1875-1876 LETTERS-MISSION AT LINCOLN 395 is simply wonderful. I do only regret that I did not urge you to spend for me a great deal more. The Filatrice' has in her spindle and hand the very thread that our dear old hero twisted in to show someone, perhaps ourselves, how the Parcae span. The vases etc. dignify the drawing-room in themselves, and they glow to me with a scarcely earthly light. Your ever loving, E. W. BENSON. To Canon Westcott. 10 March, 1876. MY DEAR WESTCOTT, The Mission here has left really an awful impression on all minds here. The assiduous thirst of the people is most touching. Their crowds, their eagerness, the way in which they remained praying after the Services in silence, give me an impression I cannot shake off. We are so wretchedly armed with what they want-"Who is blind-?" Your last note too filled me with shame when you said I was to be your Interpreter to Oxford. I don't understand either language. How I wish I could come up to Cambridge for a term and sit at yours and Lightfoot's and Hort's lectures, and talk with you afterwards about them-and be put through a course of reading. I fear that it was very bad that I did not stay and read Philosophy after my degree and I shall never get over it. But this is a useless wail. If you can tell me any direction in which to read, what I can do to get my straying and vainly anxious unsubstantial thoughts into order and strength, even at this eleventh hour, how grateful I should be. Ever yours affectionately, E. W. BENSON. (Enclosing syllabus of Lent lectures 1876.) 1 The statue of a woman spinning. To Dr Lightfoot, on Temperance. MY DEAR LIGHTFOOT, 14 March, 1876. We are now plunging into the Church of England Temperance Society, and are going to try to plough up this extraordinary fertile field by cross-ploughing-rich land, the “fertile” is to be seen in next 30 years. What will they bring forth? "Temperance" must precede "Faith" and any practical belief in "Judgment to come." Yours affectionately ever, E. W. BENSON. To his Wife. THE CHANCERY. March 30, 1876. MY DEAREST WIFE, The Night Schools are just over, and the dearest of good saints1 has been over from Riseholme at 8.30 in the evening and gone and spoken to the Central Schools and St Martin's School and dismissed them. He had been already over 3 to 5 for Lecture and Service. The children went there to lunch and have spent a happy afternoon. Hugh distinguished himself as usual by informing the Bishop that he had a St Hugh like ours in the dining-room-"with a little man in the mug"-and asked him what "his Goose was doing." They came loaded with flowers-they are all most good dear children. With you I most earnestly desire and pray that our dear one should really open the windows of her heart to the airs of heaven. It is fear of what someone will say, and fear of ridicule, and fear of " narrow mindedness," and an early unfounded fear of "fanaticism" which has slowly dried up the spring-not for good, I hope. The "high and dry" school is certainly of all the worst to have been brought up in, and amid the supreme contempt of "Methodism" which prevailed when she was young it was scarcely possible for the true lovingness, which alone carries duty through to the end, to ripen. To be taught Belief without learning to love, and to express in true forms Love to Him whom we believe in, is not a rational form of education. I shall indeed as earnestly as I can pray for what you bid 1 Bishop Wordsworth. 1876 LETTERS-COMING TO JESUS 397 me pray for. But you know what self-condemnation I feel on the subject. While I have really and warmly believed, and thoroughly realised (I think I may venture to say) the truths of the unseen and the persons of that world, as actually taking part in this, still (I know not yet fully why) the facts which gave me such happiness and strength in other ways have not till lately, if even now, reacted with anything like proper force, on my temper, my pride, my resentment, my self-government, or my opinion of myself. I have prayed for humility and sweetness always, yet I have not had before me the right ideal of character. But my notion has had in it a world of confidence in a naturally religious disposition, as if it had been a character formed and shaped by God, while it was not. This has been a snare of a most serious kind, and I have for years trusted to the religious sentiment to mould the life, without using anything like a careful interior discipline. The lost ground I have to make up is aweful. It is therefore I who want your prayers, more than you mine. But I know I have them, and I am turning back to walk again ground which I ought to have made long ago. Nothing can, nothing does make one so happy-with a bursting thankfulness-as the belief that with a new, a re-baptized intelligence, we can "come" as children can come, "to Jesus "-in utter simplicity, with cries for forgiveness and change, inner cries. But this intense happiness, which is the greatest we can ever know, is overclouded directly if for an instant that we determine to "know anything, but Jesus Christ Crucified." If we know Him-that is, if He knows us, and has drawn us close to Him, all things else fall into their places. But it is of no use to take Him up as a means to any other however good. All dearness becomes dearer, because it takes its right perspective from Him, and the love of human beings often leads us to the Love of God, because it first strikes the chord of Love at all-and when that ache begins it takes more than humanity to assuage it, but the true Heal-All includes all true love to others in its spell. And when the true Love of God in Christ is actually at work, there is not the least fear of our forgetting to love everyone in their proper place, only one must, I am certain, begin by loving Him above all persons and things. And so a time comes when we must begin to draw to a close our self-analysis. It may teach us most about ourselves. But when we know all about ourselves, there would be a limitation to that knowledge, and a sadness in it. It is after all only the knowledge 1 of phenomena. Those things which are absolutely worth knowing come in the next stage after convictions of sin. It is gazing deep down in the character and work of Christ, which will first begin to make the "Subject" of our thoughts grow. For it is not only knowledge of the "Subject" which we want, we want also to enter on a system, by which the "Subject" will become greater and more divine. And nothing but Faith in Christ has this effect-and when once it begins to operate, then we may almost give up the analysis; for just to bring the results of it, our self-knowledge, our self-despair, and our aspirations to Him, and simply beg Him to give us a notion of what we are to do with ourselves, strength to work it out as far as we see, and appetite for more, is the exercise called "Worship,”—a real approach to a real reception, of what we can't produce by thinking, or grasp with intellectual power-a spiritual fact, which the spirit alone can realise that spirit of ours which often is so merely dormant, while all else is in activity. Ah! I labour in wretched words-too dry for you to read-but true if only I could beat my music out. We must utterly try to give our children some idea of the Love of God, while they get on so well in the knowledge of God's ways-the two must go on together. I am afraid this is all awkward-but it is a true endeavour to express how earnestly I will carry out your wishes. And you for me? The Persons of God the Father-the Son-the Holy Ghost the aweful Trinity in Unity-This is what we must both know and love-Then we have hope for ever. With all love and prayer, Your most affectionate husband, I send you my letter such as it is. It does not half express my meaning or my love, but I can't do better. Early in 1876 the Chancellor was sounded informally as to whether he would accept the Bishopric of Calcutta. He eventually declined it. The suggestion was made through the Rev. John Wordsworth, now Bishop of Salisbury. Canon Crowfoot writes: "I was present at the agony which the decision brought. He felt, he told me, as if he had made 'il gran rifiuto.'" 1876 OFFER OF BISHOPRIC OF CALCUTTA Letters relating to Bishopric of Calcutta. From MY DEAR FRIEND, KEBLE TERRACE, Oxford. Friday, May 19, 1876. 399 A letter was shown me this morning entrusting me with the difficult and (as I feel it) really solemn commissionon the part of Lord Salisbury'-to find out whether you would listen to an offer of the Bishopric of Calcutta, if made to you. Maclagan you know has declined it-and Lord Salisbury is naturally anxious that the number of those who actually decline a public offer of so important a See should be as few as possible, and this I think is a feeling one is bound to sympathise with. Nevertheless he can hardly expect you not to take counsel with your most intimate friends under seal of secrecy. A formal offer will certainly follow, if you incline towards it. Now, dear friend, what do you think? Perhaps it has passed through your mind long ago, as your name has been frequently suggested for it in common talk-though this is very different from really facing the question when it becomes a reality. For my own part I almost fear you ought to go. Yet I will not say fear-though it will be almost like losing a hand to part with you, rarely as I see you. This place is perhaps next in importance in the English Church to the Throne of Canterbury-and I do not know of anyone much better qualified to fill it than you are; I don't speak with any blind friendship at all-as you know; I know too what you are giving up and the value of it. I know the terrible sacrifice you will have to make as regards your children. I know the danger of health to your dear wife and self. But "les pères de famille sont capables de tout "-do you remember writing it? It was as it were a challenge,—and this seems the answer sent by God's Providence. They will be the gainers in the end by a wider sympathy and grander associations and interests though losers now in a way most painful to them and to you. Yes, I think you must go and help to build a great house for 1 Then Secretary of State for India. 2 Then Vicar of Kensington, Bishop of Lichfield 1878, Archbishop of York since 1891. |