The copyright of the Athenaeum being for sale, Sterling and his gifted friends thought it would make a fine opening for them. He wrote much in it in the years 1828 and 1829, together with Maurice, who was editor. His "Shades of the Dead," "Alexander the Great," "Joan of Arc," "Wycliffe," "Columbus," "Gustavus Adolphus," "Milton," and "Burns," are full of thought, color, and enthusiasm, but they produce a saddening effect. They are "a beautiful mirage in the dry wilderness; but you cannot quench your thirst there!" Sterling knew not the stand-point from which alone the characters of past times can be duly appreciated. He describes Joan of Arc as "perhaps the most wonderful, exquisite, and complete personage in all the history of the world," yet he maintains that "her persuasion of the outward appearance of divine agency was caused by a diseased excitability of the fancy." As if to hear a voice from heaven "to assist her in governing herself," to see an angel, and receive visits from the departed, implied of necessity a diseased imagination! He sees in Wycliffe a Gospel hero almost as full of "immortal wisdom" as Coleridge, his "Christian Plato," He couples him with Erigena, who "questioned transubstantiation—the master-sorcery," and Berengarius, who "opposed the same monstrous doctrine." But he tells us in praise of these new lights, what may well be regarded as dispraise, that "they encouraged themselves to cast away the belief of all that Luther afterward rejected by the simple study of the Bible, unaided by general knowledge, and without the guidance of sufficient interpreters." Such is the fatal admission of one of whom his friend and biographer, Archdeacon Hare, writes that "the most striking and precious quality in his writings is the deep sympathy with the errors and faults, and even with the sins, of mankind." Here, then, is another admission—an admission, not of the disciple, but of the master, that while Sterling combated that Catholic religion which is from first to last the worship of Christ, he was already exhibiting the most decided symptom of Positivism, or the worship of Humanity. He dwells, again, with delight on the goodness and greatness of Columbus; he assures us that he was a diligent student of the Bible, had a childlike simplicity of faith in the truths of religion; was, in his own belief, the chosen minister of providence, watched over by saints and angels, pointed in his path across the waters by the mother of the Lord, and holding in his hand the cross as the only ensign of triumph; and yet, with strange perversity, he comes to the conclusion that the mind of this fearless discoverer was "in many respects dark and weak," and that his faith, though nobler than that of the multitude around him, was "not the purest Christianity." Sterling himself, in short, held a purer creed, (if he could only have defined it,) and we shall see presently to what it led.
When his mind first came into Coleridge's plastic hands, it was simply chaotic as regards religion. Instructed by the oracle of Highgate, he engrafted a belief in Christianity, such as it was, on his original "piety of heart," (as Carlyle calls it,) and his "religion, which was as good as altogether ethnic." In this new phase of mental hallucination, his sceptical zeal against what he deemed superstition abated, and his radicalism, toning down, lost some of its wildest features. In this frame he wrote and published a novel called Arthur Coningsby. It was then his only book, and it brought him little satisfaction. The babe was still-born, and had it lived, the father, as it seems, would have had little love for his own offspring. Coleridge's moonshine glittered on his pages, but its outlooks into futurity were confused and sad. It was "gilded vacuity," opulent misery. The hero is himself—a youth plunging into life without any fixed principle to guide him; full of democratic, utilitarian, and heathenish theories; he suffers shipwreck—the shipwreck of the mind; and then by the hand of some semi-Christian quack, like dreamy Coleridge, is guided into a port which is no harbor, and a church where there is no anchorage. Such was Arthur Coningsby. But to Carlyle Sterling never mentioned the name of the novel, nor would hear it spoken of in his presence.
During the years in which it was planned, written, and published, from 1829 to 1832, Sterling wooed and won Susannah Barton, a kindly and true-hearted wife, to share his pleasures and trials; made an intimate friend of General Torrijos, a Spanish exile; and was silly enough to aid him and a little band of democrats (including an Irishman named Boyd, who had more money than wits) to purchase a ship in the Thames, arms and stores, for the purpose of invading Spain and proclaiming a republic! Sterling himself was to have taken part in the mad expedition; but Cupid, as usual, was stronger than Mars; and Susannah, who was not yet Mrs. Sterling, prevailed on her lover to lay his armor aside. Of course, the Spanish envoy got tidings of the plot; and the ship, with its crew and cargo, was seized in the king's name when dropping down the river. Coleridge's moonshine, it seems, was not strong enough yet to dispel the dark frowns of democracy.
In 1830, the marriage contract was sealed; but alas! in this fallen world the glad moment of our realized hopes is almost always dashed with some strange and unexpected sorrow. Sterling's health failed, and his lungs, menaced by consumption, asked for a warmer climate. The year 1831 found him in the island of St. Vincent in the midst of tropic vegetation, tornadoes, and slaves as yet unworthy of freedom. One hurricane, fiercer than its fellows, stripped the roof from the house where Sterling lived, and whirled about the cottages of the negroes as if they had been chaff. Meanwhile, in December, 1831, Torrijos, the deluded democrat general, reaches Spain, runs ashore at Fuengirola with fifty-five desperadoes like himself, seizes a farm, barricades it, is surrounded, surrenders, is haled with his comrades to Malaga, and with them all, the rich Irishman included, is swiftly fusiladed. "I hear the sound of that musketry," wrote Sterling; "it is as if the bullets were tearing my own brain." No wonder, for to his brain the folly of a wild enterprise was mainly due.
Repentance came; religion was his study; and prayer, earnest prayer for guidance, arose from his lips as he sat under the dates and palms, and gazed on the mirror of summer seas. Such prayer had been answered more fully if teachers such as Coleridge, with his gift of words, and Edward Irving, with his gift of tongues, had not already imbued him with a multitude of truths which were half untruths, and untruths which were half truths. He believed himself to be "in possession of the blessings of Christ's redemption;" and though he scarcely as yet knew the elements of Christianity, he began to think of teaching it. It is always the way with pious Protestant youths. They have vocations to preach before they are schooled; and what ought to be taken for presumption is hailed by their friends as the most signal proof of grace. So Sterling, wearied of West India life, formed a vague scheme of anti-slavery philanthropy, and turned his face toward Europe and his thoughts toward the ministry of the Established Church.
It was in June, 1833, and on the banks of the Rhine, that the unripe aspirant for holy orders met his old friend and tutor, the Rev. Julius Hare. That worthy gentleman encouraged a desire he should rather have checked, and Sterling was not long in arriving at a determination to become Mr. Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux in Sussex, and wear, at least, the surplice and stole, though he had no hood or academical degree to adorn himself withal. So on Trinity Sunday of the following year, he came out of Chichester Cathedral a raw deacon, and established himself with his family in a modest mansion in a quiet, leafy lane of Hurstmonceaux. Very diligent was Sterling in his pastoral duties; but the fervor of his zeal soon cooled. In September he began to have misgivings, and in February following he had quitted the path he had prematurely chosen. The reason assigned was loss of health; but Carlyle guessed shrewdly, and with too much truth, that Sterling was disappointed even to despair by the church whose garment he had spasmodically caught by the hem. The virtue he expected did not go forth from it, and the glimmer of truth which reached him came through a dense cloud of confused writings. The very names of these betokened chaos, and the twilight that struggled through them was sufficient neither to cheer nor to guide. Many pages of Archdeacon Hare's memoir are filled with extracts from Sterling's letters, and accounts of his favorite studies at this period. They form a labyrinth none can thread, where he wanders to and fro without landmarks, bourn, light, or hope. The more he reads the Old Testament, the less can he believe in its miracles; and having no guide who speaks with authority, he applies for satisfaction in vain to one charlatan after another as confused, fanciful, and blind as himself. Fancy a system of theology taught by Tholuck, Schiller, and Olshausen; by Schleiermacher, Mackintosh, and Milman, by the Koran and Kant, by Jonathan Edwards, Coleridge, and Maurice! Such were Sterling's instructors, and it is not to be wondered at that they created more doubts than they removed, and that under their influence he discarded all faith in a hierarchy, a church, and a Bible written by plenary inspiration. Christianity, he thought, could only become true by changing with the times; and if any existing society or church was to be the nucleus of a new system, it could only be by the sloughing off of much that was old. How utterly deplorable would be the condition of the human race if left to the teaching of such philosophers and divines. After two thousand years of Christian schooling, it would know nothing more than ancient Greece and Rome of God and of its own destinies. All revelation must be doubted of anew in order that anything may be believed, and the improved Christianity to be given in these last days to the world would owe all its changes and improvements to men as feeble and fallible as ourselves. Better, far better, had it been for you, John Sterling, to be instructed by a simple parish priest bred among the mountains, and ministering in that church which is the pillar and ground of the truth, than be handed over as you were by Coleridge, Maurice, and Hare, to Strauss, Mill, and Carlyle—from unbelief in the bud to unbelief in full, gaudy, flaunting blossom.
We cannot discover anything imposing in Sterling's talents. Even in secular learning he was a reed shaken by the wind. His essays and poems want definite view and bold outline. It is a grand thing to see both sides of a question, but it is a pitiful thing to say as much for one side as for another. The want of first principles makes all Sterling's pages dreamy and pointless. He has no point to steer from, no harbor to steer to; he is always toiling against wind and tide, making no way, and accounting it triumphant success only not to be shipwrecked. Had he confined his criticisms to matters of taste, he might have been endured, but he will be piercing the clouds without any ballast to steady or rudder to guide his balloon.
In February, 1835, Sterling first became personally acquainted with that extraordinary writer, Thomas Carlyle. He met him in his natural element, the society of brilliant free-thinkers. He was side by side with John Stuart Mill at the India House, and then at Sterling's father's with the Crawfords and other literati, with whom unbelief was wisdom. His writings, and particularly Sartor Resartus, made a great impression on Sterling, though he saw the strange and extravagant defects of its style, and labored hard to convince the author of his own belief in a "personal God." But the poison did its work. The strong inward unrest, the Titanic heaving of Teufelsdröckh's spirit communicated itself to Sterling's, and whirled it away still further from central peace. Carlyle could only stimulate the intellect, and fill it with exuberant images. He had heard without regret of Sterling's abandonment of democracy, and he saw with greater satisfaction his defection from parochial work. He regarded the pen as his vocation, and the greatest instrument for good in the world. Not that Sterling broke outwardly with the church, or declared himself a renegade. On the contrary, he now and then performed service for a friend at Bayswater, but it became more and more evident that his faith in Christianity was partial and unsound. His mind was not in the highest degree devotional, nor had he that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom.
His knowledge of German writers hitherto was confined to semi-sceptics and self-appointed evangelists, Neander and the like. Carlyle introduced him to higher souls, if literary merit constitutes height. He brought him to the feet of Goethe, Richter, Schiller, and Lessing, and with these he tried to satisfy the void which an imperfect religion had been unable to fill. Mr. Dunn, an amiable Irish clergyman, became one of their chosen circle, and we learn from Sterling himself that his theology was compounded of the Greek fathers, mystics and ethical philosophers, and that its main defect was an insufficient apprehension of the reality and depth of sin. The very word sin is considered objectionable in the school of Carlyle and Mill, because it, is the correlative of grace. Sterling's friends seemed fated to be the enemies of his soul. He had another named Edgeworth, a nephew of Miss Edgeworth the novelist. He was well read in Plato and Kant, yet even less of a believer than they. "He entertained not creeds, but the Platonic or Kantean ghosts of creeds." So says Carlyle, of whom Sterling bears witness, that "his fundamental position is the good of evil, and the idleness of wishing to jump off one's own shadow."
Deplorable health again, in 1836, drove Sterling to a sunnier clime. He was always dodging and jerking about "to escape the scythe of Death." At Bordeaux his feeble frame revived, and he delved in the mines of literature for fine gold. The theological fever in his mind had abated. Such is Carlyle's account—and the health of pure reason returned, or almost returned. He had done with theology, rubrics, church articles, and "the enormous ever-repeated thrashing of the straw." But did he find the grain? If theology is chaff, where shall we look for wheat? Will the heart of mankind accept literature as the summum bonum, the guide of life, the antidote of sin, sorrow, and death? Yet for it Carlyle and Sterling bid farewell to Christianity, and cry: "Adieu, ye threshing-floors of rotten straw, with bleared tallow-light for sun; to you adieu!" The Sexton's Daughter was a poem which indicated Sterling's gradual renunciation of those fragments of Christianity which still clung to him. He even began to think of attacking revelation, on the principle of folly rushing in where angels fear to tread. The Christian religion, he believed, would be really indebted to him for meddling with its foundations, and he should be "doing good to theology," by writing what would for ever exclude him from ministering even in the Church of England. His letters at this period are full of distressing jumble, which Archdeacon Hare records as Christian with a certain unction, and Carlyle, more sagacious, claims as antichristian with a chuckle of delight.