Literature and the Ministry

As the ministerial vocation lies mainly within its borders, we should naturally expect that literature would occupy a prominent place in the curriculum of theological schools. Yet, so far from setting any particular value upon it for their purposes, these schools not only fail to include it in their own schemes of study, but they manifest little interest or concern in regard to the previous literary training of their students. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the spirit and policy dominant among them than the professional uses to which they put the Bible. By general consent, it contains some of the most extraordinary prose and poetry in the world ; but for all that, ignoring the man of letters, they practically give the book over into the hands of the historian, the philologist, and the theologian.

This discrimination against literature is certainly a matter which requires explanation. In the case of the Bible certain theories of inspiration may be partly responsible for it, though it is difficult to see how even the most conservative of them necessitate anything of the sort. Cardinal Newman, for example, held that the divine afflatus sometimes took such complete possession of the sacred writers as to convert them into mere passive channels of communication. Occasional passages, of which the first chapter in the gospel of St. John furnishes an instance, he did indeed refuse to call literature. He put them into the category of science, because they were supposed to deal with facts rather than with ideas. Yet, notwithstanding the presence of these so-called scientific elements, he never dreamed of considering the Bible anything else than literature, and that “ in as real and true a sense, as personal, as rich in emotion and reflection, as Demosthenes and Euripides.” But the hostile influences that may be fairly attributed to old-school doctrines of inspiration affect only the Scriptures, and do not account for the neglect of literature in general as an instrument of ministerial training. What is the distrust — for distrust there must have been - which has thrust it so completely into the background ?

John Locke, to whom the cause of education is under lasting obligations, expresses the opinion, in one of his posthumous essays, that converse with books “ is not the principal part of study.” While he does not explain his views so fully and clearly as we could wish, he seems to question the relative efficiency of literature in educational work. Perhaps his position is not essentially different from that of Professor Freeman, of Oxford, who contends that it should not form any part at all of university study, unless pursued in connection with philology and history. He does not leave us in doubt concerning his reasons for this harsh judgment. They all take their rise in his favorite doctrine that sentiment, not fact, is the province of literature. The inference is not far to seek, that in subjects of this character, which are chiefly matters of taste, and hence involve endless differences of opinion, the student may successfully teach himself.

This conception of literature, as I shall hope to show in the sequel, is inadequate and misleading. " Sentiment ” is altogether too scant a word to embrace its total contents. The whole history of books discredits the supposition that it is self-interpretative to a degree which renders exposition and illustration superfluous. The delays, the indifference and positive hostility which genius has encountered are an old and familiar story. Even the spacious times of the great Elizabeth mistook writers of the first rank for “ unlearned idiots . . . who endeavor continually to publish their folly,” and sent them for shrift to St. Fool’s. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were in no haste to appreciate men who have since become their chief glory. It is a mistake to suppose that the critic has no vocation other than carrying coals to Newcastle. The present drift of opinion in educational circles, instead of confirming the opinion that instruction is of little consequence in literature, sets strongly toward the conviction that in no other subject is it of more importance. At all events, the outcome of laissezfaire theories has been sufficiently unsatisfactory.

Another explanation of the indifference with which professional schools of theology have regarded the study of literature is that it tends to create a visionary habit and temper of mind; that it blunts the practical energies, and consequently disqualifies men for taking their proper place in a bustling, workaday world. This phase of the indictment, although it has had considerable vogue of late, is by no means new. John Lyly states it after his peculiar fashion when old Cassander gravely tells Euphues that those “ who give themselves to be bookish are often so blockish that they forget thrift.” The operations of the Society for the Extension of University Teaching in England have shown that this apprehension exists among the middle and the laboring classes. In the work of this society, literary courses have commonly suffered when brought into competition with others which are thought to have immediate connection with bread-winning. These men and women readily appreciate the relation of science to practical affairs, nor is it difficult for them to see that history, political economy, and sociology have direct and helpful relations to their personal welfare. Literature stands, in their judgment, upon a quite different footing. They not only regard it as a luxury rather than a utility, but they have a suspicion that, if meddled with very much, it might unfit them for their craft.

The questions that have been raised are doubtless questions of fact, and some may think that they can be readily settled by a little scientific investigation. Four or five years ago, John Morley met the charge that the study of literature makes men impractical by insisting that it was “ludicrously untrue ” in reference to the existing government of England. “ Some of the most sagacious men in the country,” he continued, “are the most accomplished bookmen.”

By examining the published sermons of successful preachers we should doubtless be able to determine with more or less confidence whether literature had been a chief nourisher of their genius. Take Jeremy Taylor, sometimes called the Shakespeare of the pulpit. The sources of his inspiration are not doubtful. In spite of the vicissitudes of his troubled career, he managed to read all the important publications of the day. If he did not neglect the soberer writers, neither was he indifferent to Robert Greene or Mademoiselle de Scudéri. Like Petrarch, he might have fitly died with his head on a book. Scarcely less were the obligations to literature of another great preacher, Robertson of Brighton. So conscious was he of its beneficent power in his own experience that he urged the reading of poetry upon the workingmen of his parish, as at once a powerful nepenthe,

and an inspiration which could lift them into the higher moods of living. No one who is familiar with the remarkable sermons of the late Canon Liddon will have failed to observe that only a man of letters could have written them. If there should be appeal from the discourses of clergymen to the testimony of laymen, I should be inclined to quote the opinion of Thomas Nash, which deserves whatever attention the conclusions of a keen, observant Elizabethan may happen to be worth. “ How admirably shine those divines above the common mediocrity,” he exclaims, “ that have tasted the sweet springs of Parnassus ! ”

We cannot expect, however, that this line of inquiry will lead to decisive results, since, as we have seen, literature has never been a substantial factor in the process of ministerial training. Inasmuch as satisfactory data of this sort do not exist, we are compelled to resort to a priori methods, to attempt some analysis of its principal constituents, before we can speak very definitely or confidently.

The question What is literature ? does not involve any serious difficulties. It is a matter upon which scholars are in the main agreed. They would hardly quarrel with a recent writer who says that it “ consists of all the books — and they are not so many — where moral truth and human passion are touched by a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form.” Shelley’s description of poetry, as “ the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best men,” strikes the same key, and fits prose, especially of the imaginative sort which Walter Pater calls “ the special and opportune art of the modern world,55 quite as happily as it fits poetry. Now if clergymen should happen to be “ hard sitters 55 at those greater books which contain the noblest thought, emotion, and speech of men worthy to represent their kind, and which we call literature, what then ?

It is plain at the outset that the study of these books involves a consideration of the gravest problems of theology. No theories of the Bible and of its relations to the church which promise to have much currency in our day will diminish the importance of this investigation. If literature is, in any adequate sense, a definition of man, — and such is the import of the descriptions of it which have been quoted, — it cannot pass by that very perplexing subject, the philosophy of life. The most casual examination shows that it does not pass by this question. On the contrary, ethical and religious problems largely furnish its materials of perennial interest. In our own literature, the ebb and flow of spiritual forces are distinctly traceable from the times of Chaucer onwards. Taine does not hesitate to say that it is impossible to consider religion and poetry separately, and speaks of that serious poem which in England is called religion. Doubtless our bards often sing as the linnet sings, but their prevailing strain is of another type. No theme appears to attract them so strongly and so constantly as that ancient matter of justifying the ways of God to men. In the present century, not to speak of other times, they have given much attention to contemporary religious problems. The poetry of Browning wrestles with questions like the origin of evil, the relation of knowledge to morality, and the immortality of the soul. A deep, comprehensive optimism pervades it, — an optimism which dared to look on

and which survived the tremendous ordeal. Tennyson’s In Memoriam, his Palace of Art, and Two Voices cover large tracts of modern doubt and perplexity. Clough shows an almost morbid eagerness to tear off disguises and break through conventionalities, in order to reach the simple, unalloyed truth. Shelley flew in the face of the church and theology, yet he did not always escape from the control of some higher and mysterious inspiration which overmastered his avowed purposes, so that, like the baffled prophet from Pethor, he spoke a message that the Lord put into his month.

But elaborate details are unnecessary, since “ the pale cast of thought55 is on the verse of our century. The services of the poetic intuition as a medium for the discovery and illustration of truth are so obvious as to save us the necessity of appeal to argument. These services have been conspicuous not only in the genesis of all the great religions, but also in the interpretation of nature and history. This intuition disclosed to Wordsworth the spiritual aspects of the external world ; to Scott a fascinating and forgotten world buried beneath the rubbish of mediæval chronicles ; to the Hebrew prophets the vision of God as all and in all. For our present purposes it is only necessary to call attention to these extraordinary achievements of the poetic intuition, without attempting to lay bare the sources of its power, or to institute any comparison between it and the reflective processes. The philosopher reaches his conclusions through investigation and argument; his main resource is the critical faculty, which must fail to exhaust reality, because the spiritual life is so rich and complex “that we can never, by means of reflection, lift into clear consciousness all the elements that enter into it.” On the other hand, the poet is at his best, not when he argues and tries to demonstrate, but when he yields himself wholly to the moods and inspirations of a direct vision. The poorest pages in Browning’s poetry are those which he gives over to formal discussion. If they were expunged, there would be no great loss. In general, it may be said that while art and philosophy pursue different methods, while each has advantages peculiar to itself, yet as both aim at “a thinking of things together,” as both strive “ to interpret the world in terms of spirit,” the suggestion that the distinction between them is not so radical and exclusive as has been commonly supposed may be worthy of consideration.

We should expect, therefore, waiving the question of a special divine communication to men through the medium of certain books, that literature would now and then be the source of important theological movements. The religious agitations which marked the first sixty years of the nineteenth century in England furnish an interesting illustration of this tendency. Philosophers and theologians, it is true, both had a hand in them, — effects of such magnitude generally spring from a great variety of causes, — but the leadership fell to men of letters. Coleridge belonged to all these guilds, yet, into whatever field he may have ventured, he never ceased to be a poet. Of Carlyle the same thing may be said, with a difference. He was hardly less a creature of the imagination than the man who sat on Highgate Hill. No more magnificent raw material of poetry has been written in the Victorian era than lies scattered over the pages of Sartor Resartus. In Newman and Kingsley literary gifts predominated over all others, while The Christian Year of Keble has become a classic. During the last twenty-five years, although the charge that he was a little too much at ease in Zion for an undoubted prophet might perhaps be sustained, no one has done so much to modify and harmonize theological sentiment as Matthew Arnold, a typical man of letters.

In this connection much might be said, and possibly something ought to be said, in reference to the resources of knowledge which we find in literature. The relations which it sustains to theology would seem to indicate that they are large and important. Naturally they will be less in poetry than in prose. But, according to one of the best known descriptions of it, poetry is a criticism of life, and that, to be worth anything, cannot forego knowledge. Or if we prefer to say that “the final test of greatness in a poet is his adequacy to human nature,” we imply that all the constituents of it, the grosser and denser not less than the more imponderable, appear in his verse. It is astonishing that men like Professor Freeman should depreciate literature in comparison with history or philology, on the ground that it is out of touch with facts. If there is any truth in what has been said, they cannot be wholly absent even from its most sublimated products. In certain departments of it the element of realism has been very noticeable. Thackeray used to say that Tom Jones and Roderick Random surpassed all the formal histories as a mirror of eighteenth-century society. What is more, since it may involve a writer in serious difficulty if he should tell the truth of contemporaries, or even of the dead, the novel appears to be the only available source of information in respect to certain matters of history and sociology.

But it is not in their more material and tangible elements that we find the supreme distinction of great books. The life is ever more than meat, — to rouse and inspire a higher service than to swell the stores of information. If it be asked, in view of these superior functions of literature, what special contributions to the furnishing of clergymen may be anticipated from familiarity with it, I make haste to say that it is a sovereign antidote to provincialism. Intellectual and spiritual breadth does not imply uncertainty or laxity of opinion. If it should lead to indifferentism, if it should melt into a confused mass the sharp outlines of conviction, the less we have of it the better. But we have no reason to anticipate evil consequences of that kind. Literary study certainly tends to establish and fortify definite lines of opinion ; and, what is more, it does this with due regard to the laws of proportion. The vice of provincialism is that it ignores perspective, isolates men and things from their natural environment, and, as a result, inevitably falls into gross misconceptions. That great progress has been made in mental enfranchisement wall be apparent to any one who will take the trouble to compare the present century with the seventeenth or even the eighteenth, when, to take a single illustration, the highest historic generalization divided the record of mankind into two great sections, one of which was called sacred, and the other profane. We have abandoned this crude philosophy, as we now see that it breaks the unity of human life, restricts the providence of God, and sets religion at odds with reason, if not with morality itself. Literature promotes habits and conditions of mind that exclude provincialism, not so much by virtue of its accumulations of knowledge, however useful they may be, as by bringing men directly into the presence of great thoughts and emotions, which are at once its supreme distinction and capital factors of human progress. No one, for example, can read the six essays of Dr. Johnson selected by Matthew Arnold out of the original half hundred, or the speeches of Burke on American topics, without feeling that his mental horizon has been definitely enlarged, — that he sees things in juster relations and proportions. Such reading will communicate whatever breadth of view, whatever insight into the past and present, into the problems of social and religious life, may be gained from association with representative men of the race.

Nor will this intimacy be confined to the actual people of history. Books themselves, simply as books, may share in it. Leigh Hunt says that he once saw Charles Lamb give Chapman’s Homer a kiss, and that there did not seem to be anything extravagant or unnatural in the act. But more frequently it is rather the people who live in books — in the fiction of the novelist or the verse of the poet — who attract us. Indeed, our closest friendships may be with these visionary folk. We sometimes feel that they are the most authentic men and women within the range of our knowledge, — feel like the old monk of the Escurial who came to regard the figures which looked out from the canvas of Titian’s Last Supper as substantial realities, while the shifting throngs that stared at them and talked about them, in their wanderings through the palace, appeared to be fleeting shadows. The people of literature have a fullness and range of life which those whose being is bounded by the colors of the painter cannot attain. It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of their services to the world, — services which the people of flesh and blood have scarcely surpassed. However we may explain the secret of this power, — whether it may arise in part from the fact that they are not literal reproductions of living men and women, but creatures of the imagination, freed from all that is local or individual, and therefore exponents of elementary and universal principles of human nature, — we shall not be disposed to question its wonderful scope and persistence. Out of the hopes and fears, the victories and defeats, of his struggle against arbitrary power the Prometheus of Æschylus still speaks audibly to these later times. Bunyan’s Christian walks among us with as firm and veritable a tread as St. Augustine or Thomas à Kempis. For three hundred years what eager audience has there been for my lord Hamlet, — what profound admiration of his genius, what patient exploration of the great mystery that darkens his life !

It is in connection with this phase of the subject that the unwasting vitality of literature appears in a very striking light. He who said that “ the art of printing is the most miraculous of all things man ever devised ” spoke the sober truth. It has discovered the secret of immortal youth. Age hath not dimmed the purity of Christabel, nor custom staled the visionary charm of Genevieve. Chaucer’s pilgrims are quite as fresh and expectant as on the day when they gathered at the Tabard for their expedition to Canterbury. This art of printing annihilates time and space, even, and makes all generations contemporaries. If we open the pages of Homer, we are transplanted in an instant of time into the earlier world : the Trojan war still rages before wind-swept Ilium, the wrath of Achilles still burns, funeral strains still rise out of the grave of Hector, the tamer of horses. Not only has the vitality of books continued undiminished, in many cases, for centuries, but when we look forward and scan the future, no signs of approaching exhaustion are visible. “We can fancy Shakespeare, " said Carlyle, “ as radiant over all the nations of Englishmen a thousand years hence.”

We commonly associate fervor with youth. May we expect that the study of literature will kindle enthusiasm in the ministrations of the pulpit ? Will it touch the hearts of clergymen as with a live coal from the altar ? I have alluded to the impression rife in some quarters that it spoils men for affairs. The impression has also been abroad that it is destructive to fervor. Festus said that books made Paul mad ; in later times they have been thought to make preachers dull. But if intimacy with them has any necessary or even probable consequence of this character, it is very singular. Such a result would seem to be in defiance of all recognized laws of cause and effect. We found no blight of dullness on the sermons of the preachers already mentioned. The great divines of the Reformation “ lunched with Plutarch and supped with Plato,” and suffered little loss of vivacity. John Howe’s familiarity with Spinoza and Descartes did not kill his unction. Richard Baxter somewhere enumerates the grammarians, mathematicians, physicists, philosophers, and theologians whom he studied, but he could write, nevertheless, the impassioned Call to the Unconverted. In place of viewing even technical learning with suspicion, as if somehow it would chill the sensibilities and lower the average of spiritual temperature, clergymen may well incorporate into the liturgy of their private devotions the petition of an ancient bishop, — " Lord, send me learning enough that I may preach plain enough.”

I can indeed understand how exclusive intimacy with the intellectual side of books might have unfortunate consequences. As Mr. Emerson has remarked, the intellect is cool, and if there were nothing else in books it would seriously impair their usefulness. But there are in them other and greater constituents. The professor of homiletics who said that they are for the brain uttered a very mischievous half-truth. Mr. Ruskin has spoken with a keener, more trustworthy insight. After entering into their thoughts, he declares that you have this higher advance to make, — “you have to enter into their hearts. As you go to them first for clear sight, so you must stay with them that you may share at last their great and mighty passion.”Hence he contends that it is more important to feel with them what is right than to learn from them what is right. Clergymen who have experienced something of this “ great and mighty passion ” will not find that it raises barriers between them and their flocks. Nay, it is rather the mysterious power whose touch makes the whole world kin.

But, whatever else familiarity with literature may do for the ministry, will it not after all have a tendency to blunt the ethical sensibilities ? We must admit that books, as Professor Masson puts it, have given an uncomfortable prominence to the back of the head. The wickedness which is in the world has powerfully affected them. Still, this state of things ought not to surprise us. If they deal truthfully and adequately with life, it is inevitable. Yet it can no longer be regarded as an open question — and this fact is a conclusive answer to all cavils on the score of morality — that vicious books are destined to extinction. “ If any one thing is proved by the whole history of literature down to the present time,” says Symonds, “ it is that the self-preservative instinct of humanity rejects such art as does not contribute to its intellectual nutrition or moral sustenance.” A constant process of fermentation is in operation by which all vicious and unwholesome elements are thrown off. Within certain limits, the good and evil of literature, it must not be forgotten, are relative, — incidents in the great historic movements of social evolution. What one age considers proper enough, to the next may appear intolerable. None of the devout and, according to contemporary standards, refined ladies to whom Cowper read the life of Mr. Jonathan Wild appear to have been made uncomfortable by the performance. Dryden and the Restoration dramatists would scarcely get the same reception to-day that the seventeenth century accorded them. If the Elizabethan Marston were to write for the present generation, he would need to reform his ethics altogether. However brilliant “ the rhetoric of Satan ” may be, the time comes, sooner or later, when its charm is gone. So we find that the field of authors who once had great vogue is constantly lessening, and in the inevitable course of events must completely disappear.

Yet it is not so much the presence of evil in books as the temper of the writer who deals with it that determines the character of their influence. If the writer is sincere, if his presentation of sin “ contains the thrill of pain which touches and teaches,” they cannot fairly be called immoral. In Shakespeare there are plenty of coarse passages, but they spread no infection through his plays. His undoubted moral intuition, which is never absent, saves him. The evil which we find in his pages is not there on its own account, — it affords a background upon which virtue is the more effectively set forth. Our appreciation of Cordelia would be less complete were it not for the ugly figures of Goneril and Regan. The coarseness of Caliban and Trinculo brings out with wonderful effect the spiritual ideality of Prospero and Miranda. Without the presence of Falstaff and of his riotous crew we should fail to take the full measure of Shakespeare’s favorite hero, Henry V. Admirers of the Italian Machiavelli maintain that in art and knowledge of human nature he rivals the great English dramatist; but unworthy conceptions of life and an evident relish for the baser side of it taint all the creations of his genius, and exclude him irrevocably from the company of immortals. The spokesmen of the race must take service in the cause of truth and purity; and that any class of men who aspire to be ethical and religious teachers should suppose that they can afford to neglect their words is passing strange.

Leverett W. Spring.