The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-06 00:00:00

Punishment, for example, they were prepared to
argue out as a problem admitting of logical solution
in many ways—among others, almost, it might be
said, through the Theory of Probabilities. So reso-
lutely, indeed, and persistently were the pros
and cons thus bandied to and fro between
them, that the solution of that awful problem was
at last to fall from oracular lips, from the lips of the
keeper of the Queen's conscience (and of the con-
siences, we are to presume, of course, of her Majesty's
lieges into the bargain), the occupant of the Wool-
sack, the Lord High Chancellor of England !

Dignitaries of the Church might argue—
Convocation might hold its sittings—Orders in
Council might be issued—but the Lord Chancellor
spoke and Eternal Punishment was abolished.
The rage thus setting in, the fashion it might al-
most be termed, of doubts the most astounding in re-
gard to the validity of Revelation, advanced and ex-
panded. Herr Strauss of Tubingen found in M.

Renan of Paris a congenial disciple and an

impassioned successor as the biographer of
Him whom between 300,000,000 and 400,000,000

of Christians still to this day—in spite of M. Renan
and of Herr Strauss—regard with love and adora-

tion as their Redeemer and their God. The
cynical incredulity of Strauss, it may be said,
has been sentimentalised in point of fact through
the more recently published " Life of Christ," that
Vie de Jesus of the speculative Frenchman—has
been absolutely sentimentalised into a more familiar
profanity by the tender imaginings and emotional
eloquence of Renan.
And all the while the religious ferment going on
around was such, was so conspicuously manifested in
various ways amongst ourselves, that not only were
the Spirit-Rappers holding their seances with
the aid of their money-fingering Mediums in one
direction, while the Revivalists were holding their
frantic and fanatical assemblies in another,
but in various forms the devotional fervour
of the age was revealing itself, by new
and unaccustomed manifestations of ardour
in the popular belief, both within and without the
Church Establishment. What has since acquired
for itself the incongruous title of Muscular Chris-
tianity found at the very outset in the Rev. Charles
Kingsley and his sympathisers able, and, in many
respects, brilliant exponents. The philosophic
party looked to Professor F. W. Newman
for guidance—whither it would, perhaps, be diffi-
cult to conjecture ! The gentle, heartening, cordial
influence of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, was
commemorated gently, cordially, hearteningly
by the now member for Lambeth in his first
and most delightful story, the book known to us all
as " Tom Brown's School Days." The "Religion
of Common Life" was, in another direction, des-
canted upon in a charming sermon by the Rev.
John Caird, thus virtually memorable as the
author of one sermon—for, while he may have writ-
ten many others, that one alone of his has attained
anything at all like popularity: so that we may
really in this way speak of him as virtu-
ally the author of one sermon, as Beckford was
the author of one romance and Hamilton of one
solitary speech in the House of Commons. The
Rev. Mr. Maurice, elsewhere, by word of mouth,
enforded and endorsed most persuasively the
growing unbelief as to the Eternity of Punish-
ment. The Rev. Frederick Robertson, with the
air and nature of a knightly gentleman, charmed
his hearers, day by day, week upon week, year after
year, over the pulpit cushion, first in Cheltenham,
afterwards at Brighton, until he was prematurely
prostrated by consumption in that grave of his which
is still looked back to wistfully by a throng of loving
admirers. The Rev. Dr. Cumming, again, on his part,
while disdaining to " deal damnation round the
land" like so many an earlier Boanerges, as a means
for rousing an indifferent generation to some better
sense of the necessity there is for religious zeal,
certainly strove to—
" Fright the isle from its propriety,"

with the most pertinaciously reiterated and Moore's-
almanack-like predictions of the advent of the
Great Day of Retribution. As Solomon Eagle,
during the Plague of London, is related to have
gone about the streets stark-naked, carrying a
burning chaldron of coals upon his head, and cry-
ing aloud that the Day of Judgment was at hand,
Dr. Cumming, clad in sober broadcloth and
scattering from his hand shoals of prophetic pam-
phlets and sermons, went hither and thither all over
the country,
,during several years, until people got
tired of the monotony of his non-fulfilled pre-
dictions, announcing to us again and again the
same appalling catastrophe. So persistently in
point of fact, and pertinaciously did he persevere in
thus writing and in thus speaking —after the manner
of those whom it has become the familiar slang of
our day to designate Sensationalists, that we have
a distinct recollection of having, but a very few years
since, seen the walls of the city of Bath placarded
conspicuously with a wonderfully consolatory
announcement to the effect, that for some rea-
son, now forgotten, probably the unexpected en-
gagement of the popular preacher and lecturer
elsewhere—" The Last Day," meaning by that the
delivery of Dr. C umming's then anticipated discourse
upon the subject, was unexpectedly put off, or—as
the posters read at a little distance—

THE LAST DAY
UNAVOIDABLY POSTPONED

Turning point blank from the Terrible to the
Humorous—we might almost say taking the one
step that proverbially separates the Sublime from the
Ridiculous—Mr. Spurgeon, in a very different mood
indeed from that within the range of Dr. Cumming's
philosophy, contrived somehow to charm others than
the Tozers who thronged around him by his extraordi-
nary combination of unctuous devotional enthusiasm
and racy facetiousness. Accomplishing his object
after a very different fashion, again the Rev. Mr.
Boyd,better-known under his initial title (A. K. H. B.)
as a magazine contributor and miscellaneous essayist,
has enabled us to become pleasantly conscious
of how the more delicate, not to say the more
seemly and befitting humour of a clergyman,
discoursing through his pen rather than from his
pulpit, might cultivate in the interests if not of re-
ligion at any rate of kindly Christian fellowship,
the amenities of • literature, of popular, even of
the lightest, of light literature. Finally, upon the
appearance of Dr. Colenso, the Bishop of Natal,
(bearing in his hands his Commentaries upon the
Pentateuch) we beheld a new and wholly un-
looked-for importance attached to the incre-
dulity of those who had been so long examining
with cynical and depreciating eyes the venerable
records of the Holy Scriptures. Examining one by
one the astounding arguments put forth by that
Right Reverend Arithmetician, who found in the
the person of a captious Zulu, a darker and wiser
Gamaliel, it was, as though we were watching the
researches of one who was complacently and with a
sublime self-confidence undertaking to measure
the depths of infinitude with a two-foot rule.
But, all tha while, in the midst of this varied
and widely contrasting religious agitation, in the very
thick and throng of so much sincerity, affectation,
passionate enthusiasm, and frivolous pretence—out
of all this wonderful jumble of piety and profanity—
out of the astounding confusion of this age of
Mesmerism and Mormonism, of Spiritualists and
Revivalists, of systematic deriders of Revela-
tion and pretentious interpreters of the Apocalypse,
there has been growing up, gradually, almost im-
perceptibly—growing up as some stately fir tree
. might grow from among--
Agaries, and fungi, and mildew, and mould—
Pointing ever more and more directly heavenward
—a Religious Controversy of a very notable kind, a
Controversy in which the disputants are among the
most earnest, the most gifted, and the most honoured
amongst the great mass of contemporary Thinkers
and Believers. Into the merits of this controversy
we do not purpose, here, of
course, in any way, even
partially or indirectly, to adventure. Our intention,
our one wish in the matter, being simply to afford by
the sequential enumeration of the works (books
sometimes, pamphlets more frequently) that have
been elicited, now from one side now from another--
some more accurate notion of the growth and de-
velopment of this same controversy which has so
rapidly sprung up—now in one shape from an
apparently frivolous Taunt, now in another from
a purely incidental Comment—to its present (to
say the least of it) very appreciable magnitude.

The Taunt—flung out, to all appearance quite at
random, by Mr. Kingsley, through the pages of
Macmillan's Magazine—resulted in Dr. Newman's
" Apologia." The Comment—penned seemingly
. .

with the utrt lost possible deliberation by Dr. Manning
—led to the : production of Dr. Pusey's "Eirenicon"
and of the use other already numerous publications
which the appearance of the "Eirenicon" has.very
rapidly and very recently elicited.
Referring, for a moment, to the origin of the
earlier of the two famous works but just now
mentioned, namely, Dr. Newman's " Apologia"—
(and reserving until afterwards a similar passing
reference: to the origin of Dr. Pusey's "Eireni-
con")—it should be remarked here at once that
all the particulars as to the circumstances under
which it -was called forth are to be found in
a little pamphlet of 34 pages octavo, entitled—
A Correspondence on the Question whether Dr.
Newman teaches that Truth is no Virtue—
(Longman). A pamphlet written throughout
with all the clearness and precision of that almost
peerless master of our language. It comprises
within. it (this pamphlet)—besides a fragmen-
tary passage quoted from a Review of
Froude's " History of England," in Macmil-
lan's Magazine,' a review signed C.K., and
written in reality by the Rev. Charles Kingsley—
ten letters, the purport of which was thereupon, at
the close of the Correspondence, set forth or
analysed in a few sentences of inimitable
humour, presenting to us, within the compass of
two printed pages, a perfect masterpiece of irony.
What, then, Does Dr. Newman Mean? A Reply
to a Pamphlet lately published. By the Rev.
Charles Kingsley. (Macmillan)—Was the bold and
lengthened, if not exhaustive rejoinder, issued with
all convenient speed, by the Rector of Eversley.
The original taunt bad been—(who can have
forgotten it?)—that Dr. Newman was, so far,
like the Father of Lies, that he taught lying upon
system—inculcating that truth not only never had
been a virtue with the clergy of his Church, but
need not be, and, on the whole, ought not to be.
Challenged to make good these statements, by the
naming of page and volume in which any such atro-
cious opinions had ever been expressed by Dr. New-
man, the reverend reviewer, having failed to make good
his assertion, widened the field of argument and, by
so doing, led unconsciously to the production of what
observers on all sides recognised upon the instant,
and must always recognise, as a masterpiece
of subtle, refined, and profoundly philosophic intro-
spection. This same masterpiece being the—
Apologia Pro Vita Sua : Being a Reply to a
Pamphlet, &c. By John Henry Newman,
D.D. (Longman). —A work published origi-
nally in a periodical form at uncertain inter-
vals, until its instalments, eight in number,
including the appendix, amounted to the size of a
goodly octavo volume. Later on, upon its revision
in a second edition, this famous work, a work that
we are fain to regard as the magnum opus of the
Author of " Callista," of "Loss and Gain," and of so
many other notable, and some of them very noble
productions, including among these, the most
recent of them all, the haunting poem, en-
titled, " The Dreain of Gerontius "—has been re-
named : the "Apologia," now appearing as the—
History of my Religious Opinions. By John
Henry Newman, D.D. (Longman).—A Confidence
such as the world has seldom if ever had, one admit-
ting us to the core of the heart so to speak—to the
very sanctuary of the conscience—of a fellow mortal
the whole passion of whose life manifestly has been a
hungering search after that very Truth the eliciter
of the " Apologia " inconsiderately declared him to
have absolutely repudiated.
The foregoing discussion, while, as must have
been apparent, it was in a manner purely acci-
dental in its origin, was also obviously and
essentially, from its very outset, one of a sim-
ply personal character. It rose into importance,
however, by reason of the genius of the man who
had been thus conspicuously arraigned at the Bar
of Public Opinion ; and who, while scattering into
nothingness charges. that he, upon first hearing of
them, instantly proclaimadto be slanderous, signally
availed himself of the opportunity thereby afforded,
in the mere process of his self-vindication, of opening
to view for once that window in the human breast
which had been dreamt of and pined for by the
pagan philosopher. The hearing of the argument
involved in the first unconsidered taunt thrown out
by the Author of " Hypatia," and in the consequent
" Apologia pro vita sua " which that taunt elicited
with such astounding swiftnea from Dr. Newman,
was only one which became wider and wider by the
sheer force of implication. The personality, in
other words, that had been dropped like a pebble
into still water, spread in its effect wider and wider
by implication upon implication. Insomuch that
the one apparently isolated accusation involving
within it, as it proved to do upon examination, a
whole congeries or ganglionic cluster of correlative
it might perhaps rather be said of congenital accu-
sations--accusations affecting, in truth, the character
of a whole church rather than the consistency of
an individual necessitated, in the repudia-
tion of that one first charge, the laying bare
of the entire inner history of the religious opinions
of the eminent man who had been thus assailed
without the smallest provocation. Hence, indeed,
the extraordinary interest, value, and importance
attached to the " Apologia" thus called forth by so
trivial an accident, by such a series of trivial acci-
dents—such accidents, let us say, as an incidental
illustration introduced almost parenthetically into
his argument by a magazine reviewer, an observation
pencil-marked in the margin of the magazine-
page by somebody or other (no one knows by whom)
and sent by this happily officious somebody through
the book-post to Dr. Newman's address at the Ora-
tory in Birmingham.
Another and a very different Religious Contro-
versy—already referred to by us as having been
kindled by a Comment of Dr. Manning's—we would
now briefly particularise. A controversy involving
within it no personalities whatever, and springing up,
almost we might say in the natural course of things,
certainly in no way either abruptly or unexpectedly.
The Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of
England. Bvo., pp. 45 (Longman)—A letter ad-
dressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., by Henry
Edward Manning, D.D., was the spark that fired
the train, was in plainer words, the calm, but potent
signal for the Religious Controversy that has since
then been aroused. It was a summons spoken, al-
most we might add, sotto voce, but it was one that
upon the instant awakened echoes far and wide,
echoes of which we are still hearing the reverbera-
tions. The Church of England a Portion.of Christ's
Holy Catholic Church and a Means of Restoring
Vital Unity : AN EIRENIcoN. By E. B. Pusey,
D.D. (Parker).—Was the answer- vouchsafed,
after much consideration, to the newly-installed
Catholic Archbishop of Westminster by his friend and
associate of former days, the veteran Regius Professor of
Hebrew at Oxford. Ostensibly, it was addressed to the au-
thor of " The Christian Year." But, in talking to Mr.Keble
the author of the " Eirenicon" was unmistakably talking'
at Dr. Manning. His pamphlet, or rather volume, of the
" Eirenicon" was formally offered, in point of fact, to the
public by the booksellers as—Dr. Pusey's Reply to Dr.
Manning ! An " Eirenicon" was the conciliatory and
poetical name given to it by its author, but it was
an Eirenicon flung with such a will into the op-
posing camp, the camp that it was intended (ac-
cording to its own account) to win by conciliation,
rather than to conquer by forco, that it was spoken
of by ono of its ablest reviewers as a work that
was—" to one an olive branch of peace; to the other a
firebrand." Otherwise—as Dr. Newman himself has since
wittily expressed it—it is an olive branch hurled from a
catapult! However regal ded, it was so far satisfactory, upon
all hands, as an utterance. The silence of a score years
was at length broken, It was a distinct declaration, or
manifesto, or what the Spaniards call a pronunciamento.
Roused like a warrior at the sound of the trumpet, Dr.
Pusey answered the summons of Archbishop Manning, and
has thus fairly entered once more into the arena of Religious
Controversy—ready to give an account of the faith that is
in him—prepared to receive blows or to administer them—
being to that end, armed cap a pie, both defensively and offen-
sively. historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement. By
the Very Rev. Frederick Oakeley. (Longman).—ls the title
of a contemporary publication that has minutely related in
a compendious and popular form the various phases, the
growth and development, the commencement and the
conclusion of that period of extraordinary controversial
excitement which extended over an interval of two-and-
twenty years in its duration. The Tractarian Movement
(proper) had begun, in effect, as far back as 1833, and
was only in a manner brought to an abrupt conclusion
in 1845. Then another movement of a congenial kind