Part 11

Myers made the great choice, ranking himself among those 'who,' as he puts it, 'suppose themselves to discern spiritual verities,' amid a tumult of Agnosticism and positive philosophy which arose about that time, partly, perhaps, as a result of the reaction from that exaggerated High Church teaching opposed by his father. Accepting the actual discoveries of experimental science without question, he yet maintained there is both direct and indirect evidence that the cosmic laws of uniformity, conservation of energy, and evolution, do not exhaust the controlling laws of the universe, nor explain all classes of phenomena. There is, at least, a fourth cosmic law as ascertainable as any of the others by observation and experiment. To this fourth law the greatest poets, such as Goethe, Wordsworth, Tennyson, to say nothing of the still greater Semitic Poets, have helped to introduce mankind, and psychical research has demonstrated their scientific truth. 'Life, consciousness, and thought' are facts not fully explained by physiology. The communion of mind with mind without speech or bodily contact or proximity is as certain as that of X rays or wireless telegraphy. The communion of the human soul with the Oversoul of the Universe is not a dream, but a fact as indubitable as the fact of gravitation. The study of these facts, their modes of motion, and the laws which govern them, bring careful philosophers to the conclusion that behind the natural law is an active will, and behind natural force and evolution one universal and intelligent motive power. Mental and spiritual phenomena are ignored--or, for some obscure reason, at any rate neglected--by the ordinary man of science. No real all-round student of cosmic appearances, and the laws and influences that control and guide them to cosmic ends, can afford to shut his eyes to the existence of clues which, whenever they have been loyally followed, have led along the chain of cause and effect to the ultimate discovery of God and Immortality. He who follows the Gleam, everywhere shining before him, arrives sooner or later, whatever he thinks of the creeds of the sects, at the abode of the Eternal Presence, leaving the Land of Negations far behind him. This is the substance, or at least the fair interpretation, of the ideas woven throughout the series of Essays written by our author on 'Science and a Future Life,' 'Charles Darwin and Agnosticism,' 'Tennyson as Prophet,' and 'Modern Poets and Cosmic Law.' At a later period he put forth in support of his views, in collaboration with two others, a large collection of instances, gathered from definite experiences of witnesses, of 'Phantasms of the Living.' These evidences occupy two bulky volumes. He may have been sometimes too credulous. Some of his alleged facts may have needed closer examination. His deductions from observations may not always have been accurate, yet his argument is strong in itself, strongly fortified, and apparently, as a whole, still unshaken. He was, as he says of Tennyson, 'the proclaimer of man's spirit as part and parcel of the Universe, and indestructible at the very root of things,' and as such he has restored to many a doubter, unsettled by scientific materialism, his latent self-hood, his 'subliminal soul,' his realization of the invisible world, and a belief in that intellectual 'Cosmic Will' which common men persist in calling 'God.'

Myers wrote a few sketches of men and women of the hour, under the title of 'Classical Essays,' terse, readable, and displaying literary insight. The most recent 'Life of Wordsworth,' with whose semi-pantheism he had much sympathy, is his also. Nor was St. Paul his only excursion into the realms of poesy. 'The Renewal of Youth and Other Poems' is his. Little of its contents, however, rise to the level of his religious poem, and some are distinctly trivial. Since penning this sentence I have happened upon an 'Appreciation' of the volume mentioned, by the late John Addington Symonds. He likens the muse of Myers to a 'flute of silver, or a fife of gold,' through which he breathed strains, now stronger, now weaker, according to the degree of his inspiration. 'To some ears this instrument may seem too artificial, too metallic,' for his wont was to select words for their colour-values and their sonority--for the mode of saying things rather than for the expression of new and original thoughts. Symonds finds in the poetry not only a special message of God and Immortality, but a declaration of the happy influence of womanhood in human affairs. Whether or not this judgment is right on the last point, it is certain that the all-absorbing intuition of the poet's soul was that of an eternal life for mankind, not an immortality of the species at the expense of the individual, by sacrifice and extinction, but of every separate being:

'Oh, dreadful thought, that all our sires and we Are but foundations of a race to be-- Stones which are thrust in earth, to build thereon Some white delight, some Parian Parthenon!'

THE VIEW FROM HELVELLYN

'There to the north the silver Solway shone, And Criffel, by the hazy atmosphere Lifted from off the earth, did then appear A nodding island or a cloud-built throne. And there, a spot half fancied and half seen, Was sunny Carlisle; and by hillside green Lay Penrith with its beacon of red stone.

'Southward through pale blue steam the eye might glance Along the Yorkshire fells, and o'er the rest, My native hill, dear Ingleboro's crest, Rose shapely, like a cap of maintenance. The classic Duddon, Leven, and clear Kent A trident of fair estuaries sent, Which did among the mountain roots advance.

'Westward, a region of tumultuous hills, With here and there a tongue of azure lake And ridge of fir, upon the eye did break. But chiefest wonder are the tarns and rills And giant coves, where great Helvellyn broods Upon his own majestic solitudes, Which even now the sunlight barely fills.' FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER: _Poems_.

XVI

A RELIGIOUS MEDIEVALIST

FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER

I.--THE MAN

'Especially did he endeavour to study the spirit of the Church at its foundation head, in the City of Rome, under the shadow of St. Peter's Chair. Fully recognising the claims of his own country to his labours, he made it his business to introduce into it in every possible way the devotions and practices which are consecrated by the usage of Rome.'--FATHER BOWDEN'S _Life of Faber_.

Of Huguenot descent, his ancestors having fled from France to England to avoid the persecutions arising out of the 'Edict of Nantes,' and of Evangelical Church of England training, he early developed an unexpected 'spurt' towards Romanism, and that rather of the medieval Italian than of the modern English type.

Starting from such a parentage and such environments as this, it becomes an interesting study of character and temperament, and of the forces that mould and direct them, to trace the gradual development of ideas, and habits, through boyhood to youth, and youth to manhood. The key to his having ultimately become a priestly devotee of a mystical form of Mariolatry, is only secured by a careful perusal of his letters, books, and poetry; of his memoir by Father Bowden; and such fragmentary notices of him as contemporaries have given us. His life itself, as we read it, must furnish us with clues by which to follow the labyrinths of his mind to the end it reached.

He was born in 1814 at Calverley, near Leeds, of which parish his father was the vicar. The family removed the following year to Bishop Auckland on Mr. Faber becoming secretary to the Bishop of Durham. As he grew to boyhood the circumstances of his home-life wrought a development of character beyond his years, his precociousness was stimulated by his parents, and his ardent devotion to work or play gave promise of future eminence. The beautiful scenery around him encouraged his romantic tendencies. Sent to a private clerical school at Kirkby Stephen, he was never really free from ecclesiastical influences at any point of his outlook on the world. His imaginative disposition was still further quickened, and his poetical tastes and instincts acquired a direction for life in the midst of the wild Westmorland hills, for 'solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm.' He took long rambles over mountain and fell, rebuilding in fancy the ruined castles of the eastern borderland, and the abbeys of the western, repeopling them with steel-clad knights, and ladies fair and gay, or with monks chanting their vespers as the great sun went down in glory beyond the clear-cut ramparts guarding the blue inland meres. If one reads no farther than the index to his verses one sees at a glance how firm a grasp the enchanted region had upon his affections, beginning to secure them even then, intensifying the grasp while he lived in young manhood at Ambleside, and recurring to his memory when far away by 'Adria's sapphire waters,' or beneath the shadow of St. Mary's in his 'dear City' of Oxford. Helvellyn and Loughrigg, when sunshine and storm combine to throw rainbow-bridges from peak to peak; the little babbling rivers Rothay and Brathay, when their glittering foam-bells danced beneath the autumn-tinted trees; the green vale of Rydal, where the thrushes pipe the whole day through--were each as much, or perhaps more, to him, and appealed as clamourously for the weaving of a lay, as great Parnassus himself, or even as 'the sweet Styrian Lake.' Amidst the wind-sounds in the 'brotherhood of trees' and the bird-voices of the daytime--nay, in the very night-silences of the towers and fastnesses of the 'awful sanctuary God hath built' in the Lake District--he heard 'the echoes of Church bells,' and dreamed dreams of fonts and altars at which he might serve his 'mother' as her priest.

Educational progress compelled him, after a short tariance at Shrewsbury, to go forward to Harrow. Here he would ride and swim, but he would not play. Instead of giving himself up to the healthy commingling of learning and the usual school athletics, he thought and thought, till he began to think himself an unbeliever in Divine mysteries. From Harrow to Balliol College, Oxford, was a natural transition. He left his infidel doubts and temptations behind, only, however, to come under the influence of the Tractarian flood then streaming through the University, and sweeping some of its best sons towards Rome. He was specially attracted by the preaching of Newman, who was then engaged in constructing a theology from the writings of Anglican Fathers, showing that the Church of England was Roman in its teaching though not Papal in government.

While at Oxford he remained, as all through his career, pure, truthful, sincere, and studious, though ever romantic and impulsive. One of his best impulses was to read his Bible twice from beginning to end, prayerfully and meditatively, without note or comment. This brought him back for a season to the Evangelicalism he had been reared in. Attending Newman's sermons and lectures turned him once more to Church tradition and authority. He soon left his Bible for sacramentalism and all its concommitants. His friends accused him of vacillation. 'No, not vacillation,' he answered; 'but oscillation.' Perhaps we may say his course was like the Borrowdale road, which an old guide-book says 'serpentizes.' Under Newman's more intimate friendship and guidance he was set to the translation of Patristic writings, while still reading for ordination, and began to hope Tractarianism would 'soon saturate' the Church of England. Pursuing his theological studies, winning the Newdigate Prize, and receiving a Fellowship from his college, he, of course, took in due time deacon's and priest's orders, and left Oxford to undertake a tutorship in the household of Mr. Harrison, of Ambleside.

Into the parochial work of Ambleside he threw himself _con amore_, the incumbent being old and feeble. From thence he went on a brief tour through Belgium, returning with another set-back from Rome owing to what he had seen of the low intellectual state and morals of the Belgium priesthood. It was during the period of his Ambleside tutorship that he became acquainted with Wordsworth, whom he accompanied on long walks, the elder poet 'muttering verses to himself' in the intervals of conversation.

Somewhat later came the memorable tour of Europe, and visit to Rome, with his pupils, which practically sealed his conversion. The perusal of the records of this journey in his 'Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Countries' affords a curious revelation of biased history (and therefore often very inaccurate), an interesting account of his mental perplexities, and of the wonderful organization of the Papal hierarchy, enabling it to shadow his steps and 'create an atmosphere' around him wherever he went. This time he carried letters of introduction from the astute Dr. Wiseman, which assured his seeing the æsthetic best of all the great cathedrals and institutions of the Church, in each country he traversed, and helped him to shut the eyes of his memory to Inquisitions, and persecutions, and the pride and licentiousness of Popes and Cardinals, and to the grosser side of popular superstition, comprising the annals of the places he visited, and to the story of Italy especially. He had a keen sense of the misdeeds of poor people provoked to reprisals by the tyranny of kings and priests, but never breathed a word--for he failed to notice anything wrong--against the Church that was courting him, and was coquetting with others like him in the Anglican Communion of that day. At Rome the cultured and winsome Dr. Grant was selected as his chaperon, and once more the attractive figment of a world-dominion of an united Church was dangled before his imaginative mind amidst the music and incense of elaborate ceremonials appealing to his senses. The kindness and sympathy of those who were watching over him effectually removed the last veil between him and Roman doctrine. The Pope accorded him an interview in private, and he prostrated himself to kiss his feet and receive his benediction. The Pope was already the 'Holy Father' to him, and he is able in his letters of this date, though still nominally an Anglican, to pledge himself to a life-crusade against the detestable and diabolic heresy of Protestantism 'as being' what he calls 'the devil's masterpiece.'

After all this, one wonders how he could have persuaded himself it was right to accept, on his return to England, the living of Elton, in Huntingdonshire. He did so, however, and for the space of two years he did his utmost to Romanize the district. His charming manners, and natural persuasiveness, the vein of superstition in him (evidenced by his kissing relics and touching them for healing), which fitted well with the ignorance of his rural parishioners, gave him such influence in this direction that when, in 1845, he somewhat suddenly relinquished his pastorate, and was officially united with the Roman Church, he carried off with him several of his young men, who were the nucleus of his Brotherhood of the Will of God in Birmingham.

From this time forward, the Church having gained a priest but, as Wordsworth said, 'England having lost a poet,' there was developed in him a neurotic mysticism impelling him to ascetic neglect of his body, and suppression of human affections and responsibilities, which preyed on his physical frame, producing incessant headaches, and complete prostrations, and unquestionably shortened his days on earth. His love fixed on such intangible objects as Mary and the saints, rather than the living Christ, indulges itself in luscious outbreathings towards her who was not only to him Queen of Heaven and of Purgatory, and Mother of God, but his 'dear Mama,' his 'dearest Mama,' in whose 'fondling care,' and under whose 'sweet caress' he dwelt, finding, he tells her, 'Our home, deep in Thee, eternally, eternally.' His favourite saints are 'Joseph our Father,' and St. Wilfrid, whom he adopted as his patron, and from whom his monks were called 'Wilfridians.' He lived henceforth a life of self-renunciation, the will of God being accepted by him as made known through his superiors in the Roman priesthood. He devoted his time, substance, and skill to church building, and creation of monastic brotherhoods, in Birmingham, in Shropshire, in the City of London, and finally at Brompton, ere long merging his order in that of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri--an Italian confraternity introduced into England by Newman, a missionary body formed for proselytizing the poor and the young. Besides the beautiful church of St. Wilfrid's erected under the auspices of the Earl of Shrewsbury, there is the well-known Brompton Oratory, wherein his preaching, magnetizing rather by its fervour and picturesqueness than convincing by its reason and logic, held congregations of thousands spell-bound, who were partly, no doubt, attracted by his fame, though quite as much by the exquisite singing of the hymns of his composition and the lavish ceremonies of the Mass. It proved an immense strain upon his nervous system, the daily necessity of feeding the monks, building his churches slowly but magnificently, supplying the vestments, the lights, the incense, and all the other thousand and one requirements of so gorgeous a ritual. He failed under it in 1863, and died while only forty-nine years of age, prematurely worn out and aged.

Protestant as I am, at the extreme antipodes of conviction, religious experience, education, and sympathies from Father Faber, I doubt not his soul went straight to the Great All Father, the only 'Holy Father,' without the help of Masses to liberate it from any intermediate imprisonment, or process of purification, and without need of intercession from our Lord's virgin Mother, or from any portion of the pantheon of Roman saints. Some of his objectionable opinions and teachings--some that are very terrible to us--as well as many that are common to all true Christians, will be noticed in the next article, and there may only be added now a caution to many Protestants, as well as to many of the Church of Rome, not to confound wrong views with moral wrong-doing, nor to make a man's intellectual mistakes the measure of his presumed status before the throne of his God. 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right,' when He sits in judgment upon the soul? As Faber's own celebrated hymn declares:

'The love of God is broader, Than the measures of man's mind; And the Heart of the Eternal, Is most wonderfully kind.'

COME TO JESUS

'Souls of men! why will ye scatter Like a crowd of frightened sheep? Foolish hearts! why will ye wander From a love so true and deep?

'Was there ever kindest shepherd Half so gentle, half so sweet, As the Saviour who would have us Come and gather round His feet?

'It is God: His love looks mighty, But is mightier than it seems: 'Tis our Father: and His fondness Goes far out beyond our dreams.

'There's a wideness in God's mercy, Like the wideness of the sea; There's a kindness in His justice, Which is more than liberty.

'There is no place where earth's sorrows Are more felt than up in heaven; There is no place where earth's failings Have such kindly judgment given.' FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER: _Hymns_.

A RELIGIOUS MEDIEVALIST

FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER

II.--HIS BOOKS

'At the evening service, after a few preliminary words, he told his people that the doctrines he had taught them, though true, were not those of the Church of England; that, as far as the Church of England had a voice, she had denounced them.'--FATHER BOWDEN'S _Life of Faber_.

Faber's mental output is a reflex of his character. I assumed this by using his letters and poems as the matrix of the life I sought to present my readers with. Neither I nor they found them rocks of barren quartz. They contained much gold--'yea, much fine gold'--of conscientiousness, devotion, and self-abnegation; of poetic, oratorical fervour; of rare zeal for the Church of his adoption. But with the fine gold there is also much dross. There are, for instance, not a few passages in 'Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches' of a startling kind to Englishmen--a book, be it remembered, written while the author was an Anglican clergyman. To him Charles I. was more than 'Charles the Martyr.' He was a King, 'conformed to the image of his Master through suffering.' Most of us will ask whether, supposing Jesus of Nazareth had been King in Charles's stead, there would have been any ship-money, any Star-Chamber, or any Civil War? Surely no man bears the image of Christ any farther than he comports himself Christly in politics and general public as in private life. Christ is a poor Master to serve if Charles was an image of Him. The admitted tyranny and licentiousness of the French Bourbons seemed to him to be condoned because they were great at building churches and convents. National struggles for liberty, and their champions, are usually presented in their worst lights, and the freer the nation the bitterer his words about her. The American Republic is thus a 'proud invalid' for whom there is no cure except by 'a multiplication of bishops, and then a monarchy.' In this book occurs his famous passage in favour of burning heretics. His attempted palliation, or modification, of the passage when challenged by Crabbe Robinson, the Diarist, on their ramble together to Eskdale Tarn, is disingenuous. The objectionable sentiment is explicitly made by 'the stranger,' who is as distinctly alleged to be Faber himself by his biographer, and virtually admitted to Robinson to be so. Here is the excerpt: 'Persecution belongs not, strictly speaking, to the Church. Her weapon, and a most dire one, is excommunication, whereby she cuts off the offender from the fountains of life in this world, and makes him over from her own judgment to that of Heaven in the world to come. But surely it is the duty of a Christian State to deprive such an excommunicate person of every social right and privilege; to lay on him such pains and penalties as may seem good to the wisdom of the law, or even, if they so judge, to sweep him from the earth; in other words, to put him to death. The least that can be done is make a civil death to follow an ecclesiastical death, and this must be done where the Church and State stand in right relation to each other.' To the ultramontane views promulgated in this book might be added others from his letters and published sermons, as, for instance, the phrase, 'the pernicious influence of Protestant ragged schools'; that in which he opposes the reading of the English Bible because its 'uncommon beauty and marvellous English' made it 'the stronghold of heresy'; those in which he elaborately argues for the 'adoration' of Mary ('surely it must be called so,' he says); the many in which he disparages the Reformation and applauds the blessings which the Church, and the Papacy in particular, had bestowed upon the nations; and those, once more, in which he declares a man has no rights as man conferred on him by the Bible, unless he be a Christian (by which he means a Churchman, for he says so), and dilating on the misery and unrest of that Protectionist period, proposes no remedies other than obedience to the Church, the keeping of saints' days and holy days, and the sweeping away of the 'indecent system of pews'! Incredible as it may seem, every one of these proposals is seriously propounded in 'A Churchman's Politics in Disturbed Times.'