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
the Church and its bishops, and a great dislike of Rome, Dissent, and
Methodism, but with a quick heart; with a frank, gay humility of soul,
with great contempt of appearances, great enjoyment of nature, great
unselfishness, strict and severe principles of morals and duty.
What was it that turned him by degrees into so prominent and so
influential a person? It was the result of the action of his convictions
and ideas, and still more of his character, on the energetic and
fearless mind of a pupil and disciple, Richard Hurrell Froude. Froude
was Keble's pupil at Oriel, and when Keble left Oriel for his curacy at
the beginning of the Long Vacation of 1823, he took Froude with him to
read for his degree. He took with him ultimately two other pupils,
Robert Wilberforce and Isaac Williams of Trinity. One of them, Isaac
Williams, has left some reminiscences of the time, and of the terms on
which the young men were with their tutor, then one of the most famous
men at Oxford. They were on terms of the utmost freedom. "Master is the
greatest boy of them all," was the judgment of the rustic who was
gardener, groom, and parish clerk to Mr. Keble. Froude's was a keen
logical mind, not easily satisfied, contemptuous of compromises and
evasions, and disposed on occasion to be mischievous and aggressive; and
with Keble, as with anybody else, he was ready to dispute and try every
form of dialectical experiment. But he was open to higher influences
than those of logic, and in Keble he saw what subdued and won him to
boundless veneration and affection. Keble won the love of the whole
little society; but in Froude he had gained a disciple who was to be the
mouthpiece and champion of his ideas, and who was to react on himself
and carry him forward to larger enterprises and bolder resolutions than
by himself he would have thought of. Froude took in from Keble all he
had to communicate--principles, convictions, moral rules and standards
of life, hopes, fears, antipathies. And his keenly-tempered intellect,
and his determination and high courage, gave a point and an impulse of
their own to Keble's views and purposes. As things came to look darker,
and dangers seemed more serious to the Church, its faith or its rights,
the interchange of thought between master and disciple, in talk and in
letter, pointed more and more to the coming necessity of action; and
Froude at least had no objections to the business of an agitator. But
all this was very gradual; things did not yet go beyond discussion;
ideas, views, arguments were examined and compared; and Froude, with all
his dash, felt as Keble felt, that he had much to learn about himself,
as well as about books and things. In his respect for antiquity, in his
dislike of the novelties which were invading Church rules and
sentiments, as well as its creeds, in his jealousy of the State, as well
as in his seriousness of self-discipline, he accepted Keble's guidance
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