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The Evangelical Inheritance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Standish Meacham
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Extract

Evangelicals and Evangelicalism seem unable to remain for long either in or out of favor. The line of periodic assessments which began by moving upward from the tart jibes of Sydney Smith to James Stephen's measured rehabilitation, took a plunge with the Hammond's indignant assault, and has continued to trace lesser fluctuations for the past thirty years. E. M. Howse, in Saints in Politics, attacked the Hammonds for lack of balance and attempted a rehabilitation. In the process, however, he lost his own balance and fell over backwards. Now Ford K. Brown's Fathers of the Victorians implies that one can again disparage the Evangelicals. Their legacy to the century, Brown suggests, was a negative and stifling one.

This matter of the legacy makes the question of interpretation and reinterpretation important. Historians of nineteenth-century England agree that Evangelicalism contributed much to the temper of the age. Yet there agreement ceases. Brown, for example, thinks that the legacy, never a rich one, was ill-spent by the likes of Charlotte Brönte's sour-souled Mr. Brocklehurst. Noel Annan, rather, finds it husbanded and flourishing in the sensitive conscience of Leslie Stephen. Both may be right. If so, merely further proof of the strength and complexity of the Evangelical inheritance; further indication, therefore, of the need for its careful examination.

The legacy cannot be examined apart from its source: the Evangelical faith itself. Without an understanding of that faith, one cannot know that while Zachary Macaulay was an Evangelical, Granville Sharp was not; without that understanding the true difference between the Evangelical morality of Henry Thornton and the humanitarian morality of Henry Brougham will go undetected.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , November 1963 , pp. 88 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1963

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References

1. Annan, Noel, Leslie Stephen (Cambridge, 1952)Google Scholar.

2. Young, G. M., Victorian England, Portrait of an Age (2nd ed.; London, 1953), p. 1Google Scholar.

3. Stephen, James, “The ‘Evangelical’ Succession,” Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (London, 1850), II, 155Google Scholar.

4. The most prominent Evangelical of true Calvinist persuasion was SirHill, Richard, whose Apology for Brotherly Love and for the Doctrine of the Church of England (London, 1798)Google Scholar, preached that faith alone brought salvation. Overton, John, in The True Churchman Ascertained (London, 1801)Google Scholar, asserted the importance of Christian works, as did Charles Simeon. See Webster, Michael, “Simeon's Doctrine of the Church,” in Pollard, A. and Hennell, M., Charles Simeon (London, 1959)Google Scholar.

5. Thornton, Henry, Family Commentary upon Portions of the Pentateuch (2nd ed.; London, 1843), p. 267Google Scholar.

6. With two exceptions, the major Evangelical figures engaged in the abolition fight had originally opposed the trade on religious grounds. Both James Stephen and Zachary Macaulay, however, had been to the West Indies and returned disgusted and determined to attack the trade. Their hatred of slavery led them to Wilberforce who, with the help of their Evangelical relatives, led them in turn to a new religious belief. M. G. Jones argues as well that Hannah More made her “slow and tentative approach to Evangelicalism by way of her new humanitarian interests.” Hannah More (Cambridge, 1952), p. 82Google Scholar.

7. William Wilberforce to Hannah More. Feb. 21, 1804. Quoted by Robert, and Wilberforce, Samuel, Correspondence of William Wilberforce (London, 1840), I, 299Google Scholar.

8. “Preliminary Address to the Public,” reprinted in The First Report of the Society for Bettering The Poor (London, 1797), ch. iiiGoogle Scholar.

9. Annan, Noel, Leslie Stephen, p. 113Google Scholar.

10. Evangelicals retaliated by calling names themselves, and “Methodist” became a synonym for “Jacobin”: a simple but rather careless way out of an embarrassing predicament. Brown insists that the Evangelicals' opposition to Methodism stemmed from their desire to influence “those who counted” in order to further their schemes for reform. Though they considered the Methodists an embarrassment, however, they were opposed to them for more than merely tactical reasons.

11. Forster, E. M., Marianne Thornton (New York, 1956), p. 144Google Scholar.

12. See Stephen, James, “The Epilogue,” Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, II, 460 ff.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., II, 484.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., II, 485.

16. Ibid., II, 466.

17. Ibid., II, 469.

18. Ashwell, A. R., Life of the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce (London, 1880), I, 58Google Scholar.

19. In a letter to Lord Ashley. Ibid., II, 68.

20. Ibid., II, 238.

21. Ibid., I, 114. Written in 1838.

22. Ibid., II, 224.

23. Ibid., III, 408.

24. Ibid., III, 404. For Marianne Thornton's estimate of Samuel Wilberforce see Forster, , Marianne Thornton, p. 147Google Scholar. Published by Churchmen, the Record was an Evangelical magazine which delighted in attacking Wilberforce.

25. Ashwell, , Samuel Wilberforce, I, 457.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., II, 44.

27. Ibid., III, 118.

28. “Essays and Reviews,” Quarterly Review, CIX (1861), 128–58Google Scholar.

29. Ibid. It was this fear that lay behind Wilberforce's famous and remark-ably inept attack on Huxley. He thought Darwin undermined the Bible and was therefore dangerous. He also thought Darwin's theory scientifically unsound. See his review of The Origin of the Species. Quarterly Review, CVIII (1860). 225 ff.Google Scholar

30. Ashwell, , Samuel Wilberforce, I, 215.Google Scholar

31. Stephen, Leslie, Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (London, 1895), p. 309Google Scholar.

32. Noel Annan thinks it was The Origin of the Species and its implication that chance rules the universe that convinced Stephen of the worthlessness of all metaphysical systems including Christianity. See Leslie Stephen, pp. 162-66.

33. Ibid., p. 198.

34. Ibid., p. 116. Literally the case, since Stephen's mother was Jane Venn, daughter of the rector of Clapham.

35. Stephen, Leslie, Life of James Fitzjames Stephen, p. 323Google Scholar.

36. Ibid., pp. 198-99.

37. Stephen, James Fitzjames, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (London, 1873), p. 304Google Scholar.

38. Stephen, James, “The Clapham Sect,” Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, II, 236Google Scholar.

39. A case might be made for Shaftesbury, though it would be difficult. His enthusiasm for common humanity stopped short of love for either High or Broad Church.

40. Stephen, Leslie, George Eliot (New York, 1902), pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

41. See her article, “Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming,” Westminster Review, LIV (1855)Google Scholar.

42. Eliot, George, “Janet's Repentance,” Scenes of Clerical Life (London 1878) II, 162–63Google Scholar.

43. See, for example, George Russell, W. E., Lady Victoria Buxton (London, 1919)Google Scholar.