8 April: Boreham on William Law

The High Art of Living
Many minds will turn gratefully tomorrow to the thought of William Law, the anniversary of whose death it will be. William Law was a good man who developed an extraordinary genius for making other great men good. Here, for example, on a soft autumn day in 1759, two men are lunching together in the hospitable old dining room of the Bull Inn at Putney, enjoying everything but each other's society. They are, indeed, an ill assorted pair. The one is a grave old clergyman; the other, a young fellow of 22, is an obvious dandy. The one is the essence of simplicity; the other is the essence of affectation. Yet both deserve a close and careful scrutiny, for the old gentleman has written a book that has stirred the sluggish conscience of the 18th century to its very depths. Whilst his companion, in spite of the gay kerchief that he so ostentatiously flutters and in spite of the golden snuffbox that he so frequently taps, is destined to become the most renowned historian of all time. For the old clergyman is William Law, the author of one of the greatest religious classics ever written, whilst the foppish young fellow who shares his table is Edward Gibbon, who has the romance of twenty centuries tucked away among the convolutions of his brain.

Mr. Law, a thick-set, heavily built man, rather above the middle height, is in his 74th year. Although he has, all his life, practised the habits of a student, and for many years cultivated the soul of an ascetic, he has the face of a farmer, jolly and round, with florid cheeks and grey eyes of unusual brightness. His sturdy figure is inclined to rotundity: his speech is simple but animated: his voice, though soft, easily becomes excited: his whole appearance conveys a subtle impression of immense strength and unfailing kindliness. By what strange freak of circumstance do these two men, having so little in common, chance to be eating together in this quaint old tavern.

Early Impressions Deepen With The Years
They are not strangers. Forty years earlier, Gibbon's grandfather engaged Mr. Law, then in his thirties, as private tutor to his son, the father of the future historian. It is difficult to say which was the better pleased, the old man at having secured the scholarly young clergyman's services, or the ambitious youth at having obtained so congenial an appointment. In that charming home at Putney, the young minister quickly won his way into the affections of the entire household. He was treated as a member of the family, and an honoured member at that. There, in the Gibbon home, he spent some of the happiest years of his life; there he received his guests as freely and entertained them as bountifully as if the stately residence had been actually his own; and there he wrote the book that has made his name immortal. About the time of Edward Gibbon's birth, the grandfather died and the home was broken up. But to the very end of Mr. Law's long and useful life all the members of the Gibbon family kept in closest touch with him.

Gibbon himself was no exception. Although by temperament and training he was unfitted to appreciate the choicest qualities in the character of the devout old man, he made no secret of the profound respect and growing admiration in which he held him. He could not understand Mr. Law's religious views, regarded many of them, indeed, as arrant nonsense, yet, as long as he lived, he spoke with deep emotion of the old clergyman's unwavering integrity and downright goodness of heart. "In our family," Gibbon tells us in his Memoirs, "William Law left the reputation of a worthy and pious man who really believed all that he professed and actually practised all that he enjoined." And he was often heard to say that the beautiful character of William Law had done more to make the tenets of Christianity credible to him than all the volumes of polemics and apologetics over which it had been his duty to pore. So here they are, this apparently incongruous and ill-matched pair. They stand in striking contrast with each other: there seem to be no standards by which we can compare them: and yet, in his "Res Judicatae," the Right Hon. Augustine Birrell has essayed the difficult task.

Pair Of Masterpieces In Differing Realms
Birrell speaks of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" as a most splendid achievement of learning and industry, a glorious monument, more lasting than marble, to the unrivalled genius of its author. Yet, Mr. Birrell adds, we find ourselves at times in a mood in which "The Decline and Fall" seems but a poor and barren thing by the side of William Law's "Serious Call," a book which has proved its power to pierce the hardest heart and tame the most stubborn will. No book, with the possible exception of "The Imitation" by Thomas a Kempis, has influenced so deeply the lives of so many eminent men. It completely mastered the massive mind of Dr. Johnson. John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield—the three leaders of the historic revival of the 18th century—were each, quite separately, profoundly affected by it. Sir John Franklin read it with singular pleasure and profit whilst waiting for death among the Arctic snows.

The "Serious Call," Law's masterpiece, is scarcely the book to read for relaxation. "Froude," exclaimed John Keble one day, "you told me that Law's 'Serious Call' was a clever book. I have since read it. It seems to me now as if you had said that the Day of Judgment will be a pretty sight!" In that penetrating sentence Keble sums up the situation. Not very long after that lunch with Gibbon at Putney, Mr. Law attended a service on Easter Sunday morning. On the way home, he spoke with rapture of the beauty of the English Spring. A few hours later he was gone. Those who seek the quiet and peaceful spot in which he was laid to rest will have no difficulty in finding it; for it is marked by the monument which Miss Gibbon, the aunt of the historian, erected to his honoured memory. It was exquisitely fitting, as his biographer has said, that the body of such a man should be committed to the grave whilst the old church nearby was still ringing with the echoes of the Easter music, and whilst Nature all around was unfolding in every opening flower and budding hedgerow her eloquent parable of resurrection.

F W Boreham

Image: William Law