MAGAZINE.

THE crowd which gathered round the open grave in the Abbey on April the second was not nearly so large as that which attended the funeral of Dr. Trench's successor, Arthur Stanley, on the twenty-fifth of July, 1881. Yet the pathos was felt probably by all who were present on both occasions to be at least as deep and strong. Stanley had been dean for seventeen years, and died in the midst of his work, walking feebly from the Abbey pulpit into his house, and lying down straightway upon the bed from which he did not rise again. Trench was dean not half so long, and then left England for twenty years. Except by his readers, and by those who took interest in watching the affairs of the Irish Church, he was almost forgotten. He was a far deeper theologian than Stanley, and a more exact scholar; but he was shy and retiring, instead of eager for the fray of religious controversy, and he was forced against his I will to be one of the leaders of a forlorn hope. And yet, when the history of the Church of the nineteenth century comes to be written, his monument will find a high place as that of a brave, noble, deeply-revered man. We felt that no happier choice of a hymn could have been made than that which was sung at the end of the funeral service

"Now the labourer's task is o'er; Now the battle day is past." No. 319.-vOL. LIV.

Instead of reviewing the history of his long life, I purpose, in the present short tribute to his memory, to set down a few reminiscences of a comparatively small portion of it. I came to know him personally about twoand-thirty years ago, and the love and honour with which he at once inspired me have caused me to read his writings and to watch his doings with interest ever since. And first I will say that he was the best teacher I ever knew. He was Professor of New Testament Exegesis in King's College, London, and no one who heard a single lecture of his will ever forget it-the sight of his large, heavy form and massive head, or the tones of his earnest, solemn voice. Those who only heard him as a preacher will hardly form a satisfactory judgment. A sentence or two quietly uttered, then-as the speaker grew eager and impressed with the mighty importance of his theme-words hurried into one great indistinct utterance, the sound of which could be heard in the largest buildings, but the words themselves not twenty yards from him; such was Archbishop Trench as a preacher. But at the lecturer's desk it was as different as could be. First, he was felt to be in the closest sympathy with his pupils, as eager to teach them as they were to be taught. He used carefully to make up each sentence and say it to himself silently with his lips-I

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have watched him often-before uttering it. Consequently you were never at a loss as to what he meant, nor obliged to put it into shape; he had done that for you. Nothing remained for you but to take his idea exactly as he presented it and put it down in the note-book. When the lecture was over you felt that you had got a large addition to your store of Biblical knowledge. A remarkable proof of this is furnished to me in the fact that I find in my note-books, almost word for word, whole passages which appear in his 'Studies of the New Testament,' published after he had retired from the college.

And the material itself? In the first place, Trench was deeply read in the Fathers; probably he knew Augustine better than any man of his time. We therefore got much of him, and also of Chrysostom. But he was also thoroughly imbued with German theology, a taste he probably got from Julius Hare. Clark's Foreign Theological Library has now made such writers as Olshausen familiar to English readers. Not until the English translations of that writer and of Bengel were published was it seen how Trench had drawn from those authors, reconstructing the ideas and throwing all sorts of side lights upon them from patristic sources.

There were, however, two men who, beyond all others, influenced Trench's mind. One saw signs of it in his manner and voice, as well as in his writings. They were Maurice and Samuel Wilberforce. With the former he was intimate in his undergraduate days; he was ordained as curate to the latter. The two mentors were indeed in those days thoroughly in accord, though they differed widely enough on some points afterwards. Wilberforce's early sermons were greatly inspired by Maurice's Kingdom of Christ,' and he was frequently a listener at Lincoln's Inn Chapel on Sunday afternoons in Maurice's last days. No wonder, therefore, that the influence of the latter remained strong upon Trench,

who became his colleague at King's College, and accepted his invitation to join him when he founded Queen's College in Harley Street. Presently came the divergence between the two chiefs. Maurice, repelled in the first instance by Dr. Pusey's tract on baptism, fell back from the High Church movement, while Wilberforce, led on by his two brothers and by others, advanced to the post of chief of the party. At one time he was almost omnipotent in the House of Bishops; even those who differed from him, like the two Sumners and Thirlwall, yielded themselves to his marvellous influence. It was Tait who, entering the Upper House of Convocation in an apparently hopeless minority, gradually broke the spell and became far more powerful. Trench had become Wilberforce's examining chaplain when the latter was made Bishop of Oxford, and as he naturally remained in intimate and affectionate friendship with him, the tie with Maurice was of necessity somewhat loosened. Yet it is remarkable how strongly the old influence revived. To take only one instance-in Trench's 'Westminster Abbey Sermons,'

preached at a time when controversy was running high concerning the doctrine of the Atonement, the sermon on the Lamb of God follows closely the line taken in Maurice's

Theological Essays,' in setting aside the notion of the penal character of Christ's sufferings, and placing all the satisfaction in the loving obedience and self-sacrifice.

We may say here that Trench's influence reacted on Bishop Wilberforce. The Bishop, in his most High Church days, never cast away his Lutheran views of Justification; the Protestantism of Trench was powerful, because founded on the deepest conviction, and he always made it felt.

As a preacher, we have said, he was not great. He was defective for the reason stated. But as a writer of sermons he stands probably in the front rank. It is not easy to judge of a man's published works when one