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Memoirs of James Robert Hope Scott, Volume 2

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Scotland is blessed in giving a resting-place to one of her noblest sons;
and this religious community is doubly blessed in providing the holy spot
where his body shall repose. I need not enter into all the particulars of
his life. Those which I should naturally think of to-day are sufficiently
known to you all. But if I do not enter into any details, it is not that
they are without a very strong interest. They might well be recorded as the
history of a great and noble character, as an example to the young men of
our own day, and as possessing, from his family connections, more than
ordinary value for every one. But I must speak of his character in general,
and single out those points which I consider deserving of especial praise.
We must praise the dear deceased. It is our duty to do so. What are our
desires now? What is our great wish?

That God may have mercy on his soul. God will hear us when we appeal to Him
by the good works which His servant has done. We should all praise him,
that we may be so many witnesses before God of the things which we know
must entitle him to mercy from his Father who is in heaven.

When I first heard that he was dead--especially when I was asked to speak
about him--I began to think of his character in a more careful manner than
I had ever done before. Besides my own thoughts about him, I have heard
what they say of him who were most closely allied to him. I have listened
to those who, though not related to him, were his most intimate friends and
acquaintance. I know what is thought of him by those who knew him well. I
have seen letters written since his death from many different persons; from
those who knew him in early days, those who knew him in middle life, and
again, those who knew him in later days. I have read letters from some who
knew him during the whole of his and their lives. There is a unanimity in
the thoughts of all about him which is most striking. The thoughts and
words of every one seem to form one beautiful melody, one harmonious song.
They all testify to the same great intellectual qualities, the same
goodness of heart, the same excellence of demeanour. They speak of him as
being one who was more fit for the foremost places in the State than some
who have actually attained them. They speak of him in such terms as these,
'the loveable,' 'the amiable, 'the beautiful.' Besides having talents of
the highest order, the dear deceased possessed a nature peculiarly
susceptible of good impressions. And he seems to have opened his whole
heart to receive the dew of heaven; and the grace of God produced a
hundredfold in his soul. To have known a man such as he was, who possessed
such power of mind combined with such high attainments, such soundness of
principle with such rectitude in practice, such independence of thought,
and such submission to conscience and lawful authority; to have known him--
to have been, I may say, on terms of friendship and intimacy with him--will
be amongst the most pleasing and the saddest recollections of my life. I
have said his submission to conscience. It seems almost like presumption in
me, standing as I do in the midst of those who knew him so much better than
myself, to single out any one distinguishing characteristic; but it always
struck me that a great conscientiousness was that which showed itself the
most, and shone most brilliantly to those who had the happiness of knowing
him. The voice of conscience seemed to have a magic effect upon him. The
call was no sooner heard than it was obeyed, and without any apparent
hesitation of the will. It was this delicacy of conscience, and his good-
will to act upon it, combined with his most perfect demeanour, which gave
him that authority over others which was so beautifully spoken of by his
venerable friend on Monday last, when I and many of you, my dear brethren,
had the happiness of being present. For it was this conscientiousness which
purified, consolidated, and gave direction to all the great qualities of
his soul. To this influence which he had over others I am myself a willing
witness. I felt the force of it myself. And in saying this, my dear
brethren, I speak most sincerely what I believe to be true. I should deem
it an irreverence on an occasion like this to say a word which I did not
believe. Though by no means a young man myself when I first had the
happiness of making acquaintance with the dear deceased, during the few
years that I knew him he exercised an influence over me, for the effects of
which I now thank God, and hope that I shall thank Him for all eternity.

It was, my dear brethren, to this great gift of conscientiousness, aided by
the grace of God, that he who has left us owed the greatest blessing of his
life--his submission to the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The
obstacles which stood in the way of his entering the Church must have been
great. The old French saying does not stand good when one who is not a
Catholic is thinking of entering the Church. It is not the first step
towards the Church which, in this country at least, costs the sacrifice.
The first step costs little; it most frequently costs nothing. It is
generally a pleasant step to take. Many have taken that step; but few have
persevered in their onward march. The step which costs the sacrifice is
that which crosses the threshold when the door has been arrived at. For on
one side stands that powerful tempter, human respect, whose baneful
influence has sent back hundreds, perhaps thousands, into the dreary waste.
On the other side stands ambition, with noble and captivating mien. I need
not speculate here as to what ambition may say to others; but I will
imagine what ambition may have said to our departed friend. It may have
addressed him in some such words as these: 'You are conscious, innocently
conscious, of possessing great talents. You cannot have associated as you
have done with men of great intellect, with the first men of the day,
without having in some degree measured yourself with them, without knowing
something of your own great power. You are, perhaps, desirous yourself of
advancing in the highest paths. You may have a praiseworthy ambition of
using the gifts you have received for the good of others, and to make a
return to God for all that He has bestowed upon you. You cannot but know
that, from your family connections, and the position you hold in society,
you have as fine an opening as was ever presented to a young man. Enter the
Catholic Church, and all such knowledge will be useless; all such thoughts
may be cast aside.' There is no use, my dear brethren, in blinding
ourselves to the truth in this matter. We know it, and it is well that we
should recognise it. In this country, which boasts so much of its religious
liberty, the influence--the persecution I must call it--of public opinion
is such, that when a man enters the Church, he deprives himself of all
chance of progress in the high walks of life. It may be said that in the
line in which he had hitherto walked, he succeeded as well after he entered
the Church as he had done before. It is true that he reached the highest
point of eminence as an advocate, and his religion was no obstacle in the
way; but if it was so, it was because it was the interest of suitors to
make use of his power. But if he ever entertained any idea of attaining to
the highest offices in the State--and he may well have done so--the fact of
his having entered the Catholic Church would, in all probability, have
proved a bar to his advance. He resisted the tempters; he despised human
respect, and he thrust aside ambition. Having walked up to the open door of
the Church, he did what conscience told him he ought to do, and passing the
threshold, he went in. My dear brethren, there can be no doubt that the
life which he led before this time had prepared him for the step which he
took. He had a great devotion to the will of God. His favourite prayer was
those well-known words: 'May the most just, the most high, and the most
amiable will of God be done, praised, and eternally exalted in all things!'
And though before he became a Catholic his thoughts may not have been put
into that particular formula, yet no doubt the substance of those words had
been his prayer through life. As the will of God had been his guiding star,
so, and as a consequence, he always had a great love for Jesus Christ our
Redeemer. I cannot, indeed, state this as a positive fact on my own
personal knowledge, but it could not have been otherwise; and you, my dear
brethren, who knew him so much better than I did, will, I think, agree with
me in this respect. When he became a Catholic, Jesus Christ was the object
of his continually increasing love. By the means which God provided for him
in the Church, his faith in his Redeemer, his hope in his Redeemer, and his
love for his Redeemer, grew stronger, and went on increasing to his dying
day. [Footnote: The last words which he heard on earth whilst the crucifix
was pressed to his lips, and they were spoken by those lips which here he
loved the most, were these: 'You know that you have loved Jesus all your
life.'] As he loved Jesus all his life, pray, my dear brethren, that his
merciful Lord may show mercy to him now.

Some amongst you, my dear brethren, have already heard from the lips of one
as much my superior as the subject of my discourse was, that a
distinguishing feature of the departed was the intensity of his domestic
affection. And the venerable preacher observed that the great trial of him
who has left us was to receive a succession of terrible wounds in the
tenderest part of his noble nature. You will remember his words. He said
that God had repeatedly struck him; that He had stabbed him. It was so,
indeed; and yet, my dear brethren, at the same time that a merciful God so
severely tried His servant, it was through those same domestic affections
that He gave to him the greatest comfort, next to a good conscience, that a
man can have on his death-bed. For to him who had always been so kind and
gentle with others, and anticipated all their wants, was given during the
many long months of his illness all that help and comfort which the most
tender, filial, and sisterly love could give. As God blessed him in making
him the object of such strong and persevering affection, so He has blessed
those also who were the willing instruments of His mercy.

Pray, my dear brethren, that he may rest in peace. We all owe a great deal
to him, more than we can ever repay during life. Generosity was a
remarkable feature in the dear deceased. His generosity was of a noble
kind. It was not confined to generosity with his worldly means. He was
generous in his sympathies. He sympathised with all who had any relations
with him. No one was ever with him who did not feel this. He was generous
with his worldly means; he was generous with his counsel and advice. He was
ready and willing to help any one in any way he could. I feel that I owe
him much myself. I have already alluded to the obligations which I am under
to him. And who is there amongst you, my dear brethren, who does not, in
some respect, owe him much? As he was generous to others, let us be
generous to him. Let us pray, and continually pray, to God for him. If any
of you may be inclined to relax in your prayers for his soul, because you
think that his good works were such that we have reason to hope that he is
even now enjoying the sight of God, I do not quarrel with you for so
thinking--I may think so myself; but still I urge you to pray. Pray as if
you thought it were not so. Do not let your hope lessen the effect of your
love. Pray for him as you would wish him and others to pray for you if you
were dead.

And here, my dear brethren, I might finish my discourse. But who is there
who knew the dear departed, who does not feel an irresistible impulse to
turn from the dead to the living? This influence may have been felt on
other occasions by others. For my part, I have never so deeply felt how
impossible it is to separate the one who has gone from those whom he has
left behind. Pray for the father; and pray also for the children. Pray for
those whose future must be a matter of interest to you all. And you may
pray with a firm hope of being heard. For it would seem that there is a
special providence over them, for already those children have found a home
--homes, I may say--which a guardian angel might have chosen for them. Pray
that God would ratify and confirm all those blessings which that fond
parent had bestowed upon his own, especially those blessings which, with
increased earnestness, he must have desired when he saw that, at a critical
moment in life, the hand which had guided was to make sign no more. Pray,
my dear brethren, that those two honoured names which he bore, and which
for so many years have been allied to all that is best and of sterling
worth, to all that is great and noble, may long continue the ornament and
the pride of Scotland. Once more, let me turn from the living to the dead;
and I will conclude with the prayer of the Church--'Eternal rest give to
him, O Lord; and may a perpetual light shine upon him! May he rest in
peace!'

APPENDIX III.

_The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., to Miss Hope-Scott [now the Hon.
Mrs. Maxwell Scott_].

Hawarden: Sept. 13, 1873.

My Dear Miss Hope-Scott,--I found awaiting me, through your kindness, on my
return from Scotland, Dr. Newman's Address on your much-loved father's
death. I need not say that one of my first acts was to read it. It does not
discourage me from attempting to put on paper my recollections of him, as
my free intervals of time may permit. It is well that a character of such
extraordinary grace as his should have been portrayed by one who could
scarcely, I think, even if he tried, compose a sentence that would not be
'a thing of beauty.' His means and materials for undertaking that labour of
love were as superior to mine as his power of performing it. I will only
say that I countersign, with full assent, to the best of my knowledge, the
several traits which Dr. Newman has given. He must have much more to say. I
shall at once lay before you all my little store of knowledge, in addition
to that worthier tribute of your father's own letters, to which you are not
less welcome. Lights upon his mental history my memory may, I hope, serve
here and there to throw; but those will be principally for the period
antecedent to what he himself described as 'the great change of his life.'

Few men, perhaps, have had a wider contact with their generation, or a more
varied experience of personal friendships, than myself. Among the large
numbers of estimable and remarkable people whom I have known, and who have
now passed away, there is in my memory an inner circle, and within it are
the forms of those who were marked off from the comparative crowd even of
the estimable and the remarkable by the peculiarity and privilege of their
type. Of these very few, some four or five I think only, your father was
one: and with regard to them it always seemed to me as if the type in each
case was that of the individual exclusively, and as if there could be but
one such person in our world at a time. After the early death of Arthur
Hallam, I used to regard your father distinctly as at the head of all his
contemporaries in the brightness and beauty of his gifts.

We were at Eton at the same time, but he was considerably my junior, so
that we were not in the way of being drawn together. At Christ Church we
were again contemporaries, but acquaintances only, scarcely friends. I find
he did not belong to the 'Oxford Essay Club,' in which I took an active
part, and which included not only several of his friends, but one with
whom, unless my memory deceives me, he was most intimate--I mean Mr.
Leader. And yet I have to record our partnership on two occasions in a
proceeding which in Oxford was at that time, and perhaps would have been at
any time, singular enough. At the hazard of severe notice, and perhaps
punishment, we went together to the Baptist chapel of the place, once to
hear Dr. Chalmers, and the other time to hear Mr. Rowland Hill. I had
myself been brought up in what may be termed an atmosphere of Low Church;
and, though I cannot positively say why, I believe this to have been the
case with him; and questions of communion or conformity at that date
presented themselves to us not unnaturally as questions of academic
discipline, so that we did not, I imagine, enter upon any inquiry whether
we in any degree compromised our religious position by the act, or by any
intention with which it was done.

After Oxford (which I quitted in December 1831) the next occasion on which
I remember to have seen him was in his sitting-room at Chelsea Hospital.
There must, however, have been some shortly preceding contact, or I should
not have gone there to visit him. I found him among folios and books of
grave appearance. It must have been about the year 1836. He opened a
conversation on the controversies which were then agitated in the Church of
England, and which had Oxford for their centre. I do not think I had paid
them much attention; but I was an ardent student of Dante, and likewise of
Saint Augustine; both of them had acted powerfully upon my mind; and this
was in truth the best preparation I had for anything like mental communion
with a person of his elevation. He then told me that he had been seriously
studying the controversy, and that in his opinion the Oxford authors were
right. He spoke not only with seriousness, but with solemnity, as if this
was for him a great epoch; not merely the adoption of a speculative
opinion, but the reception of a profound and powerful religious impulse.
Very strongly do I feel the force of Dr. Newman's statements as to the
religious character of his mind. It is difficult in retrospect to conceive
of this, except as growing up with him from infancy. But it appeared to me
as if at this period, in some very special manner, his attention had been
seized, his intellect exercised and enlarged in a new field; and as if the
idea of the Church of Christ had then once for all dawned upon him as the
power which, under whatever form, was from thenceforward to be the central
object of his affections, in subordination only to Christ Himself, and as
His continuing representative.

From that time I only knew of his career as one of unwearied religious
activity, pursued with an entire abnegation of self, with a deep
enthusiasm, under a calm exterior, and with a grace and gentleness of
manner, which, joined to the force of his inward motives, made him, I
think, without doubt the most winning person of his day. It was for about
fifteen years, from that time onwards, that he and I lived in close, though
latterly rarer intercourse. Yet this was due, on my side, not to any
faculty of attraction, but to the circumstance that my seat in Parliament,
and my rather close attention to business, put me in the way of dealing
with many questions relating to the Church and the universities and
colleges, on which he desired freely to expand his energies and his time.

I will here insert two notices which illustrate the opposite sides of his
character. It was in or about 1837 that I came to know well his sister-in-
law, Lady F. Hope, then already a widow. I remember very clearly her
speaking to me about the manner in which he had ministered to her sorrow.
It was not merely kindness, or merely assiduity, or any particular act of
which she spoke. She seemed to speak of him as endowed with some special
gift, as if he had, like one of old, been 'surnamed Barnabas, which is,
being interpreted, the Son of Consolation.'

I now pass to the other pole of his mind, his relish for all fun, humour,
and originality of character. In one of his tranquil years he told me with
immense amusement an anecdote he had brought from Oxford. He was in company
with two men, Mr. Palmer, commonly called Deacon Palmer, and Arthur
Kinnaird, of whom the one was not more certain to supply the material of
paradox, than the other to draw it out. The deacon had been enlarging in
lofty strain on the power and position of the clergy. 'Then I suppose,'
said Kinnaird, 'you would hold that the most depraved and irreligious
priest has a much higher standing in the sight of God than any layman?' 'Of
course,' was the immediate reply. [Footnote: Of course, Mr. Palmer, who was
clear-headed, knew what he was saying, and meant that, in comparing an
irreligious priest with a religious layman, the priest, _as such_,
belongs to a higher spiritual order than the layman _as such_, just as
it is a mere truism to say that a fallen angel, as regards his degree in
the order of creation, is superior to a saint.--ED.]

His correspondence with me, beginning in February 1837, truly exhibits the
character of our friendship, as one founded in common interests, of a kind
that gradually commanded more and more of the public attention, but that
with him were absolutely paramount. The moving power was principally on his
side. The main subjects on which it turned, and which also formed the basis
of our general intercourse, were as follows: First, a missionary
organisation for the province of Upper Canada. Then the question of the
Relations of Church and State, forced into prominence at that time by a
variety of causes, and among them not least by a series of lectures, which
Dr. Chalmers delivered in the Hanover Square Rooms, to distinguished
audiences, with a profuse eloquence, and with a noble and almost
irresistible fervour. Those lectures drove me upon the hazardous enterprise
of handling the same subject upon what I thought a sounder basis. Your
father warmly entered into this design; and bestowed upon a careful and
prolonged examination of this work in MS., and upon a searching yet most
tender criticism of its details, an amount of thought and labour which it
would, I am persuaded, have been intolerable to any man to supply, except
for one for whom each and every day as it arose was a new and an entire
sacrifice to duty. As in the year 1838, when the manuscript was ready, I
had to go abroad on account mainly of some overstrain upon the eyes, he
undertook the whole labour of carrying the work through the press; and he
even commended me, as you will see from the letters, because I did not show
an ungovernable impatience of his aid. [Footnote: J. R. Hope to Mr.
Gladstone, August 29, 1838, in ch. ix. vol. i. p. 164.]

The general frame of his mind at this time, in October 1838, will be pretty
clearly gathered from a letter of that month, No. 24 in the series, written
when he had completed that portion of his labours. [Footnote: Ibid.,
October 11, 1838, ch. ix. vol. i. p. 165.] He had full, unbroken faith in
the Church of England, as a true portion of the Catholic Church; to her he
had vowed the service of his life; all his desire was to uphold the
framework of her institutions, and to renovate their vitality. He pushed
her claims, you may find from the letters, further than I did; but the
difference of opinion between us was not such as to prevent our cordial co-
operation then and for years afterwards; though in using such a term I seem
to myself guilty of conceit and irreverence to the dead, for I well know
that he served her from an immeasurably higher level.

If I have not yet referred to his main occupation, it is because I desire
to speak specially of what I know specially. It was, however, without
doubt, in his Fellowship at Merton that he found at this period the
peculiar work of his life. A wonderful combination of fertility with
solidity always struck me as one of his most marked mental characteristics.
Only by that facility could he have accumulated and digested the learning
which he acquired in relation to Church, and especially to College History
and College Law. In mastering these systems how deeply he had drunk of the
essential spirit of the times which built them up, may be seen from a very
striking letter (No. 9) respecting Walter de Merton. [Footnote: J. R. Hope
to Mr. Gladstone, dated 'Rochester: Sunday, July 29, 1838,' in ch. viii.
vol. i. p. 147.] He gave the world some idea of the extent and fruitfulness
of these labours in connection with the next subject on which we had much
communication together, the subject of what was termed in 1840 Cathedral
Reform. My part was superficial, and was performed in the House of Commons.
His was of a very different character.

As a hearer, and a rapt hearer, I can say that Dr. Newman (p. 10) has not
exaggerated the description of the speech which he delivered, as counsel
for the Chapters (I think) before the House of Lords in 1840.[Footnote: See
ch. xi. vol. i. p. 198.] I need not say that, during the last forty years,
I have heard many speeches, and many, too, in which I had reason to take
interest, and yet never one which, by its solid as well as by its winning
qualities, more powerfully impressed me. At this period he had (I think
never or) rarely spoken in public, and he had not touched thirty years of
age.

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