Chapter XVI: Summary and Estimate of Prose Writings (2)

Another attribute, to which Gibbons alludes, in Watts’ style is his _dignity_, especially in the use of his metaphors and in the restraint he puts upon himself in his most ardent and animated passages. A wise use of the passions is a marked characteristic of his writings, as he says, “Did the Great God ever appoint statues for His ambassadors to invite sinners to His mercy; words of grace written upon brass or marble would do the work almost as well; where the preachers are stone no wonder if the hearers are motionless.” And in a fine passage in which he reprobates the philosophy of the Earl of Shaftesbury, under the name of Rhapsodus, who affirms that neither the fear of future punishment, nor the hope of future reward, can possibly be called good affections, Watts exclaims:

“Go, dress up all the virtues of human nature in all the beauties of your oratory, and declaim aloud on the praise of social virtue and the amiable qualities of goodness, till your hearts or lungs ache, among the looser herds of mankind, and you will ever find, as your _heathen fathers_ have done before you, that the wild appetites and passions of men are too violent to be restrained by such mild and silken language. You may as well build up a fence of straw and feathers to resist a cannon-ball, or try to quench a flaming granado with a shell of fair water, as hope to succeed in these attempts. But an eternal heaven and an eternal hell carry a Divine force and power with them. This doctrine, from the mouth of Christian preachers, has begun the reformation of multitudes. This Gospel has recovered thousands among the nations from iniquity and death. They have been awakened by these awful scenes to begin religion, and afterwards their virtue has improved itself into superior and more refined principles and habits by Divine grace, and risen to high and eminent degrees, though not to consummate state. The blessed God knows human nature better than _Rhapsodus_ doth, and has throughout His Word appointed a more proper and more effectual method of address to it by the passions of hope and fear, by punishments and rewards.”

His _ideas_ are large and ample; thoughts thronged through his pages. Admirable as his prose is, he writes still like a poet, and he speaks of the value of poetry as not a mere amusement or the embroidery of the mind, he says how it “brightens the fancy with a thousand beautiful images, how it enriches the soul with great and sublime sentiments and refined ideas, and fills the memory with a noble variety of language, it teaches the art of describing well, of painting everything to the life, and presenting the pleasing and frightful scenes of nature and providence, vice and virtue, in their proper charms and horrors; it assists the art of persuasion, leads to a pathetic mode of speech and writing, and adds life and beauty to conversation.”

And hence his style is so _attractive_; it has often been an enjoyment to us to turn over the pages of his prose writings. What a variety of topics is presented to us in his interesting inquiry “Concerning Space,” and how interesting his treatment makes the discussion, however abstract the topic. It is the same with his philosophic essays on “Innate Ideas,” and on the “Nature of Substance,” and in that on the “Strength and Weakness of Human Reason.” His sermons, we have before said, have not the pomp and glow of Jeremy Taylor, but they resemble, and certainly do not fall inferior to, those of John Donne, in a quiet metaphysical subtlety and a happy use of images supplied by fancy; but let us select a few:

THE SOUL AND GOD.

“My soul is touched with such a Divine influence that it cannot
rest, while God withdraws, _as the needle trembles, and hunts
after the living loadstone_.”

A SENSITIVE HEART.

“Nothing could displease Phronissa (so this good mother
is called) more than to hear a jest thrown upon natural
infirmities. She thought there was something sacred in misery,
and it was not to be touched with a rude hand.”

IMPULSIVE CHRISTIANS.

“Such Christians as these (such who are weak and too much under
the influence of their passions) live very much by sudden fits
and starts of devotion, without that uniform and steady spring
of faith and holiness which would render their religion more
even and uniform, more honourable to God and more comfortable
to themselves. They are always high on the wing, or else lying
moveless on the ground. They are ever in the heights or in the
depths, travelling on the bright mountains with the songs of
heaven on their lips, or groaning and labouring through the
dark valleys, and never walking onward as on an even plain
towards heaven.”

THE FULFILMENT OF DIVINE PREDICTIONS.

“How easy it will be for our blessed Lord to make a full
accomplishment of all His predictions concerning His kingdom;
salvation shall spread through all the tribes and ranks of
mankind, as the lightning from heaven in a few moments would
communicate a living flame through ten thousand lamps or
torches placed in a proper situation and neighbourhood.”

He had an eminent _power in description_; the following meditation is a rich illustration of this. The whole meditation is far too long to quote—his descriptions of the awakening life of leaves, and birds, and insects—but he closes:

THE FIRST OF MAY.

“’Tis a sublime and constant triumph over all the intellectual
powers of man, which the great God maintains every moment
in these inimitable works of nature, in these impenetrable
recesses and all mysteries of Divine art; and the month of
May is the most shining season of this triumph. The flags and
banners of Almighty wisdom are now displayed round half the
globe, and the other half waits the return of the sun to spread
the same triumph over the southern world. The very sun in
the firmament is God’s prime minister in this wondrous world
of beings, and he works with sovereign vigour on the surface
of the earth, and spreads his influence deep under the clods
to the very root and fibre, moulding them in their proper
forms by Divine direction. There is not a plant, nor a leaf,
nor one little branching thread above or beneath the ground,
which escapes the eye or influence of this beneficent star. An
illustrious emblem of the omnipresence and universal activity
of the Creator.”

The following strikes us as very pleasing:

ON DISTANT THUNDER.

“When we hear the thunder rumbling in some distant quarter
of the heavens, we sit calm and serene amidst our business
or diversions; we feel no terrors about us, and apprehend no
danger. When we see the slender streaks of lightning play afar
off in the horizon of an evening sky, we look on and amuse
ourselves as with an agreeable spectacle, without the least
fear or concern. But lo! the dark cloud rises by degrees; it
grows black as night, and big with tempests; it spreads as it
rises to the mid-heaven, and now hangs directly over us; the
flashes of lightning grow broad and strong, and, like sheets of
ruddy fire, they blaze terribly all round the hemisphere. We
bar the doors and windows, and every avenue of light, but we
bar them all in vain. The flames break in at every cranny, and
threaten swift destruction; the thunder follows, bursting from
the cloud with sudden and tremendous crashes; the voice of the
Lord is redoubled with violence, and overwhelms us with terror;
it rattles over our heads as though the whole house was broken
down at once with a stroke from heaven, and was tumbling on us
amain to bury us in the ruins. Happy the man whose hope in his
God composes all his passions amid these storms of nature, and
renders his whole deportment peaceful and serene amidst the
frights and hurries of weak spirits and unfortified minds.”

Many pages might be filled with such passages in which the compactness of the proverb, or the pleasantry of the fancy, or the richness of the description, is remarkable. It comes out of such characteristics as we have noticed, that he reformed the preaching of his day, especially as to the structure of sermons; it was the age of, what he calls very felicitously, “branching sermons;” and even John Howe, as both Robert Hall and Henry Rogers[50] have remarked, “far outwent many of his most extravagant contemporaries in minute and frivolous subdivision; we have sometimes heads arranged rank and file, half a score deep.” Henry Rogers continues, “If any would wish to see the full extent to which Howe carried this fault, they may look into the ‘scheme’ (a very accurate one), which his publishers prefixed to the first edition of the ‘Delighting in God,’ and by the time the student has thoroughly digested and mastered that, he will find little difficulty I apprehend in any of the first books of Euclid.” It was the characteristic of nearly all the great Puritan preachers before Watts. He speaks of some who would draw out a long rank of particulars in the same sermon under one general, and run up the number to eighteenthly! or seven and twentiethly! until they cut all their sense into shreds, so that everything they say of anything is a new particular; and he says, he has sat under this preaching until he has thought of Ezekiel’s vision in the valley full of bones, “behold they were very many and very dry.” He adds, “A single rose bush, or a dwarf pear, with all their leaves, flowers, and fruit about them, have more beauty and spirit in themselves, and yield more food and pleasure to mankind, than the innumerable branches, boughs, and twigs of a long hedge of thorns.” In the same manner he satirizes another kind of preaching, in which there are no breaks and pauses. “Is there no medium,” he says, “between a sermon made up of sixty dry particulars, and a long loose declamation without any distinction of the parts of it? Must a preacher divide his works by the breaks of a minute watch, or let it run on incessantly like the flowing stream of sand in the hour-glass?” And thus he inquires, “Can a long purling sound awaken a sleepy conscience? Can you make the arrow wound where it will not stick? Where all the discourse vanishes from the remembrance, can you imagine the soul to be profited or enriched? When you brush over the closed eyelid with a feather, did you ever find it give light to the blind? have any of your soft harangues, your continued threads of silken eloquence, ever raised the dead?” Very happily he says, “Preachers talk reason and religion to their auditories in vain, if they do not make the argument so short as to come within their grasps, and give a frequent rest to their thoughts; they must break the Bread of Life into pieces to feed children with it, and part their discourse into distinct propositions, to give the ignorant a plain scheme of any one doctrine, and enable them to comprehend or retain it. The auditors of the first kind of preacher have some confusion in their knowledge, the hearers of the last have scarce any knowledge at all.”

The reader will not fail to notice, in this nervous passage, the happy imagery by which the writer gives point to his ideas.

But that which we have said hitherto refers rather to the style, the vehicular frame-work in which Watts set forth his thoughts; it is more important to enter into the mind and spirit of the man; and, first, no attribute seems more remarkable than the seraphic _reverence_ of his nature. It is not easy to mention a writer who more distinctly realises to the mind one of those six-winged seraphs Isaiah saw, who with twain covered his face, with twain his feet, and with twain stood ready to fly; Watts appeared ready for any flight; but reverence, an awful sense of the mysterious and inscrutable, governed every movement of his soul. The Unitarians have, with singular audacity, sought to drag him through the Serbonian bog of creedless Christianity.[51] It is a fine remark, quoted by Southey, that “such doubts as troubled him he subdued, not in a martial posture, but upon his knees.” It is very certain that he had a large speculative disposition; he approached very near to the veil which hides from man the incommunicable light; there is not a line in his writings which displays a tendency towards Arianism. Towards the doctrine of Socinianism he does not condescend to give a single glance. His complaint was, and we apprehend it to be a more common one than even those who are troubled with it are aware, not that he could not believe all that is revealed, but that revelation had not conferred more light upon the subjects of even incomprehensible knowledge. But his prayer, his “solemn address to the great and ever-blessed God, upon what he had written concerning the great and ever-blessed Trinity,” is certainly an extraordinary, a passionate and most humble utterance of an ardently devout mind. It is too lengthy for entire quotation, but some of the closing paragraphs will convey the spirit of the entire piece, and the whole may be read, if read in the spirit in which it was written, with profit to every one: “Blessed and faithful God, hast Thou not promised that ‘the meek Thou wilt guide in judgment, the meek Thou wilt teach Thy way?’ Hast Thou not taught us by Isaiah, Thy prophet, that Thou wilt ‘bring the blind by a way they know not, and wilt lead them in paths which they have not known?’ Hast Thou not informed us by the prophet Hosea, that ‘if we follow on to know the Lord, then we shall know Him?’ Hath not Thy Son, our Saviour, assured us, that our Heavenly Father will give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? And is He not appointed ‘to guide us into all truth?’ Have I not sought the gracious guidance of thy Good Spirit continually? Am I not truly sensible of my own darkness and weakness, my dangerous prejudices on every side, and my utter insufficiency for my own conduct? Wilt Thou leave such a poor creature bewildered among a thousand perplexities, which are raised by the various opinions and contrivances of men, to explain Thy Divine Truth? Help me, Heavenly Father, for I am quite tired and weary of these human explainings, so various and uncertain. When wilt Thou explain it to me Thyself, O my God, by the secret and certain dictates of Thy Spirit, according to the intimation of Thy Word? Nor let any pride of reason, nor any affectation of novelty, nor any criminal bias whatever, turn my heart aside from hearkening to these Divine dictates of Thy Word and Thy Spirit. Suffer not any of my native corruptions, nor the vanity of my imagination, to cast a mist over my eyes while I am searching after the knowledge of Thy mind and will, for my eternal salvation.

“I entreat, O most merciful Father, that Thou wilt not suffer the remnant of my short life to be wasted in such endless wanderings in quest of Thee and Thy Son Jesus, as a great part of my past days have been; but let my sincere endeavours to know Thee, in all the ways whereby Thou hast discovered Thyself in Thy Word, be crowned with such success that my soul, being established in every needful truth by Thy Holy Spirit, I may spend my remaining life according to the rules of Thy Gospel, and may, with all the holy and happy creation, ascribe glory and honour, wisdom and power, to Thee who sittest upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever.”

We have stated the matter fairly as in relation to Watts’ entireness of faith, but justice has not been done to Watts in relation to that dilemma and agitation of public opinion and sentiment which forced him into controversy. It was not that he himself doubted, neither was it that he for himself approached the confines of a discussion of which it might be said—

Dark with excessive light its skirts appear.

Arianism was vexing the church in general in England in that age.[52] Many of the churches, especially those to which Watts stood related, indicated a close proclivity to Arian sentiment. The peculiar spirit of the times had created this degeneracy of sentiment; there was little of what we are now accustomed to denominate practical Christianity—the activities created by Methodism were quite unknown. All over the country were Nonconformist churches (nooks of retreat), where some learned, scholarly, and philosophical minister was at the head of a class of thoughtful minds. Numbers of them seemed to have little to do but to think; the heart did not minister much to the head in many instances. The Unitarianism of our day was unknown. It thus represented very much the high Arian sentiment of reverence to Christ without the acknowledgment of His Godhead. The hymns of Watts abound in expressions of praise to Christ and to the Holy Spirit. He was called upon to vindicate that which he himself had done; he was called upon to defend that whole scheme of doctrine which accepted the Three Persons in the Divine Godhead. Perhaps the defect in all such efforts is, that the very attempt to embody some doctrines within the forms of the understanding naturally and essentially depraves them. If we say, as we often do, a God understood is no God at all—and this remark applies to mere natural religion—the same holds true of those higher doctrines of revelation which are the adumbrations of “the light which no man hath seen or can see.” There are doctrines in Theology, even as there are doctrines in Science, the demonstration of which is rather negative than positive. Chemists tell us of an element essential to our life—we breathe it every moment; it contributes to the balance of all the powers of the atmosphere; it tames the subtle, fiery-tempered oxygen, the wild and vehement hydrogen; it represses, allays, and composes, but itself has no colour no odour; it has no active properties, no chemical affections; it is one of the greatest mysteries in nature. It is invisible, and yet it proclaims its presence; the chemist cannot touch it, but he is sure of its existence. It may well fill our minds with awe that we are ever in the presence of such an agent, that before it the lamp of science is darkened, like a man with a dim light in a room in which he sees phantoms he cannot touch, and hears voices the causes of which he cannot detect, and as he holds up his lamp he is aware of a presence that disturbs him, that will not enter into his knowledge, and for which he cannot account. Only he knows that it is. Such is nitrogen. It is thus we apprehend the doctrine of the Trinity.

All efforts must fail to apprehend the doctrines involved in the idea of the Trinity, which insist upon either the idea of personality or numeration, as they are understood by us. Watts, with the Bible in his hand, stood on the defensive against the aggressions of Arianism, and having attempted to unfold the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, he published his further dissertation, “The Arian Invited to the Orthodox Faith; a plain and easy method to lead such as deny the Proper Deity of Christ into the belief of that Article.” Those who charge Arianism upon Watts can only do so, because throughout the argument he has conducted it in a strain of eminent courtesy and charity. He approached the matter in no spirit of disputation, but with a cordial desire to promote, if possible, healing and unity; nor do we think that there are any indications, in the course of any of his discussions, that his own mind or faith was unhinged; but the discussions around him compelled him to direct his attention to questions certainly not uncongenial to his speculative and analytic order of mind. Probably the reader feels that there is a sufficient correspondence between the sense of our own spiritual wants and the revelation given to us in the Divine Word to make us feel that the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead is a necessity of our moral nature, and that it is a doctrine, as we have already intimated, best held, as most satisfactory to the mind and conscience, when held _im_plicitly rather than _ex_plicitly.

The claim which the Unitarians put forth to find in Watts one of themselves is not less than audacious and dishonest. It is, however, founded—very ridiculously, we venture to think—upon some expressions reported after his death, which implied that he would have been willing, had he been able, to have altered some expressions in his hymns. Truly it is amazing that the author could survive the publication of his first volume forty years, and not alter many barbarisms of metre and expression. It may, perhaps, be partly accounted for from the fact that the copyright of the hymns had passed at once from his hands. We can very well believe there were certain expressions in his hymns he would have been not indisposed to alter, without touching at all upon matters of doctrine. It will be time enough for Unitarians to claim Watts when they are able to set aside his last published words, and to reconcile them with that faith which they call theirs, or to account, upon such principles as they would make him hold, for the sentiments which fell from his lips when dying.

But as a study of Watts’ mind, these pieces of his are like all that emanated from his pen, characterized by exceeding reverence for the subject he attempted to elucidate, and by charity, respect, and courtesy towards his opponents. Johnson says: “I am only enough acquainted with his theological works to admire his meekness of opposition, and his mildness of censure. It was not only in his books, but in his mind, that orthodoxy was united with charity.” Some will, perhaps, almost think that this width of charity in Watts degenerated into a vice; we hope this book has made it evident that he both had strong convictions and knew how to act upon them steadily. But his heart was very inclusive in its love. It was not merely that he lived within the shadows of persecution, and belonged to an order whose opinions were only tolerated; he represented the mildest type of Nonconformity. Perhaps we shall surprise some readers not very well acquainted with his writings, by informing them that one of the latest efforts of his mind and pen was upon the inquiry, “Whether an Establishment is altogether an Impossibility.” This was in his Essay, published in the year 1739, on “Civil Power in Things Sacred.” It is a singular scheme, and the question is discussed with great moderation and candour; but it is rather a plea for a system of national education than the establishment of a national religion. He inquires, indeed, whether there might not be established a religion consistent with the just liberties of mankind, and practicable with every form of civil government. He thinks that officers should be appointed by the State to explain and enforce the great duties and sanctions of morality, and that the citizens should be compelled to receive such lessons as are unquestionably at the foundation of a national well-being, the welfare, strength, and support of the State, and that such teachers, as public benefactors, should be sustained at the charge of the State.

Watts’ philosophical works exhibit him in the same light as his theological. They are marked by a vivid disposition to analysis and speculation, and by that elevated reverence of thought which appertains to all his writings. Instance his “Inquiry Concerning Space; whether it be Something or Nothing, God or a Creature.” Most minds are quite unequal to such discussions, and many regard them as unwise, irreverent, and dangerous. They are a kind of intellectual Matterhorn which certain daring spirits assault from age to age—the origin of evil, liberty, and necessity—the nature of substance, and time, and space. It would surely be a dangerous and a doubtful doctrine to teach that such questions are only the territories or hunting-grounds of the bold masters of sceptical negations. It does not derogate from the greatness of Isaac Watts to admit that he was neither a Joseph Butler, a William de Leibnitz, nor a Jonathan Edwards; but in his mind such studies became means of usefulness. He fashioned Alpenstocks for climbers among those higher mountain ranges, through which he had himself travelled. In such studies a reverent mind may at once enlarge the understanding while learning the limitation of its powers. A wise guide will here, too, guard against the dangerous _crevasse_, while he hath himself

The secret learned
To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take
The wind into his pulses.[53]

Johnson quotes a passage from Mr. Dyer, charging Watts with confounding the idea of space with empty space, and that he did not consider that though space might be without matter, yet matter, being extended, could not be without space. But in reply to this, it may be remarked that this is the whole question, and extended matter falls rather beneath the denomination of substance. It appears certainly the case that Watts, in his discussion, deals with infinite space, or say, certainly, indefinite space—that is, extension abstracted from phenomena. Such space Sir Isaac Newton reverently regarded as the sensorium of God. Newton was so essentially reverent even in thought that it was not possible for him to indulge an idea which was capable of depraving religious conceptions; but all minds, even religious minds, have not been equally reverent. Hence some have gone on to regard space as the immensity of God, as a property of God. But it would follow from this that as space is extended, so God, too, must be extended; and whatever tends to conform God with nature, or to place Him in contact with it, in any other way than as in relation to His wisdom and His will, is essentially unscriptural, and it is a dangerous proclivity below which yawn the fearful gulfs of Pantheism and Atheism. In these discussions our writer anticipated many of those shadows which in the course of a few years were to project themselves over the whole domain of philosophy and theology; and, indeed, only a few years before, in the great work of Spinosa, ominous indications had been given; and the second part of the “Living Temple” of John Howe bore immediately upon the coming questions. Watts’ essay penetrates into the stronghold of Pantheism. Newton and Pascal, both looking up into the infinite spaces, felt their nature called on to reply to the questions suggested. The silence terrified Pascal; Newton’s calmer nature gathered up even infinite space into the great idea, that it was but a mode, or attribute, of God. Some such doctrines govern the Essays of Watts: Space, he argues, cannot be God; we cannot indeed conceive that infinite space ever began to be, we have an idea of it as eternal and unchangeable; according to Watts it seems to contain what existence it has in the very idea, nature, or essence of it, which is one attribute of God, and whereby we prove His existence. It appears to be a necessary being and has a sort of self-existence, for we cannot tell how to conceive it not to he. It seems to be an impassible, indivisible, immutable essence, and therefore according to the ghastly pantheistic philosophy it is argued that space is God. This idea Watts concisely set aside, because it involves the absurdity of making the blessed God a Being of infinite length, breadth, and depth, and ascribing to Him parts of this nature measurable by inches, yards, and miles. Perhaps this is not so clear to all readers as it was to the writer himself; but the close seems more satisfactory when he says, “Strongest arguments seem to evince this, that it must be God, or it must be nothing.” Watts, then, was an Idealist, and the remark of Johnson arises from a misapprehension of the drift of the essay. He argues that space is only the shadow cast by substance—we are sure that shadow or darkness is a mere nothing, and space is nothing but the absence of body, as shade is the absence of light, and both are explicable without supposing either to be real beings: it is therefore merely an abstract idea, or, as we should say, a “thought-form;” it will follow from this that such an idea of space dissolves one of the charming illusions of Pantheism, and that there rises from the midst of this universe of unidentical being the personality of man.

Some critics have entertained a grim joke at the expense of Watts, that having annihilated space, he proceeded in the next place to annihilate substance, anticipating at once Berkeley and Hume. Let it then be remembered that he engaged in none of these excursions in a vain or Pyrrhonistic spirit: his essays were written not to unhinge, but to rest and settle and give repose to the mind; indeed he says, “There are mysteries wherein we bewilder and lose ourselves by attempting to make something out of nothing;” substance is one of these. He goes for some distance on the way with Locke, especially in refuting the idea that substance is something real in nature; with Locke he argues that “all the ideas we have of particular, distinct sort of substances, are nothing but several combinations of simple ideas coexistent in such, the cause of their union, which makes the whole subsist of itself.” Only then comes in the important question, “what is it that supports the accidents and qualities of being?” At this point Watts parts company with Locke. His ideas of substance seem to be antagonistic to Locke, and dangerously sustaining Spinosa, who taught, as our readers know, that the whole universe, God and this world, may be the same individual substance—“How can I be sure that God and the material world have not one common substance?” But, very singularly, Watts himself in tracing the mistakes upon this matter to their origin, seems to fall into the very error he seeks to explode, the idea of a real, invisible abstract or concrete, seems to stand behind all things; he says, the mistakes which men make arise from the occult quality in the termination of names, _ity_ in solidity, _sion_ in extension, which imply a quality without including the substance; as white_ness_, without including the substance or the thing that is white; the word white is concrete, and denotes the thing or substance together with the quality, and he says, “We ought to remember that _things_ are made by God, or Nature, _words_ are made by man, and sometimes applied in a way not exactly agreeable to what things and ideas require.” The object of Watts in his discussion of the idea of substance, was the same as that in his discussion in the idea of space, to disarm Spinozism of its gross and crude ideas of God. But we do not feel that the same success closes the discussion. Perhaps it will be sufficient to admit at once that space and substance are both modes of Divine operation. Push the inquiry to any extent, and the most absolute Spinozist is compelled to halt in some such conclusion. That God is extended, that He is a mere infinite extension, is an absurdity; but it seems that no injustice is done to the most reverent and infinite thought of God by regarding Him as the essential _sub-stans_, the substance as of all souls, so of all being.

That about the philosophic essays which interests us is their freshness, and the clear, easily lucid, and charmingly illustrated style in which the doctrines are conveyed. They assuredly are a very happy commentary upon Locke, from whom he often separates, as in the essay on “Innate Ideas;” he agrees with Locke in the main, and then proceeds to discourse upon many simple ideas which are innate in some sense. His essay to prove that the “Soul never Sleeps,” and “On the Place and Motion of Spirits, and the Power of a Spirit to move Matter,” are interesting; that on the “Departing and Separate Soul” is a sublime piece of writing, and on the “Resurrection of the same Body,” and on the “Production and Nourishment of Plants and Animals.” Few persons now, it may be supposed, even know of the existence of these essays; they seem to us pieces of truly delightful reading, most instructive, suggestive, and entertaining, singularly free from hard and unpleasant lines of dogmatism, full of delightful and suggestive pictures; take the following:

SUNBEAMS AND STARBEAMS.

“What a surprising work of God is vision, that notwithstanding
all these infinite meetings and crossings of starbeams and
sunbeams night and day, through all our solar world, there
should be such a regular conveyance of light to every eye as to
discern each star so distinctly by night, as well as all other
objects on earth by day! And this difficulty and wonder will
be greatly increased by considering the innumerable double,
triple, and tenfold reflections and refractions of sunbeams,
or daylight, near our earth, and among the various bodies on
the surface of it. Let ten thousand men stand round a large
elevated amphitheatre; in the middle of it, on a black plain,
let ten thousand white round plates be placed, of two inches
diameter, and at two inches distance; every eye must receive
many rays of light reflected from every plate, in order to
perceive its shape and colour; now, if there were but one ray
of light came from each plate, here would be ten thousand
rays falling on every single eye, which would make twenty
thousand times ten thousand, that is, two hundred millions
of rays crossing each other in direct lines in order to make
every plate visible to every man. But if we suppose that each
plate reflected one hundred rays, which is no unreasonable
supposition, this would rise to twenty thousand millions. What
an amazing thing is the distinct vision of the shape and colour
of each plate by every eye, notwithstanding these confused
crossings and rays! What an astonishing composition is the eye
in all the coats and all the humours of it, to convey those ten
thousand white images, or those millions of rays so distinct
to the retina, and to impress and paint them all there! And
what further amazement attends us if we follow the image on
the retina, conveying itself by the optic nerves into the
common sensory without confusion? Can a rational being survey
this scene and say there is no God? Can a mind think on this
stupendous bodily organ, the eye, and not adore the Wisdom that
contrived it?”

And the following is not only most interesting, but anticipates, with much strength, a line of argument important to the sceptical philosophy of our own day. The German Buchner binds up his atheistic philosophy between the two covers of Force and Matter; and many in our own country follow in the same train of singularly forgetful thought: forgetful because force and matter are really not sufficient to constitute a universe; the regulative and directive power which controls force and manipulates matter to its will is assuredly as essential a factor as either force or matter.[54] Thus Dr. Watts argues in his remarks:

THE DIRECTION OF MOTION A PROOF OF DEITY.

“Yet, after all, I know it may be replied again, that
gravitation is a power which is not limited in its agency by
any conceivable distances whatsoever; and therefore, when
these starbeams are run out never so far into the infinite
void by the force of their emission from the star, yet their
gravitation towards the star, or some of the planetary worlds,
which sometimes, perhaps, may be nearer to it, has perpetual
influence to retard their motion by degrees, even as the
motion of a comet is retarded by its gravitation towards the
sun, though it flies to such a prodigious distance from the
sun, and in time it is stopped and drawn back again and made
to return towards its centre. And just so, may we suppose,
all the sunbeams and starbeams that ever were emitted, even
to the borders of the creation, to have been restrained by
degrees by this principle of gravitation till, moving slower
and slower, at last they are stopped in their progress and made
to return toward their own or some other planetary system.
And if so, then there is a perpetual return of the beams of
light towards some or other of their bright originals, an
everlasting circulation of these lucid atoms, which will hinder
this eternal dilation of the bounds of the universe, and at the
same time will equally prevent the wasting of the substance
of the lucid bodies, the sun or stars. Well, but if this
power of restraining and reducing the flight of starbeams be
ascribed to this principle of gravitation, let us inquire what
is this gravitation, which prevents the universe from such a
perpetual waste of light? It cannot be supposed to be any real
property or natural power inhering in matter or body, which
exerts its influence at so prodigious a distance. I think,
therefore, it is generally agreed, and with great reason, that
it is properly the influence of a Divine power upon every atom
of matter which, in a most exact proportion to its bulk and
distance, causes it to gravitate towards all other material
beings, and which makes all the bulky beings in the universe,
viz., the sun, planets, and stars, attract the bodies that are
near them towards themselves. Now this law of nature being
settled at first by God the Creator, and being constantly
maintained in the course of His providence, it is esteemed
as an effect of nature, and has a property of matter, though
in truth it is owing to the almighty and all-pervading power
of God exerting its incessant dominion and influence through
the whole material creation, producing an infinite variety of
changes which Ave observe among bodies, confining the universe
to its appointed limits, restraining the swift motion of the
beams of light, and preserving this vast system of beings from
waste and ruin, from desolation and darkness. If there be a
world, there is a God; if there be a sun and stars, every ray
points to their Creator; not a beam of light from all the lucid
globes, but acknowledges its mission from the wisdom and will
of God, and feels the restraint of His laws, that it may not
be an eternal wanderer. But I call my thoughts to retire from
these extravagant rovings beyond the limits of creation. What
do these amusements teach us but the inconceivable grandeur,
extent, and magnificence of the works and the power of God, the
astonishing contrivances of His wisdom, and the poverty, the
weakness, and narrowness of our own understandings, all which
are lessons well becoming a creature?”

In the same manner, also, he replies to the modern doctrine of _traducianism_ in his remarks on

CREATION OR CONSERVATION.

“It has been a very famous question in the schools, whether
conservation be a continual creation, i.e., whether that
action, whereby God preserves all creatures in their several
ranks and orders of being, is not one continued act of His
creating power or influence, as it were, giving being to them
every moment? Whether creatures, being formed out of nothing,
would relapse again into their first estate of nonentity if
they were not, as it were, perpetually reproduced by a creating
act of God? How there is one plain and easy argument whereby,
perhaps, this controversy may be determined, and it may be
proposed in this manner. In whatsoever moment God creates a
substance, He must create with it all the properties, modes,
and accidents which belong to it in that moment; for in the
very moment of creation the creature is all passive, and
cannot give itself those modes. Now if God every moment create
wicked men and devils, and cause them to exist such as they
are, by a continued act of creation, must He not, at the same
time, create or give being to all their sinful thoughts and
inclinations, and even their most criminal and abominable
actions? Must He not create devils, together with the rage and
pride, the malice, envy, and blasphemy of their thoughts? Must
He not create sinful men in the very acts of lying, perjury,
stealing, and adultery, rapine, cruelty, and murder? Must He
not form one man with malice in his heart? Another with a false
oath on the tongue? A third with a sword in his hand, plunging
it into his neighbour’s bosom? Would not these formidable
consequences follow from the supposition of God’s conserving
providence being a continual act of creation? But surely these
ideas seem to be shocking absurdities, whereas, if conservation
be really a continued creation, the modes must be created
together with their substances every moment, since it is not
possible that creatures, who every moment are supposed to be
nothing but the immediate products of the Divine will, should
be capable in every one of those very moments in which they are
produced or created to form their own modes in simultaneous
co-existence with their subjects. I own there are difficulties
on the other side of the question; but the fear of making God
the author of sin has bent my opinion this way. We must always
inviolably maintain it for the honour of the blessed God,
that all spirits, as they come out of His hand, are created
pure and innocent; every sinful act proceeds from themselves,
by an abuse of their own freedom of will, or by a voluntary
compliance with the corrupt appetites and inclinations of flesh
and blood. We must find some better way, therefore, to explain
God’s providential conservation of things than by representing
it as an act of proper and continual creation, lest we impute
all the iniquities of all men and devils, in all ages, to the
pure and holy God, who is blessed for evermore.”

There are two other pieces well worth a study—his remarks on Mr. Locke’s “Essay on the Human Understanding,” and a “Brief Scheme of Ontology.” The essay on ontology, like that on logic, is a most interesting handbook and guide to thought. Watts thought so clearly that it often seems as if he were only putting things neatly. Sometimes, as in his “Philosophic Essays,” and in his pieces on the Trinity, he is eminently translucent; you see that there is light behind. This is the impression conveyed by his dissertation on “Space,” “Substance,” and “Concerning Spirits, their Place and Motion;” but in his Ontology and Logic he is transparent, the objects are brought distinctly into view. When he presents before you his greater thoughts his style is indeed clear, but you feel that it is as when “morning is spread upon the mountains” before sunrise, or as when evening lingers in the soft and rosy light after sunset, there is something somewhere behind, some orb of light which spreads out all that roseate glow; in his Ontology and Logic he is concise and distinct, as we have said; you may almost call him a neat writer. He has a wonderful power of accumulating particulars, a singular felicity in discriminating ideas. This gives to him a very nice sense of words, as he says, “We must search the sense of words. It is for want of this that men quarrel in the dark, and that there are so many contentions in the several sciences, and especially in divinity.” His power of discrimination is so nice that it often becomes as amusing as it is instructive; regarded thus, his Logic is a most interesting book, we suppose quite the most delightful to read of any treatise on logic in our language. Of this amusing cumulative power let the reader take the following:

NAMES AND NAMING THINGS.

“Do not suppose that the natures or essences of things always
differ from one another as much as their names do. There are
various purposes in human life for which we put very different
names on the same thing, or on things whose natures are near
akin; and thereby oftentimes, by making a new nominal species,
we are ready to deceive ourselves with the idea of another
real species of beings, and those whose understandings are
led away by the mere sound of words fancy the nature of those
things to be very different whose names are so, and judge
of them accordingly. I may borrow a remarkable instance for
my purpose out of every garden which contains a variety of
plants in it. Most of all plants agree in this, that they have
a root, a stalk, leaves, buds, blossoms, and seeds: but the
gardener ranges them under very different names, as though
they were really different kinds of beings, merely because of
the different use and service to which they are applied by
men, as for instance those plants whose roots are eaten shall
appropriate the name of roots to themselves, such as carrots,
turnips, radishes, etc. If the leaves are of chief use to us
then we call them herbs, as sage, mint, thyme; if the leaves
are eaten raw they are termed salad, as lettuce, purslane;
if boiled they become pot-herbs, as spinage, coleworts; and
some of those same plants which are pot-herbs in one family
are salads in another. If the buds are made our food they are
called heads or tops; so cabbage heads, heads of asparagus,
and artichokes. If the blossom be of most importance we call
it a flower, such as daisies, tulips, and carnations, which
are the mere blossoms of those plants. If the husks or seeds
are eaten they are called the fruits of the ground, as peas,
beans, strawberries, etc. If any part of the plant be of known
or common use to us in medicine we call it a physical herb, as
cardamus, scurvy-grass; but if we count no part useful we call
it a weed, and throw it out of the garden; and yet perhaps our
next neighbour knows some valuable property and use of it, he
plants it in his garden and gives it a title of an herb or a
flower. You see here how small is the real distinction of these
several plants considered in their general nature as the lesser
vegetables, yet what very different ideas we vulgarly form
concerning them, and make different species of them, chiefly
because of the different names given to them.”

Exactly the same characteristics meet us in his Ontology, but here there is yet more of this kind of amusement; its pages are crowded with illustrations. It was perhaps in the nature of the subject that he scarcely mentions a particular for which he does not furnish one or twenty illustrative examples: take his curious discrimination of causes into the deficient, the permissive, and the conditional:

CLASSIFICATION OF CAUSES.

“_A deficient cause_ is when the effect owes its existence in
a great measure to the absence of something which would have
prevented it, so that this may be reckoned a negative rather
than a positive cause: the negligence of a gardener, or the
want of rain, are the deficient causes of the withering of
plants; and the carelessness of the pilot, or the sinking of
the tide, is the cause of a ship’s splitting on a rock; the
forgetfulness of a message is the cause of a quarrel among
friends, or of the punishment of servants; the not bringing a
reprieve in time is the cause of a criminal’s being executed;
and the want of education is the cause why many a child runs
headlong into vice and mischief; the blindness of a man, or the
darkness of the night, are the causes of stumbling; a leak in
a boat is a deficient cause why the water runs in and the boat
sinks; and a hole in a vessel is called a deficient cause why
the liquor runs out and is lost. Man is the deficient cause of
all his sins of omission, and many of these carry great guilt
in them.

“_A permissive cause_ is that which actually removes
impediments, and thus it lets the proper causes operate. Now
this sort of cause is either natural or moral. A natural
permissive cause removes natural impediments or obstructions,
and this may be called a deobstruent cause. So opening the
window shutters is the cause of the light entering the room;
cleaning the ear may be the cause of a man’s hearing music
who was deaf before; breaking down a dam is the cause of the
overflowing of water and drowning a town; letting loose a rope
is the cause of a ship’s running adrift; leaving off a garment
is the cause of a cold and a cough; and cutting the bridle of
the tongue may be the cause of speech to the dumb.

“_Note._—The cause which removes natural impediments may be a
proper efficient cause with regard to that removal, yet it is
not properly efficient, but merely permissive with regard to
the consequences of that removal.

“_A moral permissive cause_ removes moral impediments, or takes
away prohibitions, and gives leave to act: so a master is a
permissive cause of his scholars going to play; a general is
the same cause of his soldiers plundering a city; and a repeal
of a law against foreign silks is the permissive cause why they
are worn.

“_Query._—Was not God’s permission of Satan to afflict Job
rather natural than moral, since his mischievous actions did
not become lawful thereby, and since it is now become his
nature to do mischief where he has no natural restraint?

“_A condition_ has been usually caused _causa sine quâ non_,
or a cause without which the effect is not produced. It is
generally applied to something which is requisite in order to
the effect, though it hath not a proper actual influence in
producing that effect. Daylight is a condition of ploughing,
sowing, and reaping; darkness is a condition of our seeing
stars and glowworms; clearness of the stream is the condition
of our spying sand and pebbles at the bottom of it; being well
dressed with a head uncovered is a condition of a man’s coming
into the presence of a king; and paying a peppercorn yearly is
the condition of enjoying an estate. How far the perfect idea
of the word condition, in the civil law, may differ from this
representation is not my present work to determine.

“_Note._—These three last causes may possibly be all ranked
under the general name of conditions, but I think it more
proper to distinguish them into their different kinds of
causality.”