74 CHAPTER VII. The Head Master. "Unskilful he to fawn or seek for power, By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour." IT is time that the reader should become better acquainted with the Head Master of Athelling. He was indeed a man of no ordinary mind and heart, and although a true schoolmaster, yet not less a Gospel Priest. Partly of the old and partly of the new generation, the past and the present most happily met in him, uniting their excellences and losing their peculiar faults, so that he was as well able to feel with the young, as he was to discern their faults and the dangers with which the times beset them. Brought up as a strict Churchman and high Tory, Dr. Wilson had pushed his historical and theological studies too far, and observed men and manners too closely, not to feel that there was great need for change in almost every thing around him. There was a rust upon the bright things of religion and humanity such as the world had not seen since the times which immediately preceded the Reformation. All things had changed silently, and the Church, which should have been the guide and rule, had adapted herself rather to the spirit and the practice which she ought to have resisted, than to the real though unperceived necessities of the nation. All things had by partial disuse, or long familiarity, or selfish perversion, become dull and powerless. Names had taken the place of things. Forms which should have manifested, obscured their realities. The Church was no longer the Church of the people. The endowments of schools and charities were to a great extent useless. The Government was loaded with anomalous abuses. Literature was shallow and ran along old channels, attempting no more than to repolish the stones which lay upon their banks. True it is that there were some fresh springs gushing up around this "ungrateful stream,' and of these the Doctor had drunk, although sparingly and cautiously. The craving for reform, where reform was needed; the investigating spirit which animated the historical researches of Germany, and that zealous abhorrence of formularies, always professed and often deeply felt, both by Evangelical and by Liberal theologians; all touched upon so many chords of Wilson's heart. He respected all these schools, because he saw good in them. He feared them, because he saw their principles despised and oppressed by their opponents, perverted, overturned, and mixed up with evil by those who held them. He saw no hope for literature without a free spirit acting in its truest freedom under faith ; no hope for government, unless it came forward freely to grant a remedy of abuses and an adaptation of itself to the changed state of affairs, yet firmly determined to resist the restlessness, insubordination, and power-seeking of spurious liberality: no hope either for the Church, unless she would acknowledge past deficiencies, offer to reform herself, promise to make her Chapters spiritual bodies, her churches altars of continual praise, her Sacraments and means of grace the constant food of her faithful children; presenting herself as a living being, more real, practical, earnest, heavenly, than any society, scheme, or imagination which had ever been presented to the minds of the dissatisfied. It is not to be supposed that Dr. Wilson's theology was at first all which it became in after years. He was disposed to feel, like most other earnest men, the influence of events and the teaching of an aroused Church. At the time, however, of which we are speaking, he had almost taught himself. There were then few, and those few unknown to each other, who were gathering the truth alike out of the past and out of the present. Dr. Wilson had as yet scarcely done this as fully as at a later period. He had not arrived at that peace of sureness and that harmony of doctrine, which were subsequently his wellearned possession, when the storms thickened, and all the fears which he has been described as entertaining, seemed suddenly approaching their fulfilment. The death of George IV. and the accession of William brought matters to a crisis; and they only who knew the perils of the few years which immediately preceded and followed that in which the Reform Bill was passed, will be able to feel the justice of that alarm which was entertained by the bravest hearts, lest our Constitution and the temporal framework of our Church, followed perhaps by the greater portion of the spiritual structure itself, should fall to the ground, and bury the happiness and character of our land for ages. That such a calamity was turned aside for the time, must be ascribed altogether to the gracious long-suffering of GOD, and, under His blessing, very much also to those great and unknown benefits which our Church and State had conferred unconsciously upon their people. In those days the timid and worldly flocked thankfully around the brave and good. Their other differences were forgotten. The Evangelical school and the old High Churchmen were seen fighting side by side, and both were glad enough of champions whom but shortly before the first had considered the promoters of semi-popish formalism, the second mere dreamers and unwise disturbers of their pleasant slumbers. Among such champions was Dr. Wilson, and as it happened, he came to Athelling during the very crisis of alarm. As soon as it was known what manner of man he was, Clergy and gentry welcomed his arrival, and it was in no small degree from his influence and guidance, that the old Tories, the frightened Whigs, Evangelicals, High Churchmen, and men of all schools, were brought to act together for the support of their Church and country. So far, so well; and even at the time of Godfrey's first arrival at Athelling, Dr. Wilson was |