Religious Thought. Moveable Feasts. |
The following short explanation of the Moveable Feasts of the Church, and their dependence on Easter, cannot be improved: “In the English nomenclature Easter Sunday has always the six Sundays in Lent immediately preceding, and the five Sundays after Easter, immediately following. Of these the nearest to Easter before and after are Palm Sunday and Low Sunday; the farthest before and after are Quadragesima (first in Lent), and Rogation Sunday (fifth after Easter). Preceding all these are, in reverse order, Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, Septuagesima: and following them, in direct order, are the Sunday after Ascension (Holy Thursday, Thursday five weeks after Easter); Whit Sunday and Trinity Sunday. So that Easter Sunday, as it takes its course through the almanacks, draws after it, as it were, nine Sundays, and pushes eight before it, all at fixed denominations. Looking farther back, every Sunday preceding Septuagesima, but not preceding the fixed day of Epiphany (June 6), is named as of Epiphany or after Epiphany: the least number of Sundays after Epiphany is one, the greatest number six. Looking farther forwards, all the Sundays following Trinity are named as after Trinity in succession, until we arrive at the nearest Sunday (be it before or after) to the St. Andrew’s Day (November 30th), which is the first Sunday in Advent. The least number of Sundays after Trinity is twenty-two; the greatest, twenty-seven. From thence, up to Christmas Day, exclusive, the Sundays are named as in Advent, and from Christmas Day to Epiphany, exclusive, they are named as Christmas Day, or as the first or second Sunday after Christmas.”—Prof. de Morgan’s Book of Almanacks. Christmas. The celebration of Christmas is still rife among us. Its stream of joy is not narrowed, but more equally diffused through society; and although much of the custom of profuse hospitality has passed away, Christmas is yet universally recognised as a season when every Christian should show his gratitude to the Almighty for the inestimable benefits procured to us by the Nativity, by an ample display of goodwill towards our fellow-men: “What comfort by Him doe we winne,
Who made Himself the price of sinne
To make us heirs of glory?
To see this Babe all innocence,
A Martyr borne in our defence—
Can man forget this storie?”
It is, however, an error of the day to deplore a falling-off in Christmas commemorations; whereas the enjoyment has but assumed a healthier tone. The Past is ever more picturesque than the Present. We stroll into the Great Hall at Westminster, where our Plantagenet kings feasted at Christmas and Epiphany: it is, however, forsaken and dreary; and, looking up roofward, we can scarcely see the louvre through which the smoke of many huge Christmas fires has gone up; or the noble hammer-beams, or the carved angels, and other glories of this majestic roof. But, step into Inigo Jones’ banqueting-house, at Whitehall; and there you will see the Lord High Almoner distributing the Royal alms, as he was wont to do centuries since. At Windsor the Sovereign herself is superintending the distribution of her seasonable bounty; the Lord Steward fills the hungry prisoner with good things; the good cheer shines upon Ragged Schools and other havens of charity. The moderation observable in our times is conformable to the precept in the Whole Duty of Man, enjoining us not to make the day “an occasion of intemperance and disorder, as do too many, who consider nothing in Christmas and other good times but the good cheer and jollity of them.” It is, however, one of the signs of the more gracious and hallowed tone that the singing of Carols has increased of late years; together with the decoration of churches, and the revival of several minor observances, which tend to show the universality of this improved feeling. Doubt about Religion. The Bishop of Oxford, in one of his eloquent Sermons upon the Temptation to Doubt about Religion, thus describes one class of doubts, and, by implication, of doubters: “There are the doubts which are the fruits of an evil life, which come forth as the obscene creatures of the night come forth—because it is the night; because the darkness is abroad, and they are the creatures of the darkness. These are, for the most part, self-chosen doubts, bred of corruption and of fear; of a clinging to sin and yet of a fear of its punishment; of a conscious resistance to the ways and the works of a God of purity and truth; of an evil interest which men have in finding revelation to be false, because it is a system which, if true, is fatally opposed to them. Men pursued by these doubts are a fearful spectacle. The terrors which at times shake them are often appalling to witness; and yet even these are less awful than the forced grimace with which they try to laugh them off; vaunting their doubts, like the lonely wanderer who sings noisily to conceal or overcome his fear of the darkness, that they may, if possible, scatter by the loudness of their laugh the besetting crowd of their alarms.” Another class of doubts the Bishop describes are those which address themselves to specific and clearly-revealed points in the revelation, which yet, as a whole, the doubting man does not disbelieve. Against these doubts he would utter his warning, because he believes that their presence, and even their indulgence, is at this moment by no means rare; because their true character is often disguised under the most specious forms; because the young, and among the young the generous, the ardent, the thoughtful, and the inquiring, are often their special victims; and because their cause is one of weakness, both intellectual and spiritual, while their end, when they triumph, is misery here, and, too often, everlasting loss hereafter. Having observed that there must be room for doubts and questions such as these,[22] the Bishop proceeds: “It may often seem that these doubts are the pauses of modesty, and these questions the interrogations of an inquiring faith. Thus the doubts are cherished and encouraged under the garb of piety, until a habit is formed in the mind of subjecting the written word and the authoritative declarations of faith to the scrutiny of each man’s intellectual faculties; and, according to their decision, of his accepting, modifying, or rejecting them. Now, such a mode of dealing with revelation is exceeding attractive. It promises to make the faith so rational—to give every man a reason for the hope that is in him—to be so free from all forcing of doctrines on him, that it naturally wins to itself young and ardent minds. Yet it is against this that I would so earnestly warn you, and that for the weightiest reasons—for no less a reason than this, that in its very first principle it is subversive of all true faith, and that it is therefore in its consequences full of ruin to the soul.” The relation of the Christian revelation to nature, the Bishop thus intelligibly points out: “The Christian revelation teaches nothing merely to gratify our curiosity. In this respect it is the very opposite of nature. The handwriting of the Creator in the works of nature seems to be imprinted on them for the very purpose of stimulating our curiosity and training and rewarding our powers of investigation and discovery. In the Christian revelation, on the contrary, nothing is revealed for the sake merely of its being known, but that the degree of knowledge given us may in some way or other affect our moral and spiritual training.” An Undergraduate of Oxford, in bearing testimony to the influence of these Sermons upon him at the time they were preached, describes the Free Inquiry of the present day as working in three classes of men. With some it was hailed as a relief from the annoyance of a conscience which told them that if the “old paths” were the true ones, there was certainly an ill look-out for them; and it was a pleasure, therefore, to hear those who ought to know say that the hard things (such as eternal punishment, &c.) which had been told them from their cradles were matters, to say the least, of considerable doubt. With others it was adopted with the gratifying feeling that thus they showed themselves “wiser than their sires,” and as intellectual champions “in the foremost files of time,” superior to all old wives’ fables. With others it was entertained, in a spirit eager for truth, with a painful sense of perplexity—the distress of men who feel that, while they have conscientiously left the old way as a way averse to all true progress, they neither know nor like to contemplate the issue of the new. Of these three classes of “free inquirers,” the first two were of course contemptible, but the third could not be passed by unheeded; and after a vehement effort to stand up for truths hitherto on his part unquestioned, the writer felt that he was more or less with them. He then acknowledges to reading the Essays and Reviews through three times, which gave him a new freedom, with which he felt self-satisfied: still, he was miserable with uncertainty, for he had nothing beneath his feet but his own private judgment; and he asks, what was that as regards the truth, when he saw that no two men arrived at the same conclusion? In the midst of all this he went, with others, to hear these sermons: instead of hearing the Bishop steer between conflicting opinions in this matter, our Undergraduate was influenced by these sermons to feel that reverence must go hand-in-hand with knowledge, in order that the true harmony may exist between mind and soul; that a man’s reason and judgment alone are a poor support and comfort, and the kingdom of God must be received in the spirit of a little child.[23]The Bishop concludes an earnest deprecation of the habit of doubting, with the following awful picture of the death-bed of a victim to this pernicious practice: “It is not from imagination that I have drawn this warning. I can tell you of an overshadowed grave which closed in on such a struggle and such an end as that at which I have glanced. In it was laid a form which had hardly reached the fulness of earliest manhood. That young man had gone, young, ardent, and simply faithful, to the tutelage of one, himself I doubt not a believer, but one who sought to reconcile the teaching of our Church, in which he ministered, with the dreams of Rationalism. His favourite pupil learnt his lore, and it sufficed for his needs while health beat high in his youthful veins: but on him sickness and decay closed early in, and as the glow of health faded, the intellectual lights for which he had exchanged the simplicity of faith began to pale; whilst the viper brood of doubts which almost unawares he had let slip into his soul, crept forth from their hiding-places and raised against him their fearfully envenomed heads. And they were too strong for him. The teacher who had suggested could not remove them: and in darkness and despair his victim died before his eyes the doubter’s death.” Our Age of Doubt. The intellect of the present generation is usually acknowledged to have gone off on quite a different tack from that of its predecessor. Not belief, but doubt, is the present fashion. Now, belief and doubt, both of them, have their uses. Each of them has its good and its bad side. Doubt is the more daring and impressive; but belief, even if sometimes rather illogical, is decidedly the more amiable. Let a negative system be true, and a positive system be false; still the positive system will call out some of the best qualities of our nature in a way that the negative system cannot. It is certain that the present generation is growing up in a spirit of greater independence and self-reliance, of less deference to age, to tradition, to authority of all kinds, than was in vogue twenty years since. The change may be for the better or for the worse, but the fact of the change is undeniable. Probably, if minutely examined, it has both its good and its bad side. The young men of the present day have gained something in wideness of view, and at least apparent worldly knowledge; but they have certainly lost much that was very attractive in their predecessors. On the other hand, acts of petty persecution are doing all that can be done to enlist their best feelings on the side on which it is wished that they should not be enlisted. If any man, especially one of the most conscientious and hard-working officers of the University, is proscribed and insulted on account of his opinions, those opinions are at once put in an attractive light to every generous mind. Men in authority are slow to believe it, but there is no policy so foolish as that of making martyrs.—From the Saturday Review. Mr. Ruskin, in his Modern Painters, has this striking passage upon what he terms “the Faithlessness of our Age:” “A Red Indian, or Otaheitan savage, has more sense of a Divine existence round him, or government over him, than the plurality of refined Londoners and Parisians; and those among us who may in some sense be said to believe are divided almost without exception into two broad classes, Romanist and Puritan; who, but for the interference of the unbelieving portions of society, would, either of them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; the Romanist having always done so whenever he could, from the beginning of their separation, and the Puritan at this time holding himself in complacent expectation of the destruction of Rome by volcanic fire.... Hence nearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers: the best of them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the plurality, in plodding hesitation, doing as well as they can what practical work lies ready in their hands. Most of our scientific men are in this last class; our popular authors either set themselves definitely against all religious form, pleading for simple truth and benevolence, or give themselves up to bitter and fruitless statement of facts, or surface-painting, or careless blasphemy, sad or smiling. Our earnest poets and deepest thinkers are doubtful and indignant.” A Hint to Sceptics. Reason is always striving, always at a loss; and of necessity, it must so come to pass, while it is exercised about that which is not its proper object. Let us be content at last to know God by his own methods, at least so much of Him as He is pleased to reveal to us in the Sacred Scriptures. To apprehend them to be the Word of God is all our reason has to do, for all beyond it is the work of faith, which is the seal of Heaven impressed upon our human understanding.—Dryden. Bishop Mant, writing in a more scientific age than that in which Dryden flourished, says: “Persons have, perhaps, been sometimes found who, from their attachment to pursuits of science, and to the acquisition of general knowledge, have appeared sceptical upon the subject of Divine revelation. But others, at least equally endowed with intellectual powers, and equally rich in intellectual acquirements, have been serious, rational, and conscientious believers. Amongst these may be ranked the great apostle, St. Paul, who has been rarely surpassed in strength of understanding, or in the treasures of a cultivated mind; and in connexion with him it may be added, that ‘Luke, the beloved physician, whose praise is in the Gospel,’ was professionally acquainted with the operations of nature, and the effects of secondary causes, and thus qualified to appreciate the miraculous and supernatural character of the works which he has recorded as foundations of our belief.” What is Egyptology? The object of Egyptology is to render it a sort of elevated standing-point, from which all the realms of ethnography and philology might be surveyed, and the most distant and isolated points brought within range of view. This undertaking has been attempted chiefly by Bunsen, who has completed in five volumes his work entitled Ægypten’s Stelle in der Weltgeschichte (“Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” Hamburg, 1845-1857), and has discussed some of the same subjects in a more general and miscellaneous book, or collection of treatises, called Christianity and Mankind, their Beginnings and Prospects (London, 1854). It is Bunsen’s theory that “the Egyptian language is the point in universal history at which the creative energy of language still shows its original form, just before it raises its pinions aloft, and assumes in the world-ruling nations an entirely different and more spiritual form; while in the other races, according to laws not yet explored, it sinks into the atomic and mechanical, or at best deflects into subordinate ramifications.”—(Ægypten, i. 338). Looking back over a period of more than twenty thousand years, this philological speculator recognises a time when the as yet undivided families of Japhet and Shem lived together in a civilized state in Northern Asia. From this undivided Asiatic stock Egypt, according to Bunsen, must be a colony, gradually degenerated into the African type; for the old Egyptian language claims affinity at once with the Aramaic idioms in immediate contact with it, and with the Indo-Germanic tongues, with which it has no direct commerce—(Report of the Brit. Assoc., 1847, p. 280; Ægypten, iv., Pref., p. 10). It must be owned that these sweeping conclusions do not rest upon philological inductions of the most accurate kind, and are supported by arguments which are sometimes as arbitrary as they are precarious.—EncyclopÆdia Britannica, 8th edition. Jerusalem and Nimroud. The greatest light which has yet been thrown upon the architectural character of the Palace of Solomon, Mr. Lewin (in his Sketch of Jerusalem, published in 1861) is of opinion is derived from the recent discoveries in and near Nineveh; Solomon having studiously copied the Assyrian style. “Take, for instance, the north-west palace of Nimroud, which would almost seem to have been the pattern after which the royal palace at Jerusalem was built. Thus the Nimroud Palace is nearly a square, of about 330 feet each way; and the area of Solomon’s Palace is 325 feet by 290 feet. In front at Nimroud was a great hall, 152 feet long by 32 feet wide; and in front, at Jerusalem, was a hall, the house of Lebanon, 150 feet by 75 feet. The halls at Nimroud were supported by rows of pillars, not of stone, but of wood; and the Hall of Lebanon was supported by three rows of cedar pillars, fifteen in a row, making forty-five in the whole. In the centre, at Nimroud, was a spacious open court; and in the centre at Jerusalem was also a court. On the sides, at Nimroud, were suites of apartments three deep, decreasing in width as they receded from the light supplied from the great court; and at Jerusalem were windows in three rows, and light against light in three ranks. At Nimroud, in the rear was a double suite of apartments; and in the rear at Jerusalem were the separate suites of the king and the queen. At Nimroud, the interior walls were lined with sculptured slabs; and at Jerusalem the apartments were also lined with stones carved in imitation of trees and plants.” What is Rationalism? Rationalism, in its widest acceptation, is applicable to all who follow the dictates of reason, whether in their speculative or practical life. In its more restricted signification it is applied specially to that system of religious opinion whose final test of truth is placed in the direct assent of the human consciousness, whether in the form of logical deduction, moral judgment, or religious intuition, by whatever previous process these faculties may have been raised to their assumed dignity as arbitrators. The Bishop of Oxford, in one of his Charges, has thus eloquently denounced the present dangerous spirit of Rationalism in the Church: “Are there not, my reverend brethren, signs enough abroad now of special danger to make us drop our lesser differences and combine together as one man, striving earnestly for the faith once delivered to the Saints? When from within our own encampment we hear voices declaring that our whole belief in the Atonement wrought out for us by the sacrifice on the Cross is an ignorant misconception—that the miracles and the prophecies of Scripture are part of an irrational supernaturalism, which it is the duty of a remorseless criticism to expose and to account for, by such discoveries as that the imagination has allied itself with the affections to produce them, and that they may safely be brought down to a natural Rationalism;—by such suggestions as that the description of the passage of the Red Sea is the latitude of poetry—that the Avenger who slew the firstborn is the Bedouin host, akin nearly to Jethro, and more remotely to Israel—when the history of the Bible is explained away by being treated as a legend, and its prophecy deprived of all supernatural character by being turned into a history of past or present events—when we are told that had our Lord come to us now, instead of in the youth of the world, the truth of His Divine nature would not have been recognised; that is to say, that it was the peculiar stage in which flesh and blood then were, and not the revelation of His Father who was in heaven which enabled the Apostles to believe in Him—when in words, as far as opinion is privately entertained is concerned, the liberty of the English clergyman appears to be complete—when we are told that men may sign any Article of the National Church, if it is only their own opinions which are at variance with them—when we are told that they may sign, solemnly before God, that they allow certain articles of belief, meaning thereby only that they allow their existence as the lesser of two great evils, and that under the Sixth Article one may literally or allegorically, or as a parable, or as poetry or a legend, receive the story of the Serpent tempting Eve and speaking in a man’s voice; and in like manner the arresting of the earth’s motion, the water standing still, the universality of the Deluge, the confusion of tongues, the taking up of Elijah corporeally into Heaven, the nature of Angels, and the miraculous particulars of many other events:—when Abraham’s great act of obedient faith in not withholding his son, even his only son, but offering him up at the express command of God is commuted by the gross ritual of Syrian notes into a traditional revelation; while the awe of the Divine voice bidding him slay his son, and his being stayed by the angel from doing so, is watered down into an allegory meaning that the Father in whom he trusted was better pleased with mercy than with sacrifice; when it is maintained that St. Stephen, full of the Holy Ghost, in the utterances of his martyrdom, and St. Paul proving from the history of his people that Jesus was the Christ, would naturally speak not only words of truth, but after the received accounts—when, I say, such words as these are deliberately uttered by our ordained Clergy, while the slowness even of English theologians to accept such a treatment of God’s revelation is scoffed at in such words as the following, even by those in our Universities who no longer repeat fully the Shibboleth of the Reformers, the explicitness of truth and error:—‘He who assents most committing himself least to baseness being reckoned the wisest:’ whilst those who maintained the old truth, I trust with most of us, my brethren, are branded as Baal’s prophets and the four hundred prophets of the grove who cry out for falsehood—whilst, I say, such words as these are heard from ordained men amongst us, and who still keep their places in the National Church, is it not a time for us, if we do hold openly by the Holy Scriptures as the one inspired voice of God’s written revelation—if we do hold to the ancient Creeds as the summary of the good deposit—if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as very God and very Man—if we believe in His offering Himself on the Cross as the one only true and sufficient sacrifice, satisfaction, and atonement for the sins of the whole world—is it not time for us, laying aside our suspicions and our divisions about small matters, to combine together in prayer, and trust, and labour, and love, and watching, lest whilst we dispute needlessly about the lesser matters of the law, we be robbed unawares of the very foundations of the faith?” What is Theology? In the widest sense of the word Theology, including both natural and revealed theology, we have, among theologians who reject revelation, the systems of—(1) Atheism, or that doctrine concerning God which rejects his existence altogether.[24] (2) Deism, or the system which teaches that God is the Creator of all things, but that, having once created them and impressed upon them certain laws for the regulation of their future existence, commonly called the laws of nature, He has left them to the government of those laws, and concerns Himself no more with his creation; or, in other words, this system acknowledges the existence of God, but denies his providence. (3) Theism, the system which differs from Deism by acknowledging the providence of God. The systems of Deism and Theism suppose the existence of an Almighty Creator, whose existence is independent of the universe; but there is another system, according to which the laws of Nature are in themselves the external self-existent causes of all the phenomena of the universe, and there is no causative principle external to Nature. This system takes two different forms: Materialism, which makes all the phenomena of Nature to result from the physical constitution of matter itself; and the various shades of Pantheism, which suppose an intelligent principle (anima mundi) to be inseparably connected with everything that exists, and to pervade the whole creation. Deism properly means belief in the existence of a God, but is generally applied to all such belief as goes no further, that is to say, to disbelief of revelation. It is always applied dyslogistically, and frequently merely as a term of reproach. But the identical word, in its Greek form, theist, is not a word of disapprobation; and, consistently with established usage, may be appropriately applied as opposed to atheist, when the latter term is correctly used. For it must be observed that the term atheist has been not unfrequently employed in the sense of an unbeliever in Christianity, though at the same time professing theism.—Penny CyclopÆdia. Religious Forebodings. Nearly sixty years since, Southey wrote his famous anticipation of Mormonism, and of some other matters as important as Mormonism, in a letter to Rickman (1805), as follows: “Here I do not like the prospects: sooner or later a hungry government will snap at the tithes; the clergy will then become State pensioners or parish pensioners; in the latter case more odious to the farmers than they are now, in the former the first pensioners to be amerced of their stipends. Meantime, the damned system of Calvinism spreads like a pestilence among the lower classes. I have not the slightest doubt that the Calvinists will be the majority in less than half a century; we see how catching the distemper is, and do not see any means of stopping it. There is a good opening for a new religion, but the founder must start up in some of the darker parts of the world. It is America’s turn to send out apostles. A new one there must be when the old one is worn out. I am a believer in the truth of Christianity, but truth will never do for the multitude; there is an appetite for faith in us, which if it be not duly indulged, it turns to green sickness, and feeds upon chalk and cinders. The truth is, man was not made for the world alone; and speculations concerning the next will be found, at last, the most interesting to all of us.” Folly of Atheism. Morphology, in natural science, teaches us that the whole animal and vegetable creation is formed upon certain fundamental types and patterns, which can be traced under various modifications and transformations through all the rich variety of things apparently of most dissimilar build. But here and there a scientific person takes it into his foolish head that there may be a set of moulds without a moulder, a calculated gradation of forms without a calculator, an ordered world without an ordering God. Now, this atheistical science conveys about as much meaning as suicidal life; for science is possible only where there are ideas, and ideas are only possible where there is mind, and minds are the offspring of God; and atheism itself is not merely ignorance and stupidity—it is the purely nonsensical and the unintelligible.—Professor Blackie: Edinburgh Essays, 1856. The first Congregational Church in England. In the State-Paper Office has been discovered a manuscript, showing that in the Bridewell of London[25] were imprisoned the members of the Congregational Church first formed after the accession of Queen Elizabeth. They were committed by the Privy Council to the custody of the gaoler, May 20, 1567. It is, no doubt, to this company that Bishop Grindal refers, in his letter to Bullinger, July 11, 1568:—“Some London citizens,” he says, “with four or five ministers, have openly separated from us; and sometimes in private houses, sometimes in fields, and occasionally even in ships, they have held meetings, and administered the sacraments. Besides this, they have ordained ministers, elders, and deacons, after their own way.” The Rev. Dr. Waddington has discovered some original papers, written by the members of this Church in the Bridewell, signed chiefly by Christian women, together with a statement of the principles of the sect. It appears from these interesting records, which have been kept, though in a loose form, for nearly three hundred years, that Richard Fitz, their first pastor, died in the prison. Dr. Waddington shows, by indisputable evidence, from original papers in the public archives, that the succession of Congregational Churches from the above period is continuous; so that the Bridewell may be regarded as the starting-point of Congregationalism after the Reformation; or, in other words, the origin of the first voluntary church in England, after the Marian persecution, was contemporaneous with the Anglican movement. And it is as remarkable as it is satisfactory, that these touching and simple memorials should have been preserved by the Metropolitan Bishop, and finally transmitted to the Royal Archives. Innate Ideas, and Pre-existence of Souls. In the Second Series of Things not Generally Known, pp. 147-152, we have illustrated this doctrine at some length; but return to it here for the purpose of quoting an argument directly opposed to the above illustrations, by the writer of the eloquent exposition of Plato, in the Edinburgh Essays, 1856: “Plato was distinguished from all previous philosophers by the prominence which he gave to the doctrine of innate ideas. Now, the current opinion in this country certainly is, that these innate ideas were a sort of sublime phantasm blown to the winds by John Locke and the inductive philosophy of external facts which has been achieving such conquests in the modern world from the time of Bacon downwards. But the fact is, that the doctrine of innate ideas, as taught by Plato, never was touched either by Locke or Bacon; and never can be touched in substantials by any thinker who believes that he has thoughts, and that these thoughts have their roots in a simple sovereign and plastic principle which he calls his soul. No doubt there are some pleasant imaginations floating with irridescent colours round the borderland of this Platonic philosophy, which may be blown to the wind by the puff of any cheek, without special inflation from Locke or Bacon. When the great thinker, for instance, pushes his argument for the independence of mind so far as to seem to assert, in positive terms, the existence of ideas in the human soul in ready-made panoply transferred from a previous state of existence into the present, this must be regarded as a trick of the poet immanent in the philosopher, ever ready to mistake a beautiful analogy for a substantial argument. Wordsworth, as a philosophic poet, was certainly more at liberty to illustrate this pleasant fancy than Plato as a practical philosopher.[26] Reminiscence, as explained by Socrates in the Menon and elsewhere, is not a fact, if the word be taken in its natural and obvious sense; it is not true that a person studying mathematics, for instance, when the truth of any profound relation of quantity or number flashes upon his mind, is recollecting anything that he ever knew before in a previous state of existence; the simple fact is, that he recognises the evolution of this truth from other truths of which he finds himself in possession, as a consequence that cannot be avoided when once his mind is set to work in a certain direction. As certainly as a sportsman’s dog will raise game when it comes near the spot where the bird is lying, and the scent begins to tell on his eager organ, so certainly will an idea lurking in a man’s mind be hunted out into startled consciousness by a Socratic questioner. But the simile limps, like all similes, in one point: the hidden idea is not lying in the soul, like the bird in the heather, ready-made; it must be shaped, moulded, and evolved, by a long and sometimes a very painful process. All that we can legitimately say, therefore, is, that there lies in every normal human soul the dormant capacity of acknowledging every necessary truth; and that this capacity is not borrowed from without. In this sense, and this sense only, are innate ideas true; and in this sense, unquestionably, they are very far removed from what may be called a reminiscence.” The Sabbath for Professional Men. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say, “he will never make a painter who looks for the Sunday with pleasure for an idle day;” and Sir Joshua’s journals afford indisputable proofs that it was his habit to receive sitters on Sundays as well as on other days. This was naturally displeasing to Dr. Johnson; and we are told by Boswell, that he (Johnson) made three requests of Sir Joshua, a short time before his death: one was to forgive him thirty pounds which he had borrowed of him; another was, that Sir Joshua would carefully read the Scriptures; and lastly, that he would abstain from using his pencil on the Sabbath-day: to all of these requests Reynolds gave a willing assent, and kept his word. The lax practice of working on the Sabbath is, we fear, too common. That it is a short-sighted practice there can be no doubt. With respect to it, the Hon. B. F. Butler, of New York, recently made the following statement: “If I may be permitted to refer to my own experience, I can truly say that, although often severely pressed, and sometimes for years together, by professional occupations and official duties, I cannot call to mind more than half a dozen cases during the twenty-seven years which have elapsed since my admission to the Bar, in which I have found it necessary to devote any portion of the Sabbath to professional or official studies or labours. Of these instances only two, I believe, occurred during my connexion with the Government at Washington, one of which was a case of mercy as well as of necessity, and neither of which prevented my regular attendance at the house of God. The course I have pursued has sometimes compelled me to rise on the ensuing day somewhat earlier than my wont; but an occasional inconvenience of this kind is of small account when compared with the preservation of a useful habit. I am therefore able to testify that it is not necessary to the ordinary duties of professional life, that men should encroach upon the Sabbath; and that the cases of necessity or of mercy, in which professional labour can be required on that day, are few and far between.” “In the Beginning.” That the vast and unknown Antiquity of the Earth, compared with the 6000 years of its supposed existence is but as yesterday, is the first great startling fact which the researches of Geology have brought to light within the last thirty years. “With rare exceptions,” says Archdeacon Pratt, “this is become, like the motion of the earth, the universal creed. The prejudice of long-standing interpretation and ignorance of the records which the earth carries in its own bosom regarding its past history, had shut up us and our forefathers for ages, in the notion that the heavens and the earth were but six days older than the human race. But science reveals new phenomena, opens up new ideas, and creates new demands. The torch of nature and reason sheds its light upon the letter of Scripture.” The Rev. Dr. Chalmers was the first to supply this new reading in his Natural Theology, vol. i. p. 251, as follows:—“Between the initial act and the details of Genesis, the world, for aught we know, might have been the theatre of many revolutions, the traces of which geology may still investigate, and to which she, in fact, has confidently appealed as the vestiges of so many continents that have now passed away.” “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth; the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” is seen to refer to the first calling of matter into existence, and to a state of emptiness and waste into which the earth long after fell, ere God prepared it as the residence of the most perfect of His creatures. This commentary and explanation was adopted by the late Rev. Dr. Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise: “The word beginning,” he says, “as applied by Moses, in the first verse of the Book of Genesis, expresses an undefined period of time, which was antecedent to the last great change that affected the surface of the earth, and to the creation of its present animal and vegetable inhabitants, during which period a long series of operations may have been going on; which, as they are only connected with the history of the human race, are passed over in silence by the sacred historian, whose only concern was barely to state that the matter of the universe is not eternal and self-existent, but was originally created by the power of the Almighty. The Mosaic narrative commences with a declaration that, ‘in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ These few words of Genesis may be fairly appealed to by the geologist as containing a brief statement of the creation of the material elements, at a time distinctly preceding the operations of the first day; it is nowhere affirmed that God created the heaven and the earth in the first day, but in the beginning; this beginning may have been an epoch at an immeasured distance, followed by periods of undefined duration, during which all the physical operations disclosed by geology were going on. “The first verse of Genesis, therefore, seems explicitly to assert the creation of the universe; the heaven, including the sidereal systems and the earth, more especially specifying our planet, as the subsequent scene of the operations of the six days about to be described; no information is given as to events which may have occurred upon this earth, unconnected with the history of man, between the creation of its component matter recorded in the first verse, and the era at which its history is resumed in the second verse; nor is any limit fixed to the time during which these intermediate events may have been going on; millions of millions of years may have occupied the indefinite interval between the beginning in which God created the heaven and the earth, and the evening or commencement of the first day of the Mosaic narrative. “The second verse may describe the condition of the earth on the evening of this first day; for in the Jewish mode of computation used by Moses, each day is reckoned from the beginning of one evening to the beginning of another evening. This first evening may be considered as the termination of the indefinite period which followed the primeval creation announced in the first verse, and as the commencement of the first of the six succeeding days in which the earth was to be filled up and peopled in a manner fit for the reception of mankind. We have in this second verse a distinct mention of the earth and waters, as already existing and involved in darkness; their condition also is described as a state of confusion and emptiness (tohu bohu), words which are usually interpreted by the vague and indefinite Greek term chaos, and which may be geologically considered as designating the wreck and ruins of a former world. At this intermediate period of time, the preceding undefined geological periods had terminated, a new series of events commenced, and the work of the first morning of this new creation was the calling forth of light from a temporary darkness, which had overspread the ruins of the ancient earth.” Such was the modified diluvial theory in which Dr. Buckland brought the weight of his authority to support the views now generally received. The last Religious Martyrs in England. In the seventeenth century, as theology became more reasonable it became less confident, and therefore more merciful. Seventeen years after the publication of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, two men were publicly burned by the English bishops for holding heretical opinions. These were Legat, burned by King, Bishop of London; and Wightman, by Neyle, of Lichfield. They suffered in 1611. “But this,” says Buckle, “was the last gasp of expiring bigotry; and since that memorable day, the soil of England has never been stained by the blood of a man who has suffered for his religious creed.” “It should be mentioned, to the honour of the Court of Chancery, that late in the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century, its powers were exerted against the exaction of those cruel laws by which the Church of England was allowed to persecute men who differed from its own views.”—See Lord Campbell’s Chancellors, vol. ii. Liberty of Conscience. The principle of perfect respect for Liberty of Conscience is the last, the hardest, the most precious conquest of humanity over itself. On its maintenance depends the only real assurance which the world can have even of revealed truth; for where would be the assurance even of revealed truth in a world of mental slaves? England seems chosen as the guardian of liberty of conscience in Europe at the present time. To guard it faithfully is her best tribute to Heaven—her best title to the respect of all that is good and noble in the world. That she has guarded it well will be her glorious epitaph, when, in the revolutions of empire, her power and wealth shall have become a legend of the past. Distance and climate do not change principle. The conscience of the Hindoo is conscience, however clouded, though declaimers may pretend that good is evil and evil good, by the law of the prophet and the institutes of Menu. If it were not so, it would be vain to offer him a purer religion, for he would be incapable of seeing that our religion is purer than his own. Double, treble the number of your missionaries and your bishops. Speed in every way the apostolic work of Christian love. But the sword is forbidden; and not only the sword, but every influence that can compel or induce the heathen to offer to the God of Truth the unholy tribute of a hypocritical profession—the unclean sacrifice of a lie.—Saturday Review. Awful Judgments. There cannot be a more impious abuse of the authority of the name of God than its employment in solemn asseveration of the truth of that which the utterer knows to be a lie. Such wickedness has been marked with divine vengeance; and Dr. Watts has sought to impress this fact upon the minds of children, in one of his “Divine Songs,” telling us how Ananias was struck dead,
Caught with a lie upon his tongue.
An instance of this heinous sin is recorded upon the Market-cross at Devizes, in Wiltshire, in these words:— “The Mayor and Corporation of Devizes avail themselves of the stability of this building, to transmit to future time, the record of an awful event, which occurred in this market-place in the year 1753; hoping that such record may serve as a salutary warning against the danger of impiously invoking Divine vengeance, or of calling on the holy name of God to conceal the devices of falsehood and fraud. “On Thursday, the 25th of January, 1753, Ruth Pierce, of Potterne, in this county, agreed with three other women to buy a sack of wheat in the market, each paying her due proportion towards the same; one of these women, in collecting the several quotas of money, discovered a deficiency, and demanded of Ruth Pierce the sum which was wanting to make good the amount; Ruth Pierce protested that she had paid her share, and said, She wished she might drop down dead, if she had not. She rashly repeated this awful wish, when, to the consternation and terror of the surrounding multitude, she instantly fell down, and expired, having the money concealed in her hand.” It is not long since, in one of the parish churches of Canterbury, the officiating minister alluded to an awful instance of the interposition of the Almighty, which was presented a few miles from the above city. A woman who was accused of theft positively denied it, and in her protestations solemnly appealed to God in testification of her innocence, and wished she might be struck dead if guilty. She had no sooner used the expression than she fell a lifeless corpse. The articles imputed to her as having been stolen were afterwards found in her house. Christian Education. If we look to the nature of the human mind itself, if we consider its longings, how comprehensive is its range, how great its capabilities, how little its best and highest faculties are satisfied with the objects that are placed before us upon earth, how many marks this dispensation bears of being a temporary, and, as it were, an initiatory dispensation, is it not monstrous to pretend that we are giving to the human being such a cultivation as befits his nature and his destiny, when we put out of sight all the higher and more permanent purposes for which he lives, and confine our provision to matters which, however valuable (and valuable they are in their own place), yet of themselves bear only upon earthly ends? Is it not a fraud upon ourselves and our fellow-creatures? is it not playing and paltering with words? is it not giving stones to those who ask for bread, if, when man, so endowed as he is, and with such high necessities, demands of his fellow-men that he may be rightly trained, we impart to him, under the name of an adequate education, that which has no reference to his most essential capacities and wants, and which limits the immortal creature to objects that perish in the use?—W. E. Gladstone. On the whole subject of National Education, how enlarged and liberal are the views taken by the Bishop of Oxford, in one of his recent Sermons. “Our National Education is at this moment surrounded by many difficulties. Among the chief of these are those which spring from the relations of our Church and State. There is no use in disguising from ourselves the fact that these questions exist, and some of them press for settlement. I believe it to be the more manly and the more Christian way freely to admit their existence, and to lend our aid with all honesty in working out their true solution. We cannot, of course, concede one of our principles. We must teach the truth as we have received it—whole, unmixed, uncompromised. But this point secured, whatever we can do we ought to do, by a kindly regard to the feelings of others, by an allowable co-operation and all lawful concession, to loose the hard knot which discord has tied, and unite the hearts of this people in the mighty work of educating its youth to do good service to our God, and to maintain truth and righteousness throughout his world.” The Book of Psalms. On the Psalms, that inexhaustible treasury of divine wisdom and prophetic inspiration, Hooker asks: “What is there necessary for man to know which the Psalms are not able to teach? They are to beginners an easy and familiar introduction—a mighty augmentation of all virtue and knowledge; in such as are entered before, a strong confirmation to the most perfect amongst others. Heroical magnanimity, exquisite justice, grave moderation, exact wisdom, repentance unfeigned, unwearied patience, the mysteries of God, the sufferings of Christ, the terrors of wrath, the comforts of grace, the works of Providence over this world, and the promised joy of the world which is to come, all good necessarily to be either known, or done, or had—this one celestial fountain yieldeth. Let there be any grief or disease incident to the soul of man—any wound or sickness named, for which there is not in this treasure-house a present comfortable remedy at all times ready to be found.” With what satisfaction the pious Bishop Horne composed his Commentary on these sacred lyrics of the Sweet Singer of Israel, may be judged from the following passage from the Commentator’s Preface: “Could the author flatter himself that any one would have the pleasure in reading the following exposition which he hath had in writing it, he would not fear the loss of his labour. The employment detached him from the bustle and hurry of life, the din of politics, and the noise of folly. Vanity and vexation flew away for a season; care and disquietude came not near his dwelling. He arose fresh as the morning to his task; the silence of the night invited him to pursue it; and he can truly say that food and rest were not preferred before it. Every Psalm improved infinitely on his acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last; for then he grieved that his work was done. Happier hours than those which have been spent in these meditations on the Songs of Sion, he never expects to see in this world. Very pleasantly did they pass, and move smoothly and swiftly along; for when thus engaged, he counted no time. They are gone, but have left a relish and a fragrance on the mind, and the remembrance of them is sweet.” Elsewhere the Bishop thus characterizes the Psalms: “Calculated alike to profit and to please, they inform the understanding, elevate the affections, and entertain the imagination. Indited under the influence of Him to whom all hearts are known, and all events foreknown, they suit mankind in all situations; grateful as the manna which descended from above, and conformed itself to every palate. The fairest productions of human wit, after a few perusals, like gathered flowers, wither in our hands and lose their fragrancy; but these unfading plants of Paradise become, as we are accustomed to them, still more and more beautiful. Their bloom appears to be daily heightened; fresh odours are emitted and new sweets extracted from them. He who hath once tasted their excellences will desire to taste them yet again; and he who tastes them oftenest will relish them best.” The pure and sweet feeling with which this excellent prelate dwells on his past labours, if labours they can be called, could scarcely have been greater, had he foreseen the immense circulation which his work enjoys, and the universal esteem in which it is held. A more recent Commentator concludes his remarks on the last Psalm with these touching words: “I shall never again so dwell upon them on earth. My God! prepare me for heaven, and for joining there in the songs of the redeemed in the high services of eternity.” The Book of Job. Diversified are the opinions of the most learned critics concerning the author of the Book of Job, the period at which it was written, in what part of the world the events there recorded occurred; and, though last not the least difficult and perplexing, whether the whole composition may not be regarded rather as allegorical than natural and true. Dr. Mason Good observes of this poem, in his Introductory Dissertation on the Book of Job:— “It is the most extraordinary composition of any age or country, and has an equal claim to the attention of the theologian, the scholar, the antiquary, and the zoologist—to the man of taste, of genius, and of religion. Amidst the books of the Bible it stands alone, and though its sacred character is sufficiently attested both by the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, it is isolated in its language, in its manner, and in its matter. Nothing can be purer than its morality, nothing sublimer than its philosophy, nothing simpler than its ritual, nothing more majestic than its creed.” Perhaps all our readers may not be aware that, with the exception of the first two chapters and the last ten verses, the book is poetic—it is everywhere reducible to the hemistich form; but whether it is to be considered as dramatic or epic has not been determined. That Moses was the author of this sublime composition seems now almost universally agreed upon by learned commentators. The work itself, moreover, possesses internal evidence to the truth of this statement, many parts of it harmonizing with his acknowledged writings. Dr. Mason Good contends that— “In his style the author appears to have been equally master of the simple and the sublime—to have been minutely and elaborately acquainted with the astronomy, natural history, and general science of his age—to have been a Hebrew by birth and native language, and an Arabian by long residence and local study; and finally, that he must have flourished and composed the work before the Egyptian Exody. Now it is obvious that every one of these features is consummated in Moses, and in Moses alone; and that the whole of them gives us his complete lineaments and character; whence there can be no longer any difficulty in determining as to the real author of the poem. Instructed in all the learning of Egypt, it appears little doubtful that he composed it during some part of his forty years’ residence with the hospitable Jethro, in that district of IdumÆa which was named Midian.” Against the supposition that Moses was the author of the Book of Job, it has been alleged that the word “Jehovah” frequently occurs in it—a word which was first revealed to Moses by the Almighty, preparatory to his undertaking the deliverance of the Hebrew nation. But, although we are told that this term was communicated to Moses for the first time in Exodus vi. 3, we yet find it used nearly thirty times in the Book of Genesis; we may, therefore, with Dr. Mason Good, suppose that he was in possession of this name long before the promulgation of this poem; and the novelty of the communication might have induced him at once to exchange whatever term he had antecedently employed for this new and consecrated term. It seems now to be universally agreed upon that the land of Arabia PetrÆa, on the south-western coast of the lake Asphaltites, in a line between Egypt and Philistia, surrounded by Kedar, Teman, and Midian, all of which are districts of Arabia PetrÆa, situated in IdumÆa, is the land of Edom or Esau. With regard to the supposition of some learned authors, that the book is wholly allegorical, Dr. Chalmers does not concur in such a conjecture. He appears to have thoroughly studied the arguments both for and against such a theory, and to have decided against it. He is conclusively of opinion that Job was a real character, and that the history recorded of him is a statement of facts. “There is,” says our author, “a very distinct scriptural testimony for the inspiration of his book in 1 Cor. iii. 19.” Uz, where Job lived, was Edom. “We disclaim,” says Dr. Chalmers, “all consent to this being an allegorical and not a literal history; and we found our disclaimer on the subsequent references in the Bible to Job as to a real personage; as in James, v. 11, and still more in Ezekiel xiv. 14-20, where he is ranked with Noah and Daniel, whose reality no one doubts. Would the prophet have thus mixed a fictitious with real and historical characters?” It is also worthy of remark, that the history of Job, although much altered from the original, is still well known among the Asiatics. Though our author does not consider Job’s history, as a whole, as being allegorical, yet he thinks the transcendental or supernatural parts of it may be so; and he compares these passages with those in 1 Kings xxii. 19; Zech. iii. 1; and Rev. xii., all of them representations more or less resembling similar ones in Job.—Times journal.
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