The beautiful services of the Roman Church abroad, and particularly at Rome, certainly exercised a kind of magic attraction on many of the friends of Wiseman and Newman, though one wonders that the sunny grandeur of St. Peter’s at Rome should ever have seemed more impressive than the sombre sublimity and serene magnificence of Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately, the introduction of a more ornate service, even of harmless candlesticks and the often very useful incense, had always a secret meaning. They were used as symbols of something of which the people had no conception, whereas in the early Church they had been really natural and useful.
In the midst of all this commotion, and chiefly secret commotion, I felt a perfect stranger; I saw the bright and dark sides, but I confess I saw little of what I called religion. Though my own religious struggles lay behind me, still there were many questions which pressed for a solution, but for which my friends at Oxford seemed either indifferent or unprepared. My practical religion was what I had learnt from my mother; that remained unshaken in all storms, and in its extreme simplicity and childishness answered all the purposes for which religion is meant. Then followed, in the Universities of Leipzig and Berlin, the purely historical and scientific treatment of religion, which, while it explained many things and destroyed many things, never interfered with my early ideas of right and wrong, never disturbed my life with God and in God, and seemed to satisfy all my religious wants. I never was frightened or shaken by the critical writings of Strauss or Ewald, of Renan or Colenso. If what they said had an honest ring, I was delighted, for I felt quite certain that they could never deprive me of the little I really wanted. That little could never be little enough; it was like a stronghold with no fortifications, no trenches, and no walls around it. Suppose it was proved to me that, on geological evidence, the earth or the world could not have been created in six days, what was that to me? Suppose it was proved to me that Christ could never have given leave to the unclean spirits to enter into the swine, what was that to me? Let Colenso and Bishop Wilberforce, let Huxley and Gladstone fight about such matters; their turbulent waves could never disturb me, could never even reach me in my safe harbour. I had little to carry, no learned impedimenta to safeguard my faith. If a man possesses this one pearl of great price, he may save himself and his treasure, but neither the tinselled vestments of a Cardinal, nor the triple tiara that crowns the Head of the Church, will serve as life-belts in the gales of doubt and controversy. My friends at Oxford did not know that, though with my one jewel I seemed outwardly poor, I was really richer and safer than many a Cardinal and many a Doctor of Divinity. A confession of faith, like a prayer, may be very long, but the prayer of the Publican may have been more efficient than that of the Pharisee.
After a time I made an even more painful discovery: I found men, who were considered quite orthodox, but who really were without any belief. They spoke to me very freely, because they imagined that as a German I would think as they did, and that I should not be surprised if they looked on me as not quite sincere. It was not only honest doubt that disturbed them. They had done with honest doubt, and they were satisfied with a kind of Voltairian philosophy, which at last ended in pure agnosticism. But even that, even professed agnosticism, I could understand, because it often meant no more than a confession of ignorance with regard to God, which we all confess, and need not necessarily amount to the denial of the existence of Deity. But that Voltairian levity which scoffs at everything connected with religion was certainly something I did not expect to meet with at Oxford, and which even now perplexes me. Of course, I should never think of mentioning names, but it seemed to me necessary to mention the fact, to complete the curious mosaic of theological and religious thought that existed at Oxford at the time of my arrival.
CHAPTER IX
A CONFESSION
One confession I have to make, and one for which I can hardly hope for absolution, whether from my friends or from my enemies. I have never done anything; I have never been a doer, a canvasser, a wirepuller, a manager, in the ordinary sense of these words. I have also shrunk from agitation, from clubs and from cliques, even from most respectable associations and societies. Many people would call me an idle, useless, and indolent man, and though I have not wasted many hours of my life, I cannot deny the charge that I have neither fought battles, nor helped to conquer new countries, nor joined any syndicate to roll up a fortune. I have been a scholar, a Stubengelehrter, and voilà tout!
Much as I admired Ruskin when I saw him with his spade and wheelbarrow, encouraging and helping his undergraduate friends to make a new road from one village to another, I never myself took to digging, and shovelling, and carting. Nor could I quite agree with him, happy as I always felt in listening to him, when he said: “What we think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do.” My view of life has always been the very opposite! What we do, or what we build up, has always seemed to me of little consequence. Even Nineveh is now a mere desert of sand, and Ruskin’s new road also has long since been worn away. The only thing of consequence, to my mind, is what we think, what we know, what we believe! To Ruskin’s ears such a sentiment was downright heresy, and I know quite well that it would be condemned as extremely dangerous, if not downright wicked, by most people, particularly in England. My friend, Charles Kingsley, preached muscular Christianity, that is, he was always up and doing. Another old friend of mine, Carlyle, preached all his life that “it was no use talking, if one would not do.” There is an old proverb in German, too,
“Die nicht mit thaten,
Die nicht mit rathen”;
actually denying the right of giving advice to those who had not taken a part in the fight.
However, though I have not been a doer, a faiseur, as the French would say, I do not wish to represent myself as a mere idle drone during the long years of my quiet life. Nor did I stand quite alone in looking on a scholar’s life—even when I was living in a garret au cinquième—as a paradise on earth. Did not Emerson write, “The scholar is the man of the age”? Did not even Mazzini, who certainly was constantly up and trying to do, did not even he confess that men must die, but that the amount of truth they have discovered does not die with them? And Carlyle? Did he ever try to get into Parliament? Did he ever accept directorates? Did he join either the Chartists or the Special Constables in Trafalgar Square? As in a concert you want listeners as well as performers, so in public life, those who look on are quite as essential as those who shout and deal heavy blows.