The Oxford Movement; Twelve Years, 1833-1845Church, R. W. (Richard William)
Religion
The Oxford Movement; Twelve Years, 1833-1845
Church, R. W. (Richard William)
Oxford movement
Discussions and agitations, such as accompanied the movement, however
much under the control of the moral and intellectual ascendancy of the
leaders, could not of course be guaranteed from escaping from that
control. And as the time went on, men joined the movement who had but
qualified sympathy with that passionate love and zeal for the actual
English Church, that acquaintance with its historical theology, and that
temper of discipline, sobriety, and self-distrust, which marked its
first representatives. These younger disciples shared in the growing
excitement of the society round them. They were attracted by visible
height of character, and brilliant intellectual power. They were alive
to vast and original prospects, opening a new world which should be a
contrast to the worn-out interest of the old. Some of these were men of
wide and abstruse learning; quaint and eccentric scholars both in habit
and look, students of the ancient type, who even fifty years ago seemed
out of date to their generation. Some were men of considerable force of
mind, destined afterwards to leave a mark on their age as thinkers and
writers. To the former class belonged Charles Seager, and John Brande
Morris, of Exeter College, both learned Orientalists, steeped in
recondite knowledge of all kinds; men who had worked their way to
knowledge through hardship and grinding labour, and not to be outdone in
Germany itself for devouring love of learning and a scholar's plainness
of life. In the other class may be mentioned Frederic Faber, J.D.
Dalgairns, and W.G. Ward, men who have all since risen to eminence in
their different spheres. Faber was a man with a high gift of
imagination, remarkable powers of assimilating knowledge, and a great
richness and novelty and elegance of thought, which with much melody of
voice made him ultimately a very attractive preacher. If the promise of
his powers has not been adequately fulfilled, it is partly to be traced
to a want of severity of taste and self-restraint, but his name will
live in some of his hymns, and in some very beautiful portions of his
devotional writings. Dalgairns's mind was of a different order. "That
man has an eye for theology," was the remark of a competent judge on
some early paper of Dalgairns's which came before him. He had something
of the Frenchman about him. There was in him, in his Oxford days, a
bright and frank briskness, a mixture of modesty and arch daring, which
gave him an almost boyish appearance; but beneath this boyish appearance
there was a subtle and powerful intellect, alive to the problems of
religious philosophy, and impatient of any but the most thorough
solutions of them; while, on the other hand, the religious affections
were part of his nature, and mind and will and heart yielded an
unreserved and absolute obedience to the leading and guidance of faith.
In his later days, with his mind at ease, Father Dalgairns threw himself
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