[226] He has forgotten, for the moment, his own illuminating word spoken two years before: ‘Surely the promise “I am with you always” means something?’ …
[227] The famous emendation of the thirteenth stanza in the Gunpowder Treason hymn, which now reads in all editions of The Christian Year,—
‘There present in the heart
As in the hands,’
was made after Keble’s death, by his executors, and in accordance with his own request. The request was based upon that of ‘my dear friend Hurrell Froude,’ over thirty years before. Keble had long held out against the alteration, and for what he thought good cause, even against Pusey, maintaining that ‘Not in the hands’ should be understood as ‘Not [only] in the hands.’ He had precedents and analogies to lean upon. But when Bishop Jeune on February 9, 1866, quoted the original lines in Convocation as against the Real Objective Presence, the poet, then near his end, eagerly effected the change. The ordinary reader may wonder whether a more astounding variant be known to doctrinal statement.
[228] Both quotations are from one of the loveliest and tenderest numbers of The Christian Year: that entitled ‘Holy Baptism,’ stanzas v. and iii.
[229] ‘Someone’ was of course quoting from the Vulgate, the Song of Solomon, iv., 11.
[230] The Rev. John Keble, Sr., died on Jan. 24, 1835, aged 89.
[231] Thus in the Newman Correspondence, ii., 94. In the Remains the reading is ‘little to boast of.’
[232] Froude would not have heard of the famous contest for the Speakership on Feb. 19, 1835, as he left the West Indies in March, or early April. James Abercromby, Esq., of Edinburgh, obtained on that day a majority of ten over Sir Charles Manners Sutton, who thereupon retired in chagrin from public life, and was created Viscount Canterbury.