asting life of all who will believe in
Him. All this, then, the whole work of the redemption of mankind, does
our Lord in the text declare to be finished."[154]

Hare declares the necessity of faith to Christian life, but he renders
it more passive than active by saying that it is a receptive moral
endowment capable of large development. Happy is the man who becomes
inured to the exalted "habit of faith." Sin is more a matter of regret
than of responsibility; inspiration is a doctrine we should not slight,
but the language of the Scriptures must not be regarded too tenaciously;
due allowance ought to be made for all verbal inaccuracies and
discrepancies; miracles are an adjunct to Christian evidence, but their
importance is greatly exaggerated, for they are a beautiful frieze, not
one of the great pillars in the temple of our faith.

Notwithstanding these evidences of Hare's digression from orthodoxy, we
cannot forget that consecration and purity of heart revealed in some of
his sermons, and especially in the glowing pages of the _Mission of the
Comforter_. His ministerial life was an example of untiring devotion,
and we know not which to admire the more, his labor of love in the
rustic parish of Herstmonceaux, or those searching rebukes of Romanism
contained in the charges to his clergy. Independent as both his friends
and enemies acknowledge him to have been, his misfortune was an
excessive reliance upon his own imagination and upon the opinions of
those whom he admired. Nature made him capable of intimate friendships,
both personal and intellectual. No one can examine his life without
loving the man, nor read his fervent words without concluding that the
Church has been honored by few men of his noble type. That
self-sacrifice and sympathy of which he often spoke feelingly in
connection with the humiliation of Christ, were the controlling
principles of his heart. Let not the veil with which we would conceal
his theological defects obscure, in the least, the brightness of his
resplendent character and pure purposes.

No view of Hare's position can be complete without embracing that of his
brother-in-law, Maurice; both of whom were ardently sympathetic with
Coleridge. But while the former gave a more evangelical cast to his
master's opinions than they originally possessed, the latter perverted
them by unwarranted speculations. Maurice is now one of the most
influential of the Rationalistic teachers of England. He has