Born at North Stoneham, Hampshire, 20th August, 1829, the son of a naval captain, at seventeen went up from King’s College School, London, to Christ Church, Oxford, where in 1850 he graduated B.A. Ordained in 1852 as senior student of Christ Church, from 1854 to 1859 he was vice-principal of Cuddesdon Theological College, and in 1864 became a prebendary of Salisbury, in 1870 a canon of St. Paul’s, and Ireland professor of Exegesis at Oxford (till 1882). In 1866 he delivered his Bampton Lectures on the “Divinity of our Lord” (1867; 13th ed. 1889). He strongly opposed the Church Discipline Act of 1874, and as warmly supported Mr. Gladstone’s crusade against the Bulgarian atrocities in 1876. In 1886 he declined the bishopric of Edinburgh, and in 1887 visited the Holy Land. Canon Liddon was the most able and eloquent exponent of Liberal High Church principles. He died suddenly at Weston-super-Mare, 9th Sept. 1890. An “Analysis of the Epistle to the Romans” was published in 1893; his “Life of Pusey” was edited by Johnston and Wilson.

Personal

  The greatest preacher by far, and perhaps the greatest genius (though he retired a good deal from action), in the English Church is taken from us. You knew him much better than I did, but I have known him well since 1846, and almost from the first anticipated his greatness.

  As a preacher, his influence has been unique in our time—more powerful, as I believe, even than that of the present Bishop of Peterborough or the late Bishop Wilberforce, notwithstanding the close logic of the former and the persuasive rhetoric of the latter; for Liddon combined the two. Profound and ever-increasing stores of learning, careful study and preparation, great power of language, a clear, distinct intonation, and withal that great force which earnest personal conviction brings with it (the ἠθίκη πίστις of Aristotle) these seem to me to have been some of the elements of his strength. It has been said that his style was formed upon French rather than English models…. Of his charm in private life, of the value of his personal friendship, of the brilliancy of his conversation, of his quiet humour and power of sarcasm—ever kept within due bounds—of these things I do not trust myself to speak. Much that I might say seems too private and too sacred for these pages. It is rather of his public life and his work for the Church that I write.

  I never heard Liddon preach. But I have walked with him many hours and miles. And when Liddon got deeply interested in what he was saying, and stopped, gazed intently on you, and talked in touching tones, accompanied with a graceful little movement of both hands, you had no difficulty in making out the great preacher of great St. Paul’s.

  The personal factor, by which the claim of St. Paul’s to become once more a wide spiritual home for London could make itself heard and felt over the hearts of large multitudes, was to be found in the preaching of Dr. Liddon. That voice reached far and wide. It fixed the attention of the whole city on what was going forward in its midst. It kindled the imagination, so that the big world outside was prepared for great things. It compelled men to treat seriously what was done. No one could suppose that the changes in the services and ritual of St. Paul’s were superficial or formal or of small account, so long as that voice rang on, like a trumpet, telling of righteousness and temperance and judgment, preaching ever and always, with personal passion of belief, Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

  A twofold memorial will keep his fame before the minds of future generations. First the beautiful monument in the great Cathedral, and next the scholarships at Oxford, founded in his name, for the training of candidates for Holy Orders in the careful and scientific study of theology. But his character and life will never be forgotten so long as English Churchmen gratefully recall the debt they owe to him in the noble band of Oxford theologians and preachers. Single-hearted, perfectly free from all vulgar craving for honour or preferment, courageous in proclaiming truth, the friend of the oppressed, generous in giving almost to lavishness, considerate and tender to lowly men and women, his example as well as his splendid gifts will be for ever linked with the great revival of the Church of England in which he played so noble a part.

General

  In all Liddon’s discourses we can mark an apologetical aim, but his method is best seen in the volume called “University Sermons,” originally published under the title “Some Words for God,” and in the “Elements of Religion,” a course of lectures delivered during Lent, 1870, in St. James’s Church, Piccadilly. These discourses show that he possesses, in a high degree, many of the qualities needed in a modern apologist of Christianity. No apologist in our time, writing from the strict Church standpoint, has done his special work so well. He may be compared without disadvantage with Lacordaire, whom, indeed, he greatly excels in learning and range of thought.

  His intellect, as such, would never stir. You could anticipate, exactly, the position from which he would start. It never varied. He had won clear hold on the dogmatic expressions by which the Church of the Councils secured the Catholic belief in the Incarnation; and there he stood with unalterable tenacity. Abstract ideas did not appeal to him: for philosophy he had no liking, though, naturally, he could not fail in handling it to show himself a man of cultivated ability. But it did not affect him at all: he never felt drawn to get inside it. He did not work in that region. His mental tone was intensely practical; it was Latin, it was French, in sympathy and type. For Teutonic speculation he had a most amusing repugnance. Its misty magniloquence, its grotesque bulk, its immense clumsiness, its laborious pedantry, which its best friends admit, brought out everything in him that was alert, rapid, compact, practical, effective, humorous. There was nothing against which his entire armoury came into more vivid play—his brilliant readiness, his penetrating irony, his quick sense of proportion, his admirable and scholarly restraint, his delicate grace, his fastidious felicity of utterance…. He had the double gift of the preacher. He impressed, he overawed, he mastered, by the sense of unshaken solidity which his mental characteristics assured to him. Men felt the force of a position which was as a rock amid the surging seas. Here was the fixity, the security, the eternal reassurance most needed by those who wondered sadly whether the sands under their feet were shifty or no. And yet, at the service of this unmoving creed was a brain, a heart, alive with infinite motion, abounding in rich variety, fertile, resourceful, quickening, expansive, vital. And, if we add to this a strong will, possessed of unswerving courage, and utterly fearless of the world, we shall see that there was in him all the elements that constitute a great Director of Souls.