Part 8 (1/2)
Their several acquisitions, for I detest the term _accomplishments_, since it has been warped from the true meaning in which Milton used it, seem to be so many individual contributions brought in to enrich the common stock of domestic delight. Their talents are never put into exercise by artificial excitements. Habitual industry, quiet exertion, successive employments, affectionate intercourse, and gay and animated relaxation, make up the round of their cheerful day.
I could not forbear admiring in this happy family the graceful union of piety with cheerfulness; strictness of principle embellished, but never relaxed by gayety of manners; a gayety, not such as requires turbulent pleasures to stimulate it, but evidently the serene, yet animated, result of well-regulated minds;--of minds actuated by a tenderness of conscience, habitually alive to the perception of the smallest sin, and kindling into holy grat.i.tude at the smallest mercy.
I often called to my mind that my father, in order to prevent my being deceived, and run away with by persons who appeared lively at first sight, had early accustomed me to discriminate carefully, whether it was not the _animal_ only that was lively, and the man dull. I have found this caution of no small use in my observations on the other s.e.x. I had frequently remarked, that the musical and the dancing ladies, and those who were most admired for modish attainments, had little _intellectual_ gayety. In numerous instances I found that the mind was the only part which was not kept in action; and no wonder, for it was the only part which had received no previous forming, no preparatory molding.
When I mentioned this to Mr. Stanley, ”the education,” replied he, ”which now prevails, is a Mohammedan education. It consists entirely in making woman an object of attraction. There are, however, a few reasonable people left, who, while they retain the object, improve upon the plan. They too would make woman attractive; but it is by sedulously laboring to make the understanding, the temper, the mind, and the manners of their daughters, as engaging as these Circa.s.sian parents endeavor to make the person.”
CHAPTER XV.
The friendly rector frequently visited at Stanley Grove, and, for my father's sake, honored me with his particular kindness. Dr. Barlow filled up all my ideas of a country clergyman of the higher cla.s.s. There is a uniform consistency runs through his whole life and character, which often brings to my mind, allowing for the revolution in habits that almost two hundred years have necessarily produced, the incomparable _country parson_ of the ingenious Mr. George Herbert.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Herbert's Country Parson, under the heads of the parson in his house, the parson praying, the parson preaching, the parson comforting, the parson's church, the parson catechizing, the parson in mirth, &c., &c. The term parson has now indeed a vulgar and disrespectful sound, but in Herbert's time it was used in its true sense _persona ecclesiae_. I would recommend to those who have not seen it, this sketch of the ancient clerical life. As Mr. Herbert was a man of quality, he knew what became the more opulent of his function; as he was eminently pious, he practiced all that he recommended. ”This appellation of parson,” says Judge Blackstone, ”however depreciated by clownish and familiar use, is the most legal, most beneficial, and most honorable t.i.tle, which a parish priest can enjoy.” _Vide Blackstone's Commentaries._]
”I never saw _Zeal without Innovation_,” said Mr. Stanley, ”more exemplified than in Dr. Barlow. His piety is as enlightened as it is sincere. No errors in religion escape him, through ignorance of their existence, or through carelessness in their detection, or through inactivity in opposing them. He is too honest not to attack the prevailing evil, whatever shape it may a.s.sume; too correct to excite in the wise any fears that his zeal may mislead his judgment, and too upright to be afraid of the censures which active piety must ever have to encounter from the worldly and the indifferent, from cold hearts and unfurnished heads.
”From his affectionate warmth, however, and his unremitting application, arising from the vast importance he attaches to the worth of souls, the man of the world might honor him with the t.i.tle of enthusiast; while his prudence, sober-mindedness, and regularity, would draw on him from the fanatic, the appellation of formalist. Though he is far from being 'content to _dwell_ in decencies,' he is careful never to neglect them.
He is a clergyman all the week as well as on Sunday; for he says, if he did not spend much of the intermediate time in pastoral visits, there could not be kept up that mutual intercourse of kindness which so much facilitates his own labors, and his people's improvement. They listen to him because they love him, and they understand him, because he has familiarized them by private discourse to the great truths which he delivers from the pulpit.
”Dr. Barlow has greatly diminished the growth of innovation in his parishes, by attacking the innovator with his own weapons. Not indeed by stooping to the same disorderly practices, but by opposing an enlightened earnestness to an eccentric earnestness; a zeal _with_ knowledge to a zeal _without_ it. He is of opinion that activity does more good than invective, and that the latter is too often resorted to, because it is the cheaper subst.i.tute.
”His charity, however, is large, and his spirit truly catholic. He honors all his truly pious brethren, who are earnest in doing good, though they may differ from him as to the manner of doing it. Yet his candor never intrenches on his firmness; and while he will not dispute with others about shades of difference, he maintains his own opinions with the steadiness of one who embraced them on the fullest conviction.
”He is a 'scholar, and being a good and a ripe one,' it sets him above aiming at the paltry reputation to be acquired by those false embellishments of style, those difficult and uncommon words, and that labored inversion of sentences, by which some injudicious clergymen make themselves unacceptable to the higher, and unintelligible to the lower, and of course, the larger part of their audience. He always bears in mind that the common people are not foolish, they are only ignorant. To meet the one he preaches good sense, to suit the other, plain language.
But while he seldom shoots over the heads of the uninformed, he never offends the judicious. He considers the advice of Polonius to his son to be as applicable to preachers as to travelers--
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
”In his pulpit he is no wrangling polemic, but a genuine Bible Christian, deeply impressed himself with the momentous truths he so earnestly presses upon others. His mind is so imbued, so saturated, if I may hazard the expression, with scriptural knowledge, that from that rich store-house, he is ever ready to bring forth _treasures, new and old_, and to apply them wisely, temperately, and seasonably.
”Though he carefully inculcates universal holiness in all his discourses, yet his practical instructions are constantly deduced from those fundamental principles of Christianity which are the root and life and spirit of all goodness. Next to a solid piety, and a deep acquaintance with the Bible, he considers it of prime importance to a clergyman to be thoroughly acquainted with human nature in general, and with the state of his own parish in particular. The knowledge of both will alone preserve him from preaching too personally so as to hurt, or too generally so as not to touch.
”He is careful not to hurry over the prayers in so cold, inattentive, and careless a manner, as to make the audience suspect he is saving himself, that he may make a greater figure in delivering the sermon.
Instead of this, the devout, reverential, and impressive manner in which he p.r.o.nounces the various parts of the Liturgy, best prepares his own heart, and the hearts of his people, to receive benefit from his discourse. His pet.i.tions are delivered with such sober fervor, his exhortations with such humble dignity, his thanksgiving with such holy animation as carry the soul of the hearer along with him. When he ascends the pulpit, he never throws the liturgical service into the back ground by a long elaborate composition of his own, delivered with superior force and emphasis. And he p.r.o.nounces the Lord's prayer with a solemnity which shows that he recollects its importance and its author.
”In preaching, he is careful to be distinctly heard, even by his remotest auditors, and by constant attention to this important article, he has brought his voice, which was not strong, to be particularly audible. He affixes so much importance to a distinct delivery, that he smilingly told me he suspected the grammatical definition of a substantive was originally meant for a clergyman, whose great object it was, if possible, _to be seen_, but indispensably to be _heard_, _felt_, and _understood_.
”His whole performance is distinguished by a grave and majestic simplicity, as far removed from the careless reader of a common story, as from the declamation of an actor. His hearers leave the church, not so much in raptures with the preacher, as affected with the truths he has delivered. He says, he always finds he has done most good when he has been least praised, and that he feels most humbled when he receives the warmest commendation, because men, generally extol most the sermons which have probed them least; whereas those which really do good, being often such as make them most uneasy, are consequently the least likely to attract panegyric. '_They_ only bear true testimony to the excellence of a discourse,' added he, 'not who commend the composition or the delivery, but who are led by it to examine their own hearts, to search out its corruptions, and to reform their lives. Reformation is the flattery I covet.'
”He is aware that the generality of hearers like to retire from the sermon with the comfortable belief, that little is to be done on _their_ parts. Such hearers he always disappoints, by leaving on their minds at the close, some impressive precept deduced from, and growing out of, the preparatory doctrine. He does not press any one truth to the exclusion of all others. He proposes no subtleties, but labors to excite seriousness, to alarm the careless, to quicken the supine, to confirm the doubting. He presses eternal things as things near at hand; as things in which every living man has an equal interest.
”Mr. Stanley says, that though Dr. Barlow was considered at Cambridge as a correct young man, who carefully avoided vice and even irregularity, yet being cheerful, and addicted to good society, he had a disposition to innocent conviviality, which might, unsuspectedly, have led him into the errors he abhorred. He was struck with a pa.s.sage in a letter from Dr. Johnson to a young man who had just taken orders, in which, among other wholesome counsel, he advises him 'to acquire the courage to refuse _sometimes_ invitations to dinner.' It is inconceivable what a degree of force and independence his mind acquired by the occasional adoption of this single hint. He is not only, Mr. Stanley, the spiritual director, but the father, the counselor, the arbitrator, and the friend of those whom Providence has placed under his instruction.
”He is happy in an excellent wife, who, by bringing him a considerable fortune, has greatly enlarged his power of doing good. But still more essentially has she increased his happiness, and raised his character, by her piety and prudence. By the large part she takes in his affairs, he is enabled to give himself wholly up to the duties of his profession.
She is as attentive to the bodies, as her husband is to the souls of his people, and educates her own family as sedulously as he instructs his parish.