Letters to a Friend

LETTERS TO A FRIEND BY CONNOP THIRLWALL LATE LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/letterstofriendOOthir LETTERS TO A FRIEND BY CONNOP THIRLWALL LATE LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S EDITED BV THE VERY REV. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. DEAN OK WES I MINM ER LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON PUBLISHERS IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN. 1881 iondon : rp.rxTEn by .t s. virtue and co., limited, CITY ROAD. TO THE BELOVED MEMORY OF A WIDELY HONOURED, DEEPLY LAMENTED FATHER, AND TO A MOST DEAR SISTER, ®f)ese lUtters, WRITTEN BY THEIR FRIEND AS MUCH FOR THEIR INTEREST AS FOR HERS TO WHOM THEY WERE ADDRESSED, $Xu Drtitcntcti, IN THE BONDS OF THAT AFFECTION WHICH UNITED, AND UNITES, THEM ALL, PKEFACE. The following Letters are selected from a correspondence of ten years with a young friend, one of a Welsh family in which Bishop Thirlwall took great interest. It was felt that they supply a side of the Bishop's character which was not sufficiently appreciated in his lifetime, and which the correspondence with his own contemporaries does not adequately represent. They disclose the kindly, genial intellect heart which lay beneath that massive ; they show the tender regard for the sufferings of those with whom he was brought into contact by the circumstances of ordinary life affection for ; they exhibit the playful the tame creatures which formed almost part of his house- hold ; they are full of the keen appreciation which he felt for all the varying beauty of the natural seasons ; they show the immense range of his acquaintance with the lighter as well as the graver forms of literature they ; indicate the enthusiastic delight which he, no less than his correspondent, took in the language and traditions of the Welsh diocese and country which he had adopted as his own they reveal also of his innermost ; some thoughts and feelings on the great moral and religious questions of all time, concerning which in his published writings we have only the external and judicial expression. I have been requested, by those to whom the publica- Vlll PREFACE. tion of the two volumes of the Bishop's Correspondence has been intrusted, to add, by way of preface, the remarks made concerning his character and career on the occasion of his interment in Westminster Abbey. The discourse from which they are taken was an endeavour to set forth the religious use of wisdom based on the words from the Book of Job, " Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding ?" A few sentences of the sermon have been omitted, and a few added. It will be understood that the sermon dealt only with the more general aspects of his career. My personal acquaintance with him was too late and too slight to justify any detailed criticism or eulogy. A. P. S. Let me freely speak to you of this patriarch of our national Church in his two cajjacities of a universal scholar and of a wise ecclesiastical statesman. Of that thirst for knowledge in all its parts of which the Bible speaks, of the mastery of all ancient and modern learning, few, if any, in his time have been more wonder- ful examples than he Avho from his eleventh till his threescore and eighteenth year was always gathering in fresh stores of understanding. Of him, as of Solomon, it might be said, " Thy soul covered the whole earth." There was hardly a civilised language which he had not explored both in its structure and its literature. He was the chief of that illustrious group of English scholars who first revealed to this country the treasures of German research, and the insight which that research had opened into the mysterious origin of the races, institutions, and religions PREFACE. IX of mankind. Many are now living who never can forget the moment when, in the translation of "Niehuhr's Roman History," they for the first time felt that they had caught a glimpse into the dark corners of the ancient times which preceded the dawn of history. There are many who gathered their early knowledge of the Grecian world from the first history which brought all the stores of modern learning to bear on that glorious country and its glorious people, and which still, after all that has been done, remains the only history filled with the continuous sense of the unity of its marvellous destinies in their decline as well as in their rise. Many there are who have never lost the deep impression left by the attempt to trace the refined and solemn irony of ancient tragedy and human fate ;* many also who, in his masterly analysis of the composition of the Gospel narratives, first gained an insight at once alike into the complicated structure and the profound substance of the sacred volume. t Such a man is a boon to a whole generation, both by the example of his industry and by the light of his teach- ing. Even to the very last, even in old age, in blindness, in solitude, he continued with indomitable energy the task of acquiring new knowledge, of adding another and another finish to the never-ending education of his capacious mind becoming, as he said when at ; the age of seventy-six he released himself from the cares of his diocese, becoming a boy once again, but a boy still at school, still growing in wisdom and understanding. Hear it, laggards and sluggards of our laxer days ; hear it, you who spend your leisure in the things and the books that perish with the using ; hear and profit by the remembrance that there has been one amongst us to whom the word of knowledge came in all its force and * Essay on " The Irony of Sophocles." Sec "Remains," p. 6. t See Introduction to Schleicrmachcr's " Essay on St. Luke." PREFACE. beauty, to whom idleness, ignorance, and indifference were an intolerable burden, to whom the acquisition of a new language or a new literature was as the annexation of a new dominion, or the invention of a new enjoyment. Well may he rest amongst the scholars of England beneath the monument of Isaac Casaubon, whom we have of late learnt to know again * as if he had lived in our days, and in the grave of his own famous schoolfellow.t of whose labours in the same field of Grecian history he once said, with a rare union of simple modesty and noble disinterested- ness, that to himself had been given the rare privilege of seeing the work which had been the dream of his own life superseded and accomplished by a like work on a larger scale, and in more finished proportions, by the beloved and faithful friend of his early youth. It may be disappointing to some that this prodigious acquisition of knowledge was not accompanied by a corresponding productiveness. With the exception of the few indications we have given, his learning perished with him. The light which he contributed to theology was far less brilliant and permanent than that which had come from Arnold or from Milman, or from some of the great German theologians whom he so highly honoured. Still there was a form of wisdom which does not lie buried with him in that narrow vault. There is an old English word which has now somewhat changed its meaning, but which in former times was applied to one of our greatest divines, Richard Hooker—the word "judicious." We now use it in the restricted sense of "cautious" or "sagacious." But in its proper meaning it signified exactly that quality of judgment, discretion, discrimina- tion, which is the chief characteristic of the biblical virtue of wisdom. Hardly, perhaps, has there been any * Memoir of Isaac Casaubon, by Mark Pattison. t George Grotc, historian of Greece. — PREFACE. xi English theologian, rarely even any professional Judge, to whom this epithet, in this its true sense of judicial, judge-like, was more truly applicable than to the serene and powerful intellect that has just passed away. In that massive countenance, in that measured diction, in that deliberate argument, in those weighty decisions, it seemed as though Themis herself were enshrined to utter her most impressive oracles ; as if he was a living monument on which was inscribed " Incorrupta fides, nudaque Veritas ; " * as if he had absorbed into his inmost being the evangelical precept, " Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment." It must indeed be allowed that there were times when his voice failed to be raised in emergencies which seemed to demand it—that there were occasions when even in his firm hand the scales of justice trembled from some unexpected bias—when his clear vision was dimmed for a time by a glamour which fascinated him the more because its magical influence was unlike to anything in himself when his majestic serenity was ruffled by the irritation of some trivial contradiction or small annoyance. But for the larger part of his career the even current of his temper, the piercing accuracy of his insight, the calm dig- nity of his judgment, even when we might differ from its conclusions, remained immovable ; and thus, when he rose to the Episcopal office, it almost seemed as if in this respect it had been created for him—so naturally did he from it, as from a commanding eminence, take an over- sight of the whole field of ecclesiastical events—so entirely did his addresses to his clergy assume the form of judicial utterances on each of the great controversies which have agitated the Church of England for the last thirty years, and thus become the most faithful as well as impressive record of that eventful time.

Load more