9. Richard Trench (1807–1886)
The life of Richard Chenevix Trench contained ingredients so diverse as to seem almost contradictory. A scholar by nature, his position in the Anglican church forced him into prominence, where he fought and lost unpopular battles. Born into a comfortable and cultured family, he recklessly identified with an abortive “student invasion” to free the oppressed people of Spain, a venture that could have cost him his life. When he returned to Cambridge in 1831 to prepare for the ministry, he admitted to a friend that he had forgotten “well-nigh all” his Greek. Yet he wrote Synonyms of the New Testament, a classic in Greek studies that is still valuable today. Trench was not recognized as a good preacher. But his two monumental works, Notes on the Parables of Our Lord and Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord, have helped many preachers prepare better messages.
Trench would have rejoiced to stay out of the public arena and in his study, but circumstances dictated otherwise. He became dean of Westminster Abbey and eventually archbishop of Dublin. Perhaps it was the outworking of the “Peter Principle” (each person rises to his level of incompetence), because Trench was not cut out to fight church battles. He was born to study and to write.
Words were his passion. Two of his classics, though a bit outdated, are still helpful and most enjoyable: On the Study of Words and English, Past and Present. One of the greatest things Trench did was to propose to the Philological Society on January 7, 1858, that “a new and independent dictionary should be prepared.” The result was the monumental Oxford English Dictionary (OED), originally published in ten huge volumes and now available (micrographically reproduced) in one. One of the assistants who worked with James Murray on the great OED was George H. Morrison. In later years he would be known as Morrison of Wellington, one of Scotland’s greatest preachers. Whenever I use my OED, I think of Trench and Morrison and give thanks.
Richard Trench was born on September 5, 1807, in Dublin, Ireland. His father belonged to the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, and his mother, a cultured Christian, had traveled widely. She greatly influenced him in his love for books and poetry and in his desire to write. Early in his school career he displayed his love for linguistic studies. When her son was only fifteen, Mrs. Trench wrote to a friend: “My son Richard has a craving for books. . . . He cannot take an airing without arming himself against ennui by one or more volumes. . . . He wishes much we should purchase a certain Polyglot and luxuriates in the idea of finding fifteen readings of the same passage in Scripture.”1 Trench entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1825. He became a member of an elite group known familiarly as the Apostles. In this group were men who would one day greatly influence England: F. D. Maurice, the Christian socialist; Alfred Tennyson, future poet laureate; Arthur Hallam, a friend of Tennyson whose death inspired “In Memoriam”; and others.
Trench received his BA in 1829 and then spent the next year traveling. In Spain he saw the desperate need of the people. When he returned to England, he threw himself in with a group of idealistic young men who planned to invade Cadiz and set the masses free. Why would a scholar get involved in such a daring venture? Partly from heredity: his mother’s family was of Huguenot origin, and Trench was attracted to anything that smacked of chivalry. While a student at Cambridge, Trench had been fascinated by Spanish history and culture. But perhaps the main reason was his own need for a challenge. He was living rather aimlessly, which made him somewhat depressed. The liberation of Spain was just the tonic he needed. However, the whole enterprise aborted. Some of the men involved were arrested and shot. Trench never spoke about the event in later years, nor did he ever visit Spain again. The experience soured him on all revolutionary movements, a fact that played an important role when he became archbishop of Dublin.
Trench returned to Cambridge in October 1831 to study for holy orders. He was married on May 31, 1832; the following October he was ordained a deacon. No churches were available at that time, so once again Trench found himself drifting and waiting. In January 1833 he became curate to Hugh James Rose at Hadleigh in Suffolk, a post he held until September, when Rose left to become professor of divinity at the University of Dublin.
Here we meet one of those quirks of history that makes us want to ask, “What if . . . ?” While Trench was serving at Hadleigh, two important events took place that ultimately shook the Anglican church to its foundations. The first was John Keble’s “assize sermon” preached at St. Mary’s, Oxford, on July 14. That sermon marked the beginning of the Oxford Movement, although nobody knew it at the time. The second event grew out of the first: Rose, impressed by Keble’s sermon on “national apostasy,” invited a number of his clerical friends to Hadleigh to discuss ways to stir the church and bring about needed changes. Keble did not attend the conference, nor did his good friend John Henry Newman. How much Trench participated we do not know for certain; probably he was on the fringes of the meetings, being only a lowly curate.
But suppose he had been captivated by the challenge? Suppose he had been enlisted by the influential Richard Hurrell Froude, the man who perhaps more than any other influenced Newman, the man who eventually left the Anglican for the Roman church? Would Trench’s skills have made any difference in the Oxford Movement? He was definitely not a fighter, but he was a scholar. He was not a strong preacher, but he was a capable writer. His sympathies did not lie with either the evangelical party or with Rome. He could never have abandoned the Anglican church because his roots went too deep into her traditions. But could he have influenced others to remain? We will never know.
Once again, Trench found himself without a place of ministry. He returned to live with his father until January 1834, when he accepted a curacy at St. Peter’s, Colchester. But a health problem ended that ministry almost before it started. He traveled in Europe with his family, arriving back in England in June 1835. On July 5, he was ordained to the Anglican priesthood. In September he became the minister of St. Peter’s, Curdridge, where he served for six delightful years. At last he could devote himself to study and service. In 1841, he published his great work on the parables.
Though books on the parables are legion, Trench’s volume is outstanding. Be sure to purchase the edition that includes English translations of the quotations from the church fathers. It is unnerving to have the archbishop write, “The greatest insight into this truth is given by St. Augustine,” and then follow with three paragraphs of Latin! Even Charles H. Spurgeon recommended Trench on the miracles and parables, although he admitted that Trench’s doctrine was not always to his taste.
During his ministry at Curdridge, Trench became a close friend of Samuel Wilberforce, third son of the great William Wilberforce whose association with the evangelicals in the Church of England helped him in his victory over slavery. Samuel was an energetic leader whose personal charm won him the nickname “Soapy Sam.” If opposites attract, then we should not be surprised at Trench’s friendship with this future bishop of Oxford and Winchester. Wilberforce enjoyed ecclesiastical politics as much as Trench detested them. Wilberforce asked Trench to become his “examining chaplain” for ordination, a high honor indeed.
At the close of 1844, Trench moved to Itchenstoke, where he served for eleven years. There he prepared his great book on the miracles, another classic. He also got involved in Irish relief ministry. Since Ireland was the land of his birth, he visited and tried to assist the multitudes suffering from the 1846 potato blight. This experience opened Trench’s eyes to the real weaknesses and problems of the Irish Church.
Trench was appointed professor of divinity at King’s College, London, in February 1846. At last he was in his element. The students not only profited from his lectures, but actually enjoyed them. The substance of his lectures on the vocabulary of the Greek New Testament appears in Synonyms of the New Testament. He believed that theology must be grounded on the study of words. “The words of the New Testament,” he said, “are the stoikeia [elements, ABCs] of Christian theology.” What a time Trench would have had with a complete set of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich!
On June 21, 1856, a statement appeared in the Times that Richard Trench had been appointed the new bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. The news hit everybody like a sonic boom, especially Professor Trench. He was even accused of planting the item so he would get the appointment. His friend Samuel Wilberforce interceded with Queen Victoria, and Trench was absolved; but the consequences were most unpleasant to the quiet scholar. He received nearly three hundred letters from pastors asking for places in his diocese!
The Lord had something better for the man who would not promote himself. On August 15, 1856, William Buckland died and the deanery of Westminster became vacant. On October 23 Trench was installed as dean of Westminster, the ideal place for the scholar/ pastor. It was a difficult move for him and his family, for they were accustomed to the lovely English towns. Now they had to live in the busy, dirty city. At that time the abbey was surrounded by slums, described by one pastor as a “reeking and irreclaimable center of filth and misery.”
Nobody expected the new dean to do anything more than enjoy “learned leisure” but Trench surprised them. He and other London clergy were distressed that great ecclesiastical centers like St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey were not being used to reach the masses. Complicated church rules governed who could and could not preach in these historic pulpits. On December 3, 1857, Trench and his associates decided to open the abbey for Sunday evening services, an unprecedented idea at that time. No doubt the great success of Spurgeon’s evening meetings helped them make their decision. On January 3, 1858, the first Sunday evening service was held. The weather was cold and icy, and the dean was certain nobody would attend. But a crowd gathered, Trench preached, and the service was somewhat of a success. The problem was that the service was not “popular” enough, the building was too cold, and the common people in attendance did not follow the liturgy too well. Trench persisted, however, and his experiment encouraged St. Paul’s to follow his example.
Trench would have enjoyed remaining at Westminster, but the failing health of Richard Whately, archbishop of Dublin, meant that a successor would be needed. And who would be better than scholarly Dubliner Richard Trench? When his friend Wilberforce suggested the move, Trench wrote him:
England is my world, the land of all my friends; the English Church seems to feel full of life and hope and vigor, of which I see little in the Irish. Then I know myself deficient in some of the most needful qualifications for the episcopate. I have few or no gifts of government, little or no power of rallying men round me and disciplining them into harmonious action.2
Trench himself had told a friend years before that no one could wish to be a bishop who was not a hero or a madman. But on January 1, 1864, he was consecrated archbishop of Dublin and was introduced to one of the most perplexing problems in English church history: the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The Episcopal church in Ireland was a Protestant island in a Roman Catholic sea. It was the church of the well-to-do English landowners, not of the common people. As a missionary church, it had failed. The poor citizens accused the Irish Church of bleeding the people. There were less than 700,000 adherents to the Irish Church, while 4,500,000 people claimed loyalty to Rome.
The scholarly Trench lacked the experience and ability to handle so complex an issue. He was not a diplomat; he lacked the political know-how to play one group against another. On July 26, 1869, the Disestablishment Bill was given royal assent and the battle was over. Trench had lost. He was then given the task of reconstructing a new church. This precipitated controversies that the learned archbishop was unable to handle. Bravely he stayed at his post, doing the best he could with a bad situation. On November 22, 1875, he suffered a disabling accident while going to London for a meeting of the New Testament Revision Committee. In the spring of 1883, he was laid low with bronchitis; by the fall of 1884, it was obvious he would have to resign. This he did on November 28; on March 28, 1886, he died, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on April 2.
What choice volumes of Greek word studies and Christian theology might this man have written had he not become involved in ecclesiastical politics? Is becoming an archbishop necessarily a promotion? Would not Trench have made a greater contribution to the church by remaining in “learned leisure” at Westminster? This same fate overtook J. B. Lightfoot when he was taken from the university and made bishop of Durham. Those of us who love the study of words (and we have good company in G. Campbell Morgan and John Henry Jowett) are tempted to wish that Bishop Wilberforce had minded his own business and not moved Richard Trench to Dublin.