such substitutes for poetry as the real thing, our divine is a poet of no mean order. ‘What we want, sir,’ said a publisher to me the other day, ‘is a lively religious novel.’ Mr. Dale’s poetry answers to these conditions: hence its success.
His poetry was a great help to his popularity. When he was rector of the parish of St. Bride’s, and evening lecturer at St. Sepulchre, he was more intimately connected than at present with literary pursuits, and was much run after. About that time Annuals were the rage, and Mr. Dale edited a religious Annual called ‘The Iris,’ and young ladies learnt his verses by heart, or copied them into their albums. At one time Mr. Dale was Professor of English Language and Literature at the University College, in Gower Street. However, as a Tory and a Churchman, he seems to have found himself out of his element there, and left it for King’s College, Strand, at which place he held a similar appointment. It was thought that church preferment had something to do with this; that his chances were, in consequence, in danger; that in high quarters the University College was regarded with an unfavourable eye: so Mr. Dale threw it overboard. Such was the rumour at the time. Of course, to some men, such conduct may seem only wise – prudent; but if ministers of religion thus shape their conduct, with a view to worldly success, what chance have they of regenerating the world? If such things be done in the green tree, what may we not expect in the dry? A teacher of living Christianity surely should be the last to desert a cause, merely because it is weak, and unfashionable, and poor!
As a writer, Mr. Dale has been most untiring. His first poem came out in 1820. It was the ‘Widow of Nain,’ and was read with delight in religious circles. In 1822 he published another poem, called ‘Irad and Adah, a Tale of the Flood; with Specimens of a New Translation of the Psalms.’ About this time the poetic inspiration appears to have died, for since only a few occasional verses have appeared from Mr. Dale’s pen, and henceforth he seems to have betaken himself to prose. In 1830 he published a volume of ‘Sermons, Doctrinal and Practical;’ in 1835, ‘The Young Pastor’s Guide;’ in 1836, ‘A Companion to the Altar;’ in 1844, ‘The Sabbath Companion;’ in 1845, ‘The Good Shepherd: an Exposition of the 23rd Psalm;’ in 1847, ‘The Golden Psalm, being an Exposition, Practical, Experimental, and Prophetical, of Psalm xvi.’ Besides these publications, he has printed several occasional sermons. He has now attained a high position in the Establishment, which certainly can boast few more faithful or laborious men. Originally not intended for the Church, his subsequent success has justified his devotion of himself to her service. Altogether his lot has been cast in ‘pleasant ‘places,’ and he has had ‘a goodly heritage.’
THE HON. AND REV. R. LIDDELL
St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, has done what it is a very hard thing to do, created a sensation in this our phlegmatic and eating and drinking and money-making and merry-making age. It professes to be a Puseyite, and not a Protestant, place of worship. Puseyism, says a red-haired Saxon, foaming with indignation, is next door to Roman Catholicism, and a Puseyite Church is half-way to Rome. True, my perturbed brother – true. But what of that? Some are inclined to think that Church of Englandism is akin to Roman Catholicism, and that all its churches are halfway to Rome. That brutal old tyrant, Henry the Eighth, was a Roman Catholic at heart, and had faith in himself as an infallible Pope. His genuine daughter did the same. Laud, who lacked the discretion of that strong-minded woman whose
‘Christ was the Word that spake it,
He took the bread and brake it,
And what the Word did make it,
That I believe and take it,’
is a splendid specimen of ingenious mystification on the vexata questio of transubstantiation, – I question whether Charles James Bloomfield, Bishop of London, could have returned a more confused and unmeaning response, – died for his Roman Catholic tendencies. To this day England remembers who it was, with red, swollen face, and brown apparel, and collar with a spot of blood on it, made his maiden speech in Parliament by indignantly informing the House that Dr. Alabaster had preached flat Popery at St. Paul’s, and in our own day Mr. Gorham has failed in obtaining a legal decision against the Roman Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration. The mistake is, in supposing that the Church as by law established is Low Church. If it were so, then, of course, out ought to go the whole crop of Puseyite priests, in spite of the tears and hysterics of female piety. On the contrary, the Church of England is like the happy family in Trafalgar-square. Beasts of the most opposite description there dwell together in peace and unity. Dogs and cats there sleep side by side. In the prospect of a common maintenance natural enmities are forgotten. Conformity is impossible. I cannot use my brother’s words with his exact meaning. I must put my own interpretation on the creeds and articles to which I subscribe, and so long as the State Church is a chaotic mass of heterogeneous materials – so long as it has no definite voice, nor law – so long as bishop clashes with bishop, and at times with himself, – for we may have here a Puseyite, there an Evangelical, here a fox-hunting divine, – there must be everywhere heart-burning and scandal, and the degradation of Christianity itself. But, exclaims my vehement red-faced Saxon friend, you are making Papists by letting the Puseyites remain. I don’t know that. Papacy is alien to human nature, or it is not. If it is not, you cannot get rid of it. If cut down to-day, it will sprout up again to-morrow. It springs from a tendency, I take it, in the human heart. In a mild form, that tendency gently blooms as Puseyism. A cold in one man may, by means of gruel, be removed in a week. In another man, it may deepen into deadly decline. Puseyism may retain as many in the English Church as it may send to Rome. Your Low Churchman may say the Puseyite has no business in the Church at all. Well, the other may say the same of him, and there is no one to decide as to who is right. King James II. said, Hooker’s Apology made him a Papist, but Hooker was not responsible for this, and is still rightly looked on as one of the brightest ornaments of the Church of England as by law established. Men make strange leaps. Many a convert to Rome has been won from the ranks of Methodism. Many an infidel has been born and bred in the very bosom of the Roman Church. A Puseyite may become a Papist, but he also may not, and so may other men. Some people say there is Popery everywhere. I listen to a Wesleyan Reformer, for instance, and he tells me that the Conference is Popish, and that the President is the Pope. If so, it is hard to blame the Puseyites for exhibiting the priestly tendency, more or less apparent, as some affirm, in all priests.
I imagine the crime of Puseyism, in the eyes of most churchmen, is the crime of a pretty woman in an assembly of haggard crones. The Puseyite place of worship is always neat and clean, and worth looking at, and it attracts when others fail to do so. The causes of it must be various. Why does one graceful woman robe herself in simple muslin, and another dazzle you with her gorgeous attire? You may be a philosopher. If that woman can be your companion, can feel as you feel, and love as you love, you care not for her attire. But she knows that the world has a different opinion. The Puseyite becomes an object of interest. On a small, very small scale, he is a hero. True, to fight about little ceremonials argues the possession of a brain of but limited power, but his opponents are in a similar position. If you deny worship to be the simple genuine feeling of the heart – if you make no provision for that – if you turn it into a form, why then, possibly, the more of a form it is the better. I confess the way in which they intone the service at St. Paul’s is pleasant to listen to. It is not worship, I grant. Neither is mumbling the thousandth time over a printed form of words worship. What a dull thing an opera would be, read, and not sung. It is true people do not make love, or do business, or address each other in music, in real life, but in an opera they do, and the effect is great. So it is with the Church of England service. Intoned it may be unintelligible or theatrical, but it is attractive nevertheless. It is not natural, but what of that? The soul bowed down with a sense of sin, yearning for peace and pardon, in its agony and despair will vent itself in broken sentences, and will turn away from all ceremony – from even the sublime liturgy of the Church of England, as poor, and cold, and vain, inadequate to the expression of its hopes and fears. But why those who go to church as a form find fault with the people of St. Paul’s because their form is a little more attractive than their own, I confess I cannot understand.
But I have forgotten the Hon. and Rev.
