The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

4Io

Life of Benjamin Jowett

[CHAP. XII

of your own accord. I did not believe such a thing to be
within the compass of nature.
I am delighted to hear of the commissionership. That is
a real opportunity for doing something...
You are very good in rejoicing at my endowment. Christ
Church are getting great credit for this, which they did and undid
ten years ago, and which Dr. Pusey has now carried because he
knew that he must be beaten in the University. But I shan't
look a gift horse in the mouth. I was always very fond of
money, for money is a means of doing mischief, and I have
always been a great lover of mischief. I am not insensible
to the value of ~125 a quarter, though on the other hand I do
not know how to get on without the character of a 'martyr.'
To be a martyr is a delightful position and just suits me; it
consists in doing nothing, and that I understand. As an unfeeling but sagacious friend once said to me, 'Next to having
a good place, there is nothing like a good grievance.' How
much more truly might you be called a martyr-to the gout!
Like your great ancestor, again, you have found that there was
something mysteriously wrong-in the great toe. Yet don't
suppose, my dear fellow, that I am not sorry you should have
been in bed for six weeks....
When do you go to Vienna? and will you be in England
next summer? I wonder whether your wife, who is worth
ten of you for any practical purpose, would write and tell me.
To --
OXFORD, March x6, I865.
Prayer, as at present conducted, is an absurdity, if it means
praying for fine weather, &c. (faith must snap in the face of
universal obvious facts); or an ambiguity of the worst kind,
if the Theologian refuses to say, in reference to an action of
everyday life, whether it is supposed to have this effect or not.
There is nothing that more requires to be stated than that
prayer is a mental, moral, spiritual process, a communion or
1 Morier was British member of to inquire into the Austrian tariff
the Mixed Commission at Vienna (March, I865).