Chapter III: Work at Cambridge

In September 1891 Forbes was ordained as curate to his brother Armitage, who was at that time vicar of All Saints', Cambridge. Several of the letters which are given later refer to his thoughts and feelings at the time of his ordination. His connection with All Saints' did not last more than a year, as his brother resigned in the following spring. Forbes had already been licensed as chaplain to Emmanuel College. He received priest's orders in 1892. In 1895 he was appointed theological lecturer at Christ's College, and in the following year, May 30, 1896, was elected a fellow. During the same year he was appointed an examining chaplain to the Bishop of Southwell.

One who knew him well, soon after the time of his ordination, writes: 'I cannot remember how we first became acquainted, beyond the fact that I used to meet him in the rooms of some prominent members of the College Football XV. All I know is that several of our year got to know him quite well, and the friendship grew with time. The fact that he had distinguished himself in the Moral Science Tripos at {22} first rather awed me, a freshman. But I soon got over that feeling, for he was the last person in the world to trouble any one with a sense of intellectual inferiority.

'I am sure the private business hours of the Debating Society were some of his happiest moments. His magnificent assumption of wrath on the most absurd grounds; his vast intensity over trivialities; his love for the heat and play of debate, would have made a stranger believe he lived for nothing else.

'Physical strength and virtue seemed to have a strange attraction for him. His assortment of athlete friends was peculiarly wide, and his frank admiration of their qualities gave them a pleasant feeling that in some way he looked up to them--a feeling which I am sure strengthened the hold he had over them.

'He was a tireless walker, and could go far on very little. A party of us used to take long walks, often on a Sunday, to various places in the country. There was generally a volume of Burke or Emerson in his pocket, whose sonorous periods filled the interval when we lunched frugally or rested. I have never known him anything but good-humoured under any conditions. His enthusiasm for our most commonplace jests was unfailing--perhaps one of the surest ways of getting to a man's heart and staying there--and he had a wide tolerance for the minor offences of undergraduate thought and deed. Yet, as for the tone of conversation when he was near, I need scarcely say that one simply did not think of anything unpleasant or vulgar, much less say it.

'I used to admire his immense power of putting {23} his thoughts into words, but he could be silent too. Sometimes he would come to my rooms when I was working, throw himself into an arm-chair, and absolutely refuse to speak. After a considerable interval perhaps he would consider I had worked long enough, and cocoa and conversation would follow. But it was when I visited him in his own rooms that I remember things most vividly.

'I can still see that little room under the roof; the picture on the wall of the dead saint floating on the dark water; the well-filled bookcase; the table piled with volumes; himself throwing everything aside to greet one. It was almost with a feeling of awe that I sometimes climbed those stairs and entered into his presence. Perhaps it would be for a lesson on the New Testament--for when I was reading for a Theological Tripos he was generous, even prodigal, of help. The lesson over--and there are many who know what a goodly thing a lesson from him on the New Testament was--he would open a volume of Tennyson--"In Memoriam" most likely--read a few stanzas, and begin to talk about them. Gradually, it would seem, the things of the world would fade from him. He forgot the hour and my presence as his thoughts poured out. I sat and listened, generally silent, sometimes hazarding a question. Presently--it was often late--I would rise to leave. Rapt from his surroundings, he seemed scarcely conscious of my departure; and I would go quietly out, almost as though I had been on holy ground, where not once nor twice the dweller had seen God face to face.'

His power of helping men by silent sympathy is {24} referred to by one who writes: 'The many words of kindness, but more particularly the silent sympathy he conveyed in some mysterious manner, will ever keep him present with us.'

Another, who had known him in his early days at Christ's, and again in later years, writes: 'When I was up he was a nervous retiring man, at his best when one found him alone in his own room. Even then he would sometimes talk little. Since my return from South Africa I have found him much more at home with men and much more ready to talk, but retaining his old power of sympathy without words.' His own faith was based rather upon intuitive perception of the Divine love than upon argument. On one occasion, quite towards the end of his life, he said to one with whom he was staying, 'Sometimes I sit and think, till I can find no reason for the existence of God; and then there rises up in me something which is stronger than the love I have for those who are dear to me--and they are very dear--the love of God. It seems to smile at my doubts.'

Several of his friends have referred to Forbes's influence as a power which helped to develop their own sympathy towards others. Thus one writes:

'I think perhaps it was my intercourse with him that first taught me to look out for and appreciate the real goodness--or, better, Christlikeness--of others from whom one differed in important matters and with whom one seemed perhaps to have little in common.'

In some instances friendship between Forbes and an acquaintance seems to have arisen where very {25} little direct intercourse had taken place. One who was greatly his senior says of him, 'I have never known any one with whom there was so strong a sense of intimacy founded on so little positive intercourse.'

In July 1892--_i.e._ about nine months after his ordination as deacon--he took part in a kind of peregrinating mission tour through part of South Cornwall. Dressed simply in cassock and cape, and carrying a small brown paper parcel containing necessary luggage, he and his brother (the compiler of this book) walked from village to village, preaching afternoon and evening in the open air. At the end of the evening service an appeal was made to the people. It was explained to them that the preachers had come without provision or money, and hoped to receive hospitality from those to whom they ministered. Night after night Forbes and his companion were taken in and entertained, often by very poor people. A unique opportunity was thus afforded of getting to know something of the home life as well as of the religious beliefs of the poor. As a rule, those who acted as hosts were Nonconformists. Forbes spoke once or twice each day to the people who gathered, and his addresses, which were generally based on the words 'Our Father,' were admirably suited to the comprehension and needs of the simple country people.

For several months during 1895 he took charge of a small country parish near Cambridge, called Toft. While staying at Toft he wrote to a friend, 'I like living among country folk and talking with {26} and visiting them. I want to get out of my life into their lives. This parish work humiliates if it does not humble one. . . . The smallest parish is a tremendous responsibility.'

The following are a few additional notes contributed by others who knew Forbes at Christ's: 'His broad sympathies, his unfailing efforts to find out the good in persons and systems--the rays of truth which each possessed--combined with the rare faculty of going deep down beneath vexed questions, and thus lifting controversies to a higher and serener atmosphere: these were qualities in him which were known especially by those privileged to have more intimate knowledge of him than that vouchsafed by formal lectures or social gatherings. . . . He is now another link with the life beyond these conflicting voices, one "who loved Heaven's silence more than fame."'

The same writer says of him in another letter: 'His extreme fairness and toleration, which at first seemed to me to reduce half one's cherished beliefs to open questions, was of the greatest value in dispelling ignorance and prejudice, and in promoting true charity and a more intelligent faith. He delighted to call attention to the fact that our Lord found something commendable and exemplary in the serpent. And so, in dealing with those with whom he most disagreed, he tried to fix attention on that portion of truth which lay behind their opinions, or on those real difficulties, to be slighted only by {27} the superficial, with which they were grappling. Tertullian, with his love of scoring off opponents, fared badly at his hands, and he used to treat Clement of Alexandria more sympathetically than Irenaeus.

'It was striking to find a mind so evenly balanced and philosophical become fired with enthusiasm as he spoke in simplest language, in chapel or elsewhere, of great Christian truths or the victories of faith. His sermons influenced, I believe, many of the naturally careless. Simple, impartial, earnest and sympathetic, he won, I know, the deepest affection and respect of many.'

Another writes: 'Bright, pure, and strong--this was the impression he gave me . . . . Many men will be very sorry that he is not here any more, but every one who _knew_ him will be very thankful that he was here, and that they had an opportunity of hearing him "think" sometimes. I recall him most in his own rooms, beginning to talk on some small matter, and gradually lifting us higher and still higher, until we all silently listened, following as best we, with our muddier minds, could; and even when he got beyond us there were still inspiration and strength to be got from his flashing eyes and on-rushing earnestness; but if some smaller mind broke in, in a moment he was down at the level of that mind, half bantering and wholly sympathising. Nevertheless, some of us have never forgotten the things he showed us as he led us up, and the possibility of soaring very high without losing touch with those whose levels are pathetically human. . . . I do know that he helped {28} me much, and that many things he said I shall never forget, and thank God for still.'

A Cambridge and international athlete, an intimate friend of Forbes, writes: 'Though I have lost your brother Forbes, and life will be for ever poorer to me, I can't thank God enough that I ever knew him and loved him, and that he called himself my friend. He was so dear to me--my greatest friend in the world. His goodness and his help to me in my Cambridge days were wonderful. He altered my life. God has called him home and to the blessed rest of the children of God, and we are rich still with his memory and the influence of his beautiful, patient, Christlike life.'

In another letter he writes: 'The death, or, as I like to think of it, the passing of Forbes into the Great Beyond has been such a grief to me. You have no idea what he was to me--a real man "sent from God" into my life. I could do nothing when I heard the sad, and to me utterly unexpected, news, but kneel down by my bedside, and weep till I could weep no more for my beloved friend. I feel so rich and proud to have had him for my friend, and to have had his love; and so do many Cambridge men. Oh, but I did so love him! and my prayer now is that the memory of him with me always may strengthen my weak and feeble life, and help me to live somewhat more as he lived, very near the Master.'

He obtained but little help from self-introspection or self-examination. Thus he writes in one of the letters given later on: 'I am not sure that we cannot learn more about others than we can about ourselves. {29} I never think it is profitable to study oneself too closely. I never could meditate with any profit on my sins. But there, I dare say I differ from many others.'

To very intimate friends he would in rare instances admit that the secret of any influence which he possessed over men was the outcome of his efforts to pray for them. One who had known him intimately at Christ's writes in 1904:

'About eighteen months ago I had the privilege of spending a night with him, and then for the first time I realised how much of his spiritual power was the outcome of prayer. He told me that in his younger days he had taken every opportunity of personally appealing to men to come to Christ. "But," he went on, "as I grow older I become more diffident, and now often, when I desire to see the Truth come home to any man, I say to myself, 'If I have him here he will spend half an hour with me. Instead, I will spend that half-hour in prayer for him.'" Later on, when I had retired for the night, he came to me again and said, "W----, what I have said to you is in the strictest confidence: don't mention it to any one." And this revelation of his inner life is my last memory of him.'

On another occasion he said to one with whom he was staying, when speaking of the little that men could do for each other, 'I think that I should go mad were it not for prayer.'

As an instance of his common sense in a matter in which as a bachelor he could have had no personal experience, he strongly urged a married man, before {30} deciding to accept a curacy which had been offered to him, to let his wife see the vicar's wife or women-folk. 'She will know intuitively,' he said, 'whether she can get on with them and they with her, and it will make all the difference to your work and happiness.' The man to whom this advice was offered writes: 'The advice was given seriously, but with that bright twinkle of his; and I owe much to it, for we have been here since . . . and I don't want to go.'

The following is an extract from a notice which appeared in the 'Guardian '!

'By his published work he is best known to the outer world as one of the few English scholars who have given attention to Coptic. In 1896 he edited "The Coptic Apocryphal Gospels" in the "Cambridge Texts and Studies." The important article on the Coptic Version in Hastings's "Bible Dictionary" came also from his pen, and he was engaged on an edition of the Sahidic fragments of St. Luke's Gospel. His deepest interest, however, lay not in these subsidiary studies, but in the fundamental problems of theology proper. His Burney Prize essay, printed at the University Press in 1893 under the title of "The Self-limitation of the Word of God as manifested in the Incarnation," is no doubt comparatively slight, and in some respects immature; but its reverent and fearless treatment of the difficulties of his great theme gave promise of work of permanent value in this field. His interest in the great problems never flagged, and his sympathetic touch with the life and thought of the younger men in his college kept him constantly {31} engaged on the task of putting into clear and ever clearer expression such solutions as he was able to attain. His sermons in College Chapel were singularly effective, because he never wasted a word, and because every sentence was felt to be the outcome of strenuous thought tested by living experience.

'It is not surprising, therefore, that he exercised an unusual influence upon younger students. His friends were very closely bound to him indeed, in bonds which death can consecrate but cannot sever. They can never cease to thank God for the pure, bright, tender, utterly sincere, fearless, and faithful spirit He has given them to love.'

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