THE

METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW.

APRIL, 1856.

ART. I-JULIUS CHARLES HARE.

1. Guesses al Truth. By Two BROTHERS. First Series. Fifth Edition. Revised. London: 1855.

2. Guesses at Truth. By Two BROTHERS. Second Series. Third Edition. 1855. 3. Sermons preacht in Herstmonceux Church. By JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M. A., Rector of Herstmonceux, Archdeacon of Lewes, and late Fellow of Trinity College. Cambridge: 2 vols. 1841 and 1847.*

4. The Victory of Faith, and other Sermons. By JULIUS CHARLES HARE, &c. Second Edition. 1847.

5. The Mission of the Comforter, and other Sermons, with Notes. By JULIUS CHARLES HARE. Second Edition. Revised. 1850.

6. Essays and Tales. By JoHN STERLING.

Collected and edited, with a Memoir of

his Life. By J. C. HARE, &c. 2 vols. 1848. 7. The Means of Unity: a Charge.

With Notes on the Jerusalem Bishopric, and

the Need of an Ecclesiastical Synod. By J. C. HARE, &C.

8. Letter to the Dean of Chichester on the Appointment of Dr. Hampden. Second Edition. With Postscript. By J. C. HARE, &c.

9. The Better Prospects of the Church: a Charge. By J. C. HARE, &c.

10. The Contest with Rome: a Charge delivered in 1851, with Notes; especially in answer to Dr. Newman's Lectures. By J. C. HARE, &c. 1855.

11. Archdeacon Hare's Last Charge.

12. Two Sermons, on the Occasion of the Funeral of Archdeacon Hare. By the Rev. H. O. ELLIOTT, M. A., and the Rev. J. N. SIMPKINSON, M. A. 1855.

THE above list includes the principal writings of the late Julius Charles Hare, with the exception of the translation of Niebuhr, which he executed in conjunction with Dr. Connop Thirlwall, and by which he first gained a wide reputation as a scholar. We have not put on our list his famous "Vindication of Luther against his recent English Assailants," because it was originally published as a huge note in the second volume of the "Mission of the Comforter," and appears as such both in the first and in the second edition of that work. It is now published, as on every account it

• Preacht, not preached. Hare had his own system of spelling, somewhat resembling that of W. S. Landor. There is principle and consistency in it, and often it FOURTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.—11 ·

deserved to be, in a separate form. A volume of "Notes to the Victory of Faith" has been promised ever since the publication of the text in 1847, and has been announced for three years past as "preparing for publication." We believe, however, that this is still reserved for Mr. Hare's executors to publish, owing, as we presume, to the repeated attacks of severe indisposition which, during the last years of his life, too often compelled the interruption of his literary, and the suspension or postponement of his official labours.

JULIUS CHARLES HARE had an elder brother, AUGUSTUS WILLIAM, a graduate of Oxford, and fellow of New College, who became, after leaving the University, rector of Alton Barnes, a retired village in Wiltshire. Between these two brothers there existed a tender affection, and there appears to have been considerable similarity in their tastes and opinions. They were the joint authors of the "Guesses at Truth" a work of which the rare merits were generally recognised long before the authorship had ceased to be a secret. Augustus William was also the author of a posthumous volume of "Sermons to a Country Congregation," which had the singular good fortune to attract the attention and gain the high praise both of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, at that time in the height of their unrivalled eminence as the arbiters of taste, the Minos and Rhadamanthus of literary destinies. Their gifted author died in 1834, while still in the prime of his life, and left his brother, but for the "good hope" which religion afforded, inconsolable on account of his loss.

Some of our readers may remember the brief but emphatic notice of Archdeacon Hare as "the coryphæus" of the Broad Church school of Church of England divines, which we gave toward the commencement of our article on "Mr. Maurice and his Writings" in a former number of this Review. Little did we think, when writing those remarks on "the genial, accomplished, and erudite archdeacon," that within not many days from the publication

is apt and convenient, though sometimes the results look funny enough, e. g., forst for forced. In addition to his archdeaconry, Hare held the preferment of prebendary of Chichester, and was one of the chaplains in ordinary to the queen. Let us add, in this miscellaneous note, that the "Guesses at Truth" were originally published in two volumes. Of these the first volume, with large additions, has been republished in two volumes, issued at a considerable interval from one another, and designated first and second series. The original volume, with additions, has been announced for publication as the third series; but it was still unpublished at the time of Hare's death.

There were two other brothers, one older and the other younger. But of them nothing of importance is related.

† January, 1855, p. 29.

But so

of our article that distinguished man would be no more. it is. Broken down, not by weight of years, but by repeated attacks of severe illness, Julius Charles Hare has passed to his place above. A prince in intellectual wealth, an oracle for sagacity, a poet in genius, a master in criticism and in polemics, a champion of Protestantism, a brave and truthful, but, at the same time, gentle and loving spirit, a devout and humble Christian, has left the world to find out its loss, and not a few devoted friends and warm admirers to mourn his departure. It is with such an estimate of his character that we undertake the office of reviewing his writings. In some important respects we are compelled to deem his views and teachings defective; but he was, notwithstanding, a noble and a lovely spirit among men.

The position of Archdeacon Hare was peculiar, and is not easily to be defined. His antecedents and connexions, so far as we know them, would have led us to expect that his place would be found at that pole of the Coleridgean Broad Church school, where pseudo-philosophic anti-evangelism meets infidelity half way. He was the friend and biographer of Sterling, who for a short time was his curate, and whose dangerous errors he has not concealed, and yet, in too many instances, has not attempted to reprove and confute. He married a sister of Mr. Maurice's, whose wife, again, was a sister of Mrs. Sterling, and, by Hare's will, Mr. Maurice is appointed his executor, and inherits the bulk of his library. In more than one place of his writings, Hare seems to identify his opinions on the subject of inspiration with those contained in Coleridge's "Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit;" yet, on the other hand, his own writings breathe more of the evangelical spirit than any other of the school to which we have referred. Often, indeed, he all but comes up to the full standard of explicit evangelical orthodoxy; though it is not to be concealed that in other places his statements are seriously defective. He has, besides, in one of his latest works so referred to the "evangelicals" by name, as to seem to make their cause his own; though, again, it must be admitted that sometimes elsewhere his remarks have implied some disparagement of them and their doctrine. He often refers, in terms which imply high approbation, to the writings of Mr. Maurice; yet we can find no trace in all his works of any approximation to Mr. Maurice's specific views, but, on the contrary, we think there is proof positive that, as to most of these views, he is altogether at variance with him. On the other hand, he appears as the courteous and discriminating, but decided opponent, of the doctrinal and ceremonial High Churchism of Bishop Wilberforce (of Oxford), toward which we may presume that the

views of Professor Trench,* his examining chaplain, incline, especially as in his exegetical writings there is nothing to disfavor this presumption, while there is evidence to support it. He is the declared enemy and the able and intrepid assailant of Tractarianism. With easy and brilliant mastery of learning and of logic, he has met and refuted Dr. Newman at every essential point in his attacks upon Protestantism, and has broken at every point the line of defences wherewith, in his "Development Theory," he attempted to surround Popery. Moreover, he published the most complete vindication of Luther from the calumnies of Bossuet and others, that Protestantism has yet produced. So that, while indisputably a writer of the Broad Church school, and too often showing a tendency toward considerable laxity of doctrine, while, it is to be feared, scarcely sound and heart-whole as to the grand central and vital doctrine of justification by faith in the vicarious and expiatory sacrifice of Christ, yet it appears that Archdeacon Hare sympathized more strongly, and was disposed to fraternize more closely, than any other member of that school, with orthodox evangelical teachers of the old-fashioned Lutheran and Methodist doctrines, and that he held an independent position equally remote from the new Platonizing semi-infidel and from the High Church poles of the Broad Church schools. In Church politics he was a liberal, and a conservative reformer. He had long

pleaded for the restoration of Convocation, but would have its form amended, and the rights of the laity (who, except in so far as churchwardenship may go, are ignored in the English Episcopal Church) recognised, defined, and conceded. By seminal reforms he would prevent the incoming of “radical reforms" [so called] or of revolution. Dwelling thus alone in the Church field, being

The Rev. R. Chenevix Trench, an early and intimate friend of Hare, Maurice, and Sterling, has succeeded Maurice in the divinity chair at King's College.

Hare's feelings as to reform are indicated in the following pregnant extract. He is finding fault with the phrase radical reform as "involving an absurdity," and thus concludes his remarks:

"The word may perhaps be borrowed from medicine, in which we speak of a radical cure. This, however, is a metaphor implying the extirpation or complete uprooting of the disease, after which the sanative powers of nature will restore the constitution to health. But there is no such sanative power in a state; where the mere removal of abuses does not avail to set any vital faculties in action. In truth, this is only another form of the errour, by which man, ever quicker at destroying than at producing, has confounded repentance with reformation, μεταμέλεια with μετάνοια. Whereas the true reformer is he who creates new institutions, and gives them life and energy, and trusts to them for throwing off such evil humours as may be lying in the body politic. The true reformer is the seminal reformer, not the radical. And this is the way the Sower, who went forth to sow His seed, did really reform the world, without making any open assault to uproot what was already existing.-Guesses at Truth. First Series, p. 280. Let our readers take notice that in this extract and elsewhere we leave Hare's peculiar spelling as we find it.

man of no party, and belonging to a school the adherents of which are too eclectic and too minutely independent to have a common organ, even if they were numerous enough among the people at large to be able to sustain one, Archdeacon Hare was never able, if he had been disposed, to identify himself with any public journal. He exercised no influence through the columns of a newspaper; he contributed to no review or magazine. Perhaps this may be one reason why his decease has received so little notice in English periodicals. Three or four lines sufficed for it in the Athenæum, and the short notices which have appeared in the Christian Observer and Church of England Quarterly Review, though highly laudatory, are most meagre and inadequate. An extended article on Hare has, however, appeared in the Quarterly Review.

Julius Charles Hare was born September 13th, 1795, at Herstmonceux, a rural village and parish in Sussex, situated near the southern coast of England. His father was a gentleman of good estate, lord of the manor, and having in his gift the rectory of Herstmonceux. His mother was the daughter of Bishop Shipley, of St. Asaph, and is said to have possessed a fine and noble character. Lady Jones, the widow of the celebrated Sir William, was remembered by him as his aunt, and as one of the guides of his childhood. On the father's side, also, a bishop was among his ancestors, Francis Hare, a churchman of learning and reputation, well known as chaplain to the great Marlborough, having been Bishop of Chichester. This bishop became the lord of Herstmonceux Castle, and his descendants remained in the property till after the birth of Julius Hare. Young Hare, as might be expected from such connexions, was sent to one of the great schools of England. At the Charter-House he was prepared for the University; and it is very remarkable that, among his schoolfellows, there were Waddington, the Church historian, now Dean of Durham, and Grote and Thirlwall, the future historians of Greece. Manning, too, as we gather from sundry hints in Hare's writings, was another of his school-fellows. After a brilliant career at school, he went to Cambridge in 1812. Before this period he had spent much time, in boyhood and in youth, on the continent. We are In the independence and isolation of his position Hare resembled his friend Dr. Arnold, between whose views and his own there were many points of agreement or sympathy. Dr. Arnold somewhere says, in reference to his own relations at the same time with Oxford and with the London University, that he was considered a "latitudinarian at Oxford and a bigot at London." Dr. Arnold, however, was a more modern man than Hare. He had not the same veneration for by-gone learning and wisdom. He was less reverent and conservative, and the frequency and profuseness of his contributions to newspapers and periodicals contrast strongly with Hare's tastes and habits.