for simple rural beauty and pastoral peace, no spot in all England, rich in such scenes, surpasses Hodnet and its surroundings. The late Lord Teignmouth, when visiting his friend Lord Hill after Waterloo, in the autumn of 1815, wrote 1 of "the rarely surpassed grandeur and beauty of the scenery of the ancestral homes and haunts" of the Hills. Heber's Hodnet church stands at one end of the demesne; one of his chapelries commands the other. From the tower on the ridge between these, fifteen counties may be seen. The eye roams with ease from Llangollen to Shrewsbury. He had just before been a delighted witness of the triumph. of William Wilberforce in the House of Commons, when that philanthropic statesman's unwearied assiduity during twenty years first made it possible for England to declare, "The Slave Trade is no more." "At length divided, 283 to 16," writes Wilberforce in his Diary, 23rd February 1807. "A good many came over to Palace Yard after House up and congratulated me. John Thornton and Heber, Sharpe, Macaulay, Grant and Robert Grant, Robert Bird and William Smith." "Well, Henry," Wilberforce asked playfully of Mr. Thornton, what shall we abolish next?" "The lottery," gravely replied his sterner friend. "Let us make out the names of these sixteen miscreants; I have four of them," said William Smith. Wilberforce, kneeling, as was his wont, upon one knee at the crowded table, looked up hastily from the note which he was writing-"Never mind the miserable 16, let us think of our glorious 283." This, wrote his son, the famous Bishop afterwards,2 was Reginald Heber's first introduction to Mr. Wilberforce. He had imagined, from his knowledge of the sentiments of the Hills of Hawkstone, which were at that time disaffected to the Church of England, that Wilberforce shared these views, and so he entered the room with a strong suspicion of the statesman's principles. The young rector left it saying to his friend, John Thornton, "How an hour's conversation can dissolve the prejudice of years!" "Perhaps," writes Bishop Wilberforce, "his witnessing this night the Christian hero in 1 Reminiscences of Many Years, vol. i. chap. v. (Edinburgh, David Douglas). 2 The Life of Wilberforce, by his Sons, vol. iii. p. 298. his triumph after the toil of years may have been one step towards his gaining afterwards the martyr crown at Trichinopoly." Reginald Heber was thus drawn within the influence of the good men and great statesmen to whom Great Britain owes the reforms and the institutions which have proved the salt of the Empire as it has gone on expanding over Southern Asia, Africa, and the present Colonies. Although William Pitt was their friend, and built for them in the leafy retreat of Clapham the library in which they conferred for the good of humanity, their contemporaries sneered at them as "the Clapham Sect," till Sir James Stephen ennobled the phrase in his Edinburgh Review essay. In the opening chapters of The Newcomes Thackeray's gentle satire pictures Clapham and its families, but Lord Macaulay, who was a child of the Sect, used to remark on his unfairness. There was "nothing vulgar, and little that was narrow in a training which produced Samuel Wilberforce and Sir James Stephen, and Charles and Robert Grant, and Lord Macaulay," the biographer of the last justly writes.1 Even before 1807 Heber was a classic with the Clapham circle. Already when he was six Tom Macaulay's memory was such that he got the whole of Palestine by heart. 2 In the formative years before twenty-five John Thornton was the most powerful influence in Heber's character and ideals, and John Thornton was a worthy grandson of the merchant prince and evangelical of the same name whose death Cowper commemorated in 1790 "Thou hadst an industry in doing good, Restless as his who toils and sweats for food; Thy bounties were all Christian, and I make In such a place and at such a time Reginald Heber became parish priest. His return to Oxford before taking orders, and again for his M.A. degree, had renewed his popularity 1 The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, by his Nephew: second edition, 1877, p. 62. 2 Teignmouth's Reminiscences. at the University. When congratulating his friend Thornton on his marriage, he had said : "ALL SOULS, 7th July 1807. "... I hope you are not in earnest when you pretend to apologise for writing nonsense; nonsense is the true and appropriate language of happiness." He himself was described by a companion as writing what none but quiet and clever men can write, very good nonsense, and his mock-heroic verses in Greek and Latin were famous among the dons. Another contemporary wrote thus of him at college: "I cannot forget the feeling of admiration with which I approached his presence, or the surprise with which I contrasted my abstract image of him with his own simple, social, every-day manner. He talked and laughed like those around him, and entered into the pleasures of the day with them, and with their relish; but when any higher subject was introduced [and he was never slow in contriving to introduce literature at least, and to draw from his exhaustless memory riches of every kind] his manner became his own. He never looked up at his hearers (one of the few things, by the bye, which I could have wished altered in him in after life, for he retained the habit), but with his eyes downcast and fixed, poured forth in a measured intonation, which from him became fashionable, stores of every age." But from the moment that Heber entered on his calling as a Christian minister he sacrificed everything to its duties, and his most confidential correspondence reflected the spirituality of his life, while he was not one whit less genial and attractive than before. His experience has been since reproduced in that of Richard W. Church when the future Dean of St. Paul's exchanged his life at Oxford for the little Somersetshire parish of Whatley.1 Beginning his professional career avowedly as an "Arminian," Heber meant nothing more by that than those stout Calvinists, Carey and Fuller, had done in their protest against the barren hyper-Calvinism of the period, which denied the Gospel of God's grace to the majority of the human race outside of Christendom. As decided an anti-Pelagian as they, his wider 1 Life and Letters of Dean Church (1894), p. 139. reading and knowledge of the human heart made him no less plain in his teaching on sin, while he burned, he preached, he lectured, he wrote, he travelled, he organised, he prayed with the one mission to bring to Christ the Crucified every sinner of mankind. He explicitly refused all through his life to be identified with any Church party. The term "evangelical" in his day bore so Antinomian a tinge, that he disliked the abuse of so good a word, but if we were to rank him now with any school in particular, we should describe him as broadly evangelical. Heber will be found growing in his theological sympathies, manifesting the best features of cultured evangelicalism, and mellowing in charity towards Dissenters and all good men till his missionary experience carries him outside of sect and party. The following letters to John Thornton reveal his spirit of self-consecration and readiness to learn God's will and "the truth, whatever it may be." "7th August 1807. "I purposely delayed writing to you till I had had some little experience of my new situation as parish priest, and my feelings under it. With the first I have every reason to be satisfied; my feelings are, I believe, the usual ones of young men who find themselves entering into the duties of a profession in which their life is to be spent. I had no new discoveries to make in the character of my people, as I had passed the greater part of my life among them. They received me with the same expressions of good-will as they had shown on my return to England; and my volunteers and myself (for we are still considered as inseparable) were again invited to a fête champêtre. Of course, my first sermon was numerously attended; and though tears were shed, I could not attribute them entirely to my eloquence, for some of the old servants of the family began crying before I had spoken a word. I will fairly own that the cordiality of these honest people, which at first elated and pleased me exceedingly, has since been the occasion of some very serious and melancholy reflections. It is really an appalling thing to have so high expectations formed of a young man's future conduct. But even this has not so much weight with me as a fear that I shall not return their affection sufficiently, or preserve it in its present extent by my exertions and diligence in doing good. God knows I have every motive of affection and emulation to animate me, and have no possible excuse for a failure in my duty. The Methodists in Hodnet are, thank God, not very numerous, and I hope to diminish them still more; they are, however, sufficiently numerous to serve as a spur to my emulation." Twenty months later, when informing Thornton that he had sent to the press his poem Europe, begun at Dresden during a night made sleepless by the march of the troops to meet the French, he thus answers his friend's inquiries as to his parish: "I have reason to believe that both my conduct and my sermons are well liked, but I do not think any great amendment takes place in my hearers. My congregations are very good, and the number of communicants increases. The principal faults of which I have to complain are occasional drunkenness and, after they have left church, a great disregard of Sunday. You know my notions respecting the obligation of the Christian Sabbath are by no means strict; but I have seen much mischief arise from its neglect, and have been taking some pains to prevent it. By the assistance, I may say advice, of one of the churchwardens, a very worthy and sensible, though plain farmer, the shop-keepers have been restrained from selling on Sundays; and I have persuaded the inn-keepers to sign an agreement, binding themselves under a five-guinea forfeiture not to allow drinking on that day. But though the wealthy farmers and women are generally orderly, the young labourers are a dissolute set, and I have not so much influence with them now as I had when I was their captain. It is a misfortune to me, in so wide a parish, that I am slow at remembering either names or faces, which is a very useful talent. I trust, however, to acquire this gradually. .. The Methodists are neither very numerous nor very active, they have no regular meetings, but assemble from great distances to meet a favourite preacher. Yet I have sometimes thought, and it has made me really uncomfortable, that since Rowland Hill's visit to the country my congregation was thinner. Perhaps it was only owing to the bad weather, as my numbers are now a little increasing again. The test here of a churchman is the Sacrament, which the Methodists never attend. "The Hills of Hawkstone have declared their intention of attending Hodnet, which is their parish church, and I can perceive this will do a great deal of good. Their whole family live together, and they are very pleasing neighbours to us. I make |