A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 19

He was preaching against violence and cruelty:-"Don't talk to me," said he, "of the savages! a ruffian in the midst of Christendom is the savage of savages. He is as a man freezing in the sun's heat, groping in the sun's light, a straggler in paradise, an alien in heaven!"

In his chapel all the princ.i.p.al seats in front of the pulpit and down the centre aisle were filled by the sailors. We ladies, and gentlemen, and strangers, whom curiosity had brought to hear him, were ranged on each side; he would on no account allow us to take the best places. On one occasion, as he was denouncing hypocrisy, luxury, and vanity, and other vices of more civilised life, he said emphatically, "I don't mean _you_ before me here," looking at the sailors; "I believe you are wicked enough, but honest fellows in some sort, for you profess less, not more, than you practise; but I mean to touch _starboard_ and _larboard_ there!" stretching out both hands with the forefinger extended, and looking at us on either side till we quailed.

He compared the love of G.o.d in sending Christ upon earth to that of the father of a seaman who sends his eldest and most beloved son, the hope of the family, to bring back the younger one, lost on his voyage, and missing when his s.h.i.+p returned to port.

Alluding to the carelessness of Christians, he used the figure of a mariner, steering into port through a narrow dangerous channel, "false lights here, rocks there, s.h.i.+fting sand banks on one side, breakers on the other; and who, instead of fixing his attention to keep the head of his vessel right, and to obey the instructions of the pilot as he sings out from the wheel, throws the pilot overboard, lashes down the helm, and walks the deck whistling, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket." Here, suiting the action to the word, he put on a true sailor-like look of defiant jollity;-changed in a moment to an expression of horror as he added, "See! See! she drifts to destruction!"

One Sunday he attempted to give to his sailor congregation an idea of Redemption. He began with an eloquent description of a terrific storm at sea, rising to fury through all its gradations; then, amid the waves, a vessel is seen labouring in distress and driving on a lee sh.o.r.e. The masts bend and break, and go overboard; the sails are rent, the helm uns.h.i.+pped, they spring a leak! the vessel begins to fill, the water gains on them; she sinks deeper, deeper, _deeper! deeper!_ He bent over the pulpit repeating the last words again and again; his voice became low and hollow. The faces of the sailors as they gazed up at him with their mouths wide open, and their eyes fixed, I shall never forget.

Suddenly stopping, and looking to the farthest end of the chapel as into s.p.a.ce, he exclaimed, with a piercing cry of exultation, "A life boat! a life boat!" Then looking down upon his congregation, most of whom had sprung to their feet in an ecstasy of suspense, he said in a deep impressive tone, and extending his arms, "_Christ is that life boat!_"

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VII.

RELIGION AND SCIENCE.

"It is true, that science has not made Nature as expressive of G.o.d in the first instance, or to the beginner in religion, as it was in earlier times. Science reveals a rigid, immutable order; and this to common minds looks much like self-subsistence, and does not manifest intelligence, which is full of life, variety, and progressive operation.

Men, in the days of their ignorance, saw an immediate Divinity accomplis.h.i.+ng an immediate purpose, or expressing an immediate feeling, in every sudden, striking change of nature-in a storm, the flight of a bird, &c.; and Nature, thus interpreted, became the sign of a present, deeply interested Deity. Science undoubtedly brings vast aids, but it is to _prepared_ minds, to those who have begun in another school. The greatest aid it yields consists in the revelation it makes of the Infinite. It aids us not so much by showing us marks of design in this or that particular thing as by showing the _Infinite_ in the _finite_.

Science does this office when it unfolds to us the unity of the universe, which thus becomes the sign, the efflux of one unbounded intelligence, when it reveals to us in every work of Nature infinite connections, the influences of all-pervading laws-when it shows us in each created thing unfathomable, unsearchable depths, to which our intelligence is altogether unequal. Thus Nature explored by science is a witness of the Infinite. It is also a witness to the same truth by its beauty; for what is so undefined, so mysterious as beauty?"-_Dr.

Channing._

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PART II.

Literature and Art.

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Notes from Books.

1.

"A great advantage is derived from the occasional practice of reading together, for each person selects different beauties and starts different objections: while the same pa.s.sage perhaps awakens in each mind a different train of a.s.sociated ideas, or raises different images for the purposes of ill.u.s.tration."-_Francis Horner._

2.

"C'est ainsi que je poursuis la communication de quelque esprit fameux, non afin qu'il m'enseigne mais afin que je le connaisse, et que le connaissant, s'il le faut, je l'imite."-_Montaigne._

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DR. ARNOLD.

3.

I sat up till half-past two this morning reading Dr. Arnold's "Life and Letters," and have my soul full of him to-day.

On the whole I cannot say that the perusal of this admirable book has changed any notion in my mind, or added greatly to my stock of ideas.

There was no height of inspiration, or eloquence, or power, to which I looked _up_; no profound depth of thought or feeling into which I looked _down_; no _new_ lights; no _new_ guides; no absolutely _new_ aspects of things human or spiritual.

On the other hand, I never read a book of the kind with a more harmonious sense of pleasure and _approbation_,-if the word be not from me presumptuous. While I read page after page, the mind which was unfolded before me seemed to me a brother's mind-the spirit, a kindred spirit. It was the improved, the elevated, the enlarged, the enriched, the every-way superior reflection of my own intelligence, but it was certainly _that_. I felt it so from beginning to end. Exactly the reverse was the feeling with which I laid down the Life and Letters of Southey. I was instructed, amused, interested; I profited and admired; but with the _man_ Southey I had no sympathies: my mind stood off from his; the poetical intellect attracted, the material of the character repelled me. I liked the embroidery, but the texture was disagreeable, repugnant. Now with regard to Dr. Arnold, my entire sympathy with the character, with the _material_ of the character, did not extend to all its manifestations. I liked the texture better than the embroidery;-perhaps, because of my feminine organisation.

Nor did my admiration of the intellect extend to the acceptance of _all_ the opinions which emanated from it; perhaps because from the manner these were enunciated, or merely touched upon (in letters chiefly), I did not comprehend clearly the reasoning on which they may have been founded. Perhaps, if I had done so, I must have respected them more, perhaps have been convinced by them; so large, so candid, so rich in knowledge, and apparently so logical, was the mind which admitted them.

And yet this excellent, admirable man, seems to have _feared_ G.o.d, in the common-place sense of the word fear. He considered the Jews as out of the pale of equality; he was against their political emanc.i.p.ation from a hatred of Judaism. He subscribed to the Athanasian Creed, which stuck even in George the Third's orthodox throat. He believed in what Coleridge could not admit, in the existence of the spirit of evil as a person. He had an idea that the Church _of G.o.d_ may be destroyed by an Antichrist; he speaks of such a consummation as possible, as probable, as impending; as if any inst.i.tution really from G.o.d could be destroyed by an adverse power!-and he thought that a lawyer could not be a Christian.

4.

Certain pa.s.sages filled me with astonishment as coming from a churchman, particularly what he says of the sacraments (vol. ii. pp. 75. 113.); and in another place, where he speaks of "the _pestilent_ distinction between clergy and laity;" and where he says, "I hold that one form of Church government is exactly as much according to Christ's will as another." And in another place he speaks of the Anglican Church (with reference to Henry VIII. as its father, and Elizabeth as its foster-mother), as "the child of regal and aristocratical selfishness and unprincipled tyranny, who has never dared to speak boldly to the great, but has contented herself with lecturing the poor;" but he forgot at the moment the trial of the bishops in James's time, and their n.o.ble stand against regal authority.

5.

With regard to conservatism (vol. ii. pp. 19. 62.), he seems to mean-as I understand the whole pa.s.sage,-that it is a good _instinct_ but a bad _principle_. Yet as a principle is it, as he says, "always wrong?"

Though as the adversary of progress, it must be always wrong, yet as the adversary of change it _may_ be sometimes right.

6.

He remarks that most of those who are above sectarianism are in general indifferent to Christianity, while almost all who profess to value Christianity seem, when they are brought to the test, to care only for their own sect. "Now," he adds, "it is manifest to me, that all our education must be Christian, and not be sectarian." Yet the whole aim of education up to this time has been, in this country, eminently sectarian, and every statesman who has attempted to place it on a broader basis has been either wrecked or stranded.

"All sects," he says in another place, "have had among them marks of Christ's Catholic Church in the graces of his Spirit and the confession of his name," and he seems to wish that some one would compile a book showing side by side what professors of all sects have done for the good of Christ's Church,-the martyrdoms, the missionary labours of Catholics, Protestants, Arians, &c.; "a grand field," he calls it,-and so it were; but it lies fallow up to this time.

7.

"the philosophy of medicine, I imagine, is at zero; our practice is empirical, and seems hardly more than a course of guessing, more or less happy." In another place (vol. ii. p. 72.), he says, "yet I honour medicine as the most beneficent of all professions."

8.

He says (vol. ii. p. 42.), "Narrow-mindedness tends to wickedness, because it does not extend its watchfulness to every part of our moral nature." "Thus, a man may have one or more virtues, such as are according to his favourite ideas, in great perfection; and still be nothing, because these ideas are his idols, and, wors.h.i.+pping them with all his heart, there is a portion of his heart, more or less considerable, left without its proper object, guide, and nourishment; and so this portion is left to the dominion of evil," &c.