Eminent Victorians | Page 7

of events was taking place in another part of
England, which was to have a no less profound effect upon Manning's
history than the merciful removal of his wife. In the same year in which
he took up his Sussex curacy, the Tracts for the Times had begun to
appear at Oxford. The 'Oxford Movement', in fact, had started on its
course. The phrase is still familiar; but its meaning has become
somewhat obscured both by the lapse of time and the intrinsic
ambiguity of the subjects connected with it. Let us borrow for a

moment the wings of Historic Imagination, and, hovering lightly over
the Oxford of the thirties, take a rapid bird's-eye view.
For many generations the Church of England had slept the sleep of
the...comfortable. The sullen murmurings of dissent, the loud battle-cry
of Revolution, had hardly disturbed her slumbers. Portly divines
subscribed with a sigh or a smile to the Thirty- nine Articles, sank
quietly into easy living, rode gaily to hounds of a morning as
gentlemen should, and, as gentlemen should, carried their two bottles
of an evening. To be in the Church was in fact simply to pursue one of
those professions which Nature and Society had decided were proper to
gentlemen and gentlemen alone. The fervours of piety, the zeal of
Apostolic charity, the enthusiasm of self-renunciation-- these things
were all very well in their way and in their place; but their place was
certainly not the Church of England. Gentlemen were neither fervid nor
zealous, and above all they were not enthusiastic. There were, it was
true, occasionally to be found within the Church some strait-laced
parsons of the high Tory school who looked back with regret to the
days of Laud or talked of the Apostolical Succession; and there were
groups of square-toed Evangelicals who were earnest over the
Atonement, confessed to a personal love of Jesus Christ, and seemed to
have arranged the whole of their lives, down to the minutest details of
act and speech, with reference to Eternity. But such extremes were the
rare exceptions. The great bulk of the clergy walked calmly along the
smooth road of ordinary duty. They kept an eye on the poor of the
parish, and they conducted the Sunday Services in a becoming manner;
for the rest, they differed neither outwardly nor inwardly from the great
bulk of the laity, to whom the Church was a useful organisation for the
maintenance of Religion, as by law established.
The awakening came at last, however, and it was a rude one. The
liberal principles of the French Revolution, checked at first in the
terrors of reaction, began to make their way into England. Rationalists
lifted up their heads; Bentham and the Mills propounded Utilitarianism;
the Reform Bill was passed; and there were rumours abroad of
disestablishment. Even Churchmen seemed to have caught the infection.
Dr. Whately was so bold as to assert that, in the interpretation of
Scripture, different opinions might be permitted upon matters of doubt;
and, Dr. Arnold drew up a disquieting scheme for allowing Dissenters

into the Church, though it is true that he did not go quite so far as to
contemplate the admission of Unitarians.
At this time, there was living in a country parish, a young clergyman of
the name of John Keble. He had gone to Oxford at the age of fifteen,
where, after a successful academic career, he had been made a Fellow
of Oriel. He had then returned to his father's parish and taken up the
duties of a curate. He had a thorough knowledge of the contents of the
Prayer-book, the ways of a Common Room, the conjugations of the
Greek Irregular Verbs, and the small jests of a country parsonage; and
the defects of his experience in other directions were replaced by a zeal
and a piety which were soon to prove themselves equal, and more than
equal, to whatever calls might be made upon them. The
superabundance of his piety overflowed into verse; and the holy
simplicity of the Christian Year carried his name into the remotest
lodging-houses of England.
As for his zeal, however, it needed another outlet. Looking forth upon
the doings of his fellow-men through his rectory windows in
Gloucestershire, Keble felt his whole soul shaken with loathing, anger,
and dread. Infidelity was stalking through the land; authority was
laughed at; the hideous doctrines of Democracy were being openly
preached. Worse still, if possible, the Church herself was ignorant and
lukewarm; she had forgotten the mysteries of the sacraments, she had
lost faith in the Apostolical Succession; she was no longer interested in
the Early Fathers; and she submitted herself to the control of a secular
legislature, the members of which were not even bound to profess
belief in the Atonement.