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and no more associating a spiritual, a supernatural idea with his business than if that business were brewing or banking. Mr. Trollope does not like him, nor does he put him forward as a person to be liked; but he makes him a thoroughly respectable representative clergyman; the discord is in the man's temper and character, not in the authoritative mission of such a man to souls. He is described by Mr. Trollope, when he concludes the story of "The Warden," as "a gentleman, a man of conscience, one who spends his money liberally, and improves the tone of society of those among whom he lives; who is sincere in matters of religion, and yet no Pharisee; on the whole a man doing more good than harm." And numbers of people who believe that the Church of England is a real Church, see nothing absurd or improper, apart from the Archdeacon's disagreeable temper-in such a character for one of its dignitaries. If we should take, one by one, the long list of clerical portraits which the author has painted, we might find, in every one of them, something to illustrate the surprise with which we regard their popularity from the Protestant point of view; but we cannot do so, and must pass on to consider, from our own point of view, Mr. Trollope's most remarkable achievement of this kind-that which he avows has cost him the greatest pains the sketch, which we find in "Barchester Towers," of the Reverend Francis Arabin, subsequently Dean of Barchester. It is all admirably written, so true and forcible, that the man lives and moves before us; but we can only take it up at one particular point the history of Mr. Arabin's religious vacillations, which affords a proof of the absence, on Mr. Trollope's part, of even a conception of the meaning of spirituality and the supernatural, and a very striking example of the perfect good faith and semblance of reasonableness with which clever persons in the state of invincible ignorance discuss the deep things of God, just as they discuss the shallow things of the world. We can hardly conceive anything more suggestive, in its way, to Catholic readers than the following passages :

Francis Arabin had been a religious lad before he left school; that is, he had addicted himself to a party in religion, and having done so, had received that benefit which most men do who become partisans in such a cause. We are much too apt to look at schism in our church as an unmitigated evil. Moderate schism, if there may be such a thing, at any rate calls attention to the subject, draws in supporters who would otherwise have been inattentive to the matter, and teaches men to think upon religion. How great an amount of good of this description has followed that movement in the Church of England which commenced with the publication of "Froude's Remains"!

As a boy young Arabin took up the cudgels on the side of the Tractarians, and at Oxford he sat for a while at the feet of the great Newman. . . . . And now came the moment of his great danger. After many mental struggles, and an agony of doubt which may be well surmised, the great prophet of the Tractarians professed himself a Roman Catholic. Mr. Newman left the Church of England, and with him carried many a waverer. He did not carry off Mr. Arabin, but the escape which that gentleman had was a very narrow one. He left Oxford for a while, that he might meditate on the step which appeared to him to be all but unavoidable, and shut himself up in a little village on the seashore of one of our remotest counties, that he might learn, by communing with his own soul, whether or no he could with a safe conscience remain within the pale of his mother Church. Things would have gone badly with him had he been left to himself. Everything was against him: all his worldly interests required him to remain a Protestant; and he looked on his worldly interests as a legion of foes, to get the better of whom was a point of extremest honour. In his then state of ecstatic agony such a conquest would have cost him little; he could easily have thrown away all his livelihood; but it cost him much to get over the idea that by choosing the Church of England he should be open in his own mind to the charge that he had been led to such a choice by unworthy motives. Then his heart was against him. He loved with a strong and eager love the man who had hitherto been his guide, and yearned to follow his footsteps. His tastes were against him. The ceremonies and pomps of the Church of Rome, their august feasts and solemn fasts, invited his imagination and pleased his eye. His flesh was against him. How great an aid it would be to a poor, weak, wavering man to be constrained to high moral duties, self-denial, obedience, and chastity, by laws which were certain in their enactments, and not to be broken without loud, palpable, unmistakable sin! Then his faith was against him; he required to believe so much; panted so eagerly to give signs of his belief; deemed it so insufficient to wash himself simply in the waters of Jordan, that some great deed, such as that of forsaking everything for a true Church, had for him allurements almost past withstanding. . . . . It was from the poor curate of a small Cornish parish that he first learned to know that the highest laws for the governance of a Christian's duty must act from within, and not from without ; that no man can become a serviceable servant solely by obedience to written edicts and that the safety which he was about to seek within the gates of Rome was no other than the selfish freedom from personal danger which the bad soldier attempts to gain who counterfeits illness on the eve of battle.

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We shall come presently to the results of Mr. Arabin's narrow escape." Let us now briefly examine the process of it, premising that in our opinion it would be difficult for any one to present to a Protestant who believes that in his Bible he has a practical guide which he is bound to obey, stronger reasons for ceasing to be a Protestant than those which "saved" the future Dean of Barchester from becoming a member of the Catholic Church. "He looked on his worldly interests as a legion of foes, to get the better of whom was a

point of extremest honour." The Disciples were of a like way of thinking. "The august feasts, and solemn fasts, invited his imagination, and pleased his eye." In the Gospel narratives, there is a remarkable reiteration of Our Lord's teaching concerning fasting, many special declarations of its necessity, to say nothing of His wondrous example; and He carefully kept the Jewish before He instituted the Christian feasts. Mr. Arabin's "flesh was against him: how great an aid would it be to a poor, weak, wavering man to be constrained to high moral duties, self-denial, obedience, and chastity, by laws which were certain in their enactments, and not to be broken without loud, palpable, unmistakable sin!" This is one of the most deplorable sentences, we think, which has ever been written-deplorable in its terrible perversion of the meaning of a man's flesh being "against " him, for it implies that the man who is conscious of temptation and desirous to overcome it, is in danger of resorting to the Fountain for all uncleanness; deplorable in its testimony to Protestant ignorance of the nature, malignancy, and damnableness of sin. But this sentence is as absurd as an argument, as it is deplorable as a sentiment. Is it because a man is poor, weak, and wavering, that he does not require aid? Are laws of uncertain enactments desirable means of government? Is there anything but the severest and most absolute certainty in the laws, of Our Lord's enactment, by which the Church enjoins "high moral duties, self-denial, obedience," and that purity without which no man shall see God? Are any of Our Lord's laws to be broken without sin, and can any sin be otherwise than palpable and unmistakable, according to the Gospel's definition, and that of the Catholic Church? The whole of this miserable passage implies that the Protestant system, which Mr. Arabin was "saved" from abandoning, has no moral law, properly so called, and that it does not recognize the significance of sin at all. Mr. Arabin's "faith was against him;" so, according to this, was the faith of every one of the disciples, who left their ordinary line of life and followed Jesus, and yet it is precisely such faith that Jesus enjoins, and declares to be that which shall save the soul in which it reigns. The "waters of Jordan" metaphor is sorry, when one thinks of the great law of simple unquestioning obedience which governs the Catholic Church, and the practice of complex disobedience which characterises Protestant sectarianism; which, at present, in that subdivision of it that professes to abide in authority, presents the spectacle of a clergy, who claim the Apostolic commission as their raison d'être, in general revolt. against their own bishops. The last sentence in the passage

we have quoted is nonsense, positive and relative, because "laws for the governance of a Christian's duty" means simply the instruction of a Christian's conscience, which must be an interior operation under any system, and is one of the special offices of the Sacrament of Penance, and because it is precisely by obedience to written edicts that every man does become a serviceable servant; such obedience being the only proof of the submission of the heart to the Divine Master's will expressed in His law. We freely admit that the "safety to be found within the gates of Rome" is a "selfish freedom from personal danger," but the "personal danger" is the loss of one's immortal soul, and the "safety" is called, in the Gospel, "salvation." "And yet," says Mr. Trollope, in another of his works,* "I love their religion. There is something beautiful and almost divine in the faith and obedience of a true son of the Holy Mother. I sometimes fancy that I would fain be a Roman Catholic,-if I could; as also I would often wish to be still a child, if that were possible." Precisely so. Our Divine Lord has said: " Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."

Let us now look at the result of Mr. Arabin's "escape," and the ideal presentment of a Protestant clergyman, according to Mr. Trollope. The rescued one has returned to Oxford, and fallen under the influence of the head of his college, Dr. Gwynne, a person whom we hardly think Saint John or Saint Paul would regard as quite up to the mark; for "Dr. Gwynne, though a religious man, was also a thoroughly practical man of the world, and he regarded with unfavourable eye the tenets of any one who looked on the two things as incompatible."

For some time after Mr. Arabin's return to Oxford he was saturnine, silent, and unwilling to take any prominent part in University broils; but gradually his mind recovered, or rather made, its tone, and he became known as a man always ready at a moment's notice to take up the cudgels in opposition to anything that savoured of an evangelical bearing. He was great in sermons, great on platforms, great at after-dinner conversations, and always pleasant as well as great. He took delight in elections, served on committees, opposed tooth and nail all projects of University reform, and talked jovially over his glass of port of the ruin to be anticipated by the Church, and the sacrilege daily committed by the Whigs. The ordeal through which he had gone in resisting the blandishments of the lady of Rome, had certainly done much towards the strengthening of his character.

And this is all perfectly in earnest! Mr. Trollope is not quizzing Protestantism; he is not poking his fun at the

North America," vol. i. p. 75.

Church of England clergy. Mr. Arabin is a special favourite with him. He provides him with a rich and pretty wife,-he makes a dean of him; he thoroughly approves of him. And all his Protestant readers approve! It is not an enemy who has done this.

Whether Mr. Trollope's clergymen are respectable, like Mr. Harding; admirable, like Mr. Crawley; imposing, like Mr. Arabin; disreputable, like Mr. Stanhope; utterly worldly, like Dr. Grantly and Mark Robarts; silly, like Arthur Wilkinson; sensible and muscular, like Dr. Fenwick; contemptible, like Bishop Proudie; odious, like Mr. Slope; or pitiable, like Mr. Quiverful, they are all equally unlike bearers of a divine commission, "stewards of the mysteries of God;" and when we have made ourselves familiar with them all, we are equally amused by them, and surprised at the strange condition of Protestant opinion and feeling which makes their popularity possible among the Protestant community. For us, the contemplation has a serious source of satisfaction; for we, too, Bible in hand, may turn from the portrait of Dean Arabin to the portrait of Father John Maguire. As domestic stories, the clerical series is delightful. The Proudie, Grantly, Stanhope, Robarts, Crawley, and Fenwick households are incomparable; the right men marry the right women, after just a sufficient amount of doubt and difficulty; all the secondary people are very vivid and amusing, and the comfortable worldly wisdom of everybody is so unfailing, that the reader feels cleverer and wiser for absorbing it. Mr. Trollope's power of depicting stupid people, without suffering their stupidity to incommode his readers, is unequalled. Griselda Grantly is, perhaps, the best example of this; but she is also one of his most humorous achievements. Who has not followed the handsome, heartless, brainless creature, who is such an ornament to society by sheer dint of utter worldliness and cold selfishness, from her first appearance, when she passes judgment on Mr. Arabin, through the negotiations for her grand marriage, her solemn assumption of leadership in society, her delightful quiet snubbing of Mr. Palliser, and her final attainment of bliss as a marchioness? The Archdeacon and Mrs. Grantly have nothing to regret in their daughter's education, and her marriage crowns their wishes. When Lady Dumbello is leaving the parental roof with her bridegroom, "as she was about to step forward to her travelling carriage, leaning on her father's arm, the child put up her face to her mother for a last whisper. 'Mamma,' she said, I suppose Jane can put her hand at once on the moire-antique when we reach Dover?' Mrs. Grantly smiled and nodded, and again blessed her child." Lady

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