compare the
attendance on the Divinity Professor's Lectures before and after
this appointment; to consider the influence on Cambridge life and
work of the movements initiated by the young Professor himself,
developed later on in union with his friends Dr. Westcott (who
returned to Cambridge in 1870) and Dr. Hort who joined them in
1872), and carried into their present state of progress by the
band of younger men whom they gathered round themselves; to
estimate the effect on English thought of the works enumerated at
the head of this article, and of the band of men who have gone
forth year by year touched by the spirit and power of the living
man who wrote them; to think of this Cambridge movement having
its true source in the constant appeal to the Biblical writings
as the correlative of the Oxford movement of an earlier
generation, and of its sobering effect upon the agitated state of
theological thought.
"When he became a Professor at
Cambridge," writes one of Dr. Lightfoot's pupils, "
his greatness was immediately established. The immense range
of his acquisitions, the earnest efforts to do his work as
well as lay in his power, were at once recognized by the
Undergraduates. The frequent failure of Professors to win an
audience is a matter of common complaint, and men as learned
in their own domain as Dr. Lightfoot have not succeeded. But
there was something electric in his quick sympathy with the
young, in his masculine independence in his strong practical
good sense, in his matchless lucidity of exposition; and
these gifts caused his lecture-room to be thronged by eager
listeners. The late Master of Trinity was not given to
enthusiasm, but once he did wax enthusiastic, as he described
to me the passage between the Senate House and Caius College
'black with the fluttering gowns of students' hurrying to
imbibe, in the Professor's class-room, a knowledge of the New
Testament such as was not open to their less happy
predecessors, and such as would last many of them all their
lives as a fountain of valuable exegesis in many a parish and
many a pulpit."
Among the subjects of the earlier courses
of the Professor's lectures was the Gospel according to St. John,
and he for some time thought of publishing an edition of this
Gospel, an intention which he abandoned only when he found it was
entertained by one whom he considered more competent to carry it
into effect.
But in the beginning of the year 1865, that
is, within four years of his appointment to the Professorship, Dr.
Lightfoot published his edition of St. Paul's Epistle to the
Galatians. Eight years before he had intimated in the article on
'Recent Editions of St. Paul's Epistles,' not only where previous
editors had signally failed, both in design and in execution, but
also where they had succeeded, and he thus incidentally discloses
what in his own view an edition of St. Paul's Epistles should be.
When the man who had sketched this ideal of
a Commentary, and had been afterwards appointed to the Hulsean
Professorship, and had delivered courses of lectures which filled
the lecture-rooms to overflowing, announced his intention to
publish " a complete edition of St. Paul's Epistles,"
and issued the first instalment of the work, the attention of
Biblical students was naturally aroused, and very high
expectations were widely formed. We venture to think that no
expectation was raised which has not been more than fully
realized. The complete plan of the edition has not, indeed, been
carried out. It was from the first stated conditionally,--"If
my plan is ever carried out,"--and it was so arranged that
each part should be complete in itself. We are glad to be able to
hope, from hints which have from time to time reached the public
ear, that a large portion of the whole field was covered by Dr.
Light-foot's labours, and that some of the MSS. which are in the
care of his literary executors will in due course be published;
for even if they are only posthumous fragments, the student of St.
Paul's Epistles will thankfully welcome them. But the editor's
final preparation for the press was given to three volumes only,--
the Galatians, which appeared in 1865, the Philippians in 1868,
the Colossians and Philemon in 1875; and thus upon these volumes
that any claim to have filled the ideal standard which he had
himself set for the critic and commentator on St. Paul's Epistles
must ultimately rest. The verdict has been given, after most
thorough examination, by the most competent judges, and in the
most definite form. As each of these volumes appeared it at once
took, and has ever since maintained, a recognized position as the
standard work on the subject. Grammatical criticism, philological
exegesis, historical presentation, philosophical perception, are
combined in them as they were never before combined, as they have
not been since combined. They have furnished models for others,
but they have themselves remained models. With the growth of
knowledge in the future they may become obsolete, and some pupil
may arise to excel his master; but the present shows no signs of
this, and we may safely predict that any greater commentary on
these Epistles of St. Paul will owe part of its greatness to the
volumes now before us. It is moreover remarkable as showing the
fulness of the editor's early knowledge, and the fixity of his
principles, that while edition after edition of these volumes
have appeared in quick succession for now many years, they have
undergone no material change. The essays reprinted since the
author's death, in the volume entitled Dissertations on the
Apostolic Age, are the essays of the early editions. In one
respect important change is here noted. In the earlier editions
of the Philippians it was assumed in the essay on "The
Christian Ministry," that the Syriac version, edited by
Cureton, represented the original form of the Epistles of
Ignatius. Later and more complete investigations of the writings
of this Father, led to the conviction that the shorter Greek form
is genuine, and that the Syriac is only an abridgment. An extract
from the edition of The Apostolic Fathers, to which we
shall presently refer, is now added, giving full reasons for the
change of opinion. A full note on another subject does not,
indeed, express any change of opinion, but protests against
imputations of opinion which Dr. Lightfoot never held, and which
are inconsistent with a fair interpretation of his essay as a
whole. It is not easy to see how an essay which contained from
the first such passages as these, could be interpreted as in
favour of the Presbyterian as opposed to the Episcopal view of
the Christian ministry. But it was natural that controversialists
should endeavour to support their arguments by the authority of
so great a man; and as advocates will always select their facts,
we cannot think it is a matter of surprise that some of the
statements have been used, perhaps even understood, in a sense
which is opposed to that of the author. A great writer on such a
subject is sure to be misunderstood if to be misunderstood is
possible, and he should take care to make it impossible. When the
sixth edition of the Philippians was published, in 1881, the
Preface contained the following explanation:--
But on the other hand, while
disclaiming any change in my opinions, I desire equally to
disclaim the representations of those opinions which have
been put forward in some quarters. The object of the Essay
was an investigation into the origin of the Christian
Ministry. The result has been a confirmation of the statement
in the English Ordinal, 'It is evident unto all men
diligently reading the Holy Scripture and ancient authors
that from the Apostles' time there have been these orders of
Ministers in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.'
But I was scrupulously anxious not to overstate the evidence
in any case; and it would seem that partial and qualifying
statements, prompted by this anxiety, have assumed undue
proportions in the minds of some readers, who have emphasized
them to the neglect of the general drift of the Essay.
Even after this statement the
misrepresentations continued, and soon after the close of the
Lambeth Conference of 1888, Bishop Lightfoot felt it to be his
duty to collect and print a series of extracts from his published
writings bearing on this subject. There is nothing new in them.
Their value is that they show distinctly what the author's
opinion was and had been throughout; and that they were collected
by himself. His trustees have done good service in reprinting
them together with the Essay and the following note:--"It is
felt by those who have the best means of knowing that he would
himself have wished the collection to stand together simply as
his reply to the constant imputation to him of opinions for which
writers wished to claim his support without any justification."
It is perhaps hardly to be expected that such misrepresentations
will cease, but every vestige of justification, if any ever
existed, is now removed.
We have been led by the fact that these
editions of the Epistles of St. Paul could be regarded only as
part of one whole to anticipate some of the events of Dr.
Lightfoot's life, and it will be convenient to depart further
from chronological order so that we may have such a connected
view of his literary work as is possible within the scope of this
article.
Between the date of the Philippians
(1868) and the Colossians (1875) are to be placed the
first editions of the St. Clement in 1869, and the Revision of
the New Testament in 1871. Each of these volumes represents
the beginning of a stream which flowed on and gathered force
until it became an important river.
The Clement was the first-fruits of Dr.
Lightfoot's studies of the sub-apostolic age, which were
afterwards to yield such an abundant harvest. In 1877 followed an
Appendix, giving the chief results of the discoveries by
Bryennios and Prof. Bensly. Meanwhile much of the editor's
attention had been given to a contemplated edition of Ignatius,
for some portions of this work were already in print, and the
"whole of the commentary on the genuine epistles of Ignatius,
and the introduction and texts of the Ignatian Acts of Martyrdom
.... were passed through the press before the end of 1878."
Dr. Lightfoot was called early in 1879 to undertake the manifold
responsibilities of the See of Durham. "For weeks, and
sometimes for months together," he tells us, "I have
not found time to write a single line." But he snatched
minutes from his days of work and travel, and hours from his days
and nights of rest, and it was at length published in 1885.
We invited the attention of the readers of
this Review to the importance of this great work at the time, and
we must now limit ourselves to a few words of comment. These
shall be the words of Professor Harnack of Berlin, which are of
the greater interest as he writes in part from an opposite camp:--
... his [Dr. Lightfoot's] edition of
the Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp, for the appearance of
which we have been earnestly looking, and which we now hail
with delight. We may say, without exaggeration, that this
work is the most learned and careful Patristic monograph
which has appeared in the nineteenth century; that it has
been elaborated with a diligence and knowledge of the subject
which show that Lighfoot has made himself master of this
department, and placed himself beyond the reach of any rival.
These three bulky volumes were no sooner
out of hand than the editor returned to the Clement with the
intention of supplying introductions and essays which should
place it in form and matter on a level with what were intended to
be the companion volumes of Ignatius. He devoted to this work
hours that many of his friends felt were robbing the Church of
his life, but as with the early days, so with the last, his books
were really his strength, and up to and during his final illness,
as long as consciousness lasted, the Clement was constantly in
his hands. The second edition of the work was published after his
death. It is not as complete as he would have made it, but, to
use the language of another great teacher, who, if he writes from
the same camp, writes also with fulness of knowledge and
exactitude of balanced judgment:--
.... in spite of some gaps, the book
was substantially finished before the end came. He was
happily allowed to treat of 'Clement the Doctor,' 'Ignatius
the Martyr,' 'Polycarp the Elder,' in a manner answering to
his own noble ideal; and the 'Complete Edition of the
Apostolic Fathers,' such as he had designed more than thirty
years before, was ready at his death to be a monument of
learning, sagacity, and judgment unsurpassed in the present
age. . . . and in breadth and thoroughness of treatment, in
vigour and independence, in suggestiveness and fertility of
resource, this new edition of Clement will justly rank beside
the 'monumental edition' of 'Ignatius.'
The Bishop had also made considerable
progress with an edition of the Apostolic Fathers, in one volume,
which was intended for the use of students. He had himself
studied some of them in his own school-days in the edition of
Jacobson, and he wished to leave as a legacy to the young an
edition which should be more complete than any which had yet
appeared. This he was enabled to do by the assistance of his
friend and chaplain, Mr. Harmer, whose services as general editor
the trustees have been fortunate enough to secure since the
Bishop's death.
But in the opinion of Dr. Lightfoot the
Ignatius was the magnum opus of his patristic studies, and indeed
of his life. This he tells us, "was the motive, and is the
core, of the whole." He was not unaware that in the
prosecution of this work he was necessarily breaking through
another, and, as many thought, a still more important plan.
"I have been reproached" he
writes, "by my friends for allowing myself to be diverted
from the more congenial task of commenting on St. Paul's Epistles;
but the importance of the position seemed to me to justify the
expenditure of much time and labour in 'repairing a breach' not
indeed in 'the House of the Lord' itself, but in the immediately
outlying buildings."
Nor did he overrate the importance of the
position. It was nothing less than the chief foundation of the
Tubingen school. "To the disciples of Baur," as he
expresses it in terms which are not too strong, "the
rejection of the Ignatian Epistles is an absolute necessity of
their theological position. The ground would otherwise be
withdrawn from under them, and their reconstruction of early
Christian history would fall in ruins on their heads."
There are probably many of the Bishop's
friends who still hold the opinion that nothing can compensate
for the interruption of the cherished plan of a complete edition
of St. Paul's Epistles. What would they not give for a commentary
on the "Romans" and the "Ephesians," on a
scale commensurate with those on the "Galatians" and
the "Colossians"? With much of this feeling all
students of the New Testament will have the deepest sympathy, but
we are nevertheless of the opinion that the obligations which the
Bishop has conferred upon the Church are still greater than they
would have been if he had confined himself to a narrower course
which he might have completed. It is now with the Pauline
Epistles as with the works of the writers of the second century,
as with a wished-for opportunity of writing the history of the
fourth century, as with many a line of thought, and with many a
course of action--if he has not done all he intended, he has at
least shown how it should be done. He has left the legacy of an
ideal greater even than the actual which he made so great.
The Fresh Revision of the English New
Testament had its origin in a paper read before a clerical
meeting just before the Company appointed for the Revision held
its first sitting, and it had beyond question a considerable
effect both upon the work of the Revisers and upon the attitude
of the public towards that work. Among the criticisms which it
drew forth was one by Mr. Earle, afterwards Professor of Anglo-Saxon
in the University of Oxford, which attacked what Dr. Lightfoot
considered to be the impregnable position of his book. He had
"laid it down as a rule (subject of course to special
exceptions) that, when the same word occurs in the same context
in the original, it should be rendered by the same equivalent in
the Version." He had indeed laid down the same rule in one
of his early criticisms. Mr. Earle in opposing this principle,
cleverly described it as substituting the "fidelity of a
lexicon" for the "faithfulness of a translation,"
and Dr. Lightfoot, while regarding this as a misinterpretation of
his principle, replied, "My objection to the variety of
rendering which Mr. Earle advocates is that it does depart from 'the
faithfulness of a translation,' and substitutes, not indeed the
fidelity of a lexicon, but the caprice of a translator." Dr.
Lightfoot's reply was generally admitted to have established the
principle--and indeed, as stated by him, it can hardly be
questioned, and yet the Revised Version must have often recalled
Mr. Earle's phrase, "the fidelity of a lexicon," which
is said, we know not how truly, to have been varied by a learned
scholar, who retired from the work of revision on the ground that
he had been invited to "translate," and was expected to
"construe."
To discuss the merits or demerits of the
Revised Version is no part of our present subject, and the
readers of this Review are not likely to have forgotten the very
full and plain-speaking criticism which has already occupied its
pages. Nor have we any available means of determining the extent
of Dr. Lightfoot's influence on the work. The history of the
deliberations of the Revisers has not been written, and will
probably never be fully known, but the glimpses afforded by Dr.
Newth and others of the method of voting are not very encouraging
when we think of the inequality of the voters. Surely here, if
anywhere, was there place for the principle that votes should be
weighed and not counted. It does not appear that Dr. Lightfoot
was immediately concerned in the formation of the Company of
Revisers, nor was he at the time a member of the Convocation of
either Province; but it is clear that from the first nomination
of the Company he was among its chief leaders; that he was
consistently loyal to his colleagues, and that he was always
ready to defend their common work. Perhaps indeed the most
uncertain of his contests was that in which he undertook to
defend against Canon Cook the rendering, "Deliver us from
the evil one." The fresh investigations of Mr. Chase go far
in our opinion to confirm the view which Dr. Lightfoot championed,
but our readers will remember that there is much to be said on
the other side, and we can but regret that Dr. Lightfoot himself
did not supply a further reply to Canon Cook's arguments. But
while the advocates of the Revised Version are fully justified in
claiming Dr. Lightfoot's strong support, we cannot help thinking
that if he and a small body of men of like gifts and like
knowledge of English as well as of Greek had formed the Company
of Revisers, we should have now had a version practically
accepted by the English-speaking peoples. It is impossible to
read the notes in Dr Lightfoot's editions of the Epistles of St.
Paul without feeling that we are in a different atmosphere from
that of the Revised Version, and we believe that if the Version
is to gain general acceptance it will have to be again revised on
the more conservative model of the work of the Revisers of the
Old Testament. If that task is ever attempted, the new Revisers
will find no more fitting words to express their principle than
these which Mr. Lightfoot wrote as early as 1857:--
"If, then, the English of former times
speaks more plainly to the heart than the English of the present
day, and at least as plainly to the understanding, surely we
should do well to retain it, only lopping off a very few
archaisms, not because they are not a la mode, but because they
would not be generally understood."
Except indeed in the third of "The
Fundamental Resolutions adopted by the Convocation of Canterbury
on the third and fifth days of May, 1870:"--
"That in the above resolutions we do
not contemplate any new translation of the Bible, or any
alteration of the language, except where in the judgement of the
most competent scholars such change is necessary."
During the early years of the work of
revision Dr. Lightfoot was engaged also upon literary work of
another kind. In 1874 a writer, whose name has never been
authoritatively disclosed, but is widely known, published a work
entitled Supernatural Religion: an Inquiry into the
reality of Divine Revelation. He professed to show that there
is no miraculous element in Christianity; that miracles are
indeed antecedently incredible; that the evidence which is
obtainable from the apostolic period is not trustworthy; and that
the Four Gospels have no sufficient warrant for their date and
authorship. Many reasons combined to give the work an unmerited
notoriety, the chief of them being its anonymity and the widely
circulated but wholly unwarranted rumour that the author was one
of the most learned and venerable of the English prelates. Dr.
Lightfoot was led to examine the work publicly, not because of
its merits or importance--he thought indeed "that its
criticisms were too loose and pretentious, and too full of errors,
to produce any permanent effect"--but because he "found
that a cruel and unjustifiable assault was made on a very dear
friend to whom "he" was attached by the most sacred
personal and theological ties." This accounts for a certain
tone of severity which is never undeserved, but is present here
only in the course of Dr. Lightfoot's writings. The first part of
the examination appeared in the Contemporary Review in
December, 1874; the last in the same periodical in May, 1877. The
whole covers to a considerable extent--and the author had
intended that it should completely cover--"the testimony of
the first two centuries to the New Testament Scriptures;"
and it is in our opinion not too much to assert that if the
author of Supernatural Religion had been the cause of no
other investigation than the remarkable articles by Dr. Lightfoot,
he would have been the indirect means of contributing the most
valuable addition to apologetic literature which has been made
during this generation. There was naturally a strong desire in
many quarters that the articles should be collected and published
in a permanent form. Year after year this was postponed because
the writer designed further additions to them, and it was only in
1889, when "life was hanging on a slender thread," that
the collection was issued. We could wish indeed that the designed
completion had been made, we could wish that the author had been
able to abandon the polemical form and to recast the whole; but
no course remained but that which has been followed. The work is
a legacy as from a death-bed, and it is a legacy of permanent
value.
The limits of our space forbid us to refer
at greater length to Bishop Lightfoot's literary work, the extent
and variety and quality of which would have been remarkable even
in a life of learned leisure. Here we have an article or rather
the most complete treatise which is known to us on "Eusebius"
in the Dictionary of Christian Biography; here a similar
treatise on the "Acts of the Apostles" in the recently
published edition of the Dictionary of the Bible; here, courses
of lectures on "Christian Life in the Second and Third
Centuries" and "Christianity and Paganism"
delivered at St. Paul's Cathedral; here, a speech at a meeting of
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which has become a
standard authority on "The Comparative Progress of Ancient
and Modern Missions;" here, an edition of Dean Mansel's
treatise on The Gnostic Heresies; here, lectures delivered
to artisans at Rochdale or students at Edinburgh on "Simon
de Montfort and Edward I." or "The Architecture of the
Period and the University life, with special reference to Roger
Bacon;" now it is the Inaugural Address to the British
Archaeological Association; now it is that of the President of
the Co-operative Society. Here there is the formal "Charge"
delivered to his Clergy; here, the address on some public or
diocesan question which formed part of his daily work. All are
marked by the same characteristic features. The matter is
everywhere that of the painful investigator, the principle is
that of the Christian philosopher, the form is that of the artist
in words.
But the four volumes of sermons mentioned
at the head of this article claim at least some words of notice.
Archbishop Tait, when walking with a friend one morning, said,
"We have made Lightfoot a preacher;" and when asked to
explain the process by which such preachers were made, added,
"We have given the finest pulpit in the world to a man to
whom God has given the power to use it," and expressed his
conviction that better use of it had never been made. What Canon
Lightfoot himself thought of the opportunity may be read in the
dedication of his Ignatius:--
"To Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., to whom
God has given special gifts as a Christian Preacher and matched
the gifts with the Opportunities, assigning to him his place,
beneath the great dome of St. Paul's, the centre of the world's
concourse "; and what use he made of it is to be seen in
part in the volumes before us. We confess that they have taken us
by surprise, and we think that our surprise will be shared by
many who often heard Dr. Lightfoot preach and were fully
impressed by his sermons. Very rarely have we known sermons which
were so good to hear prove so much better to read. We shall not
quote from them, because no quotations could adequately represent
them. We commend them to any of our readers into whose hands they
have not fallen, as models of what sermons should be. They are
learned, they are philosophical, they are wide in grasp and firm
in tread; but from first to last of these four volumes there is
not a passage which is technical and not a sentence which the
ordinary reader cannot understand. Their logical clearness
satisfies the highest intellect, their deep pathos moves the
humblest soul.
It was of course obvious that a man of Dr.
Lightfoot's remarkable gifts, and still more remarkable devotion
in the use of those gifts, should appear to many persons to be
specially qualified to hold many offices, and from time to time
offers of preferment were made to him; but his heart was in the
work of his professorship, and no suggested honour was acceptable
to him which would in any way interfere with the most complete
discharge of the duties of that office. He became naturally a
select preacher at his own University, and also at Oxford and at
Whitehall. He was appointed Chaplain to the Prince Consort,
Honorary Chaplain to the Queen, and Deputy Clerk of the Closet.
He was for seventeen years Examining Chaplain to Dr. Tait as
Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury. But the canonry of
St. Paul's was accepted with much hesitation, and only when it
was seen that arrangements could be made for his London "residence"
which would not break in ,upon the Cambridge terms. When the
Regius Professorship of Divinity fell vacant, in 1870, he
practically declined it, in order that he might bring Mr.
Westcott back to Cambridge, but in 1875 he was elected to the
Lady Margaret Chair. More than one Deanery, more than one
Bishopric, were offered to him on the advice of more than one
Prime Minister. In 1879 came the offer of the See of Durham,
which, after much hesitation and much pressure from friends, he
at length, and with great diffidence, accepted. He was trembling
beneath the conviction that he was not fitted for the work to
which nevertheless, after prayer and counsel, he felt that he was
called of God; the Church was giving thanks for a decision which
all men felt to be the dawn of a bright day. For more than two
centuries there had been no direct nomination to the throne of
the Prince Bishops of Durham, and yet such was the public
estimation in which Dr. Lightfoot was held that there was
probably no Churchman who did not rejoice in this nomination,
except Dr. Lightfoot himself, and a band of Cambridge friends,
who thought the loss to the University would be irreparable.
There have always been men who thought their own circle was
greater than the world.
We now enter upon the last period of Dr.
Lightfoot's work, and it is a period in which we trace the signs
of an eminence which is higher even than that of his earlier
course. Great he was as antiquitatis investigator, great
he was as evangelii interpres, and yet greater when he
united and applied the principles and continued the studies of
his earlier life in the practical work of the ecclesiae rector.
And here, too, qualis fuerit. . . . testantur opera ut
aequalibus ita posteris profutura.
Dr. Lightfoot was consecrated in
Westminster Abbey on St. Mark's Day, 1879, and °ne sentence in
the sermon, which was preached by Dr. Westcott, at once linked
together the three old schoolfellows and re-stated for the Bishop
then to be consecrated, the principle which his own heart had
dictated for the third of the friends exactly two years before. Who
is sufficient for these things? was the preacher's and yet
more the listener's question. The answer now given at Westminster
had been given at St. Paul's when Dr. Lightfoot occupied the
pulpit, and Dr. Benson was consecrated to be the first Bishop of
Truro:--" He who lays down at the footstool of God his
successes and his failures, his hopes and his fears, his
knowledge and his ignorance, his weakness and his strength, his
misgivings and his confidences--all that he is and all that he
might be--content to take up thence just that which God shall
give him."
The new Bishop was enthroned, the first
instance of this ceremony being performed in the person of any
Bishop of Durham since the enthronement of Bishop Trevor in 1752,
and preached in his Cathedral Church on the 15th day of May. The
first words strike at once the dominant note of his life:--
"And what more seasonable prayer can
you offer for him who addresses you now, at this the most
momentous crisis of his life, than that he--the latest successor
of Butler--may enter upon the duties of his high and responsible
office in the same spirit; that the realization of this great
idea, the realization of this great fact, may be the constant
effort of his life; that glimpses of the invisible Righteousness,
of the invisible Grace, of the invisible Glory, may be vouchsafed
to him; and that the Eternal Presence, thus haunting him night
and day, may rebuke, may deter, may guide, may strengthen, may
comfort, may illumine, may consecrate and subdue the feeble and
wayward impulses of his own heart to God's holy will and purpose!"
The same sermon indicates two of the
immediate objects which the preacher set before himself. One is
the division of the Diocese, the other is the duty of the Church
in social and industrial questions.
In such devotion, such resolves, such
stating and strengthening of principles, passed the first day in
the Diocese. The succeeding days were forthwith devoted to
carrying these principles into practice. The Bishop lived at
first in the Castle at Durham, the ancient home of the Prince
Bishops, which had become part of the University through the
munificence and foresight of Van Mildert, but in which a suite of
rooms had been reserved in perpetuity for the Bishop's use. Here
the Visitor of the University was heartily welcomed alike by
graduates and students, and these early weeks strengthened the
attachment which he brought with him, and laid the foundations of
a warm and never broken affection for what he was wont to call
the University of his adoption.
It is said that among Dr. Lightfoot's last
words to some of his Cambridge friends when he took leave of them
was the charge, "Send me up men to the North." As soon
as Auckland Castle was ready to receive him, he carried out his
cherished project of forming a clergy-house under his own roof.
Here a band of University men, seven or eight in number, were
trained under his own immediate guidance for their future work in
the Diocese. They were instructed by himself, by his archdeacons,
and by his chaplains. The intellectual work followed the lines of
a college course in theology, the practical work in Auckland
itself and the pit villages which encircle the castle-grounds
enabled the students to test their theories by the realities of
life; but their chief lesson was the constant influence of their
true Father in God, We have referred to Dr. Prince Lee's
affection for his pupils, and those who know best assert that it
is at least equally true that Bishop Lightfoot loved nothing on
earth more devotedly than those who were in a special sense his
spiritual sons. His strong love strengthened theirs, and men in
the vigour of their young manhood learned to love him, and
through him to love afresh their God. To love him was to learn
from him, to assimilate him, to reproduce him; and not the least
of the permanent influences for good which the Bishop left to his
Diocese and his Church, was the band of young men numbering more
than seventy who had looked upon a life which in the power of its
intellect, the devotion of its soul, the humility and self-sacrifice
of its whole being was to them a daily ascension into heaven; and
who, as they looked upon it had caught something at least of its
spirit. Loving them and knowing them as he did, he expected them
and always found them to be ready to work with entire singleness
of aim and entire devotion to duty. They knew they had no claim
to preferment unless to a post of unusual poverty or unusual
difficulty, and to such a post only when prepared for it. Some
words from an "In Memoriam" sketch in a college
magazine and signed J. B. D., will show how the Bishop looked
upon his sons and their work, and what manner of men they were:--
"A new district was to be formed in a
much-neglected neighbourhood in ----. There was neither church
nor endowment nor parochial appliances of any kind. Everything
must be built up from the foundation. Only a modest stipend for a
single curate-in-charge had been guaranteed. It was necessary to
rely on youthful zeal, even at the cost of some inexperience I
asked C----, who was still curate at ----, to undertake the task
of building up this new parish, and he accepted the call. To my
great joy, B---- offered to accompany his friend as a volunteer
without remuneration, though he might have had an adequate
stipend elsewhere. ...
"I spoke of this offer then as an
inspiration, and so I regard it now. Though doubtless the work
there hastened his death, who shall regret his decision?
Certainly not those who loved him best. . . .
"I cannot but regard this splendid
unselfishness as a chief corner-stone, on which the edifice of
the new parish was raised. . . . Excellent congregations were
gathered together; generous donors came forward with liberal
offerings; and within two years and a few months from the time
when they commenced their work in the district, a large and
seemly church was finished and consecrated.
"I have had placed in my hands some
extracts from a private diary which he kept. . . . I give this
relating to the night before his ordination: Hn dianuktereuwn en
th proseuch tou Qeou. If He, how much more I needed. So in the
end I remained praying in my own room till daylight, about 3.15.
It was broad day, and I went to bed.'
Of the day itself he writes:--
"'Sunday, Matins at 8.15. I felt calm
and at peace. . . . Just broke fast and nothing more. I had no
fixed idea about fasting, but thought it better to err in too
literal a following of the Apostles than too free a departure
from them.'
"'The service at South Church was full
of a depth of peace and love to me, such as I have never known.
The Veni Creator began the climax. My heart was full of an
overpowering sense of my own unworthiness and Christ's deep love
and trust in one who had done nothing but what deserved the
withdrawal of love and trust; and at the actual imposition of
hands the surge of mingled regrets and hopes, joys and fears, the
sense of being at once infinitely humbled and exalted, broke out in
lacrimas super ora surgentes [et] defluentes. Gaudebam,
quia contristabar; contristabar, quia gaudebam.'"
The Bishop adds, "A ministry" [may
we not add, "an episcopacy"?] "so supported, could
not be otherwise than fruitful."
With this sketch drawn from the sanctuary
of the home life at Auckland Castle, it will be interesting to
compare a pendant drawn from without. Among the guests
entertained by the Bishop in 1882 was the Rev. Robert W. Barbour,
a gifted young Free Church Minister. From a memorial volume
printed for private circulation after his early death, which
shows what a loss this brought to his church and his friends, we
are permitted to print the following extracts:--
April 28, 1882.
"10.45.--The evening worship was
very uniting. The servants came in, and we sang the psalms
and hymns, and Dr. Lightfoot and a chaplain read and prayed (from
the new version and the prayer book) in his own voice and
with his own devout, simple soul uttering itself in all. His
after talk in the drawing-room was even more charming [than
that in the afternoon]. You know how a mastiff will lie down
(out of sheer love for the canine race) and let a crowd of
small dogs jump and tumble over him, and put them off, and
egg them on with great pawings and immense 'laps' of his
broad tongue. Even so did Dr. Lightfoot. ... It is good for
me to be in the midst of so much informal earnestness and
Christian manliness."
April 29, 1882.
"Then I suppose it is not taking
her past out of the hands of time, to say that Butler's seat
is now filled by his nearest successor; a man as great in his
work and in his day, as his great namesake (for they both are
written 'Joseph Dunelm'). I know not if there be any better
test of true lastingness in any man who is yet living, than
when, knowing his written works, one is able to compare them
with his person, and to say that these correspond. The same
judgment which you admire in Dr. Lightfoot's commentaries
meets you in his conversation. He seems, like justice in her
statues, always to give his sentences, holding meantime a
pair of other scales. Indeed, the analogy might be extended.
Justice is but badly described in stone as being blind-folded
in her decisions. But there is in the Bishop a strong cast of
eye which enables him, when he speaks, to address himself to
nobody in particular; although immediately after speaking, he
turns on you a glance that conveys an impression of the most
absolute impartiality. . . . He calls these lads (and I can
imagine worse things than to feel myself, for the nonce, one
of them) his family, and they treat him as frank, ingenuous
English gentlemen's sons would treat their father. He is
accessible to their difficulties and their doubts, if they
have any; but, a thing more remarkable, he is open to all
their kittenhood of mirth and fun. To hear him alone with
them is to feel you are on the edge of a circle, which tempts
you almost to stand on tiptoe and look over and wish you were
inside. It is a searching trial of true homeliness, to
observe how it comports itself when there are strangers
present. But I assert my coming in has not bated one jot of
all this family joy. Last evening, after prayers, they were
poking fun at the bishop. One man was asked how he was
getting on with Hebrew. The fellow boldly turned the weapon
round by inquiring whether his lordship was prepared to teach
him. Dr. Lightfoot was gently demurring, when somebody else
burst in, as if with a child's impatience and fear of some
older imcompleted promise: ' No, not before we have had these
lectures on botany.' Then, assuming the air of someone to
whom that study was even as his necessary food, he went on to
report his observations, taken daily on his walks to and from
the district, of two interesting weeds. It sounded
like a clever parody upon Darwin and his climbing plants
trained up the bed-post. I have written all this in order to
show--if it is within the power of words to show a thing
which lies more in the feeling of the whole, than in any
enumeration, however complete, of the details--how happy an
example one has here of the spirit and the action of the
English Church. Within, you have a home and a beehive both in
one; without everything is plain, and simple, and strenuous.
The Bishop preaches such sermons as the one I sent you. His
chaplains teach, and visit, and preach. The students an
earnest, and healthy set of men. Nothing is allowed in the
Castle which speaks of pomp or pretension. You go down
morning and evening to prayers in the chapel; I suppose it is
about the finest palace chapel in Britain. A simple service
is held. The Bishop and a chaplain read the lessons and lead
the prayers. Another chaplain has trained a choir of boys
from the neighbouring town. Behind these choristers sit the
students; the bishop and servants (eight I counted) are in
the back seats. One or two from the outside also seem to
attend. The psalms and hymns are simply but sweetly sung. So
anxious is Dr. Lightfoot that nothing should be unused,
nothing rest in an empty name, that I believe he is fitting
up the chapel with seats, so as to have a service every
Sabbath. Much of what I have seen here, the earnestness and
the manliness of the men, the order of the household, the
thoroughness of the instruction, the devoutness of the
prayers, the sweetness of the singing, the beauty, the
learning, the goodness, the simplicity, make me hang my head
for shame, both as a man and as a minister; for my whole
heart consents to these things that they are right. . ."
Arrangements having been made for a supply
of living agents for the work of the Diocese, two heavy tasks at
once confronted the Bishop; the division of the Diocese, and the
provision of additional churches and mission-rooms.
The first of these he had inherited. As
long ago as 1876 Bishop Baring had submitted the question to his
Ruridecanal Chapters, and "the judgment was almost unanimous
as to the advisableness of creating the See." A year later
Mr. Thomas Hedley bequeathed the residue of his estate, from
which some .£17,000 was ultimately realized, as the nucleus of
the necessary fund. In 1878 the Act for the creation of the four
Sees-- Liverpool, Newcastle, Southwell, and Wakefield--was passed,
and was characterized by Archbishop Tait as "one of the
greatest reforms proposed by the Church of England since the
Reformation." Bishop Baring spoke for the last time in the
House of Lords in favour of this measure, but he did not regard
the Newcastle scheme as one which was likely to be realized at an
early date. "The prospect of the accomplishment of this good
work is, I fear, far remote," he said in his Charge, which
was delivered later in the same year. Soon after Bishop Lightfoot's
appointment he had an interview with the Duke of Northumberland,
who promised the munificent gift of £10,000 to the fund. The
Bishop thereupon pledged himself to use every endeavour to
accomplish the scheme; but by the counsel of all competent
advisers he for a time withheld his hand. A deep cloud of dark
ness then hung over the commerce and industries of the north-eastern
counties, and it seemed to be hopeless to ask for subscriptions.
In December, 1880, it was possible to organize a committee. Men
soon caught what one called the " electric enthusiasm"
of the Bishop's ideas, and in nine months the work was
practically done. At the Church Congress of 1881, which was held
in Newcastle, the Bishop of Manchester appealed for subscriptions
to complete the fund, which had reached the critical stage of
near accomplishment that is often so difficult to pass. The
appeal was liberally answered, but still the last thousands did
not come, and the question of a house was becoming an additional
difficulty, when the most happy solution offered itself through
the liberality of Mr. J. W. Pease, a member of the Society of
Friends, and a banker in Newcastle. It was on the i5th of October,
18 81, that the following letter was received by the Bishop
through the then Archdeacon of Northumberland* We quote it as
showing both the widespread influence of the Bishop and the noble
spirit of the generous donor:--
" DEAR MR. ARCHDEACON,--So many
people tell me that Benwell Tower is the most suitable place
for the new Bishop that I think you ought to have it. Funds
do not come in very quickly, and the purchase of such a house
as you require must therefore be a difficulty. This being the
case, I have concluded to hand the place over to the
Committee, and as it is not occupied, they are very welcome
to the possession at once, so that any alterations which may
be considered needful may be made without loss of time, and
their solicitor can communicate with mine as to the
conveyance.
"Churchmen and Quakers used not to
get on very well together, but these times are past, and I
most sincerely trust that the important step about to be
taken may be in every way successful. What I propose to
instruct my solicitor to convey is the Tower, with its garden,
old burial-ground, stables and lodge, and as many of the
cottages near the stables as you may require. . . . Yours
very truly, JOHN PEASE."
This gift was followed by another
munificent offering of ^10,000, made by Mr. Spencer of Ryton, and
by a gift of the furniture for Benwell Tower through a Committee
of Ladies. The fund required was thus more than realized, and the
task which the Bishop had undertaken was more than accomplished.
On St. James's Day, 1882, Dr. Ernest Roland Wilberforce was
consecrated in Durham Cathedral as the first Bishop of Newcastle.
When the great work of the division of the
See was accomplished, the Bishop was more free to mature his
plans for Church Extension in the county of Durham. Along the
banks of the Tyne, the Wear, and the Tees, and in so-called
"pit villages," through a large part of the county, new
and vast populations had been called into existence by the
development of the coal, iron, and shipping industries. A country
road, such as that along which the Bishops of Durham had driven
from their castle at Auckland to the Cathedral Church, and by the
side of which one house stood some fifty years ago, had become
for a considerable part of its course a street, with a network of
houses on either side. A seaside village, like Stranton, had
developed into a great port like Hartlepool. Efforts had been
made, and with much success, by former Bishops, and notably by
Bishop Baring, to keep pace with this abnormal growth; but the
fact remained, and stared Bishop Lightfoot in the face, that in
almost every part of his Diocese the church accommodation was far
from adequate to the needs of the people. The measure of the
people's need was for him the measure of the Church's duty, and
the Church's duty was the motive power of his own immediate
action. He had learnt to the full both in school and in life that
Virtus in agenda constat. Cautious men pleaded now that "
times were bad," but so they had pleaded before when the
Newcastle Bishopric Fund was commenced. There was the added plea
that this fund had deeply drained all available resources, but
the Bishop's one answer was in effect, "Look at these sheep:
as their shepherd I must in the name of God try to provide folds
for them, and in the name of God I must call upon you to help me."
In January, 1884, a meeting was held in the
Town Hall at Durham under the presidency of the Lord-Lieutenant
of the county, for the purpose of hearing from the Bishop a
statement of the needs of the Diocese. The Archbishop of York had
generously come to help him. The nobility and gentry of the
county were well represented, but the meeting was not a large one,
for not a few had learned to fear the influence of an address
from the Bishop. He pleaded in simple and earnest terms for funds
to provide twenty-five churches and mission-rooms which he felt
to be urgently needed, and supported his plea by a generous gift.
Again the contagion of his enthusiasm and his munificence spread,
and a sum approaching £30,000 was subscribed in the room. "Why,
the Diocese has gone mad!" said a well-known layman after
the meeting; but it was a madness the results of which are now
written in deeds for which the most sanguine could not then have
hoped, and for which thousands do and will bless God. At the end
of five years--and these years a period of deep and continued
commercial depression--the Bishop was enabled to report, not that
the twenty-five buildings for which he had pleaded were in
progress but that "no less than forty-five churches and
mission-chapels had been completed, or will shortly be so,
through the instrumentality of the fund." Nor did the force
of the wave spend itself there or then. It sent its impetus into
many parishes, where no immediate work of church-building was
needed, and its direct force can be traced to the present day.
The Bishop himself offered, in thanksgiving for the completion of
the decennium of his episcopate, the noble building which
probably is the only instance in our own country of a dedication--and
in this case a peculiarly appropriate one --to S. Ignatius the
Martyr. Another church now being built in the same town of
Sunderland owes its existence to his forethought and his gifts,
and will be a memorial of his name and work. Gateshead also will,
under similar conditions, soon have its Bishop Lightfoot Memorial
Church, and these, the two largest towns in the Diocese, are but
examples of the spirit and work of the whole.
Another practical scheme to which the
Bishop gave much attention and which was a natural supplement to
his Church Building Fund, was a Diocesan Fund. This was intended
to form a combination of all the various funds in the Diocese for
Churches, Schools, Provision for Insurance and Pensions for the
Clergy, and so on, and in addition was to provide a fund under
the direction of a representative committee, which should aid any
one or more of the allied funds in case of need, and should
itself provide for any special work--a mission clergyman here, a
parish room there, a temporary endowment in a third place--which
may from time to time arise.
"I propose the present effort,"
wrote the Bishop, "to be wholly different to anything which
has preceded it, both in kind and magnitude. It ought not only to
supplement existing organizations, but also to plant and to
maintain living agents in districts with which the Church would
otherwise be unable successfully to deal. In short, as I have
said on a previous occasion it will be the handmaid of the
Diocese, stepping in at times and places where the need is sorest.
Above all, it will teach us to feel the high privilege of acting
as members of a great spiritual community, by stepping outside
the limits of parochial efforts, and taking a larger conception
of our responsibilities."
Here, as in all other cases, his appeal to
others was strengthened by his own munificence. Five hundred
pounds was the annual subscription which he proposed to
contribute personally, and it was natural that the Diocese should
support him nobly, as it did. In addition to the large gifts of
rich men and the apparently small gifts of poor men, came the
annual collections in churches, which were made in all the
parishes of the Diocese--with exceptions so few that they do but
emphasize the unanimity.
It will seem, perhaps, that more than
enough has been written to show how fully the Bishop's time and
thought were given to the details of his Diocesan work; but the
contents of the two quadrennial Charges which fall within the
period of his episcopate are so fully illustrative of this, and
at the same time so suggestive, that we cannot refrain from
quoting them:--
1882. I. THE DIOCESE.
(i) Territorial Rearrangements,
(i) Division of the Diocese,
(ii) New Archdeaconry,
(iii) Rearrangement of Rural Deaneries,
(iv) Subdivision of Parishes.
(2) Diocesan Institutions and
Associations.
(i) Diocesan Conference,
(ii) Diocesan Societies,
(iii) Organization of Lay Help,
(iv) Lay Readers,
(v) Ministration of Women,
(vi) Girls' Friendly Society and Young Men's Friendly
Society,
(vii) Diocesan Preachers.
(3) Miscellaneous.
(i) Ordinations,
(ii) Meeting of Curates,
(iii) Confirmations,
(iv) Church Building and
Restoration.
(v) Diocesan Calendar and Magazine.
(4) Retrospective and Prospective.
II. THE CHURCH.
(1) Burial Laws Amendment Act.
(2) Permanent Diaconate.
(3) Salvation Army.
(4) Revised New Testament.
(5) Vestments.
(6) Church and State.
(7) Anxieties and Hopes.
1886.
I. THE DIOCESE.
(1) Church Extension.
(i) Churches, Chapels, and Parishes,
(ii) Cemeteries and Churchyards.
(2) The Services.
(i) Services in Supplementary
Buildings.
(ii) Holy Communion,
(iii) Weekday Services.
(iv) Choirs and Hymns,
(v) Letting and Appropriation of Pews.
(3) The Clergy.
(i) Ordinations,
(ii) Junior Clergy,
(iii) Increase in the Clergy,
(iv) Canon Missioner's Work.
(4) Lay Ministrations.
(i) Lay Readers,
(ii) Lay Evangelists,
(iii) The Church Army.
(5) Confirmations.
(6) Diocesan Finance.
(i) Financial Statement,
(ii) Collection of Statistics,
(iii) General Diocesan Fund.
(7) Diocesan Societies.
(i) Church of England Temperance
Society,
(ii) White Cross Army,
(iii) Girls' Friendly Society,
(iv) Diocesan Sons of the Clergy,
(v) Diocesan Board of Inspection,
(vi) Parochial Schools Society,
(vii) Diocesan Board of Education.
(8) Conclusion.
II. THE CHURCH.
(1) Church Patronage.
(2) Church Revenues.
(3) Ecclesiastical Courts.
(4) The Church House.
These Charges were a cause of
disappointment to many of the Bishop's friends. They had hoped
that he would follow the example of some other learned men who
had been called to Bishops* thrones, and had thence addressed the
Church and the world on questions of the day. But he deliberately
chose his line. In his opinion:--
"A visitation is a great audit time,
when the Bishop and clergy alike render an account of their
ministrations--the clergy by their answers to the questions of
their diocesan--the Bishop by his charge summing up the work of
the diocese during the few years past. It is a foreshadowing and
a forecast of the great and final visitation, when the Master
Himself returning shall demand an account of His talents, when
the Chief Shepherd shall reappear and require His flock at our
hands."
Not that he failed to feel constantly the
pulse of great movements. He never forgot that he was a Bishop of
the Anglican Church, but he always remembered that he was the
Bishop of Durham. The Church and the wider questions which affect
the Church at large have their place in both the Charges, but the
Diocese had the primary claim at a visitation of the clergy of
the Diocese. And what a picture of the work of a diocese do these
Charges give! In almost every detail is there ground for humble
thankfulness for the progress of the past, and ground for hopeful
counsel for the work of the future. What a picture, too, do we
get incidentally of the work of a Bishop!
"I am thankful to say," he writes
in 1886, "that there are now only a few churches in my
Diocese in which I have not officiated, and I hope before long to
complete the circuit. I have preached "--and the volumes
before us tell us of what kind these sermons were--"in all
the churches in Gateshead, Darlington, Stockton, and Sunderland (including
Bishopwearmouth and Monkwearmouth), and in nearly all in Durham,
South Shields, and the Hartlepools--in the principal churches in
these towns several times."1
Some of the Bishop's friends were also
disappointed, and perhaps with more show of reason, that his
voice was seldom heard in the House of Lords. But here, too, he
was guided by the same principle. He never forgot that he was a
lord of Parliament, but he always remembered that he was
primarily Bishop of Durham. He was indeed never absent from the
House of Lords at a critical division, though his presence
involved the sacrifice of an important Diocesan engagement and
two nights in a railway carriage; his counsel was always at the
command of the leaders of the Episcopal Bench; no man was more in
touch with every movement for the social as well as spiritual
welfare of his countrymen; but he naturally did not attach to his
own utterances the weight which others did, and he felt that the
interests of the Church and the people were most safely guided by
the great Archbishops, upon whom this burden naturally fell.
Nor did he shrink, when it came clearly in
the path of his own duty, from expressing his opinion or offering
his counsel on questions which were of universal interest. In
1881 he presided over the twenty-first meeting--the coming of age--of
the Church Congress at Newcastle-on-Tyne, The British Association
had just kept its jubilee in the metropolis of the Northern
Province. Here is the Bishop's happy and characteristically
hopeful reference to the coincidence:-- .
"The President availed himself of the
occasion to sum up the achievements of the half-century past--untrodden
fields opened out, fresh sciences created, a whole world of fact
and theory discovered, of which men had hardly a suspicion at the
beginning of this period. In this commemoration we are reminded
of the revolution in the intellectual world which has taken place
in our own time, as in the other, our attention was directed to
the revolution in the social and industrial world.
Here again we are confronted with a giant
force, of which the Church of Christ must give an account. If we
are wise we shall endeavour to understand and to absorb these
truths. They are our proper heritage as Christians, for they are
manifestations of the Eternal Word, who is also the Head of the
Church. They will add breadth and strength and depth to our
theology. Before all things we shall learn by the lessons of the
past to keep ourselves free from any distrust or dismay.
Astronomy once menaced, or was thought to menace, Christianity.
Long before we were born the menace had passed away. We found
astronomy the sworn ally of religion. The heresy of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries had become the orthodoxy of the
nineteenth. When some years ago an eminent man of science,
himself a firm believer, wrote a work throwing doubt on the
plurality of worlds, it was received with a storm of adverse
criticism, chiefly from Christian teachers, because he ventured
to question a theory which three centuries earlier it would have
been a shocking heresy to maintain. Geology next entered the
lists. We are old enough, many of us, to remember the anxiety and
distrust with which its startling announcements were received.
This scare, like the other, has passed away. We admire the
providential design which through myriads of years prepared the
earth by successive gradations of animal and vegetable life for
its ultimate destination as the abode of man. Nowhere else do we
find more vivid and striking illustrations of the increasing
purpose which runs through the ages. . . . Our theological
conceptions have been corrected and enlarged by its teaching, but
the work of the Church of Christ goes on as before. Geology, like
astronomy, is fast becoming our faithful ally. And now, in turn,
Biology concentrates the same interests, and excites the same
distrusts. Will not history repeat itself? If the time should
come when evolution is translated from the region of suggestive
theory to the region of acknowledged fact, what then? Will it not
carry still further the idea of providential design and order?
Will it not reinforce with new and splendid illustrations the
magnificent lesson of modern science-- complexity of results
traced back to simplicity of principles--variety of phenomena
issuing from unity of order--the gathering up, as it were, of the
threads which connect the universe, in the right hand of the One
Eternal Word?
"Thus we are reminded by these two
celebrations of the twin giants, the creation of our age, with
which the Church of Christ has to reckon-- foes only if they are
treated as such, but capable of being won as trusty allies, by
appreciation, by sympathy, by conciliation and respect."
In 1885 the Bishop presided at a meeting of
the Diocesan Conference at Durham. Disestablishment was in the
air and to many persons seemed nearer then than it does now. He
was led to speak at some length upon it. We extract a few
sentences:--
"But I cannot blink facts. The
question is not sleeping; it has been definitely raised; and I
should hold it culpable in anyone in my position not to express,
and express definitely, his opinion on the issues involved. . . .
The only schemes which are before us involve a wholesale
alienation of property, a disregard of personal and corporate
rights, and a violation of all the most sacred associations and
feelings, such as, in the words of an eminent living statesman,
would leave England "a lacerated and bleeding mass." Of
any such scheme of disestablishment I say deliberately, having
carefully weighed these words and feeling the tremendous
responsibility of over-statement, that it would be not only a
national disaster, but also a national crime, to which it would
be difficult to find a parallel in the history of England since
England became a nation. I believe that a moral blow would be
inflicted on this country, under which it would reel and stagger
for many generations to come, even if it ever recovered."
In October, 1889, just two months before
his death, the Bishop presided over the Conference of his Diocese
in Sunderland. He addressed it on many subjects, and especially
on the Lambeth Conference, Christian Socialism, the White Cross
Movement, the Brotherhood of the Poor. How touching in the light
of what followed, how firm in the strength of faith, is this
reference to himself:--
"While I was suffering from overwork,
and before I understood the true nature of my complaint, it was
the strain, both in London and at home, in connexion with this
Pan-Anglican gathering, which broke me down hopelessly. I did not
regret it then, and I do not regret it now. I should not have
wished to recall the past, even if my illness had been fatal. For
what after all is the individual life in the history of the
Church? Men may come and men may go--individual lives float down
like straws on the surface of the waters till they are lost in
the ocean of eternity; but the broad, mighty, rolling stream of
the Church itself--the cleansing, purifying, fertilising tide of
the River of God--flows on for ever and ever. A gathering of
Bishops, so numerous and so representative, collected from all
parts of the globe, is an incident quite unique in the history of
this Diocese. . . . For to those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear, what does it all mean? What activities does it not suggest
in the Anglican Church of the present? What capacities and hopes
for the Anglican Church of the future? What evidences of present
catholicity? What visions of future diffusion? ... I hold that
God has vouchsafed a signal blessing to our generation in this
demonstration of the catholicity of the English Church, and I
consider myself happy that in my chapel at Auckland will be
preserved for future generations a memorial of this chief event
of my episcopate."
How full of wisdom is this comment on the
work of the Lambeth Conference:--
"But it may be said: this was a very
important and very suggestive gathering, but what was the outcome?
Did it leave behind any result at all proportionate to the
imposing spectacle? What questions did it settle, disposing for
ever of the relations between Christianity and science, or
between religion and politics or social life--questions of
infinite perplexity, which are troubling the minds of men in our
own generation?
"Heaven be thanked, it did not lay
down any formal dogma or infallible decree on any of these points.
There is such a thing as hastening to be wise, even in Church
Councils and Conferences. Of all the manifold blessings which God
has showered on our English Church, none surely is greater than
the providence which has shielded her from premature and
authoritative statements, which soon or late must be repudiated
or explained away, however great may have been the temptation
from time to time. The Church of England is nowhere directly or
indirectly committed to the position that the sun goes round the
earth; or that this world has only existed for six or seven
thousand years; or that the days of creation are days of twenty-four
hours each; or that the scriptural genealogies must always be
accepted as strict and continuous records of the descent from
father to son; or that the sacred books were written in every
case by those whose names they bear; or that there is nowhere
allegory, which men have commonly mistaken for history. On these
and similar points, our Church has been silent; though
individuals, even men of high authority, have written hastily and
incautiously."
The above extracts are all taken from
addresses which the Bishop delivered within the limits of his own
Diocese, but it would entirely misrepresent him if the impression
should be formed that his sympathies and work were confined to
these limits. If space were at our command, we should like to
quote other passages, which show how fully he was in touch with
the work of the Church far and near. Now he gives an address at
meetings of the Church Congress at Leicester and Carlisle; now he
preaches the Congress Sermon at Wolverhampton; now and again he
crosses the Border to show his warm sympathy with his brethren in
Scotland. His voice was constantly heard in London on behalf of
this or that philanthropic society; and here and there throughout
the country, clergymen whose only claim was their need, asked for
and obtained his help. To Cambridge he was bound by many ties,
and the series of "Cuddesdon Addresses" shows that to
Oxford he was no less generous.
Nor was it in public only that this help
was given. Auckland Castle was almost constantly filled, as with
the sons of the house who were being prepared for their future
work, so with the clergy and laity from the Diocese, and from
afar, who were welcomed to his hospitality and to his counsel.
Few perhaps realize what the burden is which the post-bag adds to
a Bishop's daily life, and in his case it brought the scholar's
burden too; but even this was cheerfully borne, and no letter
remained unanswered, whether it was that of the Southern farmer
who wished to know if the Bishop could supply him with Durham
cows, or that of a lady who felt sure he could find time to read
a theological work in MS. before she sent it to the press--and
" may she say in her preface that it had his approval?"--or
that of the student in the far West who had just begun the Greek
Testament, and would like a solution of his many difficulties,
and had " heard that the Bishop was a good scholar." In
small matters, as in great, no one asked for anything which he
felt that he could give, and asked in vain. And so, year after
year, the hard work was done, and the noble life was lived. The
mental and physical strength seemed equal to every strain. No
engagement ever fell through, no weariness was ever apparent.
Ignatius was refreshment from the work of the Diocese: the work
of the Diocese was refreshment from Ignatius. The face was always
bright; the heart was always glad. The happiest years of his life
he thought these Durham years to be; and he thought that he had
never been so strong. It was towards the close of the spring
confirmations in 1888, when the pressure of work had been
unusually heavy, and falls of snow had more than once blocked the
roads by which he tried to travel, that this strength seemed for
the first time to be strained. He thought, and his friends
thought, that a short summer holiday would completely restore him;
but the Lambeth Conference came and the visit of the Bishops to
Durham came. Both brought to him great happiness, but both
brought much work. The autumn holiday was too late, and the
Bishop returned to his Diocese only to leave it again, under
positive medical orders, for a winter in Bournemouth. He at once
thought of resigning the Bishopric. It was foreign to his whole
thought to have personal interests distinct from his office. He
could not conceive that any man could accept an office in the
Church of Christ without identifying himself with it, or would
hold it a day longer than he could fully discharge its duties.
One of the burdens which weighed on his soul was that instances
to the contrary were not wholly wanting in his Diocese. He at
least would do the one thing which was right. But he was still
comparatively young; hopes of restoration to health, and strength,
and work, seemed to be well grounded; and those to whom he was
bound by every tie of allegiance absolutely forbade the step he
wished to take. An Assistant Bishop, first welcomed and soon
beloved by himself and by his Diocese, was found in the person of
Bishop Sandford, and he somewhat doubtingly acquiesced in a
course about which others had no doubt. The spring of 1889 seemed
to bring a fulfilment of the hopes which had been formed. The
Bishop was able to return to his Diocese, and on Ascension Day
the Cathedral Church was crowded by a vast assembly who joined
with him in a special Service of Thanksgiving. He was able to
fulfil the ordinary Diocesan duties, and to devote a large amount
of time to literary work during the months of the summer and
autumn; and he took part in three public events of special
interest. On July 2nd he consecrated the Church of S. Ignatius
the Martyr, Sunderland, his own noble gift of thanksgiving; on
October 17th he presided over the Diocesan Conference, and
delivered the remarkable address to which we have referred; on
October the 29th he received in a public meeting, at the hands of
the Lord-Lieutenant, the beautiful Pastoral Staff, which,
together with a portrait by Mr. Richmond, it was determined to
present to him on the completion of the tenth year of his
episcopate. He thanked the donors in his usual happy, cheerful,
tone, and took his farewell with tender words of blessing. It was
for the last time. He left for the purpose of wintering again in
Bournemouth a few days afterwards. For a time he continued to
make progress. He was able to work regularly at the Clement up to
Tuesday, December 17th. The local papers of the following
Saturday morning contained a note from Archdeacon Watkins, "asking
the clergy and other ministers of religion to make special
supplication for our beloved Bishop on Sunday and other days."
The evening papers of the same day contained a telegram from
Bournemouth --"The Bishop of Durham passed peacefully away
this afternoon, at a quarter to four o'clock."
The sorrow of the Church and of the nation,
and the expression of that sorrow in the pulpit and in the press,
is still fresh in the memory. The death and buriall were the
natural sequence to the life. True goodness and true greatness
are honoured by men of every opinion and by men of every rank.
Some estimates of the work of Bishop
Lightfoot which were uttered under the influence of strong
feeling immediately after death, contained perhaps some
expressions and some comparisons which history will not justify.
We are writing from the vantage-ground of three years' distance,
and with access to many papers and references which have been
kindly placed at our disposal, and have endeavoured at every
point to follow in the spirit of the inscription which has formed
our motto: Quails fuerit . . . testantur of era. For this reason
we have largely quoted the Bishop's own words, and if we try to
express our own estimate of his work we shall still have recourse
to words which he used of another, and which with little change
may be as truly said of himself:--
"But after making all allowance for
the fond partiality of a recent regret, we may fairly say that as
a Bishop of Durham he stands out preeminent in the long list of
twelve centuries; as a man of letters, greatest of all save De
Bury; as a restorer of the fabric and order of churches, greatest
of all save Cosin; as a profound thinker, greatest of all save
Butler; as a munificent and patriotic ruler, greatest of all save
Barrington; but as uniting in himself many and varied
qualifications which combined go far towards realizing the ideal
head of a religious and learned foundation, the just
representative of a famous academic body, greater than these or
any of his predecessors. Vast and varied mental powers, untiring
energy and extensive knowledge, integrity of character and
strictness of example, a wide and generous munificence, a keen
interest in the progress of the Church and the University, an
intense devotion to his own Diocese, a strong sense of duty, a
true largeness of heart, a simple Christian faith; the union of
these qualities fairly entitles him to the foremost place among
the Bishops of Durham."
It is natural that men should have
attempted not only to portray this great life, but to analyse it;
and the Church and the nation would owe a deep debt of gratitude
to the writer who could show us how in any degree other men can
learn the principles, of which the life and character of Joseph
Barber Lightfoot were the product. Two statements among the many
which lie before us are of special value in themselves, and
derive a special interest from the widely-different sources from
which they come.
Canon Westcott, preaching in Westminster
Abbey two days after the funeral, said:--
What then, you will ask me, is the
secret of the life of him to whom we look this afternoon with
reverent regard? It is, in a word, the secret of strength. He
was strong by singleness of aim, by resolution, by judgment,
by enthusiasm, by sympathy, by devotion. In old days it was
strength to be with him: and for the future it will be
strength to remember him.
Lord Durham, speaking on two occasions
separated by three years, said:--
I venture to attribute the success of
the Bishop to the strong personal feeling he inspires in all
those who know him. It is impossible to have been connected
with him or to have come in contact with him, without
appreciating his strong sympathy and his generous regard for
the welfare of the people surrounding him. ... I think that
no prelate in the proud and old princely days of the
Palatinate of Durham, with all his pomp and with all his
circumstance, ever commanded more true respect than our
present Bishop with his simple, kindly life, and his generous
and unostentatious charity.
In every town and parish in this county
you will find visible and tangible evidence of his untiring
zeal, and of the impetus which his genius gave to all those
who served under him. But what you will not see, and what no
hand can probe, is the impress he made upon the hearts of all
with whom he came into contact, and the softening influence
of his genial presence upon all sorts and conditions of men.
... I venture to think that the chief factor in his paramount
influence amongst us was his true and genial sympathy--sympathy
with our joys and our sorrows, sympathy with our aspirations
and with our failures; with our pursuits and with our
recreations; and, above all, boundless sympathy with the
shortcomings of feeble human nature. He was no proud Pharisee,
who thanked God that he was not as other men are, but a true-hearted
Christian gentleman, conscious of the trials and temptations
of the world, striving with his pure life, and humble, modest
ways, to raise mankind to a higher and better level by his
example of Christian charity and loving sympathy.
It seems to be certain that the two great
secrets of the Bishop's power are here--strength and sympathy.
And yet they were veiled in a modesty which men thought amounted
to shyness. They were held in reserve; they were ready for
fullest use whenever occasion demanded. But his very sympathy was
strong, and he could not understand some forms of weakness. One
of his early pupils has told us " . . . he was kindness
itself. ... I once offended him ... by telling him, when I got my
Fellowship that he might have saved me many gloomy misgivings as
an Undergraduate, if the Cambridge system had dealt a little more
freely in words of encouragement." One of his clergy, whom
he had placed in several difficult posts, said to another after
some years of service, " It would remove a burden from my
mind if I felt sure that my work was being done as he wished it,
but he has never said to me a single word of encouragement."
The second replied, "I have had a larger experience, but I
should never look for such words from him. He expects strong men
to do their work, and would as soon think of encouraging such men
as of seeking encouragement in words for himself. They must do
all and bear all in the light of the Divine Presence, as he
himself does." And yet this second speaker received from the
Bishop, not long before his death, a note which contained the
following words: " I have never ceased to be thankful for
the inspiration which led me to invite you to assist me in the
work of the Diocese. May God give you every blessing."
Strength and sympathy! But the secret
principle lies deeper still; and here again the Bishop's own
words must guide us. The text of his enthronement sermon was
"And they shall see His face," and we have already
quoted words which tell the secret of which we are in quest. The
prayer which from the first he asked his Diocese to offer for him
was--
"That the Eternal Presence, thus
haunting him night and day, may rebuke, may deter, may guide, may
strengthen, may comfort, may illumine, may consecrate and subdue
the feeble and wayward impulses of his own heart to God's holy
will and purpose!"
The "consciousness of an Eternal
Presence"--that was the principle of his life. That made him
strong; that made him sympathetic; that gave him absolute
singleness of aim and simplicity of life; that filled him with a
buoyant optimism which expressed itself in constant joyousness;
that was the source of an almost unparalleled generosity which in
life gave to God and the Church every gift which God gave him,
and at death made his chaplains his executors, and his Diocese
his residuary legatee; that was the strength which nerved the
mind to think and the hand to write in the solitary room before
the hard day of public life began and after it ended; that was
the wondrous power of personality which made itself felt in
Cambridge, in London, in Durham, by men of every degree. He was
ever conscious of the Eternal Presence. He ever went to men from
God, and the human presence was illumined by the Divine.
Did boys at school wonder that Light-foot
never spoke an ignoble word, or did an ignoble deed? The secret
finds its explanation in the spirit which led him and a younger
schoolfellow, afterwards not less eminent than himself, to
arrange a form of prayer for the hours of the day for their
common use. Did men marvel at the influence of the young Fellow
and Tutor of Trinity? They would have marvelled less had they
known that his life was strengthened by the following among other
prayers:--
Since it hath pleased Thee, O Lord,
that I should be called to take my part in the teaching of
this College, grant that I may not assume the same lightly,
or without a due sense of the importance of my trust; but,
considering it a stewardship, whereof I shall have to render
an account hereafter, may faithfully fulfil the same to Thy
honour and glory. Grant, O Lord, that neither by word nor
deed I may do aught that may weaken the faith, or slacken the
practice of those committed to my charge; but rather grant to
me such measure of Thy Holy Spirit, that my duties may be
discharged to Thy honour and glory, and to the welfare of
both the teacher and the taught. Grant this, O Lord, through
Thy son, Jesus Christ, who is the Way, and the Truth, and the
Life. Amen.
Or if they had known that in the pressure
of that busy life he found time to write to schoolboys such words
as these:--
Remember me to all the boys. . . .
Goodbye. Fight manfully against all school-boy temptations.
Be as brave as a lion in defence of all that is good. Strive
to live purely and uprightly. Work hard.
Did peers and pitmen, rich and poor, old
and young, in the Diocese of Durham feel that a strange influence
of sympathy and strength had come among them and had touched
their hearts? Had they followed the great Bishop of Durham to his
inner chamber they would have found him resting, for the too few
hours he gave to sleep, on a simple iron bedstead which the
pitman would have spurned; and they would have seen hanging close
by the side of it a simple German engraving of Albert Dürer's Crucifixion,
with the legend "ES IST VOLLBRACHT."
Among the last words which the Bishop
addressed to the public from the very brink of the grave were
these: --
I believe from my heart that the truth
which this Gospel [of St. John] more especially enshrines--the
truth that Jesus Christ is the very Word incarnate, the
manifestation of the Father to mankind--is the one lesson
which, duly apprehended, will do more than all our feeble
efforts to purify and elevate human life here by imparting to
it hope and light and strength, the one study which alone can
fitly prepare us for a joyful immortality hereafter.
The first words of the Will and Testament
by which he spoke from beyond the grave, were these:--
With ever-increasing thankfulness to
Almighty God for his many and great mercies vouchsafed to me,
hoping to die, as I have striven to live, in the light of God's
fatherly goodness as revealed through the Cross of Christ.
Such were the principles of this great life--Qualis
fuerit .... testantur opera; qualis fuerit testantur ....
FlDES ET PRECES PRIVATE.
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