Item 162 - Letter from Julius Charles Hare

7 pp

Herstmonceux, Hailsham - JCH has received a parcel from WW and Connop Thirlwall [WW, 'Additional Remarks on some parts of Mr Thirlwall's Two Letters on the Admission of Dissenters to Academical Degrees', 1834. CT had produced a pamphlet entitled 'A Letter to the Rev. Thomas Turton on the Admission of Dissenters to the University of Cambridge', 1834, as a response to the House of Lords rejecting a Bill to abolish tests and to Thomas Turton's, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, defence of religious disqualification's in his 'Thoughts on the Admission of Persons, without regard to their Religious Opinions, to Certain Degrees in the Universities of England', 1834 ]: 'It used to be a source of great satisfaction to me to think that I had left you Thirlwall as a colleague. My grief however was overpowered by indignation on learning yesterday that the master had not only required him to give up his place in the tuition, but had also recommended his resigning his fellowship. Surely this is a most outrageous step. The high church party seem all gone stark-mad, and to have been all seized with a fanatical desire of martyrdom at all costs and risks. Else I should be utterly unable to comprehend how the master could be guilty of such a piece of insolence and folly. I conceive that, in making this recommendation, he was urging what he has no authority to enforce: and assuredly the pamphlet contains nothing to warrant such a proceeding. I long to hear what the fellows will do in consequence. It seems to me that, in addition to your private answers to Thirlwall's circular, there ought at least to be a general protest, if not a general address to him. Is it true that what the master has done has been prompted by Rose [Hugh James Rose]? I cannot believe it. If it had, he ought never to be admitted into any room in the college again'. However where CT attacked compulsory chapel service it was right that he should be made to resign: 'For it seems to me that the officers in any executive body are bound not to proclaim the defects of the system they are appointed to execute, unless in concert with their brother officers, and with a reasonable hope of correcting the defects they complain of'. JCH regrets as much as WW what CT says about chapel attendance: Still is not the fact of his speaking in such a way about the practice a strong argument against it? I think you strain the argument from antiquity, though of course I concur heartily with what you say about such an argument. In ancient times the practice of the colleges was in unison with that of all the rest of the country. Daily religious worship was then general'. Students on the whole see chapel going not as a religious duty but more as a muster-roll which is injurious. JCH gives his opinion on Christian Dissenters: 'I was very glad to see what you said in defence of 'prescribed exercises', and against the 'full consciousness of freedom'. It is so strange that a person who weighs his words, and knows their meaning, like Thirlwall, (unlike C. Wordsworth) and have been led by his abhorrence of 'compulsory religion', into arrant quakerism: that is to say, quakerism in the idea; for of course the quakers, out of their hatred of all forms, become the greatest formalists among mankind. It is strange that he should have overlooked the difference between 'compulsory religion', and religion into which one is led, and in which one is strengthened, by moral influences. Though force is destructive of religion, these influences, being cognate to it, are not. Alas one cannot have a fortnight in the care of a parish without finding that to talk about 'the full consciousness of freedom 'as necessary to religion is totally inapplicable to the present condition of mankind'. Theology may be installed into a man but not religion. 'It is [awful?] to think of the breaking up of that singularly happy delightful society which we enjoyed for so many years at Trinity. But how could one expect that it would be privileged to last for ever?' Who did not foresee that the Reform Bill 'was to shake every institution and to loosen every tie throughout the country!' How can WW say he stands completely outside the conflict? and should he?: 'You who have so much influence with both parties, who see through their delusions, who have so many qualifications for mediating between them?' In fact WW's pamphlet shows that he cannot abstain. Hopefully the forthcoming vacation will cool men's minds and induce the master to apologise to CT. 'Have you heard anything lately of William Wordsworth? He will be grieved to hear of these college quarrels'. John Sterling has been lately with JCH - 'whom I know not whether more to admire for his genius, or to love for his simplicity, his gentleness, his frankness, and his noble mind'. Sterling tells JCH of the 'very good effects produced by the abridgement of the service at Corpus. If something of the kind were done, it might give the service more the character of family prayer and I think a great deal of good might be done by having a sermon more short, and bore upon the condition of the congregation, somewhat of the manner of Arnold's [Matthew Arnold] admirable Rugby sermons. This would be much in associating religious feelings with the place'.