Part 14

"Whether regarded in relation to your bodily strength, your spiritual interests, or to prudence in affairs, I should be disposed to advise you to decline, with a due sense of kindness, &c., the Bishop's offer. Your constitution is not a strong one, and it is highly desirable in that view alone that you should for a time officiate in a small sphere, and if it may be in a place where, as from your vicinity to Oxford, you can have assistance when you are not equal yourself to the whole duty. With such a scattered population, there must be a call I conceive for great bodily strength. Secondly, the situation appears to me still less eligible considered on higher grounds. It is no ground of blame to you that your studies have not hitherto been of divinity. Supply all that I should say under that head, were I not writing to one who is capable himself of suggesting it to his own mind. Again, you cannot have that acquaintance with human nature, either in general, or in your own self, which it would be desirable for any one to possess who was to be placed in so wide and populous a field, especially in one so circumstanced as this particular place. Then you would be at a distance from almost all your friends, which I mention now in reference to the spiritual disadvantages of the situation, not in relation to your comfort and Emily's, in which, however, it may be fairly admitted to some weight. Again, _I_ should much regret your being placed where you would naturally be called to study controversial anti-Roman Catholic divinity, rather than that which expects the cultivation of personal holiness in yourself and your parishioners. I could say much on this head. Thirdly, Mr. Neale sees the objections on the ground of pecuniary interest, as alone of so much weight, as to warrant your refusing the offer--a vicarage. Its income is commonly derived from small payments, and in that district probably of poor people whom you would not, could not squeeze, and yet without squeezing from whom you probably would get nothing. Most likely a curate would be indispensable."

On the same topic Wilberforce writes again:--

"_March 17th, 1829._

"I ought to tell you that in the reasons I assigned to the Bishop for declining his offer, one, and in itself perhaps the strongest, (nay, certainly so, not perhaps,) was my persuasion that for any one educated and associated as you have been, it was of very great importance with a view to your spiritual state, (more especially for the cultivation of devotional feelings and spirituality of mind,) that he should in the outset of his ministerial course be for some time in a quiet and retired situation, where he could live in the enjoyment of domestic comfort, of leisure for religious reading and meditation, and devotional exercises; while, on the contrary, it was very undesirable in lieu of these to be placed in circumstances in which he would almost necessarily be almost incessantly arguing for Protestant principles--in short, would be occupied in the religion of the head rather than of the heart. I own to you in confidence (though I believe I shall make the avowal to my dear Robert himself) that I am sometimes uneasy on a ground somewhat congenial with this, about the tutor of Oriel. For though I doubt not the solidity of his religious character, yet I fear his situation is far from favourable to the growth in grace, and would, alas! need every help we can have for the advancement of personal religion within us, and can scarcely bear without injury any circumstances that have an unfavourable tendency. I trust my dear Samuel will himself consider that he is now responsible for living in circumstances peculiarly favourable to the growth of personal piety, and therefore that he should use his utmost endeavours to derive the benefits that appear, (humanly speaking,) to be placed within his reach. Oh, my dearest boy, we are all too sadly lukewarm, sadly too little urging forward with the earnestness that might justly be expected from those that are contending for an incorruptible crown. Did you ever read Owen on spiritual-mindedness? There are some passages that to me appear almost unintelligible (one at least), but it is in the main, I think, a highly useful book. I need not say how sorry we are to hear of Emily being poorly. But our gourds must have something to alloy their sweets. D. G. your mother is recovering gradually, and now profits much from a jumbling pony-chair; its shaking quality renders its value to her double what it would be otherwise."[58]

"_March 19, 1829._

"In speaking of Whately's book I ought to have said that I had not got to the part in which he speaks of imputed righteousness. I remember it was an objection made to my 'Practical View' by a certain strange head of a college that I was silent on that point. The honest truth is, I never considered it. I have always been disposed to believe it to be in some sort true, but not to deem it a matter of importance, if the doctrine of free grace and justification by faith be held, which are, I believe, of primary importance. Hooker, unless I forget, is clearly for it; see his sermon on Justification. I trust I need not fear your misconstruing me, and supposing I can be advising you, either to be roguish, or shabbily reserved. But really I do think that you may produce an unfavourable and false impression of your principles and professional character, by talking unguardedly about _Methodistical_ persons and opinions. Mrs. R. may report you as UNSOUND to the Bishop of Winchester, and he imbibe a prejudice against you. Besides, my dear Samuel, I am sure you will not _fire_ when I say that you may see reason on farther reading, and reflection, and more experience to change or qualify some of the opinions you may now hold. I own, (I should not be honest if I did not say so,) that I think I have myself witnessed occasions which have strengthened with me the impression that you may need this hint.... Have you any parishioners who have been used to hear Methodists or Dissenters, or have you any who appear to have had, or still to have, much feeling of religion? I cannot help suspecting that it is a mistaken notion that the lower orders are to be chiefly instructed in the ordinary practical duties of religion, whereas I own I believe them to be quite capable of impressions on their affections: on the infinite love of their God and Redeemer, and of their corresponding obligation to Love and Obedience. We found peasants more open to attacks on their consciences, on the score of being wanting in gratitude, than on any other."

"_April 3, 1829._

"Articles sent to Mr. Samuel--Bewick, Venn's Sermons (2 vols.), White's 'Selborne' (2 vols. bound in one), 2nd vol. of 'The Monastery.' A lending library is, I think, likely to be considerably beneficial. It cannot but have a tendency to generate in the poor a disposition favourable to domestic habits and pleasures, and to seek their enjoyments at home rather than in the alehouse, and it strikes me as likely to confirm this taste, to encourage the poor people's children to read to them. Send me a list of any books you will like to have for your lending library, and I will by degrees pick them up for you....

"We ought to be always making it our endeavour to be experiencing peace and joy in believing, and that we do not enjoy more of this sunshine of the breast is, I fear, almost always our own fault. We ought not to acquiesce quietly in the want of them, whereas we are too apt to be satisfied if our consciences do not reproach us with anything wrong, if we can on good grounds entertain the persuasion that we are safe; and we do not sufficiently consider that we serve a gracious and kind master who is willing that we should taste that He is gracious. Both in St. John's first general Epistle, and in our Lord's declaration in John xv., we are assured that our Lord's object and the apostles' in telling us of our having spiritual supplies and communion, is that our joy may be full. It is a great comfort to me to reflect that you are in circumstances peculiarly favourable to your best interests. To be spiritually-minded is both life and peace. How much happier would your dear mother be if she were living the quiet life you and Emily do, instead of being cumbered about many things; yet she is in the path of duty, and that is all in all."

"_September 7, 1829._

"An admirable expedient has this moment suggested itself to me, which will supersede the necessity for my giving expression to sentiments and feelings, for which you will give me full credit, though unexpressed. It is that of following the precedent set by a candidate for the City of Bristol in conjunction with Mr. Burke. The latter had addressed his electors in a fuller effusion of eloquence than was used to flow even from his lips, when his colleague, conscious that he should appear to great disadvantage were he to attempt a speech, very wisely confined himself to, 'Gentlemen, you have heard Mr. Burke's excellent speech. I say ditto to the whole of it.' Sure I am that no language of mine could give you warmer or more sincere assurances of parental affection than you will have received in the letter of your dear mother, which she has just put into my hands to be inserted into my letter. To all she has said, therefore, I say ditto. My dear Samuel, I must tell you the pleasure with which I look back on what I witnessed at Checkendon,[59] and how it combines with, and augments the joyful gratulations with which I welcome the 7th of September.[60] I hope I am deeply thankful to the bountiful Giver of all good for having granted me in you a son to whose future course I can look with so much humble hope, and even joyful confidence. It is also with no little thankfulness that I reflect on your domestic prospects, from the excellent qualities of your, let me say _our_, dear Emily. I must stop, the rest shall be prayer, prayer for both of you, that your course in this life may be useful and honourable, and that you may at length, accompanied by a large assemblage of the sheep of Christ, whom you have been the honoured instrument of bringing to the fold of Christ, have an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of God."

"_September 28, 1829._

"How much do they lose of comfort, as well as, I believe, in incentives to gratitude and love, and if it be not their own fault thereby in the means of practical improvement, who do not accustom themselves to watch the operations of the Divine Hand. I have often thought that, had it not been for the positive declarations of the Holy Scriptures concerning the attention of the Almighty Governor of the universe to our minutest comforts and interests enforced by a comparison with the στοργἡ of parental affection, we should not dare to be so presumptuous as to believe, that He who rolls the spheres along, would condescend thus to sympathise with our feelings, and attend to our minutest interests. Here also Dr. Chalmers' suggestions, derived from the discoveries made to us through the microscope, come in to confirm the same delightful persuasion. I am persuaded that many true Christians lose much pleasure they might otherwise enjoy from not sufficiently watching the various events of their lives, more especially in those little incidents, as we rather unfitly term them; for, considering them as links in the chain, they maintain the continuity, as much as those which we are apt to regard as of greater size and consequence."

"_November 21, 1829._

"We have been for a few days at Battersea Rise. But your mother will, I doubt not, have told you the memorabilia of this visit, and especially the inexhaustible conversational powers of Sir James Mackintosh. I wish I may be able, some time or other, to enable you to hear these powers exerted. Poor fellow! he is, however, the victim of his own social dispositions and excellences. For I cannot but believe, that the superfluous hours dissipated in these talks, might suffice for the performance of a great work. They are to him, what, alas! in some degree, my letters were to me during my Parliamentary life, and even to this day."

"_December 17, 1829._

"We ought not to expect this life to flow on smoothly without rubs or mortification. Indeed, it is a sentiment which I often inculcate on myself that, to use a familiar phrase, we here have more than our bargain, as Christians, in the days in which we live; for I apprehend the promise of the life that now is, combined with that which is to come, was meant to refer rather to mental peace and comfort, than to temporal prosperity. My thoughts have been of late often led into reflections on the degree in which we are wanting to ourselves, in relation to the rich and bright prospects set before us as attainable in the Word of God. More especially I refer to that of the Christian's hope and peace and joy. Again and again we are assured that joy is ordinarily and generally to be the portion of the Christian. Yet how prone are but too commonly those, whom we really believe to be entitled to the name of Christians, disposed to remain contented without the possession of this delightful state of heart; and to regard it as the privilege of some rarely gifted, and eminently favoured Christians, rather than as the general character of all, yet I believe that except for some hypochondriacal affection, or state of spirits arising from bodily ailments, every Christian ought to be very distrustful of himself, _and to call himself to account, as it were_, if he is not able to maintain a settled frame of 'inward peace,' if not joy. It is to be obtained through the Holy Spirit, and therefore when St. Paul prays for the Roman Christians that they may be filled with all _peace_ and _joy_ in believing, and may abound in hope, it is added, through the power of the Holy Ghost."

"HIGHWOOD HILL, "_December 31, 1829._

"MY DEAR CHILDREN,--For to both of you I address myself. An idea, which for so old a fellow as myself you will allow somewhat to be deserving the praise of brightness, has just struck my mind, and I proceed to act upon it. Are you Yorkshireman enough to know the article (an excellent one it is) entitled a Christmas, or sometimes a goose or a turkey pie? Its composition is this. Take first the smallest of eatable birds, as a snipe, for instance, then put it within its next neighbour of the feathered race, I mean in point of size, the woodcock, insert the two into a teal, the teal into a duck, the duck and Co. into a fowl, the fowl into a goose, the goose and Co. into a turkey. In imitation of this laudable precedent, I propose, though with a variation, as our Speaker would say, in the order of our proceeding, that this large sheet which I have selected for the purpose should contain the united epistles of all the family circle, from the fullest grown if not largest in dimensions, myself, to the most diminutive, little William.[61] As the thought is my own, I will begin the execution of it, and if any vacant space should remain, I will fill it, just as any orifices left vacant in said pie are supplied by the pouring in of the jelly. But I begin to be ashamed of this jocoseness when I call to mind on what day I am writing--the day which, combined with the succeeding one, the 1st of January, I consider, except perhaps my birthday, as the most important of the whole year. For a long period (as long as I lived in the neighbourhood of the Lock, or rather not far from it) I used to receive the Sacrament, which was always administered there on New Year's Day. And the heart must be hard and cold, which that sacred ordinance in such a relation, would not soften and warm into religious sensibility and tenderness. I was naturally led into looking backwards to the past days of my life, and forward to the future; led to consider in what pleasant places my lines were fallen, how goodly was my heritage, that the bounds of my life should be fixed in that little spot, in which, of the whole earth, there has been the greatest measure of temporal comforts, and of spiritual privileges. That it should be also in the eighteenth century, for where should I have been, a small, weakly man, had I been born either among our painted or skin-clothed ancestors, or in almost any other before or after it? As they would have begun by exposing me, there need be no more inquiry as to the sequel of the piece. Next take my station in life, neither so high as naturally to intoxicate me, nor so low as to excite to envy or degradation. Take then the other particulars of my condition, both personal and circumstantial. But I need go no farther, but leave it to you to supply the rest. And you will likewise, I doubt not, pursue the same mental process in your own instance also, and find, as may well be the case, that the retrospect and prospect afford abundant matter for gratitude and humiliation, (I am sure I find the latter most powerfully called forth in my heart by my own survey). Many thanks for your last kind letter. You have precisely anticipated what was said by the several _dramatis personæ_. It is a real sacrifice for Emily and you to be absent from my family circle. But the sacrifice is to duty, and that is enough. And you have no small ground for comfort, from your not having to go through the 'experiment solitary,' as Lord Bacon terms it, but to have one, to whom you may say that solitude is sweet. But I must surrender the pen to your dear mother."

The country was at that time extremely disturbed by what were known as the "Swing Riots."[62] Bands of rioters went about, burning ricks and threshing machines, then newly introduced, and considered by the labourers as depriving them of the winter threshing work. Wilberforce seems to have shared this feeling.

"HIGHWOOD HILL, "_November 25, 1830._

"Your mother suggests that a threshing machine used to be kept in one of your barns. If so I really think it should be removed. I should be very sorry to have it stated that a threshing machine had been burnt on the premises of the Rev. Samuel Wilberforce; they take away one of the surest sources of occupation for farmers in frost and snow times. In what a dreadful state the country now is! Gisborne, I find, has stated his opinion, that the present is the period of pouring out the 7th Vial, when there was to be general confusion, insubordination, and misery. It really appears in the political world, like what the abolition of some of the great elements in the physical world would be; the extinction, for instance, of the principle of gravity."

"_December 9, 1830._

"I have been delaying the books that all might go together. Mather's 'Magnalia'[63] shall be one of them. There is a very curious passage in it early in the volume, in which in Charles I's time, he says, expenses have been increasing so much of late years that men can no longer maintain their rank in society. Assuredly this Government is greatly to be preferred before the last. Brougham better than Copley, and several highly respectable besides, the Grants (Charles is in the Cabinet), Lord Althorp, Sir James Graham, Lord Grey himself, highly respectable as family men; Denman a very honest fellow. The worst appointment is Holland, Duchy of Lancaster; he has much church patronage which, though I love the man, I cannot think decorous. Lord Lansdowne, very decent, Lord Goderich ditto. But your mother is worrying me all this time to force me out, and Joseph declares the letters will be too late. So farewell."

"_December 17, 1830._

"I have always thought that your having a strong virtuous attachment when you first went to the University was a great security to you. The blessed effects of this safeguard we shall one day know. It will be a mutual augmentation of attachment and happiness to find that those whom we loved best had been rendered the instruments more or less of our salvation....

"That religious feelings are contagious (if I may use the word so), is undeniable, and there may be temporary accesses of religious feeling, which may produce a temporary effervescence, with little or none of the real work of God on the heart. But you and I, who are not Calvinists, believe that even where the influence of the Holy Spirit was in the heart, that Spirit may be grieved and quenched. The good seed in the hearts of the stony-ground hearers is just an instance in point. When my friend Terrot was chaplain, of the _Defence_ I think, great numbers of the rough sailors were deeply affected by his conversation and sermons, of whom, I think he said, thirty only appeared in the sequel to be permanently changed."

"_January 4, 1831._

"You are now a man possessed of as much leisure as you are ever likely to possess. What think you of laying in materials for a Doctrinal and practical History of Religion in England, in different classes of society, and of males and females, from the time of the Reformation to the present time or perhaps to 1760. It was once my wish to write such a work, but the state of my eyes long ago rendered it impracticable. The sources from whence the particulars for the work must be derived are chiefly Lives and Memoirs. Numbers of these have been published of late years, and the object is one which would give opportunities for exercising sagacity, as well as candour. There is this also of good in it that, _nullus dies sine lineâ_, you might be continually finding some fresh fact or hint, which would afterwards be capable of being turned to good account. The Annual Registers and the different magazines and reviews would be rich mines of raw material. Do meditate on these suggestions. How very strong has dear Henry become both in his opinions and his language! Really if he were to go into the law, which Robert seems to think not improbable, there would be considerable danger of his getting into quarrels which might draw on him challenges, the more probably because people might suppose from his parentage, &c., that he most likely would not answer a call to the field. I must say that the becoming exempt, even in the world's estimate, from the obligation to challenge or being challenged may be no unfair principle of preference of an ecclesiastical profession to any other. The subject of duelling is one which I never saw well treated; a very worthy and sensible man, a Scotchman who was shipwrecked in Madagascar, I forget his name (was it Duncan?) sent me one, his own writing, but I thought it _naught_. And now my very dear boy farewell."

Wilberforce writes to Mrs. Samuel Wilberforce the day after his daughter Elizabeth's marriage.

_Mr. Wilberforce to Mrs. Samuel Wilberforce._

"HIGHWOOD HILL, "_January 12, 1831._