Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 2

by Andrew Dickson White

Leaving Yale in 1853, I passed nearly three years in Europe; and observation of the effects resulting from the various orthodoxies in England, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy developed my opinions in various ways. I was deeply susceptible to religious architecture, music, and, indeed, to the nobler forms of ceremonial. I doubt whether any man ever entered Westminster Abbey and the various cathedrals of Great Britain—and I have visited every one of them of any note—with a more reverent feeling than that which animated me; but some features of the Anglican service as practised at that time repelled me; above all, I disliked the intoning of the prayers, as I then heard it for the first time. A manly, straightforward petition made by a man standing or kneeling before his Maker, in a natural, earnest voice, has always greatly impressed me; but the sort of whining, drawling, falsetto in which the Anglican prayers were then usually intoned simply drove out all religious thoughts from my mind. I had a feeling that the Almighty must turn with contempt from a man who presumed thus to address him. Some prayers in the church service had from a very early period taken a deep place in my heart: the prayer of St. Chrysostom in the morning service, the first prayer in the ante-communion service, the prayer "for the whole state of Christ's church militant," and some of the collects had become, as it were, part of me; so much the more disappointed and disgusted was I, then, to hear prayer made in what seemed to me a sickly, unmanly whine.

Although the feelings thus aroused by religious observances in England and other parts of Europe were frequently unedifying, there was one happy exception to the rule. Both in the Church of England and in the Roman Catholic churches of the Continent I always greatly enjoyed the antiphonal chanting of the Psalter. To me this has always been—the imprecatory psalms excepted—by far the noblest feature in Christian worship as worship; for, coming down as it does from the Jewish Church through the whole history of the Christian Church, and being practised by all the great bodies of Jews and Christians, it had, and still has, to me a great significance, both religious and historic. In the cathedrals of the continent of Europe—and I have visited every one of note except those of Spain—I cared little for what Browning's bishop calls "the blessed mutter of the mass," but the chanting of the Psalter always attracted me. Many were the hours during which I sat at vespers in abbeys and cathedrals, listening to the Latin psalms until they became almost as familiar to me as the English Psalter. On the other hand, I was at times greatly repelled by perfunctory performances of the service, both Protestant and Catholic. The "Te Deum" which I once heard recited by an Anglican clergyman in the chapel at the castle of Homburg dwells in my memory as one of the worst things of its kind I ever heard, and especially there remains a vivid remembrance of the invocation, which ran as follows:

"Ha-a-ow-ly, Ha-a-a-ow-ly, Ha-a-ow-ly: La-a-rd Gawd of Sabbith!"

But this was not the only thing of the kind, for I have heard utterances nearly, if not quite, as bad in various English cathedrals,—as bad, indeed, as the famous reading, "He that hath yeahs to yeah, let him yeah."

As to more important religious influences, I had, during my first visit to Oxford in 1853, a chance to understand something of the two currents of thought then showing themselves in the English Church. On a Sunday morning I went to Christ Church Cathedral to hear the regius professor of Hebrew, Dr. Jacobson, whom, years afterward, I saw enthroned as bishop in the cathedral at Chester. It is a church beautiful in itself, and consecrated not only by the relics of mediaeval saints, but by the devotions of many generations of scholars, statesmen, and poets; and in front of the pulpit were a body of young men, the most promising in Great Britain; yet a more dull, mechanical discourse could not be imagined. The preacher maundered on like a Tartar praying-mill; every hearer clearly regarding his discourse as an Arab regards a sand-storm.

In the afternoon I went to St. Mary's, and heard the regular university sermon, before a similar audience, by Fraser, a fellow of Oriel College. It was not oratorical, but straightforward, earnest, and in a line of thought which enlisted my sympathies. The young preacher especially warned his audience that if the Church of England was to remain the Church of England, she must put forth greater efforts than any she had made for many years; and he went on to point out some of the lines on which these exertions should be made,—lines which, I am happy to say, have since been taken by great numbers of excellent men of the Anglican communion.

During the evening, in the dining-room of the Mitre Inn, I happened to be seated at table with an old country clergyman who had just entered his son at Oxford and was evidently a rural parson of the good old high-and-dry sort; but as I happened to speak of the sermons of the day, he burst out in a voice gruff with theological contempt and hot toddy: "Did you hear that young upstart this afternoon? Did you ever hear such nonsense? Why couldn't he mind his own business, as Dr. Jacobson did?"

Nor did sermons from Anglican bishops which I heard at that period greatly move me. The primate of that day, Dr. Sumner, impressed me by his wig, but not otherwise. He was, I think, the last archbishop of Canterbury who used this means of enhancing his dignity. Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, was far better; but, after all, though his preaching showed decided ability, it was not of the sort to impress one deeply, from either the religious or the intellectual point of view.

Then, and at various times since, I have obtained more from simpler forms of worship and less pretentious expositions of the Gospel.

As to religious influence in France, there was little. I lived in the family of a French professor, a devout Catholic, but Gallican in his ideas,—so much so that he often said that if he could wake up some morning and hear that the Pope had been dispossessed of his temporal power, it would be the happiest day of his life, since he was persuaded that nothing had so hampered the church—and, indeed, debased it—as the limits imposed upon the papacy by its sovereignty over the Roman states.