evidence of those within the veil; to explain that the difficulties of revealed religion have their likeness in that part of the Divine proceedings which comes under our view in the daily business of life. Thus, as the rose suspends its vital current but dies not, losing its grace and loveliness but springing forth afresh; as the insect languishes, withdraws into its silken shroud, motionless and powerless, yet bursts its tomb and enters into a new world, rejoicing in the possession of new and enlarged powers, so the spirit of man may be renewed through the dust and ashes of his dissolution, though our straining eyes may not follow it into the dark beyond. True, we may not reach demonstration. Here we see through a glass darkly let probability be our guide. This is the principle on which he retires, sensible to the sad discords of the universe. Who that has gone deep enough into the conditions of knowledge to feel the weary burden of 'this unintelligible world' is not inclined to consider this a wise conclusion? The Analogy, in spite of its faulty style, is destined, by its very solidity and moral earnestness, to be the eternal heritage of mankind. About the middle of the century, Deism, as a creed or constructive system to live and die by, vanquished and languishing from internal decay, fell into disrepute. Amid this dust of debate, we may hear now and then the voice of ecstatic meditation, sore sick' of the long din, convinced of its futility to arrest religious decadence or quicken the ordinary soul, and calling men to the birth of a heavenly life. Perhaps the writer who exercised the deepest influence in the revival of the eighteenth century was William Law, who, almost alone among his contemporaries, might stand for a primitive Christian come to revisit a strangely altered scene. To his rapt contemplation, we are pilgrims filing swiftly across the stage of action, tarrying an instant, yet in that instant on the road for eternity. "The whole race of mankind are a race of fallen spirits that pass through this world as an arrow passes through the air.' With such convictions, he was a fit messenger sent to Vanity Fair, to order its inhabitants to put on sackcloth and ashes. Religion, from being historical and rational, becomes subjective and emotional. The appeal is to the heart. The Christian must separate himself altogether in life and feelings from the world that is about him: old-school Puritans had made the Scriptures themselves the final court of appeal, but this was discredited by the interminable differences of interpretation. Others imagined they had found an infallible oracle in a certain inward light residing in the souls of believers; but this expedient-too mystical and extravagant to be of any force in argument - had also to be abandoned. The orthodox party were thus forced to defend themselves by logic. Is the Bible a forgery, or the word of the living God? Is Christianity an imposture, or the light which alone can lighten the world? Such were the questions that broadly define the struggle. The Deists urged that the Christian doctrines were irrational, and proposed to substitute for revealed religion the religion of nature. The divines replied that a revelation was an antecedent probability, and was supported by evidence, internal and external, so weighty and conclusive that prudence and common sense compelled its acceptance. The series of Deistical writings in this age closed with the posthumous publications of Bolingbroke, in 1752. Admitting the existence of God, he denies His providence; admitting the possibility of a revelation, he denies the fact; admitting that miracles, if wrought, prove a Divine revelation, he maintains that the canonical books belong to a later age than the events they describe. Middleton, a most insidious and powerful assailant, first opened out the whole question of the historical evidence of miracles by his attacks, in 1748, on the miraculous narratives of the Fathers. The complete development of the scepticism of this period, however, is represented by Hume, whose teachings and influence will be considered hereafter. The orthodox position was given most fully and philosophically by Bishop Butler-incomparably the greatest of Christian advocates. In 1736, appeared his Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. Its aim was to present the leading points in the controversy; to show that every objection urged against the Christian faith may be urged equally against the economy of the natural world, and is equally valid for the disproof of truths which are universally believed; to find in outward and visible things the type and evidence of those within the veil; to explain that the difficulties of revealed religion have their likeness in that part of the Divine proceedings which comes under our view in the daily business of life. Thus, as the rose suspends its vital current but dies not, losing its grace and loveliness but springing forth afresh; as the insect languishes, withdraws into its silken shroud, motionless and powerless, yet bursts its tomb and enters into a new world, rejoicing in the possession of new and enlarged powers, so the spirit of man may be renewed through the dust and ashes of his dissolution, though our straining eyes may not follow it into the dark beyond. True, we may not reach demonstration. Here we see through a glass darkly let probability be our guide. This is the principle on which he retires, sensible to the sad discords of the universe. Who that has gone deep enough into the conditions of knowledge to feel the weary burden of 'this unintelligible world' is not inclined to consider this a wise conclusion? The Analogy, in spite of its faulty style, is destined, by its very solidity and moral earnestness, to be the eternal heritage of mankind. About the middle of the century, Deism, as a creed or constructive system to live and die by, vanquished and languishing from internal decay, fell into disrepute. Amid this dust of debate, we may hear now and then the voice of ecstatic meditation, 'sore sick of the long din, convinced of its futility to arrest religious decadence or quicken the ordinary soul, and calling men to the birth of a heavenly life. Perhaps the writer who exercised the deepest influence in the revival of the eighteenth century was William Law, who, almost alone among his contemporaries, might stand for a primitive Christian come to revisit a strangely altered scene. To his rapt contemplation, we are pilgrims filing swiftly across the stage of action, tarrying an instant, yet in that instant on the road for eternity. "The whole race of mankind are a race of fallen spirits that pass through this world as an arrow passes through the air.' With such convictions, he was a fit messenger sent to Vanity Fair, to order its inhabitants to put on sackcloth and ashes. Religion, from being historical and rational, becomes subjective and emotional. The appeal is to the heart. The Christian must separate himself altogether in life and feelings from the world that is about him: spond to our sensations, or to affirm that the sensation is no proof of anything without, is Idealism. The first divides the mental from the physical, and believes that the mind has proof of both; the second resolves the mental into the physical; the third resolves the physical into the mental. The first is the underlying philosophy of religion and daily life; the second is the prevailing drift of English speculation; the third is a reaction against the second,- a noble but mistaken endeavor to rescue the hopes and beliefs of men. Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume make up the line of materialistic succession. The first made seeing and hearing the conditions of thinking, and thus gave English thought a material bent. The second made this tendency excessive and one-sided. The third was peculiarly influential at one point,-the origin of ideas. He asserted that the sole ground of knowledge was experience. The mind contributed nothing,-it was simply paper, on which the images of outward things, and the states they occasioned, were received. The fourth carried the views of his predecessor to startling consequences. Résumé. A new form of landscape gardening was introduced. Symmetry of design, so popular in the reign of Anne, was discarded for the variety and freedom of nature. Hogarth cultivated the taste for portrait-painting, as yet the only flourishing branch of the high tree of British art.' He translated the inward into the outward, exhibiting manners, with deep and various meaning, in color and form. The impulse given to sacred music, and the origin of the English opera, are the capital events in musical history. These facts indicate the tendencies of taste. Both literature and government were given a more popular turn. Instead of the vices, miseries, and frivolities of the great, the people now saw, in what they read, an account of themselves. The critical spirit of the age was at once formal and substantial, increasingly the latter. Prose was preeminent, and spread far and wide into many realms. History was a favorite study. No literary labor was more remunerative, nor did any other so readily raise to distinction those who excelled in it. The prevailing style was still classical; but to the nimble move ment of Pope and the graceful pace of Addison, was now added the ponderous and stately gait of Johnson. Poetry, open to petty and superficial criticism, conformed to the rules and proprieties, but was divorced from living nature. Formalism and rationalism provoked reactionary efforts, disclosing far-off forces at work, promises of the coming spontaneity in which poetry should flow as lava from volcanoes, light from stars, or perfume from flowers. RICHARDSON. His power was his own in the strictest sense; not borrowed from books, little aided even by experience of life, derived almost solely from introspection of himself and communion with his own heart.-Craik. Biography.-Born in Derbyshire, in 1689, son of a poor carpenter. Received a common-school education, and at the age of sixteen was apprenticed to a printer in London—a calling to which he was determined by its prospective opportunities for reading. Advanced rapidly by industry and good conduct, was taken into partnership, and ultimately became the head of an extensive business. At fifty, became an author, writing during his leisure moments in his shop parlor. Delicate, nervous, often ill, his disorders terminated fatally on the 4th of July, 1761. Writings. Known from his youth as a fluent letter-writer, he had been engaged to prepare a manual of familiar letters on useful subjects, and it occurred to him, while executing the task, that the work would be greatly enlivened if the letters were made to tell a connected story. The result was Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740); published in order to cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the young. Pamela is an artless and lovely child of fifteen, half servant and half favorite, who finds herself exposed to the wickedness of a rich and aristocratic young master, a justice of the peace, a sort of divinity to her. He insults her, but she is always timid and humble: It is for you, sir, to say what you please, and for me only to say, God bless your honor!' |