His ministerial life was an example of untiring devotion,
and we know not which to admire the more, his labor of love in the
rustic parish of Herstmonceaux, or those searching rebukes of Romanism
contained in the charges to his clergy. Independent as both his friends
and enemies acknowledge him to have been, his misfortune was an
excessive reliance upon his own imagination and upon the opinions of
those whom he admired. Nature made him capable of intimate friendships,
both personal and intellectual. No one can examine his life without
loving the man, nor read his fervent words without concluding that the
Church has been honored by few men of his noble type. That
self-sacrifice and sympathy of which he often spoke feelingly in
connection with the humiliation of Christ, were the controlling
principles of his heart. Let not the veil with which we would conceal
his theological defects obscure, in the least, the brightness of his
resplendent character and pure purposes.
No view of Hare's position can be complete without embracing that of his
brother-in-law, Maurice; both of whom were ardently sympathetic with
Coleridge.
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