INTRODUCTION

THE present Bishop of Oxford, to his lasting honour, preaching in Christ Church Cathedral, as Dean, in October 1893, exhorted his hearers to ‘praise God for the strenuous ungrudging energy, the hidden bountifulness, the true kind heart, the public spirit, the unworldliness, the deep reserve of strength, which were in Benjamin Jowett‘¹¹   Studies of the Christian Character, by Francis Paget, D.D., 1895.. The Regius Greek Professor of the years from 1855 to 1893 had triumphantly ‘lived down’²²   See Life of Benjamin Jowett, I, 239. the obloquy which, from conscientious motives, had been commenced by a former Canon of Christ Church³³   E. B. Pusey., and promulgated by a former Bishop of Oxford⁴⁴   Samuel Wilberforce.. His greatness as an educational and moral force could no longer be gainsaid; and his place in the literature of scholarship had been secured by his translations of Plato and Thucydides. But the injury to his reputation as a theologian was not thus repaired. The clergy of his own generation had been warned to avoid his teaching as ‘unsound’, and in the following years the younger men, whether theologically inclined or the reverse, were listening to other voices—sacerdotal, xmystical, positivist, or aesthetic. The firstfruits of his ripe manhood were in danger of being buried in oblivion—the labour of his best years wasted. Yet there were not a few to whom his writings on religious subjects appeared invaluable; and there are some even to-day who are ready to endorse the words of A. P. Stanley in reviewing the work from which these essays are taken⁵⁵   In the Times of Oct. 15, 1859.: ‘The cynical and sceptical spirit of the time will have met with an antidote such as we shall vainly expect from any other quarter.’ Nor only the cynical spirit; but the neopagan hedonist temper, which saps the moral strength of many, meets here with a more searching humanism which penetrates to the inmost marrow of the mind and heart, and reaches that which is ‘far more deeply interfused’. What Wordsworth said ‘with invincible confidence’ of his own poetry⁶⁶   Letter to Lady Beaumont, 1807. may be affirmed of Jowett’s theological writings. They ‘co-operate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society wherever found, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier’.

Some part of what he expected from his own method in theology may be inferred from a passage towards the end of the essay on the interpretation of Scripture⁷⁷   Essays and Reviews, p. 423. Reprinted in 3rd edition of the Epistles, vol. ii, p. 91.:—

‘Is it a mere chimera that the different sections xiof Christendom may meet on the common ground of the New Testament, or that the individual may be urged by the vacancy and unprofitableness of old traditions to make the gospel his own—a life of Christ in the soul, instead of a theory of Christ which is in a book, or written down? Or that, in missions to the heathen, Scripture may become the expression of universal truths rather than of the tenets of particular men or churches? That would remove many obstacles to the reception of Christianity. Or that the study of Scripture may have a more important place in a liberal education than hitherto? Or that the ‘rational service’ of interpreting Scripture may dry up the crude and dreamy vapours of religious excitement? Or that, in preaching, new sources of spiritual health may flow from a more natural use of Scripture? Or that the lessons of Scripture may have a nearer way to the hearts of the poor when disengaged from theological formulas?’

That essay was contributed to a volume whose professed object was ‘to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religious and moral truth, from a free handling in a becoming spirit of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language and from traditional methods of treatment’. In some such attempt as this Jowett saw the only hope of making Christianity a universal religion (see below, p. 220).

The essays which are here presented to the reader may be said to have had a threefold purpose:—(1) While interpreting St. Paul, to call up as far as might be, a true image of the Apostolical age; xii(2) to apply the lessons of that age, and the teaching of the Apostle to actual life; and (3) to find such an expression for the theological doctrines which have been derived from that teaching, as may appeal to modern, or, if possible, to universal experience.

(1) The nature of the first endeavour may be best described in the words of Arthur Stanley, who, as Arnold’s pupil, had the same problem in his eye. He says of Jowett in the article already quoted:—

‘He has approached the Apostolic writings with the view, not of imposing his meaning on them, but of learning their own meaning from themselves. He has placed himself not merely on the external scene, but in the living atmosphere of the Apostolic age. He. . . prepared himself for his work by committing to memory the whole of St. Paul’s Epistles in the original Greek. But this is not enough. . . the immense layers of Papal, scholastic, and Puritan philosophy which intervene between ourselves and the Apostolic times; the elevation of the Apostolic point of view above the petty disputes in which we are absorbed; the very familiarity of the words of Scripture—all aggravate the difficulty of such an effort. . . . So to reproduce the past by the microscopic power of scholarship, and by the telescopic power of genius and learning, is the very purpose for which Universities are endowed, and for which Theology exists,

(2) The second element or factor in Jowett’s work belonged to the insight of a man of large experience and profound religious feeling, whose power of xiiisympathy was equal to the width and clearness of his mental vision. It is this which stamps a work of erudition with the character of genius. The growth of an intrinsic faculty, it was the fruit of his devotion to the educational work to which he had been called, and in which from the first he had been aware of possibilities that are hidden from less original minds. Whatever he had gained from his own early struggles with self, with temptation, or with circumstances, had been transfused into a means of helping others—of ‘strengthening his brethren’. Amongst his pupils had been men of genius, and his own experience was enlarged by theirs. These gifts, together with the rich and varied culture accumulated in student days, were now concentrated on what he had long regarded as his chief life-work. See, for example (below, p. 62):—

‘No one with a heart open to human feelings, loving not man less, but God more, sensitive to the happiness of this world, yet aiming at a higher—no man of such a nature ever made a great sacrifice, or performed a great act of self-denial, without impressing a change on his character which lasted to his latest breath. No man ever took his besetting sin, it may be lust, or pride, or the love of rank and position, and, as it were, cut it out by voluntarily placing himself where to gratify it was impossible, without sensibly receiving a new strength of character. In one day, almost in an hour, he may become an altered man; he may stand, as it were, on a different stage of moral and religious life; he may feel himself in new relations to an altered world.’

Or consider the following passage from an essay not included here:—

‘There is a state in which man is powerless to act, and is, nevertheless, clairvoyant to all the good and evil of his own nature. He places the good and evil principle before him, and is ever oscillating between them. He traces the labyrinth of conflicting principles in the world, and is yet further perplexed and entangled. He is sensitive to every breath of feeling, and incapable of the performance of any duty. Or take another example: It sometimes happens that the remembrance of past suffering, or the consciousness of sin, may so weigh a man down as fairly to paralyse his moral power. He is distracted between what he is and what he was; old habits and vices, and the new character which is being fashioned in him. Sometimes the balance seems to hang equal; he feels the earnest wish and desire to act rightly, but cannot hope to find pleasure and satisfaction in a good life; he desires heartily to repent, but can never think it possible that God should forgive. “It is I and it is not I, but sin that dwelleth in me.” “I have, and have never ceased to have, the wish for better things, even amid haunts of infamy and vice.” In such language, even now, though with less fervour than in “the first spiritual chaos of the affections” does the soul cry out to God—“Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”’⁸⁸   Epistles, 3rd edition, vol. ii, p. 297.

In this and other adaptations of the Apostle’s thoughts the interpreter is guided by what he frequently calls ‘the analogy of faith’⁹⁹   Cf. Rom. xii. 6..

(3) The remaining purpose was one which made a more severe demand on strenuous thought and spiritual imagination. It was nothing short of the endeavour to give to the truths which darkly join 1 in Christian theology, and which the Church of the fourth century, or the reformed churches in the sixteenth, had formulated in a manner suited to that age, an expression which may appeal to the heart and intellect of modern times, and may not be found to clash with other truths, or with the highest standard of morality. It was through this attempt that Jowett gave offence to the religious world of his day by departing at once from ‘Patristic’ and from ‘popular’ theology.

Bishop Kaye, of Lincoln (1827-1853), had said that the decree of the Council of Nicaea ‘was the greatest misfortune that ever befell the Church’. On this Jowett quietly remarks ‘that is, perhaps, true; yet a different decision would have been a greater misfortune’. His method in this respect has much in common with that recommended by the late M. Auguste Sabatier in his sketch of a Philosophy of Religion. See, for example, the following passage:—

‘Par ces discussions, par ces controverses mêmes auxquelles heureusement aucun pouvoir extérieur ne vient mettre fin, le dogme est sans cesse mis à l’épreuve, refondu en quelque sorte au feu de la forge; il perd sa dureté de loi extérieure; il reste chaud, malléable; il se dépouille des superstitions mortes du passé pour répondre aux besoins du présent, se di versifier naturellement avec les esprits, xvis’ouvrir à la philosophie du siècle, la pénétrer à son tour, participer au progrès laborieux de la pensée moderne et rester toujours en harmonie et en communion avec elle¹⁰¹⁰   Esquisse d’une Philosophie de la Religion, 7^e édition, p. 332..’

In the present volume a certain progress may be traced from the first of these endeavours to the third,—the first two essays dealing more directly with the Apostolical age, while the third and fourth dwell more on religious experience generally, and the last three are mainly concerned with theology. The seven dissertations here reprinted are in this way representative of the whole work. It may be mentioned that the essay on the Character of St. Paul gave the motive for an ideal work of sculpture by Woolmer, and that on Conversion was pointed out at the time by H. J. S. Smith as likely to conciliate the Evangelical School. The essay on Casuistry should be compared with the account of Loyola in the volume of Biographical Sermons. Much else, of equal interest, might have been included, but would have extended the volume beyond the limits assigned to this series. Readers whose interest is awakened by what is here contained may be led to examine other portions of the original work,—such as the essay on Predestination, full of subtle disquisition, that on The Law as the Strength of Sin, where modern analogies are drawn out with deep observation, or that on Contrasts of Prophecy, or xviiabove all the essay on the Interpretation of Scripture, originally contributed to Essays and Reviews, and reprinted in the posthumous third edition of the Epistles. This last, comprising matter which the author had intended to include in his second edition, throws abundant light upon his general method and point of view. Minor excursuses such as that on the Belief in the Coming of Christ, or on the State of the Heathen World (not reprinted in the 3rd edition), would also still repay perusal.

Professor Jowett was far from thinking that his work in theology was complete or final. Posterity, he said, ‘will remark that up to a certain point we saw clearly; but that no man is beyond his age—there was a circle which we could not pass’¹¹¹¹   3rd edition of Epistles, vol. ii, p. 138.. Yet a disciple may be pardoned for believing that his writings may have even now an influence for good. The time for such endeavours is not yet past; and it is hoped that the present reprint may be received with better quiet, better opinion, ‘better confirmation’, than was accorded to these essays when they first appeared.

Many persons still require to be taught that ‘the whole world, and all things in it, instead of being secular and external to revelation, needs to be brought back to within the sphere of revelation’¹²¹²   See Life of Benjamin Jowett, vol. i, p. 372.. And although in fifty years much water has passed the mill—though marvellous progress has been made xviiiboth in the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge,—yet the whole has not yet been harvested in the interest of religion. In ‘these slow-paced changes’ (the phrase is Dr. James Martineau’s) speculations, and even discoveries about human origins, or about the constitution of the material universe, do not add much appreciably to the long result of time. It may still be worth while, even for the most enlightened, to consider what a mind of exceptional fulness, of keen discernment and sincere piety, regarded as the main outcome of all that was known and felt half a century ago.

Students of Professor Jowett’s book on St. Paul may have much besides to learn, but they will not have much to unlearn. Historical studies have greatly advanced and so has Natural Science; but Gibbon and Humboldt are still worth reading. The very extent of the field makes concentration difficult. The success of special inquiries renders it harder for philosophy and for the religious mind to take all into one view. But, as Plato said, comprehensiveness belongs to the only kind of knowledge which takes lasting root.¹³¹³   Plato, Rep. 537 c.

And religious thinking ebbs as well as flows. The past sometimes prevails over the present and dims the forecast of the future. There is a real danger lest Obscurantism should divide the ground which Religion and Science ought to occupy harmoniously together. The serene spirit which breathes through xixJowett’s writings may give courage to the timid and calmness to the bold.

The two large volumes published in 1855 (second edition, 1859) were after all only a fragment of the work which their author had in view. There are those amongst his friends who will always regret that the labours of the Oxford Vice-Chancellorship, and the exhaustion which followed, should have deprived him first of the leisure, and then of the mental vigour, that was requisite for the execution of his literary designs. He never lost his interest in theology; and the strong vein of reverent thoughtfulness, which pervades the book on St. Paul, was the same which carried him onward through many trials to the attainment of the Christian graces so eloquently commended by Bishop Paget.

Professor Jowett was less inclined indeed in later years to engage in controversy. He used to say, ‘when we were younger, religious doctrines such as that of the Atonement were often presented in a form repugnant to the moral sense. That is not equally so now.’ But it were much to be wished that he had written the treatise he so long contemplated on Moral Ideas, or had worked out his views on the Religions of the World; or had been able to substantiate the dream that was suggested to him by the Imitatio Christi:—

‘Would it be possible to combine in a manual of piety religious fervour with perfect good sense and knowledge of the world? This has never been xxattempted and would be a work worthy of a great religious genius. . . . Is it possible for me, perhaps ten years hence, to write a new Thomas a Kempis, going as deeply into the foundations of human life and yet not revolting the common sense of the nineteenth century, by his violent contrast between this world and another?’

Will Jowett some day have a successor an inheritor of his unfulfilled renown—to sum up with calm insight, and with unclouded faith in God, the spiritual outcome of the last fifty years?—A Christian philosopher, gifted with knowledge of the world and human nature, yet not worldly; loving truth unflinchingly, and not despairing of it; accomplished, not only in theology, but in history and science, full of devotion to God and Christ, and also to the good of man?—Who knows?

LEWIS CAMPBELL.

ALASSIO, ITALY,

March, 1906.