Untitled - Electric Scotland

1849-53] FIRST DAYS AT CARLISLE 155
Diary.
-Carlisle, Sunday, ^th May 1850.- -This is our first Sun
day in our new home. What from God !
great blessings have we received
How graciously has He dealt with me in providing
a quiet useful retirement when the bustle and work of Rugby
seemed too much for me ! O Lord, enable me to use the retire
ment of this place for my own increase in spiritual-mindedness,
by Thy Holy Spirit s help. Enable me to labour faithfully for
others. Pardon my sin, and bless to my soul the Holy Communion
which I have this day received. Through Jesus
Christ. Amen."
At Carlisle he rapidly regained a large measure of his
former strength, and though he was never again a robust
man, and his heart was always irregular in its action,
the work he succeeded in doing during the six Carlisle
years was sufficient evidence of his physical energy.
In the Cathedral itself there was much to be done ; but
his reforms did not greatly commend themselves to all his
colleagues, and he had an uphill fight to wage
before he
carried them. There was special difficulty, for example,
about the establishment of an afternoon sermon in the
Cathedral on Sundays, although he took the entire re
sponsibility of it upon himself. But he was not easily
daunted, and he gained his points one by one.
With returning strength came new calls for its exercise,
in what was practically the opening of his public life. He
had for many years been known by his Oxford friends as an
advocate of wide reforms in the system of the University.
His pamphlet on the subject in I839 1 had attracted con
siderable attention, and he had continued while at Rugby
to give expression to the same views in magazine articles
and elsewhere. And the subject was now coming
to the
front. From his accession to the premiership in 1846
Lord John Russell had been alarming the more conserva
tive among the qlergy by his avowed sympathy with what
1
See p. 71.