father, however, who
admitted the difficulty to be insuperable, but thought for a moment that
they might act together as editor and sub-editor. My father says in his
letters (August 4 and 8, 1854): 'I adhere with no qualifications of
which I am conscious to the theological views of my old Clapham friends.
You, I suppose, are an adherent of Mr. Maurice. To myself it appears
that he is nothing more than a great theological rhetorician, and that
his only definite and appreciable meaning is that of wedding the gospel
to some form of philosophy, if so to conceal its baldness. But Paul of
Tarsus many ages ago forbade the banns.' In a second letter he says that
there does not seem to be much real difference between Fitzjames's creed
and his own. 'It seems to me quite easy to have a theological theory
quite complete and systematic enough for use; and scarcely possible to
reach such a theory with any view to speculation--easy, I mean, and
scarcely possible for the unlearned class to which I belong. The learned
are, I trust and hope, far more fixed and comprehensive in their views
than they seem to me to be, but if I dared trust to my own observation I
should say that they are determined to erect into a science a series of
propositions which God has communicated to us as so many detached and,
to us, irreconcilable verities; the common link or connecting principle
of which He has not seen fit to communicate. I am profoundly convinced
of the consistency of all the declarations of Scripture; but I am as
profoundly convinced of my own incapacity to perceive that they are
consistent. I can receive them each in turn, and to some extent I can,
however feebly, draw nutriment from each of them. To blend them one with
another into an harmonious or congruous whole surpasses my skill, or
perhaps my diligence. But what then? I am here not to speculate but to
repent, to believe and to obey; and I find no difficulty whatever in
believing, each in turn, doctrines which yet seem to me incompatible
with each other. It is in this sense and to this extent that I adopt the
whole of the creed called evangelical. I adopt it as a regulator of the
affections, as a rule of life and as a quietus, not as a stimulant to
inquiry. So, I gather, do you, and if so, I at least have no right to
quarrel with you on that account. Only, if you and I are unscientific
Christians, let us be patient and reverent towards those whose deeper
minds or more profound inquiries,