The Oxford Movement | Page 9

temper and habits, before the

movement, in those who afterwards directed it. The Christian Year was
published in 1827, and tells us distinctly by what kind of standard Mr.
Keble moulded his judgment and aims. What Mr. Keble's influence and
teaching did, in training an apt pupil to deep and severe views of truth
and duty, is to be seen in the records of purpose and self-discipline,
often so painful, but always so lofty and sincere, of Mr. Hurrell
Froude's journal. But these indications are most forcibly given in Mr.
Newman's earliest preaching. As tutor at Oriel, Mr. Newman had made
what efforts he could, sometimes disturbing to the authorities, to raise
the standard of conduct and feeling among his pupils. When he became
a parish priest, his preaching took a singularly practical and
plain-spoken character. The first sermon of the series, a typical sermon,
"Holiness necessary for future Blessedness," a sermon which has made
many readers grave when they laid it down, was written in 1826, before
he came to St. Mary's; and as he began he continued. No sermons,
except those which his great opposite, Dr. Arnold, was preaching at
Rugby, had appealed to conscience with such directness and force. A
passionate and sustained earnestness after a high moral rule, seriously
realised in conduct, is the dominant character of these sermons. They
showed the strong reaction against slackness of fibre in the religious
life; against the poverty, softness; restlessness, worldliness, the blunted
and impaired sense of truth, which reigned with little check in the
recognised fashions of professing Christianity; the want of depth both
of thought and feeling; the strange blindness to the real sternness, nay
the austerity, of the New Testament. Out of this ground the movement
grew. Even more than a theological reform, it was a protest against the
loose unreality of ordinary religious morality. In the first stage of the
movement, moral earnestness and enthusiasm gave its impulse to
theological interest and zeal.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] The suppression of the Irish bishoprics. Palmer, Narrative (1883),
pp. 44, 101. Maurice, Life, i. 180.
[3] "The Church, as it now stands, no human power can save" (Arnold
to Tyler, June 1832. _Life,_ i. 326). "Nothing, as it seems to me, can

save the Church but an union with the Dissenters; now they are leagued
with the antichristian party, and no merely internal reforms will satisfy
them" (Arnold to Whately, January 1833, i. 348). He afterwards
thought this exaggerated (_Life,_ i. 336). "The Church has been for one
hundred years without any government, and in such a stormy season it
will not go on much longer without a rudder" (Whately to Bp.
Copleston, July 1832. Life, i, 167). "If such an arrangement of the
Executive Government is completed, it will be a difficult, but great and
glorious feat for your Lordship's ministry to preserve the establishment
from utter overthrow" (Whately to Lord Grey, May 1832. Life, i. 156).
It is remarkable that Dean Stanley should have been satisfied with
ascribing to the movement an "origin _entirely political_" and should
have seen a proof of this "thoroughly political origin" in Newman's
observing the date of Mr. Keble's sermon "National Apostasy" as the
birthday of the movement, _Edin. Rev._ April 1880, pp. 309, 310.
[4] Readers of Wordsworth will remember the account of Mr. R.
Walker (Notes to the "River Duddon").
[5] Compare Life of Whately (ed. 1866), i. 52, 68.
[6] Arnold to W. Smith, Life, i. 356-358; ii. 32.
[7] Life, i. 225 sqq.
[8] "I am vexed to find how much hopeless bigotry lingers in minds,
οἶς ἥκιστα ἕχÏη" (Arnold to Whately, Sept. 1832.
_Life,_ i. 331; ii. 3-7).
[9] St. Bartholomew's Day
[10] "The mere barren orthodoxy which, from all that I can hear, is
characteristic of Oxford." Maurice in 1829 (_Life,_ i. 103). In 1832 he
speaks of his "high endeavours to rouse Oxford from its lethargy
having so signally failed" (i. 143).
[11] Abbey and Overton, _English Church in the Eighteenth Century,_
ii. 180, 204.

[12] _V._ Maurice, _Life,_ i. 108-111; Trench's _Letters;_ Carlyle's
Sterling.
[13] "In what concerns the Established Church, the House of Commons
seems to feel no other principle than that of vulgar policy. The old High
Church race is worn out." Alex. Knox (June 1816), i. 54.

CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVEMENT--JOHN KEBLE
Long before the Oxford movement was thought of, or had any definite
shape, a number of its characteristic principles and ideas had taken
strong hold of the mind of a man of great ability and great seriousness,
who, after a brilliant career at Oxford as student and tutor, had
exchanged the University for a humble country cure. John Keble, by
some years the senior, but the college friend and intimate of Arnold,
was the son of a Gloucestershire