Chapter XV: Appendix: Great Precedence Question 287 (14)

“I must rise instantly, or I shall be suffocated,” said the wife of a banker, on July 8, at Trent Park: she rose, rushed to a window, which she threw open to inhale fresh air: it was the last breath she took in, for she fell a corpse!

In the same year, Audin, the well-known publisher, died suddenly in his carriage, while travelling from Marseilles to Avignon; and Herr Carl Sander, the celebrated German surgeon, expired while seated at his desk, writing a treatise on anatomy.

On New Year’s Day, 1852, Sir Charles Wager Watson, of Westwratting Park, while riding briskly to meet the Suffolk foxhounds, fell from his horse, and on his friends coming up, they found him dead. On April 5, Prince Schwartzenberg was holding a Cabinet council, when he suddenly appeared to gasp for breath, and withdrew: he rallied, and retired to dress for dinner, during which he fell senseless on the floor, and died within an hour from his first seizure.

Mr. Frank Forster, the engineer, on April 13, while writing a letter, was struck with apoplexy, and almost immediately expired. A. N. Welby Pugin, the architect, scarcely of mature age, died suddenly at Ramsgate, September 14; and on the same day, the Duke of Wellington, who had retired to rest apparently quite well on the previous night, died, it is stated of apoplexy, within the brief space of six or seven hours. Dr. Granville states, from the testimony of medical and other near attendants, that, from the very first seizure, when the duke ordered distinctly the apothecary to be fetched _immediately_, down to the last moment of his existence, paralysis of the brain had been complete, for no other comprehensible word could he utter after that direction. On the day before, Dr. Stokoe, the appointed medical attendant to Napoleon I., during the last years of his exile, died suddenly in a public room at York, as he was preparing to continue his journey to London.

On March 12, 1853, Marshal Haynau, having supped with the prime minister, Buol, retired to rest, when, just after midnight, he rang for a glass of water; when the servant returned, his master was gasping for breath, and soon after died. On the same night, the gallant Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Kerrison was found dead in his bed. And, not many days after, Vice-Admiral Zarthmann, while walking in the streets of Copenhagen, complained of vertigo, sank to the ground, and expired in an hour. On April 30, Dr. Butler, Dean of Peterborough, while seated at table with his family, suddenly became insensible, and in ten minutes passed away, almost without a struggle. Maurice O’Connell, the eldest son of “the Liberator,” appeared in his usual health in the House of Commons; on the morrow, at midnight, he breathed his last. On December 12, 1853, Dr. Harrington, Principal of Brazenose College, Oxford, having retired to rest in his usual health and spirits, was shortly after seized with spasms, and died before eight o’clock next morning, in his fifty-third year. On the 5th of the same month, Captain Warner, of the “long range,” expired suddenly. On a Sunday evening in the same month, a stout middle-aged yeoman was crossing Ovington Park, near Southampton, on his way to the church, which he never reached: the park-keeper found him seated with his back to a tree, his hat on, his umbrella under his arm--dead--with no appearance of convulsion or previous struggle. Visconti, the architect, on December 29, had attended the first meeting of the Imperial Commission for the Exposition building at Paris, and was returning home in his carriage: on the door being opened, he was found dead.

One of the most awfully sudden visitations recorded in our time was the death of Mr. Justice Talfourd, in his fifty-eighth year, March 13, 1845, at Stafford, while delivering his charge to the grand jury. He was speaking of the increase of crime--of the neglects of the rich, the ignorance of the poor--of the want of a closer knowledge and more vital sympathy between class and class--and of the thousand social evils which arise from that unhappy and unnatural estrangement of human interests--when his face flushed and he bent forward on his desk, almost as if the Judge were bowed in prayer by some sharp and overpowering emotion. A moment more, and the bystanders saw him swerve, as if he were already senseless. He was dying, calmly and happily. In a few seconds he was gone--and all that was mortal of the poet was carried to the Judges’ Chambers and there laid down in breathless awe. “The people were trembling at the thought of coming before him; but in a minute his function was over, and he was gone to his own account.”

Respecting the frequency of these fatal occurrences, Dr. Granville remarks: “Where is the friend, where the acquaintance, or the passing associate at a club, who has not some sad story of the sort, or many of them, to tell you, if you once enter on the dismal subject? From every quarter of the country, from families whom you knew to be in the full bloom of youth, of individuals who were deemed vigorous and in the flower of manhood, we hear as we meet in our daily intercourse, of some one of them having suddenly disappeared from among the living!” Our newspapers abound with such records as the following.

In 1837, a communication to a Bristol journal recorded

“The fearfully sudden decease of Thomas Kington, Esq., of Manilla
hall, Clifton. Apparently without the slightest indisposition he
died in his counting-house, Queen-square, Bristol, surrounded by
all the accumulations of wealth, and the advantages accruing from
the interests of that wide range of commerce, the Melbourne and
Australian trade.”

And, in the _Times_, June, 1862:

“On the 19th inst., at Nine Elms, very suddenly, Mr. John Miller,
on the anniversary of his birth and wedding days, which events
he had intended to celebrate at the Star and Garter, Richmond,
where he had gone with a few friends, but was suddenly attacked
with illness on his arrival there, and was re-conveyed to his own
residence, where he expired shortly afterwards, aged fifty.”

In 1862, Mr. F. W. Gingell, of Wood House, East Ham, while sitting at dinner with the family, observed to his father, “I have a presentiment that I shall die suddenly:” at the same time his head dropped, and he expired.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] Many years since, the writer heard Sir Lucas Pepys, (some time President of the College of Physicians,) inquire of a druggist at Dorking what use he could possibly make of the many drugs in his shop; “for,” added Sir Lucas, “I have only used five or six articles in all my practice.”--J. T.

[21] Liebig: _Letters on Chemistry_, p. 28.

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?”

_Ben Jonson._

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._