CHAPTER XVIII.

 LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH--THE FUNERAL--THE MEMORIAL.

 1882.

 IF any man ever lived with the thought of death constantly present to his mind, that man was Pusey. The two truths on which throughout life he constantly fell back were the nothingness of this world, and the enduring love and magnificence of God. He sometimes quoted Burke' s well-known exclamation,  'What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!'  But he more often repeated St. Paul' s words,  'We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'

As each friend of his earlier days had been called to pass beyond the veil, Pusey had gazed after him with a wistful longing, which had only been kept in check by his habitual submission to the Divine Will. As years passed on he felt these losses less acutely, not because old age was bringing with it any failure of natural sensibility, but because he knew that the separation could not be long. No sorrow of this kind, in his whole life, equalled the loss of his wife perhaps the greatest in his later years was that which he felt when in April, 1866, he stood by Keble' s grave in Hursley churchyard. But when his son Philip died, in January, 1880, he rarely expressed himself as if they were separated.  'Philip says,'  was a more frequent form of quoting his departed son than  'Philip used to say' : it was as though they were living in adjoining rooms.  'At my age we cannot, you know,'  he observed with his bright smile,  'be very long without seeing each other again.'

Pusey' s life had been for more than half a century a preparation for death: and he seems to have been granted something of the nature of a presentiment as to the time at which his summons might come. One day in the autumn of 1880 he was talking with a friend on the probable future of Religion in Oxford, and a reference was made to measures which might be expected after October, 1882, when, in the due course of succession, the Master of Balliol would become Vice-Chancellor.  'Ah,'  said Pusey, sud–denly and decidedly,  'that may concern you and others. I shall have nothing to do with it.'  His death occurred within one month of the Master' s entering on his office.

On Trinity Sunday, June 4, a friend called to see him, and found that he was keeping the day, as he had kept every Trinity Sunday since 1839, as the solemn anniversary of his wife' s death. In a short talk, Pusey mentioned that this was the first summer term in the more than fifty years that had elapsed since he became Professor, in which he had stopped his lectures before the end of full Term. He had only done so now because those who had been attending them were leaving Oxford. He spoke of it with tears in his eyes, as if it were presentimental.

When all the other work of the Term was over, Pusey left Oxford for Ascot Priory on the morning of June 16. As usual, two or three large boxes, filled with books of reference, went with him: and Channing, his faithful servant, was not neglectful of any provisions which would enable her master to bear the fatigue of the journey. For the last time he looked round the rooms in which he had lived for fifty-three year; and for the last time walked from his door to the steps on the south side of the great gateway, where Dr. Acland was awaiting him with his brougham to take him to the station. Although wearied by his effort to attend a meeting of the Governing Body on the previous day, he talked cheerfully about his plans and hopes for work up to the last moment, and left the Oxford station by the twelve o' clock train.

As usual, when he was at Ascot, the change of air appeared to do him good, and throughout July he was  'remarkably well.'  He walked a great deal in the pine wood, among the rabbit holes and in the heather; in this, it was noticed, returning to an old habit, which he had dropped since the great shock of his son' s death. At times he was even in. buoyant spirits.  'It seems,'  he said one day,  'as if Almighty God were going to take away my cough' --the cough which he had been unable to shake off for six months.

At the end of July those who watched him narrowly observed something like the beginning of a change. The Sister in charge of the Penitentiary at Plymouth became suddenly and seriously ill. As a rule Pusey never showed symptoms of surprise at anything that came from the Hand of God.  'One learns,'  he used to say,  'as life goes on, to hope for nothing, to be surprised at nothing, and to try to make the best of everything.'  But the news of the Sister' s illness came to him as a shock; it affected him very deeply. He at once took a desponding view of the case, and of its probable consequences. Even when, on the following day, a hopeful report from Plymouth arrived at Ascot, he did not recover his cheerfulness.

However, he appeared to be in his wonted health during the first three weeks of August. He used to sit out in front of his little house for several hours of the day, and occupied himself in reading and dictating. Before he left Oxford a friend  'had asked him his opinion of Mr. T. Mozley' s  'Reminiscences,'  then recently published. His opinion was that the clever writer had not been able to resist the temptations which beset a good story; and that the book was inaccurate, and sometimes illnatured. In particular, he was greatly concerned by a story about the way in which Dr. Routh, the venerable President of Magdalen, had received a story of the death of a Fellow of his College under very distressing circumstances. Pusey had a correspondence with Dr. Bulley, then President of Magdalen, which satisfied him of the baselessness of the story. But the book took possession of him in a manner which would not have been the case in his days of health, and the friend who had mentioned it to him has always regretted that he had done so.

August 22 was Pusey' s eighty-second birthday. It found him still, to all appearance, in his wonted health. He had heard the confessions of the Sisters during the three or four previous days. In discharging this duty, he had not been quite equal to himself: one Sister said that he had detained her for a long time, and had repeated himself unnecessarily. But on his birthday he was cheerful; and acknowledged the congratulations which he received with his wonted courtesy and tenderness.

His last illness really began two days later, on the night of St. Bartholomew' s Day, August 24. On the 23rd he had heard that a lady who had intended to join the Sister–hood had lost the relative, whose claims upon her time and duty had hitherto made it impossible for her to carry out her purpose. On the 24th he was told that she did not now intend thus to consecrate her liberty. The report strangely agitated him: and he wrote her a very earnest letter. The report, as it afterwards proved, rested on a misapprehension.

The post of that morning also brought a letter from a person who had been visiting the Rev. S. F. Green, who was still confined in Lancaster-gaol, on account of his conscientious inability to obey the Privy .Council' s in–terpretation of the Prayer-book. In his days of health Pusey would have dwelt on the high privilege of suffering for conscience sake. Now his own depressed physical condition coloured his thoughts.  'Here,'  he said,  'we have all our comforts and this beautiful air to breathe, and all around us is happy and peaceful; while he, poor man, is in prison.'  The letter had described Mr. Green as  'wasted and gaunt'  ;  locked up in  'a room which looked like a very large dungeon with a huge fire.'  Pusey forwarded to the Times an extract from this letter, and added a short note of his own.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE  'TIMES.'

August 24, 1882.

The character of the Rev. Mr. Green has been so entirely mis–represented as if he wilfully remained in Lancaster gaol,  'keeping the door locked on the inside,'  that it occurred to me that the following account of his condition from one who saw him lately might open the eyes of some who would not jest at suffering.

But Pusey was no longer in a condition to write or talk on subjects which deeply moved him: and there can be little room for doubt that in his critical state of health, the slight effort which he thus made contributed to precipitate his illness. On the evening of the 24th he went to bed without complaining of anything serious. When he was called at seven o' clock as usual on the morning of the 25th, he could not rise. Evidently he had had some kind of seizure. On that and the following day he remained in bed: but he got up at nine on Sunday the 27th, read his letters, and those about him hoped that his getting well was only a question of days. He had often been worse before and had regained his strength.

For a week he seemed to maintain the level which he had reached on Sunday, August 27. He tried several times to resume reading for his Hebrew Lectures. But each time he had to put the books away, saying that he could not get on. It was now becoming clear to those about him that he was not to be long in this world. But letters were received as usual, and some were still written day by day.

His note to the Times, as was inevitable, had reopened the floodgates of controversy. It was supposed, greatly to Pusey' s annoyance, to reflect upon the Archbishop of York, and it entailed a correspondence with his Grace, who expressed himself as perfectly satisfied with Pusey' s ex–planations. Then a correspondent of the Times, who signed himself  'a Vicar-General,'  made fun of the account of Mr. Green' s condition in Lancaster gaol; and proceeded to allude in similar terms to a piece of heartless and in–delicate gossip which was utterly without foundation. As soon as Pusey had ascertained from Mr. Green that the story was false, he wrote to the Times once more, and for the last time, on Thursday, August 31. He enclosed Mr. Green' s letter, and added--

E. B. P. TO THE EDITOR OF THE  'TIMES.'

August 31, 1882.

... The supposed fact which the Vicar-General states to rest on very good authority, and on which he comments with so much flippancy, is absolutely and entirely untrue. ... Idle words have to be given account of at an unerring tribunal' .

These were the last words he ever addressed to the world at large. The week which ended on September 2 was the last week--in any sense active--of Pusey' s life.

On Sunday, September 3, he was in low spirits; but he said through the Evening Service for the day with Miss Kebbel, who made the responses. She specially noticed with what repressed  'energy he repeated the first words of the eighteenth Psalm-- 'I will love Thee, O Lord, my Strength.'  After he had gone to bed, he repeated aloud the Litany from memory: when he could not recall one petition, he asked Miss Kebbel to write it in large characters that he might see it, and then went on.

Monday, September 4, was the critical day on which the illness entered on its second and, as it proved, its fatal stage. Up to that date it might have seemed likely that he would recover; He had recovered from much worse illnesses more than once; and his constitution seemed, humanly speaking, to have vast reserves of vital power. But after that day there was no real prospect of any issue but one. During the morning of that day Pusey remained in his little bedroom reading the Hebrew Bible. He observed on coming out that he had spent a long time over a single botanical term without being able to satisfy himself as to its exact meaning. In his days of health, when he had come to the conclusion that the sense of a word was uncertain, he would have weighed the prob–abilities, decided, at any rate provisionally, in favour of one meaning, and gone on to something else. Now the word haunted him; he talked about it at luncheon to the kind friends who waited on him, and who, of course, did not understand Hebrew. Still, in the middle of the day, Mr. Fagge, the doctor, called, and thought him so much better that he begged him to go out and take the fresh air in the afternoon.

About an hour later he was seen trying with evident pain and difficulty to move across his room, resting on the back of a chair, and almost immediately afterwards he fell forward in a state of unconsciousness. He was lifted into a chair, and when he opened his eyes, seemed to know no one; and after a short time was, by his own request, moved to his bed. He never left it again.

Dr. Acland, his old friend, was at once summoned from Devonshire. He of course saw the full gravity of the situation.  'If it were any one but Dr. Pusey, a man in this condition would not be likely to live for twenty-four hours.'  But on the morning of the 7th, he pronounced him to be even  'surprisingly better.'  He had seen Dr. Pusey in worse illnesses from which he had recovered, and he hopefully promised that when the time came for the return to Oxford, he would himself come and take him home.

It was not to be. There was another partial rally on the morning of Friday the 8th; but his strength was now giving way, and from that. date, the downward progress was unrelieved by any hopeful symptoms. The char–acteristics of illness in its later stages now began to display themselves: the increasing restlessness, the difficulty in taking any nourishment, the weariness of weakness, the long periods of apparent unconsciousness or stupor, during parts of which, however, there is reason to think he was engaged in constant prayer or keenly alive to what was going on in the room. On Monday and Tuesday it was quite evident that the end was near. His daughter and her husband were sent for and reached Ascot late on Tuesday. On Wednesday, at 8.30, Mrs. Brine visited her dying father. He received her with a bright, cheerful smile:  'Well, you see, dear, I am soon down, and soon up again.'  Then he asked about his grandchildren, one after another, especially the absent soldier-boy, Percy Brine. Then he added,  'What brought you here?'  Mrs. Brine wrote an answer in large letters: and Pusey put on his spectacles to read it, but he could not  'see anything. Dr. Fagge came at 10.30.  'Well, Dr. Pusey,'  he said very slowly,  'how are you this morning?'  Pusey looked hard at the mouth of the speaker, and then answered with a bright smile,  'Is it not your business to tell me how I am, rather than mine to tell you?'  Dr Fagge then felt his pulse, and, wishing his patient to understand the grave character of his illness, said slowly,  'Your strength seems to be failing.'  He wrote the words in large letters on a piece of paper. Pusey again put on his spectacles and tried hard to read them: but it is doubtful whether he did more than guess at their meaning.

He was now exhausted; and begged that he might be undisturbed. After some hours he roused himself to ask after the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was seriously ill. In the middle of the day his grandson, the Rev. J. E. B. Brine (who had lived with him since 1880), Dr. King, and Miss M. Milner, came over from Oxford. Dr. King' s presence roused Pusey : he looked at him with his clear blue eye, and, put out his hand, while his face lighted up with a beautiful smile. But he could say nothing. Soon afterwards it seemed as if the end was very near; and Dr. King, who had been saying prayers at his bedside, read the Commendatory Prayer.

But he rallied at night, and on the following day, Thursday, the 14th, recognized with delight his brother, the Rev. W. B. Pusey, who had now arrived. He was, however, only able to speak at intervals. When Mrs. Brine handed to her uncle the Prayer-book which had belonged to his mother, Lady Lucy, Pusey said in quite a strong voice,  'The dear old book.'  During Friday, the 15th, he was for the most part wandering, and in his delirium his mind moved con–tinuously round the solemn ministerial acts which had been his greatest practical interest in life. He repeated again and again the words,  'The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, Which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.'  When a cup containing some food was brought him, he clutched it with reverent eagerness, thinking that it was the Chalice. When he saw some of those who were around kneeling at the bedside, he raised his hand, with the words,  'By His authority committed unto me, I absolve thee from all thy sins.'  Mrs. Brine was anxious that he should receive the Holy Communion, and the question was written on paper in large characters, which he succeeded in reading. He paused and then said,  'If I am to receive the Holy Communion I must administer it myself.'   It was clear to his brother that his mind was too overclouded; and the subject was dropped.

But as death came near his thoughts were clearer, while bodily weakness hourly increased. From time to time in the morning of Saturday, September 16, faint words escaped him, which appeared to show that he was repeating the Te Deum mentally, in accordance with the advice which he had often given to the sleepless and the sick. The death-sweat was on his brow when he was heard to sigh out a last aspiration, which summed up his life-- 'My God.'  He passed away at twenty minutes after three in the afternoon.

His Hebrew Bible still lay on a little table near his bed, open--as he had left it on the previous Sunday--at 1 Chron. xvi, which describes David' s triumphant restoration of the Ark of God to its place in the reverent worship of Israel.

All present remained for some time kneeling round the bed; when they rose, the Rev. T. T. Carter was standing just outside. They all went into the open air: it was an autumn afternoon of cloudless beauty; and some of those present looked up into the clear blue sky, not without many thoughts of the Blessed Angels who were just carrying the departed soul into the Presence-chamber of the Judge, and earnest prayers that nothing might be wanting to his eternal rest.

Dr. Liddon was abroad when the illness began: the first news of its seriousness reached him at Turin. He tried to start back the same night, but all the places in the sleeping-carriages were engaged. When at last he got to Paris, on the 18th, he bought an English paper, and his eye fell first of all on an obituary notice headed  'Dr. Pusey.'  The following words are from his own diary

 'I had not the heart to look on, but walked about the streets rapidly for an hour before I came back to the hotel. . . So he has left us--most dear and revered of friends, of whose friendshp I have been all along so utterly unworthy. How little I can realize it, though I have been looking forward to this day for twenty years. Now that dearest Dr. Pusey is gone, the world is no longer the same world.. .  He Who created and trained Dr. Pusey, can train successors if He will. Requiescat in pace amicus dilectissimus.'

On the following Monday, September 18, the Body was taken by road to Oxford. The Canons of Christ Church were at the gate of the College, to receive it, and it was laid in the room which he had used as his study for so many years; here sorrowing friends kept continual watch by its side day and flight. On Thursday, St. Matthew' s Day, September 21, a very large gathering assembled for the Funeral, although it was in the quietest part of the Long Vacation. The procession of clergy, five or six abreast, reached round three sides of the Great Quadrangle; the fourth, between Dr. Pusey' s house and the Cathedral, being kept clear. As the Coffin was brought out of the well-known door in the south west corner of the quad–rangle, the Cathedral Choir came to meet it. By the sides of the Coffin there walked as pall-bearers those who represented the friendships and the labours of his life: the Archdeacon of Oxford and three Canons who were also Theological Professors (Dr. Heurtley, Dr. Bright, and Dr. King), Mr. Gladstone, the Hon. C. L. Wood, the Earl of Glasgow, the Hon. and Rev. C. L. Courtenay, the Warden of Keble College, and Dr. Acland. As they passed towards the Cathedral the Choir sang the hymn,  'A few more years shall roll,'  recalling his own often-repeated solemn words about the life which he had left and that to which he had passed. At the west door of the Cathedral the procession was met by the Dean of Christ Church, the Bishop of Oxford, and Dr. Liddon, who read the opening sentences of the Burial Service. After the Dean had read the Lesson, Newman' s hymn,  'Lead, kindly light,'  was sung, and Dr. Liddon then said the concluding part of the Service, committing  'his dear body'  to the grave beneath the floor of the central aisle  'in sure and certain hope of. the resurrection to eternal life.'  Before the Bishop of Oxford pronounced the final Benediction, the well-known -hymn  'Jerusalem the Golden'  rang out, lifting up the hearts of all the mourners from the thoughts of death and separation to that Holy City where the Lord God is the Light and the Life of the Saints, and to the time, as he so often used to say in the solemn farewells of his later years, of  'that coming in where there is no going out, in life everlasting.'

He was laid to his rest to await that Day in the same grave with his wife and two eldest daughters. A large white marble slab in the floor of the central aisle of the Cathedral marks the spot. The inscription on it, so far as it refers to those who had gone before Pusey, was written by himself; Dr Liddon wrote the rest.

The following words, spoken in the University pulpit at Oxford on the first Sunday of the next Term, by Dean Church, may well be quoted here. They are the words of one who from the beginning had his hand on the pulse of the Movement, and whose minute knowledge and singular capacity for judgment enabled him to speak as no one else could:--

 'Many, I suppose, are thinking this morning, among the changes since the University was last assembled, of one name which since then has disappeared from its roll of members--a great and illustrious Name, a Name which was the special possession of Oxford, but belonged scarcely less to England and to Christendom. One of our Great Men has passed away from us. I hope it is pardonable, even when I cannot be sure of all sympathies, if I allow myself to remember that only within the last month we were many of us standing about the grave where the toils of his long life ended, and where he still sleeps among us, in the Oxford which he so deeply loved. Merely as the end of a career, without its match in modern Oxford, the ceasing from among us of that long, familiar life must touch us all. Few here present saw the outset of it in the Oxford Honour Schools, just over sixty years. ago; few of those who saw its beginning could look forward to its surprising and eventful -course. They could not imagine through what vicissitudes it would pass--all that it would see of what stirs and tries the soul--what persistent, unwearied industry, what unabated energy of public interest and sympathy, up to the very week of death, what deep, inconsolable sorrows, what piercing wounds, what profound - disappointments, what strange chequered successes, what unlooked-for revolutions, what alternations of disgrace and honour, of unchecked obloquy and wanton insult, of boundless rever–ence and trust. No man was more variously judged, more sternly condemned, more tenderly loved. Of course that means that his was a time of great and prolonged conflict, of great changes and great reverses; that in it all he took a foremost part; that he had to deal largely with foes as well as with friends. But now, all is over--hardly yet weary, hardly exhausted, he rests from his labours of more than half a century. What is the judgment upon him--not on the repre–sentative of ideas, or the champion of a cause, or the worker in the field of knowledge, but on the man? I think that there is but one answer from those whose hearts thrill at the memory of all that he was to them, and from most of those--from many, I am sure--who stood against him, disapproved, resisted him. First and foremost, he was one who lived his life, as above everything, the Servant of God. He takes rank with those who gave themselves, and all that they had, and all that they wished for--their unsparing trouble, their ease, their honour, their powers, their interests, to what they believed to be their work for God; who spared nothing, reserved nothing, shrank from nothing, in that supreme and sacred ambition to be His true and persevering Servant. The world will remember him as the famous student, the powerful leader, the wielder of great influence in critical times, the man of strongly marked and original character, who left his mark on the age. Those who knew and loved him will remember him, as long as life lasts with them, as one whose boundless charity was always looking out to console and to make allowance, as one whose dauntless courage and patient hopefulness never flagged, as one to whose tenderness and strength they owed the best and the noblest part of all that they have felt and all that they have done. But when our confusions are still, when our loves, and enmities, and angers have perished, when our mistakes and misunderstandings have become dim and insignificant in the great distance of the past, then his figure will rise in history as one of that high company who really looked at life as St. Paul looked at it. All who care for the Church of God, all who care for Christ' s Religion, even those--I make bold to say--who do not in many things think as he thought, will class him among those who in difficult and anxious times have witnessed, by great zeal, and great effort, and great sacrifice, for God and Truth and Holiness; they will see in him one who sought to make Religion a living and mighty force over the consciences and in the affairs of men, not by knowledge only and learning'  and wisdom and great gifts of persuasion, but still more by boundless devotedness, by the power of a consecrated and unfaltering will.'

Pusey had made a will on November 19,1875. The whole of the document is in his own handwriting. It begins:--

 'I, Edward Bouverie Pusey, make this as my last will and testament. I die in the faith of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, believing explicite (as I have for many years declared) all which I know Almighty God to have revealed in her; and implicite anything which He may have revealed in her which I may not, know. I give my soul into the Hands of Almighty God, humbly beseeching Him to pardon all my sins, known to me or unknown, for the sole Merits of the Blood of my Redeemer, Jesus Christ (one drop of Whose Precious Blood might cleanse the whole world), and interpose His Precious Death between me and my sins.

 '1 desire that my body should be buried quite simply and in the churchyard of the place in which it shall pleased God to call me, unless I should die in term-time within the precincts of Christ Church, and then, too, as privately as the customs of the place may permit.'

The Will then goes on to leave everything to his son Philip, with special injunctions not to reprint the two volumes on the Theology of Germany, nor any of his earlier corrections and notes on the English translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. He never drew up another Will, after Philip' s death;  'in a case like mine,'  he said,  'the Law is the best Will-maker,' --so he really died intestate, and his Library, which represented the studies of his life, passed to Mrs. Brine, his married daughter and only surviving child.

On the afternoon of the day of the funeral, a meeting was held at Dr. Bright' s house in Christ Church, to consider the form which his Memorial should take. Dr. Liddon advocated a College of Clergy in Oxford, to be a centre of religious faith, theological learning, and personal sympathy, as the most fitting Memorial of one whose whole heart was devoted to the preservation of the Faith, and whose days had been spent in fighting its battles in Oxford. This proposal was then provisionally adopted; and on Thursday, November 16, a very large meeting was held in London, at the house of the Marquis of Salisbury, in Arlington Street, to settle finally the form that the Memorial should take. At that meeting, Dr. Liddon' s proposal was finally ac–cepted. It was decided that the Memorial was to be in Oxford, and that a fund of £50,000 should be raised to purchase his Library and provide a suitable building for it, and also an endowment for two or more clergy to act as librarians, who should aim at promoting in every way the interests of theological study and religious life within the University.

The words of Lord Salisbury at the opening of that meeting set forth the claims  which may rightly be made on Pusey' s behalf to the gratitude of even a wider circle than English Churchmen:--

 'It was Dr. Pusey' s fate to be engaged in a double task--to have before him two duties, differing very much in their immediate interests, and differing, though in an inverse direction, with regard to their ulti–mate importance to the Church. He was deeply mixed up, I need not say, with the controversies of the day, and it was probably owing to his connexion with those controversies that the only authority in the Church which he enjoyed was given him before his fame and his merits became known. But there was another aspect of his character, another goal to his efforts--he was above all things a Christian apologist. His most earnest aims were not associated with the controversies, deeply interesting though they were, with which his name in public estimation was specially bound up. His mind was chiefly bent upon one thing, that in an age when Christian faith was exposed to many and dangerous attacks, the first duty of her sons and of those whose learning could give her support, was to defend it in all its integrity. It was as a defender of the Christian Church as a whole--as a defender of the Faith once given to the Saints, and as a champion of the Church of eighteen centuries--that he lived and worked; not, as many have thought, simply as a fighter in one of the transient conflicts which from time to time divide the Church. . . . Already it seems as if the fervour of old differences were passing away, and as if men were turning from the narrow disputes in which many years ago they were engaged, in order to prepare themselves for that great struggle which is coming upon us--the struggle with the spirit of general unbelief. It is with the efforts which he made, with the instruments which he furnished for combating this danger, that, in my belief, the name of Dr. Pusey will be ultimately bound up.'

To the clear-sighted and statesmanlike discernment of these words, it is only necessary to add that they express what was throughout Pusey' s view of his own work. To the defence of the Christian Faith he had solemnly devoted himself in his early days at Gottingen, when he first realized to what an extent  'the spirit of general unbelief'  had in Germany shattered loyalty to Jesus Christ. In England he saw that, as apologists for the Creed of the Catholic Church, there was little to choose between the Evangelical School of Cambridge and the Broad Church School of Arnold. Both of these schools had a zeal for holiness; but they were both in danger of disparaging, and even seemed ready to surrender some vital portions of that  'deposit of faith'  which was the heritage and the strength of Christendom. The Tractarians--and Pusey was a Tractarian till the day of his death--were convinced that Christian Apology could only be successful in the hands of those who held the whole of the Faith once delivered to the Saints. They maintained that the Creeds, the Sacra–ments, and the Apostolical Succession are not unessential outworks of the Church; they are parts of a unity which has logically been surrendered when one portion has been abandoned. With this clear conviction, Pusey spent his life first in reasserting the Truths which were in danger of being overlooked, then in proving that the Church of England had ever taught those Truths and in straining every nerve to prevent their forfeiture, and afterwards in showing how the Faith thus recovered in its completeness was able to impart new spiritual energy to the English church, and in its strength to welcome without fear all those discoveries of Science which were thought by others to contradict it. When his share of this great work was finished, very much still remained to be done. But under God he had laid the foundation, and now others in grateful remembrance may build upon it. He could well have chosen for himself the motto selected for his Memorial in Oxford, Deus Scientiarum Dominus: and he would have always gone on to add the motto of the University which he loved so truly, Dominus illuminatio mea.

 

 

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