IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // ^ .s\^. 1^ I.I 1.25 no I 2.8 S m I' 2.5 2.2 1^ IIIIIM U II 1.6 Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STRHT WEBSTER. NY )4S80 (716) 872-4503 ^v <^ ri>^ :\ \ ^"^ ^ "V ^^^. \ ''i^^^ 10 CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICIVIH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Note* tachniquas at bibllographiquas Tha Instituta has attamptad to obtain tha baat original copy svailabia for filming. Faaturaa of thia copy which may ba bibliographically uniqua. which may altar any of tha imagaa in tha raproduction. or which may significantly changa tha usual mathod of filming, ara chackad balow. D n n □ D Colourad covars/ Couvartura da coulaur I I Covars damagad/ Couvartura andommagAa Covars rastorad and/or laminatad/ Couvartura rastaur6a at/ou palliculAa I I Covar titia missing/ □ La titra da couvartura manqua |~~| Coloured maps/ Cartas giographiquas an coulaur Colourad inic (i.a. othar than blua or black)/ Encra da coulaur (i.a. autra qua blaua ou noira) r~~| Colourad platas and/or illustrations/ Planchas at/ou illustrations an coulaur Bound with othar material/ ReliA avac d'autres documents Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin/ La reliure serrAe peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distortion la long da la marge intirieure Blank leaves added during restoration may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming/ II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajout6es lors d'une restauration apparalssent dans la taxte, mais. lorsque cela Atait possible, ces pages n'ont pas AtA filmtas. Additional comments:/ Commentaires supplAmentaires; Thi to tl L'Institut a microfilm^ la meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a 4t4 possible de se procurer. Les ditaiis da cet exemplaire qui sont paut-Atre uniques du point de vue bibliographiqua, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite. ou qui peuvent exiger une modification dans la m6thoda normala de f ilmaga sont indiquAs ci-dessous. r~n Colourad pages/ X D X Pages de couleur Pages damaged/ Pages endommag6es Pages restored and/or laminated/ Pages restaur6as et/c j pelllculAes Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ Pages dAcolor6es, tachattes ou piquAas Pages detached/ Pages ditachias The pos oft filn" Ori( beg the sior oth firs sior or i Showthrough/ Transparence I I Quality of print varies/ Quaiit* InAgaia de I'imprussion Includes supplementary material/ Comprend du material suppiimantaira The shal TINi whi Map diffi entii begi right requ metl Only edition avaitabia/ Saule Mition disponible Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata slips, tissues, etc.. have been refilmed to ensure the best possible image/ Les pages totalement ou partieilement obscurcies par un feuiliet d'errata. une pelure. etc., ont 6t* filmAes A nouveau de fa^on h obtenir la meiileure image possible. This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/ Ce document est filmA au taux de reduction indiquA ci-dessous. 10X 14X 18X 22X 26X 30X J 12X 16X 20X 24X 28X 32X The copy filmed here has been reproduced thanks to the generosity of: National Library of Canada L'exemplaire fijmi fut reproduit grdce d la g6n6ro8it6 de: Bibliothdque nationale du Canada The images appearing here are the best quality possible considering the condition and legibility of the original copy and in keeping with the filming contract specifications. Les images suivantes ont 6t6 reproduites avec le plus grand soin, compte tenu de la condition et de la netteti de l'exemplaire film6. et en conformity avec les conditions du contrat de filmage. Original copies in printed paper covers are filmed beginning with the front cover and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All other original copies are filmed beginning on the first page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impression. Les exemplaires originaux dont la couverture en papier est imprim^e sont film6s en commen^ant par le premier plat et en terminant soit par la derniire page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration, soit par le second plat, selon le cas. Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont filmis en commenpant par la premidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la dernidre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. The last recorded frame on each microfiche shall contain the symbol — ^ (meaning "CON- TINUED "), or the symbol V (meaning "END"), whichever applies. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernlAre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbols — »> signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbols V signifie "FIN". Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film6s A des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour 6tre reproduit en un seul clich6, il est filmd A partir de Tangle sup^rieur gauche, de gauche i droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n^cessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mithode. 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 6 6 LJ q i"^ <* ^^^Ltu f^cceo^ /cr- LECTURES AND SERxMONS. l,iUi-li.W 'vi. aulluMKN.ii.l .' M,,nli,wil (•-■^ (TuRJ'S AND bERMOXr BY THI H'-V \V. MORLEV PUNSHON, LL.D. 4b-Y. ^, r v) K > X T o A D A ^'. S 1 V \ ;, N '^ r,> ^ j; .' o 'iwf- .•r c. i: ■•■*» / / it / 7, f * ''>' / .i < 1 Lectures and Sermons. BY THE REV. W. MORLEY PUNSHON, LL.D. TORONTO : ADAM, STEVENSON & CO 1873- ^ 19935S .1 ! Entered according to the Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy-three, by ADAM, St£V£NSON & Co., in the office of the Minister of Agriculture. HrjNTER, POSE k CO., FRINTERS. BLECTKOlYi'UKS AND BUOKBTNDRR& ToaoNTO. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. n the year one f£NSON&CO., THERE are times in a man's life when it is not graceful to withstand external pressure, and when one must risk a reputation for being wise, to secure a reputation for being kind. It is, therefore, that, at the request of many friends, 1 consent to the publication of these Lectures and Sermons, as a memo- rial volume. I have not aimed to alter the form of direct address. I have thought that possibly the perusal of what multitudes have heard, may recall the voice that spoke — when the speaker is far away. Thus not only may the truth remain, but the per- sonal memory linger ; not only may the oak be a substantial and helpial thing, but the invisible dryad be remembered too. I take pleasure in the thought that, although not native to the Dominion, I have learned to identify myself as loyally with its interests as if I were "to the manner born ;" and in the separation to which duty calls me, I shall cherish an unceasing attachment to its people and its fortunes sHll. When I consider that here is a land which reaps all the benefits of monarchy without the caste and cost of monarchy — a land where there is no degradation in honest toil, and ample chances for the honest toiler; a land whose educational appli- r VI ances rival any other, and whose moral principle has not yet been undermined ; a land which starts its national existence with a kindling love of freedom, a quickened onset of enquiry, and a reverent love of truth, and of its highest embodiment. Religion — I feel that never country began under fairer auspices, and that if Canada's children be but true to themselves, what- ever their political destiny may be, they will establish a stable commonwealth rich in all the virtues which make nations great — mighty in those irresistible moral forces which make any people strong. Esto perpetiia ! May no Marius ever sit among the ruins of a promise so fair. W. MORLEY PUNSHON. Toronto, May, 1873. "•a^i CONTENTS. Author's Preface, Lectures : i. daniel in babylon, . 2. macaulay, . . 3. john bunyan, .... 4. wesley and his times, . 5. florence and the florentines, 6. the huguenots, . . . , A Pr .GRIMACE TO TWO AMERICAN ShRINES, Sermons : I. KINDNESS TO THE POOR, 309 [Preached before the Members of St. George's Society, In the Metropolitan Obiirch, Toronto. Paor. V 3 39 lOI 149 195 235 295 2. THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL, 3. THE LORDS SUPTER, , . , 4. THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST, 6~l 345 363 THE Publishers embellish the cover of these Lectures with a miniature outline of the Metropolitan W. M. Church, Toronto, which owes its origin to the earnest labour and elo- quence of the Rev. Dr. Punshon. It was thought, moreover, that the design, on this literary memorial, might not inappro- priately point to the architectural memorial of the author's residence in Canada. The Steel Portrait appears in deference to an expressed wish. '^i.a^ \ .ectures witli M. Church, )Our and elo- it, moreover, not inappro- tlie author's in deference DANIEL IN BABYLON. J^ 'E I i Inv DANIEL IN BABYLON. LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF DANIEL IN BABYLON. HERE were giants in the earth in those days, for those old Hebrew prophets were a marvellous race of men. It i$ difficult for us to regard them as parts of the ordinary cre- aiion of God. Only in such an age, when Revelation was a simple thing, and men felt, as they saw the symbol or the vision, ti^at the Divine was "not far away from any one of them:" Cply beneath such a sky, whose sun, as it blasted the desert iiito desolation, or greened the olive slope into beauty, was a pi^rpetual monition both of threatening and of promise : only ailttong such a people, of deep religious instincts, and impressi- Ijle in a high degree, could they have lived, and flourished, and bfcome the powers they were. They were not soldiers, but when they rebuked kings, theirs was a courage which the most stal- wart crusader might have envied. They were not priests, but never priest spake solemn words with greater seemliness of ut- terance, nor with diviner power. As we trace their long and loi^y line, and their notable ones crowd upon our memories, we seem to shrink from any discussion of their characters, as if they were creatures from the spirit-land. Some such feeling steals over us, as might have prompted the affrighted Gadarenes, when DANIEL IN BABYLON. they prayed for the departure of the Saviour, or as might hav- burdened the wondering soul of Peter, when in his first visior of Christ's miraculous power, he said, " Depart from me, for am a sinful man, O Lord." They seem to be in the nature c humanity rather than of it, to be surrounded by conditions, an to dwell in an existence of their own, with which the rest of tli world can have but a scanty sympathy, or rather a mingled fei ing, which is half admiration and half awe. They are not me so much as distinct individual influences, passive beneath the swelling inspiration, standing before the Lord, like the liglr nings, which are his messengers, or as the "stormy wind, fult ling His word." It is evident that the peculiarities of their office, and the comparative isolation from the experiences of common huma: ity, prevent us, in the general, from acknowledging their fitno as examples by which to regulate our own life and condiic There is a shrewd impiety in human nature, which has fornii its own estimate of what its patterns ought to be, and whu demands that certain initial conditions shall be rigidly fulfille There must be identity of nature, and there must be similar: of circumstance. The man must have like passions, and tho passions must have been powerfully tried. Failure in these cc ditions would at once neutralize the force of the example, ev as a blemish in physical beauty would, to a Greek of the old' time, have ostracised Apollo from the fellowship of the God^ There is none among the brotherhood of the Prophets, w so thoroughly comes home to us as that Hebrew youth, of t royal line of Judah, from whose history we are purposing to instructed now. He was inspired, but he had a life apart fr his inspiration, and we recognize in it the common clcnu: ill. T |ave !een \ emm I'wall fan tn DANIEL IN BABYLON )r as might havf n his first visior •t from me, for ; in the nature g y conditions, an; ich the rest of tli er a mingled fet hey are not mc ive beneath the d, Hke the ligh ormy wind, fult office, and tlu common huni:i; ging their fitne- life and conduc vhich has fornii to be, and wliii )e rigidly fulfille iiust be similar; assions, andtho ilure in these a the example, ov Ireek of the old' hip of the God> he Prophets, w Drew youth, of t re purposing to d a life apart ti common clcme: Df which lives are made. Principle and persecution — sorrow $nd success — the harp-song of thankfulness and the breeze-like jroice of grief — all the constituents which are shapely in the formation of character j we meet with them in his experience, lust as we have felt them in our own. He comes to us, therc- ibre, no stranger, but robed in our own humanness. He is no Jneteor vision — sweeping out of darkness to play for a brief space |he masque of human living, and then flitting into darkness as |inbroken — he comes eating and drinking, doing common things, thrilled with common feelings— ^hough those feelings prompt liim to heroic action, and those common things are done in a tnajestic way. My object is to teach lessons from the life and character of Daniel. My chief purpose, I am not ashamed to iivow, is to do my listeners good, and though the platform is |)roader than the pulpit, and may be indulged with wider lati- tude of range and phrase, I should be recreant to my great, )ved life-work, if I were not to strive mainly to make my words jU upon that future when eternity shall flash upon the doings ^f time. It is affinned of the religion of Jesus, that it is adapted for 11 changes of human condition, and for all varieties of human laracter. Clearly, a religion which aims to be universal must iossess this assimilating power, or, in the complexities of the prorld, it would be disqualified for the post which it aspires to in. The high claims which its advocates assert for Christianity, iave been passed through the crucible of the ages, and have feen verified by the experience of each generation. It is not lemmed in by parallels of latitude. It is not hindered by any I* wall of partition." It can work its marvels in every clime. It |an translate its comforts into every language. Like its founder, DANIEL IN BABYLON. its delight is in the "'habitable parts of the earth," and wher- ever man is, in rich metropolis or in rude savannah, whether intellect has exalted, or savagery degraded him, there, in the neighbourhood and in the heart of man^ is the chosen sphen. of Christianity, where she works her changes, diffuses her bless- ings, raises up her witnesses, and i)roves to every one who em- braces her his angel of discipline and of life. It may be that you are thinking, some of you, that your circumstant'es are ex- ceptional, that Religion is a thing only for stream-side villages and (juiet hours — not for the realm of business, nor "the tragi* hearts of towns." That is a grave error, my brother. Heaven is as near the great city as the breezy down. You can preserve as bright an integrity, you can hold as close a fellowshij) with the true and the Divine in the heart of London, the modern IJabylon, as did Daniel in Ikibylon, the ancient London. This brings me to my first thought — the earnest piety 7iihic/i 7i'as the foil )idation-f act of Daiiicrs eofisistent life. He was a religious man. His religion inlUienced his character, kindled his heroism, and had largely to do with his success. His reli- gion, moret)ver, was not a surface sentiment, traditionally inher- ited, and therefore loosely held. Opinions have often been entailed with estates, handed down as reverenced heir-looms from one generation to another. Men have rallied round a crimson banner, or shouted lustily for the buff and blue, for no better reason than that the same colours had sashed and roset ted their fathers perhaps for a century of years. In the history of human 0})inion it would be curious to enquire how much ot it has been the pride of partisanship, or the inheritance of affec- tion, how little of it the force of conviction, and the result of honest thought and study. But Daniel's was an inwrougb DANIEL IN HAIiYLON. th," and wlicr- mnah, whether I, there, in the chosen sphere ffuses her bless ry one who em- It may be that istan(!es are e\- im-side vill;i[j;es nor " the tra^i< :)ther. Heaven oil can i)reservc fellowship with )n, the modern London. est piety 7vhich ifc. He was a iracter, kindled cess. His reli- ditionally inher- ave often been iced heir-looms rallied round a md blue, for no shed and roset In the history e how much ot eritance of affec- id the result of an inwroughf piety, whose seat was in the heart, and it was ol that brave sort which no disaster was able to disturb. And ix was no easy matter to maintain it. Look at him ns Ik- is first introduced to our notice. He was lonely, he was tein|)teet the pom]i ndonment s any, into t others ot d Daniel's easure, or Mvently in 1 ? Amid nit out, as •en. Oh, hinder a ht thing? lay travel d on the l)alm tree istenance, he will manage somehow to find living water there. Banish him to the dreariest Patmos you can find, he will get a grand Apoca- lypse among its barren crags. Thrust him into an inner pri- son, and make his feet fast in the stocks; the doxology will I reverberate through the dungeon, making such melody within 1 its walls of stone that the gaoler shall relapse into a man, and I the prisoners, hearing it. shall dream of freedom and of home. i Young men, you who have any ])iety at all, what sort is it? 1 Is it a hot-house plant, which must be framed and glassed, lest March, that bold young fellow, should shake the life out of it in his rough play among the flowers? — or is it a hardy shrub, which rejoices when the wild winds course along the heather or howl above the crest of Lebanon ? We need, believe me, the I bravery of godliness to bear true witness for our Master now. ^ There is opposed to us a manhood of insolence and error. The breath of the plague is carried on the wings of the wind. ,^Ours must be a robust piety — which does not get sick soon lin the tainted air. The forces of evil are marshalled in un- I wonted activity — and there are liers in wait to surprise and •^to betray. Ours must be a watchful piety, which is not fright- ^ened from its steadfastness by the "noise of the captains and Uhe shouting." Through the heavy night, and beyond the em- battled hosts, there glitters the victor's recompense. It must be ours to press towards it on our patient way, saying to all who differ from us, " Hinder me not, I mean to wear that crown." One main cause of Daniel's consistency, which I would fain commend for your imitation, was this. He made the stand at once, and resisted on the earliest occasion of encroachment upon conscience and of requirement to sin. He purposed in his heart that he "would not defile himself with the king's iCT" DANIEL IN BABYLON. n meat, nor with the portion of wine which he drank." Now, as a true Hebrew, bound by the rescripts of the Mosaic law, cer- tain meats were forbidden to him, which other nations ate with- out scruple. Moreover, the chances are that the bread and tin wine had been idclatrously consecrated, for those old Pagans were not ashamed, as wc art% to pervade the common things ot life with their religion. To Daniel, therefore, these things were forbidden, forbidden by their ceremonial uncleanness, forbidden c(|ually by their idolatrous association, and it was his duty to refuse them. I see that curl of the lip on the face of that unbeliever, and as it might hurt him, possibly, if his indignation had not vent. I will try to help it into words. "A small thing, a very insigni- ficant occasion for a very supercilious and obstinate disi)lay I \v hat worse would he have been if he had not been so offen- sively singular? He was not obliged to know that there had been any connection with idolatry about it. Why obtrude his old-world sanctimoniousness about such a trifle as this ?" A tritle ! Yes ! but are not these trifles sometimes among the mightiest forces in the universe ? A falling apple, a drifting log of wood, the singing and puffing of a tea-kettle ! Trifles ail- but set the royal mind to work upon them, and what comes ot the trifles then? From the falling apple, the law of gravitation. From the drifting log of wood, the discovery of America. From the smoke and song of the tea-kettle, the hundred-fold appliances of steam. There are no trifles in the moral universe of God. Speak me a word to-day; — it shall go ringing on through the ages. Sin in your heedless youth ; — I will she\\ you the characters, long years afterwards, carven on the walls of "the temple of the body." Hence the good policy as well as lO DANIEL IN BABYLON. " Now, as lie law, cer ns ate with- ead and tlu: old Pagans 3n things ot things were ;s, forbidden his duty to leliever, and ad not vent, very insigni- ate display I ;en so offen- Lt there had obtrude his this ?" A among the drifting log Trilles all- lat comes ot gravitation, of America, lundred-fold Dral universe ringing on I will shew the Wvills of :y as well as % piety of Daniel. He made the stand at once, and (iod honoured it ; and, the foremost champion of the enemy slain, it was easy to rout the rest. Do I address some one now over whom the critical moment impends? You are beset with diffi- culties so formidable that you shudder as you think of them. Does wealth allure, or beauty fascinate, or endearment woo, or authority command you to sin? Does the carnal reason gloss over the guiltiness, and the deprecating fancy whisi)er "Is it not a little one?" and the roused and vigorous passion strive with the reluctant will? Now is the moment, then, on your l)art for the most valorous resistance, on my part for the most affectionate and solemn warning. It is against this beginning of evil, this first breach upon the sacredness of conscience, that you must take your stand. It is the first careless drifting into the current of the rapids which speeds the frail bark into the whirlpool's wave. Yield to the temptation which now in- vites you, and it may be that you are lost for ever. Go to that scene of dissipation, enter that hell of gambling, follow that " strange woman" to her house, make that fraudulent entry, engage in that doubtful speculation, make light of that Sabbath and its blessings — what have you done? You have weakened your moral nature, you have sharpened the dagger for the assassin who waits to stab you, and you are accessory, in your measure, to the murder of your own soul. Brothers, with all a brother's tenderness, I warn you against a peril which is at once so threatening and so near. Now, while time and chance are given, while, in the thickly-peopled air there are spirits which wait your halting, and other spirits, which wait to give their ministry to the heirs of salvation — now, let the conflict be de" cidcd. Break from the bonds which are already closing around 1 1 f DANIEL IN BABYLON. you. Frantic as a bondsman to escape the living hell of slavery^ be it yours to hasten your escape from the pursuing evil of sin. There, close at your heels, is the vengeful and resolute enemy. Haste ! Flee for your life ! Look not behind you, lest you be overtaken and destroyed. On — though the feet bleed, and the veins swell, and the heart-strings quiver. On — spite of wearied jimbs, and shuddering memories, and the sobs and pants of labouring breath. Once get within the gates of the city of refuge and you are safe, for neither God's love nor man's will ever, though all the world demand it, give up to his pursuers a poor fugitive slave. Having mentioned the piety of Daniel, the Corinthian pillar of his character, we may glance at some of the acanthus leaves which twine so gracefully round it. It will not be amiss if we learn to be as contented, under all change of circumstance, as Daniel's piety made him. He is supposed to have been about twenty years old when he was carried away to Babylon. He was then in the flower of his youth j at an age when the susceptibilities are the keenest, when the visions of the former time have not faded from the fancy, when the future stretches brightly before the view. His con- nexion with the royal family of Judah might, not unnaturally, have opened to him the prospect of a life of state and pleasure, haunted by no pangs of ungratified desire. It was a hard fate for him to be at once banished from his fatherland and robbed of his freedom. Every sensibility must have been rudely shocked, every temporal hope must have been cruelly blighted, by the transition from the courtly to the menial, and from Jeru- salem to Babylon. How will Daniel act under these altered circumstances, which had come upon him from causes which he 13 DANIEL IN BABYLON. f slavery /•il of sin. :e enemy. St you be , and the f wearied pants of le city of dan's will )ursuers a lian pillar lus leaves under all 1. He is m he was i^er of his lest, when the fancy, His con- maturally, . pleasure, . hard fate id robbed en rudely ^ blighted, from Jeru- se altered 1 which he could neither control nor remedy? There were three courses open to him, other than the one he took. He might have re signed himself to the dominion of sorrow, have suffered grief for his bereavement to have paralyzed every energy of his nature, and have moaned idly and uselessly, as, beneath the trailing willows, he "wept when" he "remembered Zion." He might have harboured some sullen purpose of revenge, and have glared out upon his captors with an eye whose meaning, being interpreted, was murder. Or he might have abandoned himself to listless dreaming, indolent in present duty, and taking no part at all for the fulfilment of his own dreams. But Daniel was too true and brave a man, and had too reverent a recognition of the Providence of God to do either the one or the other. He knew that his duty was to make the best of the circumstances round him, to create the content, and to exhibit it, though the conditions which had formerly constrained it were at hand no longer. Hence, though he was by no means in- different to his altered fortunes ; though there would often rise upon his softened fancy the hills and temples of his native land, he v.'as resigned and useful and happy in Babylon. It may be that some among yourselves may profitably learn this lesson. Wearied with hard work, done for the enrichment of other people, you are disposed to fret against your destiny, and to rebel against the fortune which has doomed you to be the toiler and the drudge. Ambition is, in some sort, natural to us all, and could we borrow for a night a spirit more potent than the lame demon of Le Sage, and could he unroof for us hearts as well as houses, there would perhaps be discovered a vast amount of lurking discontent, poisoning the springs both of usefulness and of happiness for n-iany. Under the infiuence of this em- 13 % 4 l'\ I DAN/EL IN BABYLON. bittered feeling some rail eloquently at class distinctions in society, and sigh for an ideal equality with an ardour which the first hour of a real equality would speedily freeze, while some drivel into inglorious dreamers, and are always on the look-out. like the immortal Micawber, for something to " turn up," which will float them into the possession of a Nabob's fortune, or into the notoriety of some easily-acquired renown. I am not sure whether our dispensation of popular lecturing is altogether guiltless in this matter. Young men, especially, have been so often exhorted to aspire, to have souls above busi- ness, to cultivate self-reliance, to aim at a prouder destiny, and all that sort of thing ; and we hav*.: heard so much of the men who have risen from the ranks to be glorified in the world's memory — Burns at the plough-tail, and Claude Lorraine in the pastry-cook's shop, and Chantrey the milk boy, and Sir Isaac Newton with his cabbages in the Grantham market, and John Bunyan mending the kettles, and Martin Luther singing in the j-treets for bread — that it is hardly surprising if some who have listened to these counsels have been now and then excited into an anti-commercial frenzy ; not, it is hoped, so fiercely as that silly lad who attempted, happily in vain, to destroy himself, and left a note for his employer, assigning as the reason of the rash act, as the newspapers always call it, that "he was made by God to be a man, but doomed by man to be a grocer." Well, if we lecturers have fostered the evil, it should be ours to atone by the warning exhibition of its peril. I can conceive of nothing more perilous to all practical success, more destructive of everything masculine in the character, than the indulgence in this delirious and unprofitable reverie. The mind once sur- rendered to its spell has lost all power of self-control, and is 14 ? passil I narcd cL. DANIEL IN BABYLON. ictions in kvhich the hile some : look-out. p," which le, or into lecturing ;specially. )0ve busi- >tiny, and the men le world's ine in the Sir Isaac nd John ig in the v'ho have ited into as that self, and the rash nade l)y Well, o atone eive of tructive ulgence ice sur- uid is i passive, like the opium-eater, under the influence of the horrible I narcotic. Real life is discarded as unlikely, and the dream is ■f arranged with all the accuracy, and very much of the adventure J of a three-volumed novel. A high-born maiden becomes sud- idenly enamoured of the slim youth who serves her with the I silks she rustles in, or, some rich unheard of uncle dies, just at ^the crtical time, or he turns out to be somebody's son, and by ■ consei j lence heir to a fortune or a large-acred landed proprietor, or he is hurtling an imaginary senate with very imaginary elo- quence; or, fired with the hope of hymeneal bliss, he is I whirled off with a bride and a ibrtune (always a fortune) in a I chariot and four ; and so he revels in these impossible heavens, until, as in the dream of Alnaschar, crash goes the crockery, or down falls the bale of muslin upon his most bunioned toe, or an ecjuivocal river of gamboge is too sure prediction of the ■ annihilation of the basket of eggs. But how unreal and foolish ;^all this is! how hurtfiil to all healthiness of moral sentiment, '!and to all industry of patient toil. How nearly akin to the K spirit of the gambler, who has lost all his fortune at hazard and then risks his last quarter just because it is so small. "But," says some indignant youth, "what do you mean? Are all the counsels to which we have listened in the former time to go for [nothing ? Are we not to aspire ? Are we to grovel always ? [Are we never to rise above the sphere of society in which we lmo\cd to-day ? " Oh yes ! some of you may, and if the ele- [ments of greatness are in you they will come oiit^ aye, though [an Alp were piled upon them, or though the sepulchre hewn [out of the rock hid them in its heart of stone. But it is no use [hiding the truth ; ninety out of every hundred of you will re- jmain as you are. "Grocers" to-day, you will be grocers or IS DANIEL IN BABYLON. something like it to the end of the chapter. Well, and what ui that ? Better the meanest honest occupation than to be a das tard, or a deceiver, or a drone. Better the weary-footed wan derer, who knows not where the morrow's breakfost will be had. than to be the sordid or unworthy rascal, whirled through tin city in a carriage, built, cushioned, horsed, harnessed, all with other people's money. God has placed you in a position in which you can be honest and excel. Do your duty in the pre sent, and God will take care of the future. Depend \\\)o\\ it. the way to rise in lite, is neither to repine, and so add to tin trou' 'es of misfortune the sorer troubles of passion and envy. nor to waste in dreams the plodding energy which would go far to the accomplishment of the dreamer's wealthiest desire. It the Passions rule you, there will be a Reign of 'i'error. It Imagination be suffered to hold the reins, you will make small progress, if indeed there be no catastrophe, for though Phfeton was a very brilliant driver, yet he burnt the world. Don't aim, then, at any impossible heroisms. Strive rather to be quiet heroes in your own sphere. Don't live in the cloudland of some transcendental heaven ; do your best to bring the glorv of a real heaven down, and ray it out upon your fellows in this work-day world. Don't go out, ascetic and cowardly, from the fellowships of men. Try to be angels in their houses, that so a light may linger from you as you leave them, and your voice may echo in their hearing, " like to the benediction that follows after prayer." The illun ■>'ation which celebrates a victory is but the vulgar light shining through various devices into which men have twisted very base metal ; and so the commonest things can be ennobled by the transparency with which they are done. Seek then to make trade bright with a spotless integrity, aiui i6 DANIEL IN BABYLON. 1, and what ut n to be a das •y-footcd wan St will be had, \ through tin ;ssed, all with a position in ity in the pre pend upon it. so add to till' ion and envy. 11 would go far est desire. If of Terror. If ^^ill make small hough Ph?eton krive rather to the cloudland iring the glory Ifellows in this rdly, from tht [uses, that so a id your voice >n that follows victory is bin ito which men test things can ley are done, lintegrity, and '^ business lustrous with the beauty of holiness. Whether fortune smile on you or not, you shall " stand in your lot," and it shall $ be a happy one. The contentment of the soul will make the I countenance sunny ; and if you compare your heritage with tluii . of others who are thought higher in the social scale ; dtjwercd I more richly with the favours of that old goddess who was .said I to be both fickle and blind, the comjjarison will not be a ho]Jc ■ less one if you can sing in the Poet's stirring words — % " Cleon hath a thousand acics, Ne'er a one have I ; ■^ Ck'on dwelletli m a mansiu;i, — In a lodginji, I. Clcon hatli a tlo/.cn fortune.--, Hardly one liuve 1 ; Yet the poorer of the twain Is Cleon and not 1. "Clcon, true, [)o.sse.sselh acres, I!ul the landscape i ; — llair the charms to me it yii ld(th .Money cannot buy. Cleou harhours sloth and duhi«s, Freshenuig vigour, I ; — He in velvet — I in broadcloth — Richer man am 1. " Cleon is a slave to grandeur, Free as thought am I ;— Cleon fees a score uf doctois ; — Need of none have I. Wealth-surroundetl — care-environed, Cleon fears to die ; — Deatli may come, he'll find me rei.Jy, Happier uun am 1. 17 DANIEL L\ BABYLON. " Cleon sees no charms in nature, In a daisy, I ; — Cleon hears no antliems ringing In the earth and sky ; — Nature sings to me for ever, Eaiu'ist listener 1, State for state with all attendants, Who would change ? Not 1.' The religion of Daniel influenced him ftirtlier to be coinicoti\ to those by whom he was stirroiinded. In the early years of his residence in Babylon, he won " the favour and tender love of the prince of the eunuchs.'' His resistance to what he deemed unworthy stibserviency was not rudely nor harshly manifested. " He requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself." He bore himself respectfully, yet without an atom of servility; never compromising his fidelity to God, but neither insolent in his contempt of idolatry, nor forward to with- hold honour and custom where honour and custom were due. h will not, perhaps, be amiss to commend him in this matter to the age in which we Xwo. \ and amid many incentives to inde- [>endence, original thought, intolerance of shams and scorners, md the like, to whisper a word in favour of good manners. There ts so much of outspokenness now'-a-days, and it has been so intich and so eloquently enforced that there is some danger lest ui our re-action from servility, we should exhi])it the " fidsehood of extremes." Some men fancy themselves extremely clever, when they are only extremely coarse, and obtrude before ali comers a boorishness which they mistake for bravery. I covet for you all, the more if you be Christians, the grand old name of gentleman — manhood and gentleness — inborn and intlueit- 1 8 DANIEL IN BABYLON, to be courteous •ly years of his tender love of hat he deemed ilv manifested. It he might not yet without an ty to God, but brward to with- torn were due. n this matter to intives to inde- is and scorners, good manners, d it has been so )rne danger lest the " fiilsehood jemely clever, ude before all very. I covet :rand old name n and influen- cing energy, but with affability and courtesy to t'imper it. You have heard of the Nasmyth hammer. It can chip an egg-shell tl without breaking it, or can shiver with a stroke ihe ponderous ; bar of iron. We are awed by the wonderful force, but we are .' especially attracted by the machinery which holds it in control. So a rough strength of character will repel even while it attracts i us, but a frank and winning courtesy comes stealing into our ? hearts like a sunbeam, and flings an otto of July over the chil- lest November air. This courtesy which I recommend you to exhibit is not only auxiliary to your religion, but a part of it. " The wisdom which ;is from above," I leave you to guess where the other wisdom comes from, is "gentle, and easy to be entreated." "Christ," Emerson says, " was a prince in courtesy, as well as in benefi- .cence and wisdom," and a Christian is not more bound to main- main his own rights than to be tolerant of the feelings and opin- '^ons of others. Even Fashion, at the bottom, (though, as in a muddy road, the l)ottom may be a long way down) is based lipr)n religion, and is a sort of Rabbinical perversion of Chris- tianity. There is not a usage of cultivated society to-day, which lad not its origin in some real or flmcied benevolence. Love the essence of religion, and courtesy is but love in society — ^e " good Samaritan'' genial in the drawing-room, as on the occa- idon he was self-sacrificing on the highway and in the field. The J^olden rule of all the politeness which it is worth a man's while to seek after, is in the old music-master's counsel to his pupil nrhcn she asked him the secret of performing with expression Ittid effect — " Cultivate your heart. Miss, cultivate your heart." *|'here is no reason surely why you should be otherwise than courteous. Good men are not necessarily abrupt and disagree- 19 DANIEL IN BABYLON. able. There is no inevitable connection between Christianity and cynicism. Truth is not a salad, is it ? that you must always dress it with vinegar. It will be foul shame if some of your quondam friends should be able, with any truth, to say, " He was a fine, frank, generous, open-hearted fellow before he became a Christian^' as if that had contracted the sympathies, which only can rightly expand them, as if that had frosted the heart, under whose warmth alone spring up " all that is of good report and lovely." Have a care to wipe away this reproach, even if it has but begun to cleave to you, or, so far as you are concerned, your religion will be "wounded in the house of her friends.' You should be so firm in your principles that you can afford to be kind. Let yours be the heroism which can sing even from a shattered heart, " Ten thousand deaths in every nerve. I'd rather suffer than deserve." Preserve this unfailing kindliness whatever betide; though you are deafened by the strife of tongues, though, loudest in the scoff or the slander, you hear the changed tones of your owe familiar one \ though your heart be wrung until its very fibres start, — yet beseem yourself as becomes God's child, the chile of one who bears with " the unthankful and the evil." You wili find your account in it, and in earnest prayers, and charity whid. never faileth, and compassions delicately shewn, and opportun ities eagerly embraced for piling up " coals of fire," you ma) secure the nobility of revenge. And not for your own comfort only, but in your work o: Christian witness-bearing, there must be gentleness in the rebiik; and in the icstimony, if either of them are to prevail. A bin: 20 DANIEL IN BABYLON. a Christianity a must always some of your to say, "He efore, he became pathies, which ted the heart, of good report roach, even if are concerned, )f her friends.'^ u can afford to ,ng even from a betide; though h, loudest in tht es of your own il its very fibres child, the chile t evil." You wii nd charity vvhid and opportun )f fire," you ma; in your work o: less in the rebuk prevail. A blu; I countryman once strayed into Westminster Hall, and sat, with edifying patience for two mortal hours, while two lawyers wran- \ gled over the merits of a case which was as much Greek to him ^ as Curran's famous quotation from Juvenal was to the jury of Dublin shopkeepers. Some bystander, amused at his bewilder- \ ment, and amazed at his attention, asked him *' which he thought \ had the best of it?" His reply was ready — "The little one, to I be sure, because he put the other matt in a passion.'^ There was shrewdness, if not logic, in the answer, and it shews how all argument is likely to shape itself to the bucolic mind. Believe i me, neither Christianity, nor sound political dogma, nor any i other good thing was ever yet permanently advantaged, either % by the sword of the bigot, or by the tongue of the scold. The one only elevates the slaughtered into martyrdom, even though ;they were in life "lewd fellows of the baser sort f — the other I rouses resistance, and enlists manliness upon the side of error. I Brothers, in all seriousness I protest against grafting upon our holy religion a spirit that is tmculent and cruel. Speak the truth, by all means ! Speak it so that no man can mistake the utterance. Be bold and fearless in your rebuke of error, and in your keener rebuke of wrong-doing, all Christ's witnesses are bound to be thus " valiant for the truth ;" but be human, and lov- ing, and gentle, and brotherly, the while. If you must deliver the Redeemer's testimony, deliver it with the Redeemer's tears. Look, straight-eyed and kindly, upon the vilest, as a man ought to look upon a man, both royal, although the one is wearing, and the other has pawned, his crown. The religion of Daniel constrained his fidelity to duty and his diligefit fulfilment of every trust confided to him. It is a grievous itrror, but partly from the mistakes of religionists, and partly 21 DA XI EL IN nABVLON. from the malignity of infidels, it is one which has very largely o])t;iined, that the interests of the life that now is are in tL.^ct antagonism to the interests of the life that is to come. You may hear it reiterated from many a Sanhedrim of worldly self-sufticiency, and from many a Rabbi's supercilious lips. They will tell yd: that high moral excellence and deej) religious feeling are inconsistent with shrewd business habits, and with the effective discharge of the commoner duties o' life ; and that, if a man would serve his God aright, he must forthwith abandon all hope of temporal advantage, and transfer his thought exclusively to the inheritance which awaits him in the sky. There is in this view, as in all prevalent errors, a sub- stratum of important truth. A Christian will not hesitate ♦o tell you that he lives in the recognition of Eternity, and there is that in his glad hope of the future which will smite down his avarice, and turn away his footsteps from the altar of Mammon, but he has not forgotten, that as the heir of promise, he in- herits this world too. The present is his by a truer charter than that by which the worldling holds it, and his eye may revel in its beauty, and his ear may listen to its music, and he may gather up its competence with a thankful heart, while yet his faith pierces through the cloud, and sees in the wealthier heaven his treasure and abiding home;. How fine an illustration of diligent and successful industry we have in the character of Daniel ! He rose rapidly in the king's favour, and by his administrative ability secured the con- fidence of four successive monarchs who sat upon the throne of Babylon, Darius the Median, who succeeded to the empire after Belshazzar had been slain, discerned early the excellent spirit that was in him, promoted him to be chief of the presi- 22 *t ' DANIEL IN BABYLON. ch has very *e that now life that is to Sanhedrim of s supercihous nee and deep isiness habits, iner duties o^ ight, he must J, and transfer awaits him in ; errors, a sub- lot hesitate ♦o lity, and there jmite down his r of Mammon, romise, he in- L truer charter his eye may music, and he .eart, while yet 1 the wealthier ;essful industry rapidly in the cured the con- n the throne of to the empire 1 the excellent ef of the presi- dents, to whom the hundred and twenty princes were amenable, and thought to set him over the whole realm. The duties thus devolved upon Daniel must have been of the most onerous and resi)onsible kind. The empire extended southward to the Per- Isian (iulf and northward to Mesopotamia. Naturally fertile, it ihad been cultivated to the uttermost. Babylon, the capital, to Iwiiich Herodotus assigns dimensions of almost fiibulous magni- ude, had, on the lowest computation, an area twice as large as hat of modern London, and enclosed within its walls a j^opula- ion of a million and a cpiarter souls. How complicated must ave been the problems of government which Daniel was called |Li])on to solve ! He had to deal, in a foreign language, ith foreign customs, and under different dynasties of kings, lany of those with whom he had to work were the " wise men f Babylon," not inconsiderably versed in starry lore and bear- g a high reputation among their fellows. He must have crefore political sagacity and scientific research. His must be he ruling mind to disentangle a sophistry, and the seer's fore- light to perceive the end from the beginning. Then the ad- iuistration of justice formed no small part of his duty. Before |iini, as he sat in the gate, appellant and defendant came, t was his to hear the cause, to weigh the jirobabilities of ividence, to adjudicate, to execute the decision. Then, further, fee must make provision for the contingencies which in those turbulent times were constantly occurring. He must be Argus- eyed against intestine fliction, and against aggressions from beyond : quick to catch and quiet the murmurs of discontent at home ; equally quick to scent the battle from afar. On him |lso devolved, in the last event, the financial administration of the realm. He had to get from each reluctant satrap the tribute DANIEL IN BABYLON. assessed upon his province, to check the accounts of the presi- dents, and to see, as the tale was told into the treasury, that the king suffered no damage. Now, when you think of all the resjionsibility thus thrust upon one busy man, how he was at once Finance Minister, Lord Chief Justice, Home and Foreign Secretary, War Minister, and Premier to boot, you will readily conceive that Daniel had about enough on his hands, and that he would require, rightly to discharge his duty, both tact and energy, and a rigid and conscientious frugality of time. In the differing play of mind before me, this consideration may have suggested different thoughts just now. I will imagine one or two of them, and turn them to profit as we proceed. There may be perhaps what I will venture to call the nar- rowly pious thought ; the thought of a mind, evil from the ex- treme of good; the apprehension of a sensitive spirit, which like the mollusc of the rock, thrusts out its long antennae at the barest possibility of danger. " Enough on his hands ! yes ! and far too much, more than any man ought to have who has two worlds to think about and provide for. It would be impossible, in this round of ceaseless seculr -itv, to preserve that recognition of Eternity, and that preparation for its destinies which it is so need- ful for man to realize." The apprehension does you honour, my brother. I won't chide you for it ; there are sadly too few who are thus jealous for the Lord in the midst of us : but you need not fear. See him ! He comes out of the presence- chamber, where he has been having audience of the king. Whither will he go ? Ah ! he goes to the closet, and the lattice is reverently opened, and the knees are bent towards the un- forgotten temple at Jerusalem, and there trembles through the air the cadence of some Hebrew psalm, followed shortly by 24 :!illi DANIEL IN BABYLON. ; of the presi- Lsury, that the ik of all the ow he was at ; and Foreign lu will readily ids, and that )oth tact and time. consideration I will imagine proceed. call the nar- from the ex- rit, which like e at the barest s ! and far too two worlds to ssible, in this cognition of it is so need- you honour, adly too few us : but you he presence- pf the king. d the lattice ards the un- through the shortly by some fervent strain of prayer. Oh ! there is no fear, while the track to that chamber is a beaten one, while the memories of home and temple are so fragrant ; while through the thrown-back lattice the morning sun shines in u]jon that silver- haired statesman on his knees. He who can thus pray, will neither be faithless to man nor recreant to God. In that humiliation, and thrice-repeated litany of prayer, he finds his safety and his strength, and he exhibits for your encouragement and mine that it is possible to combine, in grandest harmony of character, fidelity to duty and to God ; and amid the ceaseless- [ness of labour, whether of the hand or of the brain, to keep a [loyal heart within, whose every pulse beats eagerly for heaven. Then out speaks a frank and manly worldling, knowing little md caring less about religion, but delighted with Daniel because [he is so clever ; almost worshipping the diplomacy which is as- [tute, and sagacious, and above all successful. " Time for thought lof eternity. No, and why should he ? His deeds are his best Iprayers. Surely if ever a man might make his work his wor- Iship, it is he. He is a brave, true man, doing a man's work in right manly way. What needs he to pray, except perhaps that lis own valued life may not come to a close too soon." Ah ! ^so you think that the thought of Eternity must paralyze the "effort of Time. You think that your nature, when a strong ^man wears it, may claim its own place among the Gods. You, |to whom prayer is an impertinence, and the acknowledgment of ,fein hypocrisy, alas for you that you are not in the secret ! fV\^hy, this prayer is the explanation of everything which you ladmire in the man. Is he brave ? What makes him so ? Be- ^cause the fear of God has filled his heart so full that there is no Iroom for the fear of man to get in. Does he walk warily on a J ■-»' 25 DANIEL IN BABYLON. ■ : giddy height, which would make weaker brains dizzy ? It is because he knows that the sky is higher than the mountain, and cherishes in all his ways the humbled feeling of dependence and laith. Is he rigid and conscientious in the discharge of daily duty? It is because he has learnt, and recollects, that " every one of us must give account of himself to God." Go then, and learn his piety, and humble thyself in thy chamber as he does. It will teach thee higher views of life than thou hast ever rea- lized yet. Immortality shall burst upon thee, as America burst upon Columbus, a new world, flashing with a new heaven, and thou shalt be shewn that not in stalwart arm nor cunning brain shall be thy strength, but in quietness, and confidence, and in "the joy of the Lord." It may be, though I would fain believe it otherwise, that a third discordant voice is speaking, the voice of one who hides beneath a seemly exterior, a scoffing soul. " He a statesman ' what ! that man of psalm and prayer, who cants along about right, and conscience, and duty, — you will find out diffeiently by- and-bye. I am greatly mistaken if he does not turn out incom- petent or wicked ; they will have a hard life who bear office under him. I hate these saints. Look narrowly into his accounts, perhaps you will make some discoveries ; there'll be a fine ex- posure some day of his blundering, and rapacity, and wrong." It would please you, I dare say to find yourself among the pro- phets, but happily the answer is at hand. Your ancestors shall come forward (you are not the first of the line) and with their own reluctant lips they shall refute your sarcasm. Mark them how they gather, presidents and princes, and counsellors, and captains — "vile conspirators all of them, devising mischiel against the beloved of the Lord." Now we shall know the wo'st' 26 DANIEL IN BABYLON. you may be sure. If Daniel's administration has been faulty or fraudulent, all the world will be privy to it now. Malice is on his track, and it has a keen scent for blemishes. Envy is at work, and if it cannot see, it will suborn witnesses to swear they see, spots upon the sun. All his administration is brought into unfriendly review. Home and Foreign politics, Finance, Jus- tice, all are straitly canvassed. Well, what is the result ? Come scoffer, and hear thy fathers speak. " We shall not be able to find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his (jod." What? Did we hear aright ? No occasion of charge against the chief minister of a great empire, when men are seeking for it with all their hearts ! Was ever such a thing heard in this world ? No failure of fore- sight ! No lack of sagacity, which they might torture into pre- meditated wrong ! no personal enrichment ! no solitary nepo- tism in the distribution of patronage ! This is very marvellous, and it is very grand. Speak it out again, for it is the noblest testimony which malice ever bore to virtue. " We shall not be I able to find any occasion against this Daniel !" There he stands, j spotless on the confession of his enemies. It matters not what becomes of him now, the character — which is the man — has been adjudged free from stain. Cast him to the lions, if you like, his faith will stop their mouths. Fling him into the seven- [fold heated furnace, you can't taint his garments with the smell of fire. Heir of two worlds, he has made good his title of inhe- |ritance for both : — Daniel, faithful among men ! Daniel, the be- I loved of the Lord . Brothers, if the exhibition of this character has produced the I effect upon you which I fondly hope, yoj will have learnt some |lessons, which will make all your after-life the briglUcr. You 27 « I i[l i I;! I'B I li liiji' I ii' ■ DANIEL IN BABYLON will learn that though there may be, here and there, a favourite of fortune, who goes up in a balloon to some high position with- out the trouble of the climbing, the only way for ordinary men is just to foot it, up the "steep and starry road." You will learn that Labour is the true alchemist which beats out in patient transmutation the baser metals into gold. You will learn that atheistic labour and prayerful idleness are alike disreputable, and you will brand with equal reprobation the hypocrite who is too devout to work, and the worldling who is too busy to pray. You will learn how hollow is the plea of the procrastinator that he has no time for religion, when *^he Prime Minister of a hundred and twenty provinces can retire for prayer three times a day. Above all you will learn that a reputation, built up by th^ wise masonry of years, does not fall at the blast of a scorner's trum- pet, that God thrones the right at last, in kinglier royalty, because its coronation is delayed, and that neither earth nor hell can permanently harm you, if you be "followers of that which is good." It needs only that I should remind you that when the interests of the tivo worlds came mto collision, and there are periods in every man's life when they will, Daniel dared the danger, rather than prove faithless to his God. The vile council which met to compass his ruin laid their scheme cunningly. They knew him to be faithful, faithful in all respects, and it may be that like that other famous council of which Milton sings, they were aboiu to separate in despair without accomplishing their purpose, when some Belial-spirit suggested that his fidelity to man should l)e pitted against his fidelity to God. The scheme succeeded. The King's consent was hastily gained to the promulgation of a de- cree, that for thirty days no petition should be offered to (jod 28 DANIEL IN BABYLON. 2, a favourite position with- Drdinary men ?'ou will learn it in patient ill learn that eputable, and te who is too to pray. You lator that he of a hundred times a day. 3 by th*^ wise corner's trum- yalty, because nor hell can that which is en the interesU re periods in ianger, rather which met to ley knew him be that like ey were about jurpose, when an should be cceeded. The ition of a de- ■fcred to God or man, save to the King's own majesty, and the men, who knew Daniel's habit of prayer, exulted as they deemed his ruin sure. And what has he done, this man, whom they thus conspire to destroy ? Alas ! for the baseness of human nature, his only faults are merit and success. It is the same world still. The times are changed from those of Smithfield and the Lollard's Tower • men fear not now the stake and the headsman, but the spirit which did the martyrs to the death is the spirit of the car- nal heart to-day. How will Daniel meet this new peril ? It is mevitable — Da- rius cannot relent, for " the law of the Medes and Persians altereth not." Then shall Daniel yield ? shall there be evasion, compromise, delay ? His manner was to retire, that he might commune with God undisturbed ; to kneel, in the prostration of a spirit at once contrite and dependent ; to open his window towards Jerusalem, that the prayer which Solomon, as if pres- cient of their exile, invoked at the dedication of the temple, might be realized and answered. Shall he omit an observance, ' or suspend, even for an hour, the constancy of his devotion to his God ? I think you could answer these questions from wti-it you already know of the man. He did exactly as he had been accustomed to do. He did not then, for the first time throw open his window. If he had done that, he would have been ii Phar- isee. He did not close his window, because, for the first time, there was danger in opening it If he had done that, he would have been a coward. He was neither th' one nor the other, but simply, a bmve, good man, who loved life well, but who loved God better ; and who when a thing was put before him, when |Timidity whispered, "Is it safe?" and Expediency hinted, "Is it ■politic?" and Vanity suggested, "Will it be popular?" took coun- 29 DANIEL IN BABYLON. sel of his own true heart, and simply enquired, *' Is it right ?" You can see him as on the fated day he retires for his accus- tomed worship, and with a quickened pulse, for he knows that his foes are in ambush, he enters his room, and opens his west- ern window. Now he reads in the law of the Lord — then the psalm rises, a little tremulous in its earlier notes, but waxing louder and clearer as the inspiration comes \7ith the strain ; then the prayer is heard — adoration, confession, supplication, thanksgiving; nist as it had arisen from that chamber through the sea. J as of some seventy years. And now the room is filled with the envious ones, their eyes gleaming with triumph, and they accuse him fiercely of a violation of the King's decree. He does not falter, though he might have faltered as he thought of the cruel death, from which the King laboured vainly until sun- down to deliver him; though he might have faltered as he thought of the hungry lions, kept without food on purpose thai they might the more fiercely rush upon their prey ; but he does not falter \ and rather than betray his conscience goes calmly down to death, with the decision of the martyr, with the deci- sion of the martyr's Lord. Surely tnis is true heroism. It is not physical daring, such as beneath some proud impulse will rush upon an enemy s steel ; it is not reckless valour, sporting with a life which ill- fortune has blighted, or which despair has made intolerable ; it is not the passiveness of the stoic, through whose indifferent heart no tides of feeling flow ; it is the calm courage which re- flects upon its alternatives, and deliberately chooses to do right ; it is the determination of Christian principle, whose foot resteth on the rock, and whose eye pierceth into Heaven. And now surely the eneiiiies are satisfied. They have com- 30 I DANIEL IN BABYLON passed the ruin of the Minister, they have wounded the heart of the King ; they have removed the watchfuhiess which pre- vented their extortion, and the power which restrained them from wrong ; now they will enjoy their triumph ! Yes ! but only for a night. The wicked do but boast themselves a moment, and the shrewd observers, who meditate upon their swift destruction, remember the place where it is written, " They digged a pit for the righteous, and into the midst of it they are fallen themselves." Oh vain are all the efforts of slan- der, permanently to injure the fair fame of a good man ! There is a cascade in a lovely Swiss valley, which the fierce winds catch and scatter so soon as it pours over the summit of the rock, and for a season the continuity of the fall is broken, and you see nothing but a feathery wreath of apparently helpless spray; but if you look further down the consistency is re- covered, and the Staubbach pours its rejoicing waters as if no breeze had blown at all ; nay, the blast which interrupts it only fans it into more marvellous loveliness, and makes it a shrine of beauty where all pilgrim footsteps travel. And so the blasts of calumny, howl they ever so fiercely over the good man's head, contribute to his juster appreciation and to his wider fame. Preserve only a good conscience toward God, and a loving purpose toward your fellow-men, and you need not wince nor tremble, though the pack of the spaniel-hearted hound snarl at your heels — Nearer you fear, but go ahead In self-relying strength ; What matters it that Malice said, " We've found it out at length." Found out ! Found what ? An honest man Is open as the light, 31 DANIEL IN BABYLON. ' •; So search as keenly as you can, You'll only find — all right. Aye ! blot him black with slander's ink. He stands as white as snow. You serve him better than you think, And kinder than you know. Yes ! be the scandal what you wil!, Or whisper what you please ; You do but fan his glory still By whistling up a breeze. T trust there are many of you who are emulous of Daniel's heroism. The brutality of the olden persecutions has passed away. Saul does not now make havoc of the Church, nor Caligula nor Adrian purify it by lustrations of blood, but the spirit of the oppressor lives, and there is room enough in the most uneventful life for exemplary religious decision. The exi- gencies of the present times, regard for your own character and honour, the absolute requirement of God, all summon you to this nobleness of religious decision. Resist all temptations to become recreant to the truth. Remember that the Christian ought to be 11 .e Achilles, who could be wounded only in the heel, a part of the body which good soldiers tio not generally show. Don't let the question ever be asked about you, " Is such an one a Christian ? ^'' The very necessity to ask suggests a negative answer. Some painters in the rude times of art are said to have put under their works, '* This is a horse ! " Of course ! it was necessary, for no one could possibly recognize it without being told. But it is a poor sign when either a work of art or a work of grace needs to be labelled. Who thought of asking where Moses had been when he came down 32 DANIEL IN BABYLON. from the mount? They looked at him, and they saw the glory. Let your consistency be thus steadfast and pure. If you know that the " writing is signed" which will throw you upon the world's cold pity or cruel scorn because you will keep your conscience inviolate, take heart from the example ot Daniel. Don't shut your lattice-window. Men may ridicule you, but they will respect you notwithstanding ; and if they do not, you can atford to do without their good opinion, while God looks down upon you with complacency, and the light of His countenance shines, broad and bright, upon your soul. I have never despaired of the future of the world in which I live. I leave that to infidelity, with its sad scorn of the im- mortal and its vaunt of brotherhood with the brutes that perish. Humanity has been at once ransomed and glorified by Christ, and though there are still dark omens round us, though " this dear earth which Jesus trod is wet with tears and blood," yet there is a power abroad to whose call there is something in every man responsive, and the glad gospel of peace and bless- ing shall yet hush the voices of earth's many wailings, and speak of resurrection amid the silence of its many tombs. And the work is being done. When I think of the agencies which are ceaslessly at work to make this bad world better, I iam thankful that I live. From the eminence of the proud To- |day, as from an Alp of clear and searching vision, I have [looked backward on the past and forward on the illimitable , future. I look, and that former time seemeth as a huge pri- jmeval forest, rioting in a very luxury of vegetation ; with trees of [giant bole, beneath which serpents brood, and whose branches [arch overhead so thickly that they keep out the sun. But as look there is a stir in that forest, for " the feller has come 33 DANIEL IN BABYLON. m ill up against the trees." All that is prescriptive and all that is venerable combine to protest against the intrusion. Custom shudders at the novelty ; Fraud shudders at the sunlight \ Sloth shudders at the trouble ; "grey-bearded Use " leans upon his staff and wonders where all this will end \ Romance is indig- nant that any should dare to meddle with the old ; Affection clinging to some cherished association, with broken voice and with imploring hands, says^ "Woodman, spare that tree." But as I look the woodman hath no pity, and at every stroke he destroys the useless, or dislodges the pestilent, or slaughters? the cruel. The vision vanisheth, but again— "I look, aside the mist has rolled, The waster seems the builder too ; Upspringing from the ruined old I see the new ! *• Twas but the ruin of the bad, The wasting of the wrong and ill ; Whate'er of good the old time had, Is living still." The woodman is there still, but he has thrown his axe aside, and now drives the ploughshare through the stubborn soil, or delves in the earth as lustily as though he knew that the colours of Eden were slumbering in the clods, and close upon him come the planter and the sower, and soon upon the cleared ground^ there is the laugh of harvest, as reapers with their sickles bright "Troop, singii 5, down the mountain-side." That vision of the present vanisheth, and, yet further away, there dawns on me the sight of the To-morrow. The wood 34 DANIEL IN BABYLON. man and his co-workers are dead — all dead ! — but the work lives on. The seeds of the former time have ripened into a goodly growth, and there, on the spot where once the swamp was sluggish, and where once the serpent ^vrithed, lo ! a Para' dise, wherein is man the loving and the happy, into whicli angels wander as of yore, and where the " voice of the Lord is heard speaking in the cool of the day." Brother, this vision is no fable. It is for an appointed time, and it will not tarry. It is nearer for every outworn lie, and for every trampled fraud, for each scattered truth-seed, and I each kindly speech and deed. Each of us may aid it in its coming. Children who fling seeds about in sport — Youth in its prime — Age in its maturity — Manhood in his energy of en- terprise — Womanhood in her ministry of mercy — all may speed it onward. In a reverent mingling of Faith and Labour, it is lours to watch and to work for it. Do not mourn the p^.st, my [brother, it has given place to better times. Do not dread the :oming of the future. It shall dawn in brighter and in safer jlory. Come, and upon the altars of the faith be anointed as the Daniels of to-day, at once the prophet and the worker — le brow bright with the shining prophecy, the hands full of earnest and of holy deeds. "Thine the needed Truth to speak, Right the wronged, and raise the weak j Thine to make earth's desert glad, In its Eden greenness clad. Thine to work as well as pi"/, Clearing thorny wrongs away, Plucking up the weeds of sin, Letting Heaven's warm sunshine in. 35 DANIEL IN BABYLON. hi: Watching on the hills of Faith, Listening what the Spirit saith, Catching gleams of temple-spire - Hearing notes from angel-choirs. Like the seer of Patmos, gazing On the glory downward blazing. Till, upon earth's grateful sod^ Rests the city of our God." 56 MACAULAY. rfff I bet gle; amc con dra\ my a lo alrn( beer has with If I of n The has t finds jamn Acad pictu MACAULAY. I AM in (!ifficulties. There are three pictures vivid to my mental eye, which will haply illustrate these difficulties better than any long array of words. The first is that of a gleaner, by the dim light of the moon, searching painfully among the unwealiny stubble, in a harvest-field from which the com has been reaped, and from which the reapers have with- drawn. I am that gleaner. About the great man who is my subject there has been as much said as would suffice for a long course of lectures, and as much written as would ahnost furnish a library. Where is the tongue which has not been loosened to utter his eulogy? Where is the pen which has not been swift in his praise? I have, therefore, to deal with matters which are already treasured as national property. If I am to furnish for you any but thin and blasted ears, I must of necessity enrich myself from the full sheaves of others. The second picture is that of an unfortunate individual, who has to write an art-criticism upon a celebrated picture, but who finds himself, with a small physique and with a horror of crowds, jammed hopelessly into the front rank of the spectators at the Academy, with the sun dazzling his eyes, and so near to the picture that he sees little upon the canvas but a vague and 39 MAC AC/LAY. shapeless outline of colour. I am that unhappy critic, dazzled as I look upon my subject — and both you and I are too near for perfect vision. Macaulay,.as every one knows, was through life identified with a political party. Even his literary efforts were i)rompted by political impulses, and tinged necessarily with political hues. It would seem, therefore, that to be accu- rately judged he must be looked at through the haze of yeais, when the strife of passion has subsided, and prepossession and prejudice have alike faded in the lapse of time. The third pic- ture is that of a son, keenly affectionate, but of high integrity, clinging with almost reverent fondness to the memory of a father, but who I'ls become conscious of one detraction, from that father's excellence, which he may not conscientiously conceal. I am that mourning son. There are few of you who hold that marvellous Englishman more dear, or who are more jealous for the renown which, on his human side, he merits, and which has made his name a word of pride wherever Anglo- Saxons wander. If this world were all, I could admire and worship with the best of you, and no warning accompaniment should mingle with the music of praise; but I should be recreant to the duty which I owe to those who listen to me, and traitorous to my higher stewardship as a minister of Christ, if I forbore to warn you that, without godliness in the heart and in the life, the most brilliant career has failed of its allotted purpose, and there comes a paleness upon the lustre of the very proudest fame. It is enough. Your discernment per- ceives my difficulties, and your sympathy will accord me its in- dulgence while we speak together of the man who was the mar- vel of other lands, and who occupies no obscure place upon the bright bead-roll of his own — the rhetorician, the essayist, the 40 MACAULAY. poet, the statesman, the historian — Thomas Babington, first and last Baron Macaulay. From a middle-class family, in a midland county in England, was born the man whom England delights to honour. The place of his birth was Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, at the house of his uncle, Mr. Thomas Babington, after whom he was naMied ; and the time the month of October, when the century was not many moons old. His grandfather was a minister ot the Kirk of Scotland, who dwelt quietly in his manse at Card- ross on the Clyde. His father, after the manner of Scotchmen, travelled in early life toward the south, that he might find wider scope for his enterprise and industry than the country of Ma- callum More could yield. His mother was the daughter of a bookseller in Bristol, who was a member of the Society of Friends. Some of his critics, on the ^'■post hoc propter hoc" principle, have discovered in these two facts the reasons of his after severity against Scotchmen and Quakers. When, in these times, we ask after a man's parentage, it is not that we may know by how many removes he is allied to the Plantagenets, nor how many quarterings he is entitled to grave upon his shield. Estates and names are not the only inheritances of children. They inherit the qualities by which estates are acquired or scattered, and by which men carve out names for themselves, the prouder because they are self-won. Influences which are thrown around them in the years of early life are vital, almost creative in their power, upon the future of their being. You look upon a child in the rounded dimples of its happiness, with large wonder in its eyes, and brow across which sun and sliadow chase each other ceaselessly. It is all unconscious of its solemn stewardship, and of the fine or fatal destiny which it may 41 MACAULAY, , I .' achieve ; but you take the thoughts of responsibility and of influence into account, and you feel that of all known and terri- ble forces, short of Omnipotence, the mightiest may slumber in: that cradle, or look wistfully from out those childish eyes. You look at it again when the possible of the child has developed into the actual of the man. The life purpose has been chosen, and there is the steady striving for its accomplishment. The babe who once slumbered so helplessly has become the village Hampden, or the cmel Claverhouse ; the dark blasphemer, or the ready helper of the friendless ; the poet, in his brief felony of the music of Paradise, or the missionary in his labour to re- store its lost blessings to mankind. You migh^ ;dmost have pre- dicted the result, because you knew the : fi^ cnces, subtle but mighty, which helped to confirm him in the right, or which helped to warp him to the wrong. And who shall say in the character of each of us, how much we are indebted to heredi- tary endowments, to early association, to the philosophy of pa- rental rule, and to that retinue of circumstances which guarded us as we emerged from the ^'■eamland of childhood into the actual experiences of life? In the character and habits of Macaulay the results of these influences may be very largely discovered. Those of you who are familiar with the wicked wit of Sydney Smith will remember his reference to " the patent Christianity of Clapham ; " and in Sir James Stephen's inimitable essay, the worthies of the Clapham sect are portrayed with such fidelity and power that we feel their presence, and they are familiar to us as the faces of to-day. Let us look in upon them on a summer's eve some fifty years ago. We are in the house - ': Henry Thornton, the wealthy banker, and for many years the independent representative of 43 MACAULAY. I 1 the faithful constituency of Southwark. The guests assemble in such numbers that it might almost be a gathering of ihe clan. They have disported on the spacious lawn, beneath the shadow of venerable elms, until the evening warns them inside, and they are in the oval saloon, projected and deco- rated, in his brief leisure, by William Pitt, and filled, to every available inch, with a well-selected library. Take notice of the company, for men of mark are here. There is Henry Thornton himself, lord of the innocent and happy revels, with open brow and searching eye ; with a mind subtle to per- ceive and bright to harmonize the varied aspects of a question ; with a tranquil soul, and a calm, judicial, persevering wisdom, which, if it never rose into heroism, was always ready to coun- sel and sustain the impulses of the heroism of others. That slight, agile, re itless little man, with a crowd about him, whose rich voice rolls like music upon charmed listeners, as if he were a harper who played upon all hearts at his pleasure, can that be the apostle of the brotherhood ? By what process of com- pression did the great soul of Wilberforce get into a frame so slender ? It is the old tale of the genius and the fisherman re- vived. He is fairly abandoned to-night to the current of his own joyous fancies j now contributing to the stream of earnest talk which murmurs through the room, and now rippling into a merry laugh, light-hearted as a sportive child. There may be seen the burly form, and heard the sonorous voice of William Smii/i, the active member for Nonvich, separated from the rest in theological beliefs, but linked with them in all human charities; who at threescore years and ten could say that he had no remembrance of an illness, and that though the head of a numerous family, not a fuiural had ever started from his 43 AfACAULAY. •door. Yonder, with ;in absent .u'r, as if awakened from some dear dream of proj^liery, sits GravviUc Sharp^ thai man of chivalrovis goodness : st(Mn to indignation against every form of wrongdoing. gentU' to tenderness tow.rds the individual wrong <1oer. The author of many pubhralions, tlie patron of many so( ieties, the exjioser of many abuses, there was underlying the earnest ]nniiose of his life a festive himiour which made the worUl hapin' to him, and which gladdened the circle of his home. His leisure was divided, when he was not i tVankpledge there was a remedy for all the sorrows of Sierra Leone, and which mourned over the degeneracy ol statesmen, because Charles VV»x, whom he saw at the l'\)reign C)tlue. had never so much as heard of Daniel's " Little Horn." Ai^iironching with a half impatient look, as if he longed to be breathing the tresh air in some glen of Needwood Chase, comes Thomas Gishornc, the sworn friend of Natui'c, to whom she whisjiered all her secrets (^i bird and stream and tree, and who loved her with a p'are love, less only than that which he felt for the souls in his homely parish to whom he ministered the Word of Lite. There, in a group, eagerly conversing together, are the 44 MACAULAY. Inmcnlcd yA'7fv//r/', and the elder Strphcti, —Charles (i)aftt,\\\v\\ the reputed mitocrat of that Leadenh.ill Street whose glory has so recently dei)artcd, and /(?////, TA^rd Teij^nmouth, whose ([iiiet, gentlemanly fare one rould better imagine in the chair of the IJihle Society, than ruling in viceregal i (mp over the vast em- pireof India. Summoned up from ('amhridge to the gathering there is Isaac Mihicr, "of lofty stature, vast girth, and super- incumbent wig," charged perhaps with some message of affc«:- tion from good old John Venn, who then lay (juietly waiting until his change should <-f)me ; and Charles Simeon., redeemed from all affectations, as he is kindled by the reading of a letter which has just reached him from the far lOast, and vvhidi bears the signature of Iletn-y Martyn. Are we mistaken, or did we discover in the crowd, lighted up with a fme benignity, the countenance of the accomplished Mackintosh ? And surely there (lilted by us, with ( haracleristic liaste, that active, working, marvellously expressive face which could answer to no oiIkt nanu' than that of f/enry fhouij^ham. 'I'here is just one more figure in the corner upon whom we must for a moment lin- ger, and as we p.iss towards him that we may get a nearer vision, look at that group of three ingenuous youths, drinking in the rich flow of soul with feelings of mingled shyness and pride. Oui you tell their fortunes? The interpreting years would show them to you — the one dying beloved and honoured as the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, the second living, as the active and cloipicnt I'ishop of Oxford,* and the the third the future historian of his country, and one of her most renowned and most lamented sons. With beetling brows, and figure robust but ungaijily, slow ol * Now of Wiiichcslcr. 45 %i: MACAULAY. !:ii speech, and with a face which told no tale, described as the man " whose understanding was proof against sophistry, and his nerves against fear," and who, though his demeanour was " inanimate, if not austere, excited among his chosen circle a faith approaching to superstition, and a love rising to enthu- siasm." — What was the secret of Zachary Macaulay's power ? Just this, the consecration of every energy to the one purpose upon which his life was offered as a living sacrifice — the sweep- ing from the face of the earth of the wrong and shame of slavery. An eye-witness of its abominations in Jamaica, a long resident at Sierra Leone, with the slave-trade flourishing around him, he became impressed wi*^h the conviction that God had called him to do battle with this giant sin, and from that moment he lived apart, lifted above ordinary cares and aims by the grandeur of this solemn inspiration. For this cause he laboured without weariness, and wrote with force and vigour. For this cause he suffered slander patiently, made light of fame and fortune, wasted health, and died poor. His friends marked thi. self-devotion, and respected it. They bowed in homage to the majesty of goodness. They regarded him almost as a being of superior order, while so deep was his h\imility, and so close his fellowship with God, that it became easy to imagine that he dwelt habitually in the presence of the shining ones, and that the glory of the mount upon which his footsteps often lingered, shone about him as he sojourned among men. Such were the men who, as leaders of the "Clapham sect," aj it was called, drew down the wonder of the worldly, and provoked the scoffing of the proud. Oh rare and sacred fellowship ! Where is the limner who will preserve for us these features upon canvas ? Already 46 MACAULAY. upon our walls we can live with the renowned and the worthy. We see the great Duke in the midst of his com panions-in- arms ; we are at home with Dr. Johnson and his friends ; we are pre- sent when John Wesley dies ] we can nod familiarly to a group of free-traders ; we can recognise noble sheep-breeders and stalwart yeomen at an agricultural show -, why should our moral heroes be forgotten ? Who will paint the Clapham sect for us ? Their own age derided them ; let us, their posterity, enthrone them with double honour. They sowed the seeds of which the harvest waveth now. It was theirs to commence, amid un- friendly watchers, those wide schemes of philanthropy which have made the name of England blessed. Catching the man- tle of those holy men who in the early part of the last cen- tury were the apostles of the second Reformation, they had perhaps a keener sense of the difficulties of evangelism, and a more practical knowledge of the manners and customs of the world. Fearlessly as their fathers had testified in attestation of some vital doctrine, they bore their heroic witness against in- solent oppression and wrong ; and to them we owe the creation of that enlightened public opinion which has made the nation a commonwealth, and the world a neighbourhood, which is so prolific in its merciful inventions in the times in which we live ; and which, while it screens the peasant's thatch, protects the beggar's conscience, and uplifts the poor man's home, is so world-wide in its magnificence of charity, that it has an ear for the plaint of the exile, a response to the cry of the Sudra, and a tear for the sorrows of the slave. With such healthy and stirring influences surrounding him, Macaulay passed his childhood; and though in after years he became the student rather than the worker, — " brought over," ( 47 M AC AULA Y. as Mr. Maurice significantly says, "from the party of the saints to the party of the Whigs." — the results of the association stamped themselves upon his character, and we can trace them in his sturdy independence and consistent love of liberty, in his rare appreciation of the beauty of moral goodness, and in the quiet energy of perseverance which urged him to the mas- tery of every subject he handled, a.id which stored his mind so richly that he grew into a living encyciopcedia of knowledge, i'he world has recently been enriched with information upon the subject of Macaulay's childhood, from the letters addressed to his father by the venerable Hannah More. This remarkable woman — sprightly at seventy as at twenty-five — was a living link between the celebrities of two ages, and wielded, from her retirement at Barley Wood, an influence of which it is scarcely possible for us to estimate the extent and value. Rich in recollections of Garrick, Burke, Walpole, and Johnson, she entered heartily into the schemes and interests of the world of later times, and many were the eminent names who sought her counsel, or who prized her correspondence and friendship. Her interest in the Macaulay family was ir.creased by the fact that the Selina Mills, whom Zachary Macaulay afterwards mar- ried, had been under her charge as a pupil, when she and her sister kept a school in Bristol. From her letters we learn the impression of extraordinary endowment which the young Macaulay gave. When he had attained the mature age of eight, she rejoices "that his classicality has not extinguished his piety," and adds — " his hymns were really extraordinary for such a baby." What better illustration can there be of the old adage that poets are born, not made ! " He lisped in numbers, and the numbers came." In his twelfth year, when the mo- 48 MACAULAY. in mentous question of a public school was debaced in the j)arental councils, Hannah More gives her judgment in favour of his being sent to Westminster by day — thus, as she thought, securing the discipline and avoiding the danger. And in the same letter she says, " Yours, like Edwin, is no vulgar boy, and will require attention in proportion to his great superiority of intellect and quickness of passion. He ought to have compe- titors. He is like the prince who refused to play with anything but kings, I never saw any one bad propensity in him ; nothing except natural frailty and ambition, inseparable, perhaps, from such talents and so lively an imagination. He appears sincere, veracious, tender-hearted, and affectionate." It would seem that private tuition was thought to have the advantage over public schools, for the Rev. Matthew M. Preston, then of Shelford, Cambridgeshire, and subsequently of Aspden House, Herts, was entrusted with the educational guardianship of young Macaulay. During his residence here, he is described as a studious, thoughtful boy, rather largely built than otherwise, with a head which seemed too big for his body, stooping shoulders, and pallid face ; not renowned either at boating or cricket, nor any of the other articles in the creed of muscular Christianity, but incessantly reading or writing or repeating ballad-poetry by the yard or by the hour. Hannah More says that during a visit to Barley Wood, he recited all Bishop Heber's prize poem of " Palestine," and that they had "poetry for breakfast, dinner, and supper." She laboured hard to impress him with Sir Henry Saville's notion that poets are the best writers of all, next to those who have written prose, and seems to have been terribly afraid lest he should turn out a poet after all. It was about this period that he wrote an D 49 MAC/fULAV. !■' epitaph on Henry Martyn, which has been published as his earhest effort, and which other judges than partial ones will pronounce excellent, to have been written by a boy of twelve : — *' Here Martyn lies ! in manhood's early bloom, The Christian hero found a Pagan tomb ! ^ Religion, sorrowing o'er lier favourite son, Points to the glorious trophies which he won. Immortal 1 rophies ! not with slaughter red, Not stained with t ars by helpless orphans shed j But trophies of the Cross ! In that dear Name, Through every scene of danger, toil, an*^ shame, Onward he journeyed to that happy shore, Where dah jer, toil, and shame are known no more. " In the fifteenth year of his age, we find the young student, with characteristic eneigy, coming out as a church reformer, assailing the time-honoured prerogative of parish clerks, and making "heroic exertions" to promote, in the village where he worshipped, the responses of the congregation at large. The same period was signalised by the appearance of his first cr'tical essay, and of his earliest published work — the criticism, however, ventured only in a letter to Barley Wood, and the work being neither an epic nor a treatise, but an index to the thirteenth volume of the Christian Observer, It seems that his fatLer shared the jealousy of his poetical tendencies which Hannah More so frequently expressed ; and to curb his Pegasus, imposed on him the cultivation of prose composition, in one of its most useful, if not of its most captivating styles. The letter in which Macaulay talks the critiques, and alludes to the forthcoming publication, shall tell its own tale, and you may forget or remember, as you please, that the writer was not 50 MACAULAY. yet fifteen. After alkiding to the illness of Mr. Henry Thornton, and to Hannah More's recovery from the effects of an accident by fire, he says : " Every eminent writer of poetr}'-, good or bad, has been publishing within the last month, or is to publish shortly. Lord Byron's pen is at work over a poem as yet nameless. Lucien Buonaparte has given the world his ' Charlemagne.' Scott has published his ' Lord of the Isles,' in six cantos — a beautiful and elegant poem ; and Southey his ' Roderick, the last of the Goths.' Wordsworth has printed ' The Excursion' (a ponderous quarto of five hundred pages), bcmg a portion of the intended poem entitled 'The Recluse.' What the length of this intended poem is to be, as the Grand Vizier said of the Turkish poet — ' n'est connu qu'4 Dieu et k M. Wordsworth ' — this forerunner, however, is co say no more, almost as long as it is dull ; not but that there are many striking and beautiful passages inter- spersed ; but who would wade through a poem *' Where perhaps one beauty shines In the dry desert of a thousand lines." To add to the list, my dear Madam, you will soon see a work of mine in print. Do not be frightened ; it is only the Index to the thirteenth volume of the Christian Observer, which I have had the honour of composing. Index-making, though the lowest, is not the most useless round in the ladder of literature ; and I pride myself upon being able to say that there are many readers of the Christian Observer who could do without Walter Scott's works, but not without those of " My dear Madam, your affectionate friend, " Thomas B. Macaulay." 51 i MACAULAY. !^:i I' ii i From Mr. Preston's roof Macaulay proceeded in due course to Trinity College, Cambridge, the alma mater of so many distinguished sons, proud in the past of the fame of those whose " mens divinior''' first developed itself within her classic precincts — her Bacon, Newton, Milton, Barrow — as she will be proud in the future of her later child, who spake of their great- ness to the world. Such is reported to have been his distaste for mathematics that he did not compete for honours, but he twice carried off the Chancellor's medal for prize-poems on the subjects respectively of "Pompeii, ' und "Evening;" gained the Craven scholarship; and in 1822 obtained his Bachelor's degree. It should not be forgotten, and the mention of it may hearten into hope again some timid youth who has been dis- couraged by partial failure, that a third poem, on the inspiring subject of "Waterloo," failed to obtain the prize. In 1825 his Master's degree was taken, and in the year following he was called to the bar. It was during his residence at the University that he started as an adventurer into that world of letters, which is so stony- hearted to the friendless and the feeble, but v/hich, once propitiated or mastered, speeds the vigorous or the fortunate to the temple of fame. He was happy in the enterprising indi- vidual who first enlisted his ready pen. There were times when the publisher was as a grim ogre, who held the writer in his thrall ; and there would be material for many an unwritten chapter of the " Calamities of Authors," if one could but recount the affronts put upon needy genius by vulgar but wealthy pride. They are to be congratulated who find a pub- lisher with a heart to sympathise and a soul to kindle, as well as with brows to knit and head to reckon. It was well for 52 I MACAULAY. Macaulay, though his genius would have burst through all trammels, that he was a genial leader under whose banners he won his spurs of literary fame. There are few names which the literature of modem times should hold in dearer remem- brance than the name of Charles Knight, at once the Meca^nas of youthful authorship, and a worthy fellow-labourer with the band whom he gathered around him. He yet lives in tht; midst of us, though in the winter of his years. Long may it be ere Jerrold's apt epitaph be needed, and the last " Good Knight " be breathed above the turf that wraps his clay ! A goodly band of choice spirits those were, who, under various names, enriched the pages of " Knight's Quarterly Magazine." It is not too much to say, however, that though John Moultrie, Nelson Coleridge, and Winthrop Praed were among the valued contributors, the great charm of the magazine, during its brief but brilliant existence, was in the articles signed " Tristram Merton," which was the literary alias ot Thomas Macaulay. In these earlier productions of his pen there are the foreshadowings of his future eminence, the same flashes of genius, the sanxe antithetical power, the same pro- digious learning, the same marvellous wealth of illustration, which so much entrance and surprise us in his later years. His versatility is amazing. Nothing comes amiss to him : Italian poets and Athenian orators — the revels of Alcibiades, and the gallantries of Caesar, the philosophy of history, and the abstruser questions of political science, — all are discussed with boldness and fervour by this youth of twenty-four summers ; while those who read his fragments of a parish law-suit, and a projected epic, will pronounce him " of an infinite humour ;" and those who read his "Songs of the Huguenots," and of the "Civil 53 ii .; I MACAULAY. m War," will recognise the first martial outbursts of the poet-soul which flung its fiery words upon the world in the "Lays ot Ancient Rome." His old love of the ballad, which had been a passion in his schoolboy life, was not entirely overborne by his api)lication to graver studies. Calliope had not yet been sup- planted by Clio, and he sung the Battle of Naseby, for example, with a force of rushing words which takes our hearts by storm, in spite of olden prejudice or political creed, and which, in what some critics would call a wanton perversion of power, carries away the most peace-loving amongst us in a momentary insanity for war : ■* Oh ! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North, With your hands ana your feet and your raiment all red ? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread? " Oh ! evil was the root, and bitter was the fruit, And crimson was the juice of the vintage that we trod ; For we trampled on the throng of the haughty and the strong. Who sate in the high places and slew the saints of God. *' It was about the noon of a glorious day of June, That we saw their banners dance and their cuirasses shine ; And the Man of Blood was there, with his long essenced hair. And Astley, and Sir Marmaduke, and Rupert of the Rhine. '• Like a servant of the Lord, with his Bible and his sword, The General rode along us to form us for the tight, When a murmuring sound broke out, and swelled into a shout, Among the godless horsemen upon the tyrant's right. *' And hark ! like the roar of the billows on the shore, The cry of battle rises along their charging line — For God ! for the Cause ! for the Church ! for the Laws! For Charles, King of England, and Rupert of the Rhine! 54 MAC A (/LAV. " The furious German comes, with his clarions and his drums, His b-avoes of Alsatia and pages of "Whitehall; They are bursting on our flanks. Grasp your pik«s: — close your rank? : For Rupert never comes but to conquer or to fall. Stout Skippon hath a wound : — the centre hath given ground : — Hark ! hark ! — What means the trampling of horsemen on our rear? Whose banner do I see, boys ? 'Tis he, thank God, 'tis he, boys, Bear up another minute. Brave Oliver is here ! Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row, Like a whirlwind on the trees, like a deluge on the dykes, Our cuirassiers have burst on the ranks of the Accurst, And at a shock have scattered the forests of his pikes. Fast, fast the gallants ride, in some safe nook to hide Their coward heafls, predestined to rot on Temple-Bar, And he — he turns, he flies, — shame on those cruel eyes That bore to look on torture, and dared not look on war. " Fools ! your doublets shone with gold, and your hearts were gay and bold, When you kissed your lily hands to your lemans to-day. And to-morrow shall the fox, from her chambers in the rocks, Lead forth her tawny cub? to howl above the prey. " And she of the seven hills shall mourn her childreri's ills. And tremble when she thinks on the edge of England's sword; And the kings of earth in fear shall shudder when they hear What the hand of God hath wrought for the Houses and the Word.' Tt has been said that a speech delivered by Macaiilay, on the great question which absorbed his father's life, attracted the notice of Jeffrey, then seeking for young blood wherewith 55 MACAU LAY. to enrich the pages of the " Edinburgh Review," and that this was the cause of his introduction into the guild of literat'ire, of which he became the decus et tutamen. The world is now familiar wi i that series of inimitable essays, which were poured out in rap.d and apparently inexhaustible succession, for the space of twenty years. To criticise them, either in mass or in detail, is no part of the lecturer's province ; and even to enumerate them would entail a pilgrimage to many and distant shrines. As we surrender ourselves to his masterly guidance, we are fascinated beneath a life-like biography, or enchained by some sweet spell of travel we pronounce upon canons of criticism, and solve problems of government with a calm dogmatism which is troubled by no misgivings ; we range unquestioned through the Court at Potsdam, mix in Italian intrigues, and settle Spanish successions \ and, under the robe of the sagacious ^^urleigh, peer out upon the presence chamber of Elizabeth herself. Now, with Clive and Hastings, we tread the sultry Ind — our path glittering with " barbaric pearl and gold" — now on bloody Chalgrove we shudder to see Hampden fall, and anon we gaze upon the glorious dreamer, as he listens musingly to the dull plash of the water from his cell on Bedford Bridge. We stand aside, and are awed while Byron raves, and charmed while Milton sings. Addison condescendingly writes for us, and Chatham declaims in our presence ; Madame d'Arblay trips lightly along the corridor, and Boswell comes ushering in his burly idol, and smirking like the showman of a giant. We watch the process curiously as an unfortunate poet is impaled amid the scattered Sibyllines of the reviews which puffed him ; and we hold our breath while the Nemesis descends to crucify the miscreant Barfire. In all moods of mind, in all 56 MACAULAY. varieties of experience, there is something for us of instruction or of warning. If we pause, it is from astonishment ; if we are wearied, it is from excess of splendour ; we are in a gorgeous saloon, from whose walls flash out upon us a long array of pictures, many of them Pre-Raphaelite in colour ; and we are so dazzled by the brilliant hues, and by the effective grouping, that it is long ere we can ask ourselves whether they are true to nature, or to those deeper convictions which our spirits have struggled to attain. Criticism, for a season, becomes the vassal of delight; and we know not whether most to admire the prodigality of knowledge or the precision of utterance — the sagacity which foresees, or the fancy which embellishes — the tolerant temper, or the moral courage. In these essays Macaulay has written his mental autobiography. He has done for us in reference to himself what, with all his brilliancy, he has often failed to do for us in his portraitures of others. He has shown us the man. He has anatomised his own nature. As in a glass we may here see him as he is. He is not the thinker — reverent, hesitating, troubled, but the rare expositor of the thoughts of elder time. He is not the discerner of spirits, born to the knowledge of others in the birth-pangs of his own regeneration, but the omnivorous reader, familiar with every corner of the book-world, and divining from the entrails of a folio, as the ancient augurs from the entrails of a bird. He is not the prophet, but has a shrewdness of insight which often stimulates the prophet's inspiration. He is not the philosopher, laying broad and deep the foundations of a new system, but the illustrator, stringing upon old systems a multitude of gathered facts ; not dry nor tiresome, but transmuted into logic or poetry by the tire that burned within him. He is not > i 57 MACAULAY. iiM r the mere partisan, save only "in that unconscious disingen- uousness from whicl] the most upright man when strongly- attached to an opinion is seldom ^ wholly free," but the discriminating censor, who can deride the love-locks and fopperies of the Cavalier, and yet admire his chivalrous loyalty ; who can rejoice in the stern virtues of the Puritan, and yet laugh at his small scruples and his nasal twang. He is not, alas ! the Christian apostle, the witness alike amid the gloom of Gethsemane and on the Mount of Vision ; not for him are either those agonies or that mountain-baptism ; " he would have feared to enter into the cloud." He '.s rather the Hebrew scribe, astonished at the marvellous works, eager and fluent in recording them, and yet retaining his earthward leanings, and cherishing his country's dream of the advent of a temporal Messiah. The first essay, that on Milton, at once established Macaulay's fame. In later years, he spoke of it as overloaded with gaudy and ungraceful ornament, and *' as containing scarcely a paragraph such as his matured judgment approved." There are many yet, however, with whom its high moral tone, courage, and healthy freshness of feeling will atone for its occasional dogmatism, and for the efflorescence of its style. Who has not glowed to read that description of the Puritan worthies, " whose palaces were houses not made with hands ; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt, for they esteemed themselves rich in n more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language; nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand ?" Scarcely less eloquent, though much less known, is the 58 MACAULAY. description of the influence of the literature of Athens, which I quote as a fair example of the essayist's early style : " It is a subject on which I love to forget the accuracy of a judge in the veneration of a worshipper, and the gratitude of a child. If we consider merdy the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and eloquence of expression, which characterise the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable ; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect — that from hence were the vast accomplish- ments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero ; the withering fire of Juvenal ; the plastic imagination of Dante ; the humour of Cervantes ; the comprehension of Bacon ; the wit of Butler ; the supreme arid universal excellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them — inspiring, encouraging, consoling ; by the lonely lamp of Erasmus ; by the restless bed of Pascal ; in the tribune of Mirabeau ; in the cell of Gahleo ; on the scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankmd to engage? — to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty, liberty in bondage, health in sickness, society in solitude ? Her power is indeed manifested at the bar, in the senate, in the field of battle, in the schools of ' 4 59 MACAULAY. w\W philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or nssiiages pain, wherever it brings gladness to eyes which (ail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep, there is exhibited in its noblest form the immortal influence of Athens. The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to his conrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he reiained the casket of that mysterious juice which enabled him to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental wcrld, all the hoarded treasures of its primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines. This is the gift ol Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated ; her people have degenerated into timid slaves ; her language into a barbarous jargon ; her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen ; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And when those who have rivalled her greatness shall have shared her fate ; when civil- ization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents ; when the scei)tre shall have iv^sed away from England ; when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain labour to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief — shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple, and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts — her influence and her ^lory will still survive, fresh in eternal youth, 'exempt from 60 MACAULAY. miit.ihility and d'.;cay, immortal as the intellectual principle from wlich they derived their origin, and over which they exenise their control." Yoi' v'll not fail to perceive in the last sentence of this (inotation the first sketch of the celebrated New Zealander, who has certaitily earned the privilege of a free seat on London Bridge, by tlie fre(|iiency with which he has "pointed a moral and adorned a tale." In his finished form, and busy at his melancholy work, he appenrs in an article on " Ranke's History of the I'opes," to illustrate Macauiays principle of the perpetuity of the Roman (Jatholic Church: — "She saw the commencement of all the governments, and of all the ecMJc- siastical establishments that now exist in the world ; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the I'Vank had passed the Rhine, when (irecian elocjuence still flourished at Antiocli, when idols were still worshipped in the temi)le of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." As one reads this oracular announcement, one is ready to en(|uire, ' Is it really so ? Is the tide to roll back so far? Are all the strugg[es of the ages fruiUess? Has the light streamed into the darkness only that the darkness may not comprehend it? The blood of our lathers, shed in the battle for dear life, that life of the spirit which is costlier far than this poor life of the body — has it ilowcid in vain ? ' Ah ! he sees but events on the level, and the mists of the past dim the eyes that would penetrate the future. Let us get up higher, higher than 6i <^-f<^ M,u .in .iy I. J.. thr p iin. l\i|iluM tli.m (hr pl.tlraii. hij^luM \\\:\u \]\c t.iMc l.in\nposo in t'lo Inst. 'y >! the mitions, in tlu- |M('|);n,nion ol 1% = tval '^1 Inndt-uh rs. in llir sulitii(!in,iMtin, rovtnnr. to tl»o inilt^Min}' ol" (mic r.i ind rUion* los. \n bvMh of r.Oi^l ,;• i ilosign. Wo sbai -oo a ; -^UMnul vi'lij;ioiis nioxenu'iil Mw.ilvcncd. jirownig. jvuhoving sitcnglh. and piop.ning in scnrl loi (ho tninistrv \vln« h its nvniliood is \o wu-ld. \\"r sli.dl llial ]^\Hostantisni has hold «^l the world's nnrlltrlual wcahh. sproails hcrsolt anionj; now juoplos as a nnssionaiv power, broathrs o\im> ni Kt^nnsh ronntiii^s as a hoahn}; and saliilary breath, and is luaxu);; mv (Mis» loiislv \n ommv traini at tho tvMuh nUo lioonion. and Topcry annot harho\n tho tV 00 . Sonpturo \nu\ orsallv «iroulalod. ani Follow 1o\os uo{ tlio \\\h\c . and ihon. rt^noniluMini; that W(> 1 o\ pri>phoov. wo Kntwv that its tlooni is ha \o a sinv worv ;po kon. an ,1 that ni rn>d" d ti s LivHHl tunc\ I t>porv shall ponsh tin-own tVoni tho tnoil world whioh has writhoil biMioalh its voko so lonj;. ]Hnisli. I'roni its so\on hills, and iVom its spiritual wiokodncss. utiovh and tor o\oi. boloro tho Lord, "slain by the breath ol His mouth, and oonsumod by tho brij;htnoss ol" His coming." To tlie wealth ot" Maoaulay in illnstration we have already MAtAULAV In is uly in.'ulc K Icrrntc, ;iH(l nlso lo tlir (;n I tlinl Ins im;)^rs uw dr.iwn lull r.McIv (inin rxtcm.il iimIuic. hi liodk'; he (miukI llir rH(li;inl((l <;iv(' wlii* It !('i|iiii<'f| ImiI liis " (»|i(n scs.imc" to disclose lo liim lli(> tuidiMl lr(>;isii!(' ; njid in his disMirsivc V(';i(liiij'. llir liiglu'sl liouk w;is not loi|M)ll("n. TIm' rc'i'Icr of liis v;iiioiis works will not I'nl to Ik- sliixk with Ins lrr(|iirnl s( ii|)lm,il jilliisioMs ; iind i( lie is in sr;ir( li o( n, |icror;ition, ;ind Inis n|iou ;tn imngc wlii* li rings inoic rniisi»nlly f "s.. cs ; the one Irom the I'ss.iy on Lord I'nroM, Jind the ollie; irr i l!i;il on Hoiilliey's ('oIlors f)t the new |ihiloso|)hy, has, in one (tf his finest poems, rompared I{a< on lo Moses standing on Mount I'isgah. It is to l»a( on, we Ihink, as he /ippears in the first hook of the Novum < )rganum, that the <(tmparison applies with peniliar felif ity. Tluai" we see ihe great lawgiver looking round from his huvly clexation on an infinite exjianse, hehinci hin) a wilderness Ol dreary sands and hitler waters, in which successive gencr ations have sojourned, always moving, yet never advancing, reaping no harvest, and building no abiding (ity ; beff^rc him a goodly land, a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey ; while the multitude below saw only the flat sterile desert in which they had so long wandered, bounded on every side by a near horizon, or diversified only by some deceitful mirage, he was gazing from a far higher stand on a far lovelier country, following with his eye the long course of fertilising 63 MACAULAY. m rivers, through ample pastures, and under the bridges of great capitals, measuring the distances of marts and havens, and portioning out all those wealthy regions from Dan to Beer- sheba." The other extract represents the evils of the alliance between Christianity and Power, and commends itself to our literary taste, even if we suppose that there are two sides to the shield : "The ark of God was never taken till it was surrounded by the arms of earthly defenders. In captivity its sanctity was sufficient to vindicate it from insult, and to lay the hostile fiend prostrate on the threshold of his own temple. The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to every house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave. To such a system it can bring no addition of dignity or strength, that is part and parcel of the common law. It is not now for the first time left to rely on the force of its own evidences, and the attractions of its own beauty. It3 sublime theology confounded the Grecian schools in the fair conflict of reason with reason. The bravest and wisest of the Csesars found their arms and their policy unavailing, when opposed to the weapons that were not carnal, and the kingdom that was not of this world. The victory which Porphyry and Diocletian failed to gain, is not, to all appearance, reserved for any of those who have in this age, directed their attacks against the last restraint of the powerful, and the last hope of the wretched. The whole history of Christianity shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power, than of being crushed by 64 i'^ii ai: MACAC/LAV. its opposition. Those who thrust temporal sovereignty upon her, treat her as their prototypes treated her Author. They bow the knee, and spit upon her ; they cry ' Hail !' and smite her on the cheek ; they put a sceptre in her hand, but it is a fragile reed ; they crown her, but it is with thorns ; they cover with purple the wounds which their own hands have inflicted on her ; and inscribe magnificent titles over the cross on which they have fixed her to perish in ignominy and pain." Every reader of the essays must be impressed with the marvellous versatility of knowledge which they disclose. What has he not read? is the question which we feel disposed to ask. Quotations from obscure writers, or from obscure works of great writers ; multitudinous allusions to ancient classics, or tc» modem authors whom his mention has gone far to make classic — references to some less studied book of Scripture — names which have driven us to the atlas to make sure of our geo- graphy — or to the Biographical Gallery to remind us that they lived ; — they crowd upon us so thickly that we are wildered in the profusion, and there is danger to our physical symmetry from the enlargement of our bump of wonder. It is said that, in allusion to this accumulation of knowledge, his associates rather profanely nicknamed him " Macaulay the Omniscient ;" and indeed, the fact of his amazing knowledge is beyond dispute. Then, how did he get it ? Did it come to him by the direct fiat of heaven, as Adam's, in Paradise ? Did he open his eyes and find himself the heir of the ages, as those who are born to fair acres and broad lands ? Did he spring at once, like Minerva, from the brain of Jupiter, full-armed, a ripe and furnished scholar ? Or was he just favoured, as others, with a clear mind and a resolute will—with a high appreciation of E 65 MACAULAY. knowledge, and a keen covetousness to make it his own? He had a wonderful memory, that is true; so that each fragment of his amassed lore seemed to be producible at will. He had a regal faculty, that also is true ; by which all that he had gathered goldened into a beauty of its own ; but it was the persevering industry of labour which brought stores to the retentive memory, and material to the creative mind. Work, hard work, the sweat of the brain through many an exhausting hour, and through many a weary vigil, was the secret after all, of his success. Many who slumber in nameless graves, or wander through the tortures of a wasted life, have had memories as capacious, and faculties as fine as he, but they lacked the steadiness of purpose, and patient thoughtful labour, which multiplied the "ten talents" into "ten other talents beside them." It is the old lesson, voiceful from every life that has a moral in it — from Bernard Palissy, selling his clothes, and tearing up his floor to add fuel to the furnace, and wearying his wife and amusing his neighbours with dreams of his white enamel, through the unremunerative years ; from Warren Hastings, lying at seven years old upon the rivulet's bank, and vowing inwardly that he would regain his patrimonial property, and dwell in his ancestral halls, and that there should be again a Hastings of Daylesford j from William Carey, panting after the moral conquest of India, whether he sat at the lap-stone o- his early craft, or wielded the ferule in the village school, or lectured the village elders when the Sabbath dawned. It is the old lesson,— a worthy purpose, patient energy for its accom- plishment, a resoluteness that is undaunted by difficulties, and, in ordinary circumstances, success. Do you say that you are not gifted, and that therefore Macaulay is no model to you? — 06 MACAULAY. that yours is a lowly sphere or a prosaic occupation, and that even if you were ambitious to rise, or determined to become heroic, your unfortunate surroundings would refuse to give you the occasion ? It is quite possible that you may not have the affluent fancy, nor the lordly and formative brain. All men are not thus endowed, and the world will never be reduced to a level uniformity of mind. The powers and deeds of some men will be always miracles to other men, even to the end of time. It is quite possible, too, that the conditions of your life may be unfavourable, that your daily course may not glow with poetical incident, nor ripple into opportunities of ostentatious greatness. But, granted all these disadvantages, it is the part of true manhood to make its own occasions. The highest greatness is not that which waits for favourable circumstances, but that which compels hard fortune to do it service, which slays the Nemasan lion, and goes on to further conquests, robed in its tawny hide. The real heroes are the men who constrain the tribute which men would fain deny them, — " Men who walk up to Fame as to a friend, Or their own house, which from the wrongful heir They have wrested : from the world's hard hand and gripe. Men who — like Death, all bone, but all unarmed — Have ta'en the giant world by the throat, and thrown him, And made him swear to maintain their name and fame At peril of his life." There are few of you, perhaps, who could achieve dis- tinction ) there are none of you who need be satisfied without an achievement that is infinitely higher. You may make your lives beautiful and blessed. The poorest of you can afford 67 is '"ii. Il: MACAULAY. WP^. I- > n, ■ I ■Ml I .i to be kind ; the least gifted amongst you can practise that loving wisdom which knows the straightest road to human hearts. You may not be able to thrill senates with your elocjuence, but you may see eyes sparkle and faces grow gladder when you appear ; you may not astonish the listeners by your ac([uiremcnts of varied scholarship, but you may dwell in some spirits, as a presence associated with all that is beautiful and holy ; you may neither be a magnate nor a millionaire, but you may have truer honours than of earth, and riches which wax not old. You may not rise to patrician estate, and come under that mysterious process by which the churl's blood is transformed into the nobleman's, but you may ennoble your- selves in a higher aristocracy than that of belted earl. Use the opportunities you have ; make the best of your circum- stances, however unpromising. Give your hearts to God, and your lives to earnest work and loving purpose, and you can never live in vain. Men will feel your influe'ice like the scent of a bank of violets, fragrant with the hidden sweetness of the spring. Men will miss you when you cease from their commjnions, as if a calm, familiar star shot suddenly and briglitly from their vision ; and if there wave not at your funeral the trappings of the world's gaudy woe, " eyes full of heart- break" will gaze wistfully adown the path where you have vanished, and in the long after-time, hearts which you have helped to make happy will recall your memory with gratitude and tears. The union of great acquirements and great rhetorical power so manifest in Macaulay's mind, could not fail to render him a desirable acquisition to any political party ; and as he had imbibed, and in some sort inherited, Whig principles, an 68 oppor where first R influer borouc the R represe 1834 1 devotei that J); legislati form fr exquisit impract on the ! superb is prob plan of others, Warren in Parlis Abercro rc-electe occasion election, the bru! and part grant, to him wer condcnu: MACAULAY. opportunity was soon found for his admission into Parliament, where he appeared in time to join in the discussions on the first Reform Bill. He was returned, in February, 1830, by the influence of the Marquis of Lansdowne, for the nomination borough of Calne. He sat for Calne until the passing of the Refoxm Bill, when he was elected one of their first representatives by the newly created constituency of Leeds. In 1834 he was appointed a Member of Council in India, and devoted himself to the construction of a new penal code for that i)art of her Majesty's dominions. This was his .sole legislative offspring, and, from the best estimate which we can form from imperfect knowledge, it would seem to havo been exquisite on paper, but useless in working — a brilliant, but impracticable thing. During his residence in India he continued on the staff of the " Edinburgh," and contributed some of his superb criticisms from beneath an Eastern sky. Here, also, it is probable that he gathered the material and sketched the plan of those masterly articles which, perhaps, more than most others, aroused English sympathies for India — the articles on Warren Hastings and Lord Clive. In May, 1839, he reappeared in Parliament, on the elevation to the peerage of Mr. Speaker Abercromby, as the representative of Edinburgh. He was re-elected at the general election of 1841, and twice on occasion of his accessioft" to oflfice. In 1847, ^.t the general election, he failed to obtain his seat, partly, as it is said, from the brusque manner in which he treated his constituents, and partly from his consistent support of the enlarged Maynooth grant, to which many of those who had previously sui)ported him were conscientiously opposed. The papers were loud in condenuialion of the Edinburgh electors, who were represented 69 i V' m MACAULAY. as having disgraced themselves for ever by their rejection of a man of so much excellent renown. Well, i^ a representative rs to be chosen for his brilliant parts, or for his fluent speech, perhaps they did; but if men vote for conscience sake, and they feel strongly on what they consider a vital question, and if a representative is to be what his name imports — the faith- ful reflex of the sentiments of the majority who send him — one can see nothing in the outcry but unreasoning clamour I cannot see dishonour either in his sturdy maintenance of un- popular opinions, or in his constituents' rejection of him be- cause his sentiments were opposed to their own ; but I can see much that is honourable to both parties in their reconciliation after temporary estrangement, — on their part, that they should honour him by returning him in 1852, unsolicited, at the head of the poll, — on his part, that he should, with a manly genero- sity, bury all causes of dissension, and consent to return to public life, as the representative of a constituency which had bidden him for a season to retire. There is, indeed, no part of Macaulay's character in v/hich he shows to more advantage than in his position as a niember of parliament. We may not always be able to agree with him in sentiment, we may fancy that we discover the fallacies which lurk beneath the shrewdness of his logic, we may suffer now and then from the apt sarcasm which he was not slow to wield ; but we must accord to him the tribute that his political life was a life of unswerving con- sistency and of stainless honour. In his lofty scorn of dupli- city he became, perhaps, sometimes contemptuous, just as in his calm dogmatism he never seemed to imagine that there were plausible arguments which might be adduced on both sides of a question; but in his freedom from disguise, and abhorrence 70 MACAULAY. of corruption, in his refusal to parley when compromise would have been easy, and in his refusal to be silent when silence \;ould have wounded his conscience but saved his seat, in the noble indignation with which he denounced oppression, and in his independence of all influences which were crafty and con- temptible, he may fairly be held up as a model English states- man. Before the Reform Bill, the members for the city usually subscribed fifty guineas to the Edinburgh races, and shortly after the election of 1841, Mr. Macaulay was applied to on this be- half. His reply was a fine specimen of manly decision. " In the first place," he says, *' I am not clear that the object is a good one. In the next place, I am clear that by giving money for such an object in obedience to such a summons, I should completely change the whole character of my connection with Edinburgh. It has been usual enough for rich families to keep a hold on corrupt boroughs by defraying the expense of public amusements. Sometimes it is a ball, sometimes a re- gatta. The Derby family used to support the Preston races. The members for Beverley, I believe, find a bull for their con- stituents to bait. But these were not the conditions on which J undertook to represent Edinburgh. In return for your gene- rous confidence I off"er faithful parliamentary service, and 1 offer nothing else. The call that is now made is one so objection- able, that I must plainly say I would rather take the Chiltern Hundreds than comi)ly with it." All honour to the moral courage which indited that reply. Brothers, let the manly ex- ample fire you. Carry such heroism into your realms of morals and of commerce, and into all the social interlacings of your lifej let no possible loss of influence or patronage or gold tempt you to the doing of that which your judgment and conscience 7« ":^, MACAULAY, \\\<\ disapprove. Better a thousand times to be slandered than to sin; nobler to spend your days in all the bitterness of unheeded struggle, than become a hollow parasite to gain a hollow friend. Worthier far to remain poor for ever, the brave and self-respect- ing heir of the crust and of the spring, than, in another sen.se than Shakspeare's, to *' coin your heart," and for the " vile drachmas," which are the hire of wrong, " to drop your" gene- rous ** blood." Macauiay's speeches, published by himself in self-defence against the dishonest publication of them by other people, bear the stamp and character of the essay rather than of the oiorion, and reveal all the mental qualities of the man— his strong ":e:r-.e and vast learning, his shrewdness in the selection of \\).h i?),;t">.,- rials, and his mastery over that sort of reasoning which siler je's if it does not convince. They betray also, very brgcly, tlie idiosyncrasy which is, perhaps, his most observable facu! the disposition to regard all subjects in the light of t^2 ^^ast, iv\V to treat them historically, rather than from the exi^erience of actual life. Thus in his speeches on li": East India Company's charter, on the motion of want of confidt:ncf in ihe Melbourne miristry, on the state of Ireland, on the Furt. >iit.i> Bill, on the question of the exclusion of the Master of the Rolls from parliament, he ransacks for precedents and illustrations in the histories of almost every age and clime, while he gives but vague and hesi- tating solutions on the agitating problems of the day. Hence, though his last recorded speech is said to have been unrivalled in the annals of parliamentary oratory for the number of votes which it won, the impression of his speeches in the general was no, so immediate as it will, perhaps, be lasting. Men were conscious of a despotism while he spoke, and none wisiied to 72 MACAULAY. be delivered from the sorcery ; but when he ceased the spell was broken, and they awoke as from a pleasant dream. They were exciting discussions in which he had to engage, and he did not wholly escape from the acrimony of party strife. There are passages in his speeches of that exacerbated bitterness which has too often made it seem as if our politicians acted upon the instructions which are said to have been once endorsed upon the brief of an advocate — " No case, but abuse tlic plain- tiff's attorney." There is one extract from the speeches which 1 quote with singular pleasure. It will answer the double purpose of afford- ing a fair specimen of his clear and earnest style, and of reveal- ing what, to a resident in India, and one of the most shrewd and sagacious observers, appeared sound policy in reference to the method in which that country should be governed, it i5 from his speech on Mr. Vernon Smith's motion of cen;iure on Lord Ellenborough anent the celebrated gates of Somnauih. " Our duty, as rulers, was to preserve strict neutrality on ali questions merely religious; and 1 am not aware that wc have ever swerved from strict neutrality for the purpose of making proselytes to our own faith. But we have, I am sorr o say, sometimes deviated from the right path in an opposite rection. Some Englishmen, who have held high office in Indi.i. seem to have thought that the only religion \/hich was not utitled to toleration and respect was Christianity. They rer u Jed every Christian missionary with extreme jealousy and uisdain ; and they suffered the most atrocious crimes, if enjoined by the Hin- doo superstition, to be perpetrated in open day. It is lament- able to think how long after our power was firmly established in Bengal, we, grossly neglecting the first and plainest duty oi 73 ;lH mm I Il V Ul III' MACAULAY. the civil magistrate, suffered the practices of infanticide and suttee to continue unchecked. We decorated the temples of the false gods. We provided the dancing girls. We gilded and painted the images to which our ignorant subjects bowed down. We repaired and embellished the car under the wheels of which crazy devotees flung themselves at every festival to be crushed to death. We sent guards of honour to escort pilgrims to the places of worship. We actually made oblations at the shrines of idols. All this was considered, and is still consid- ered, by some prejudiced Anglo-Indians of the old school, as profound policy. I believe that there never was so shallow, so senseless a policy. We gained nothing from it. We lowered ourselves in the eyes of those whom we m.ea!?t to flatter. We led them to beli'^ve that we attached no importance to the difference between Christianity and hea- thenism. Yet how vast that difference is ! I altogether abstain from alluding to topics which belong to divines; I speak merely as a politician, anxious for the morality and the temporal well- being of society; and so speaking, I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry, and to discountenance that religion which has done so much to promote justice, and mercy, and freedom, and arts, and sciences, and good government, and domestic happiness, which has struck off the chains of the slave, which has mitigated the horrors of war, which has raised women from serv- ants and playthings into companions and friends, is to commit high treason against humanity and civilization." I should like to commend this manly and Christian utterance to our rulers now. The old traditional policy is yet a favourite sentiment with many, though it has borne its bitter fruits of bloodshed. While we thankfully acknowledge an improved state of feeling, 74 MACAULAY. and the removal of many restrictions which in former times hindered the evangelization of India, we must never forget that at this day, not by a company of traders, but the government of our beloved Queen, there is in all government schools on that vast continent, a brand upon the Holy Bible. It may lie up- on the shelf of the library, but for all purposes of instruction it is a sealed book. The Koran of the Mussulman is there, the Shastras of the pagan are there, the Zend Avesta of the Parsee is there; and their lessons, sanguinary or sensual or silly, are taught by royal authority, and the teachers endowed by grants from the royal treasury; but the Book which England acknow- ledges as the fountain of highest inspiration, and the source of loftiest morals ; from whose pure precepts all sublime ethics are derived; which gives sanction to governmen. i\d majesty to law; on which senators swear their allegiance, and royalty takes its coronation oath, — that Book is not only ignored but pro- scribed, subjected to an Index Expurgatorius as rigid as ever issued from Rome; branded with this foul dishonour before scoffing Mussulmen and wondering pagans at the bidding of state-craft, or spurious charity, or fear. It is time that this should end. Our holy religion ought not to be thus " wounded in the house of her" enemies, by the hands of her professed "friends." An empire which extends " from Cape Comorin to the eternal snow of the Himalayas," *' far to the east of the Burrampooter and far to the west of the Hydaspes," should not demean itself before those whom it has conquered by a procla- mation of national irreligion. We ask for Christianity in India neither coercive measures nor the boastful activity of govern- ment proselytism. Those who impute this to the Christians ol England are either ignorant of our motives, or they slander us 75 II'* MACAULAY. for their own ends. The rags of a poHtical piety but disfigure tlie Cross around which they are ostentatiously displayed, and to bribe a heathen into conformity were as bad as to persecute him for his adhesion to the faith of his fathers. All we ask ol" the government is a fair field; if Alexander would but stand out of the way, the fair sunshine would stream at once into the darkness of the Cynic's dwelling; if they will give freedom to the Bible, it will assert its own supremacy by its own power, and Britain will escape from the curse which now cleaves to her like a Nessus' robe — that in a land committed to her trust, and looking up to her for redress and blessing, she has allowed the Word upon which rest the dearest hopes of her soils for eternity, to be forbidden from the Brahman's solicitude, and trampled beneath the Mollah's scorn. In the year 1842 Mr. Macaulay appeared in a new character, by the publication of the " Lays of Ancient Rome." This was his first venture in acknowledged authorship. It is often not safe to descend from the bench to the bar. The man who has long sat in the critic's chair must have condemned so many criminals that he will find little mercy when he is put upon his own trial, and has become a suppliant for die favour which he has been accustomed to grant or refuse. The public were taken by surprise, but surprise quickly yielded to delight. Minos and Rhadamanthus abdicated their thrones to listen; every pen flowed in praise of that wonderful book, which united rare cri- tical sagacity with the poetic faculty and insight; and now, after the lapse of years, the world retains its enthusiasm, and refuses to reverse the verdict of its first approval. By one critic, indeed, whose opinions are entitled to all respect, the ballads are said to be as much below the level of Macaulay, as the 76 " Cato" ( his pen. spirited s( those mil colouring, that granc Gilt their " none of and passic should be or read ih Macaulay human syr who has n^ feel. The unerringly in earnest, this test in anatomist ( todon, and spell of the siege of De years of ag( Macaulay's {be " Parad when first i throbs with and the firs more than charms of si r\ MACAULAY. ** Cato" of Addison was below all else which proceeded from his pen. But there is surely more in them than " rattling and spirited songs." These are expressions which hardly describe those minutely accurate details; that gorgeousness of classic colouring, those exquisite felicities of word ; and, above all, that grand roll of martial inspiration which abounds through- out their stirring lines. Another critic strangely says that " none of the characters have the flesh and blood, the action and passion of human nature." The test ot this, I suppose, should be the effect which they produce upon those who hear or read them. It has not been an unfrequent charge against Macaulay that he had no heart, and that he was wanting in that human sympathy which is so large an element of strength. He who has no heart of his own cannot reach mine and make it feel. There are instincts in the soul of a man which tell him unerringly when a brother soul is speaking. Let me see a man in earnest, and his earnestness will kindle mine. I apply this test in the case of Macaulay. I am told of the greatest anatomist of the age suspending all speculations about the mas- todon, and all analyses of the lesser mammalia, beneath the spell of the sorcerer who drew the rout at Sedgemoor and the siege of Derry. I see Robert Hall lying on his back at sixty years of age, to learn the Italian language, that he might verity Macaulay's description of Dante, and enjoy the " Inferno"' and ^he " Paradiso" in the original. I remember my own emotions when first introduced to the Essays; the strange, wild heart- throbs with which I revelled in the description of the Puritans : and the first article on Bunyan. There is something in all tliis more than can be explained by artistic grouping or by t'lo charms of style. The man has convictions and sympathies lm 77 f.l; ti II xMACAULAY. his own, and the very strength of those convictions and sympa- thies forces an answer from the "like passions" to which he appeals. It is just so with the poetry. It were easy to criti- cise it, and perhaps to find in it some shortcomings from the rules of refined melody, and a ruggedness which the linked sweetness of the Lakers might not tolerate; but try it in actual experiment, sound it in the ears of a Crimean regiment, and see how it will inspirit them to the field; rehearse it with earnestness and passion to a company of ardent schoolboys, at the age when the young imagination has just been thrilled with its first conscious sense of beauty and of power; and you shall have the Bard's best guerdon in their kindling cheeks and gleaming eyes. " The Prophecy of Capys" is perhaps the most sustained, " Virginia" the most eloquent, and " The Battle of the Lake Regillus" the one which contains the finest passages; but I confess to a fondness for " Horatius," my first and early love, which all the wisdom which ought to have come with maturity has not been able to change. Perhaps you will bear with a few stanzas of it, just to try the effect upon yourselves: " But the Consul's brow was sad, And the Consul's speech was low, And darkly looked he at the wall. And darkly at the foe. * Their van will be upon us Before the bridge goes down ; And if they once but win the bridjje. What hope to save the town ? ' *'Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate : ' To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. 78 MACAULAY. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his gods ? ' ** * Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, With all the speed ye may ; I, with two more to help me, Will hold the foe in play. In yon strait path a thousand May well be stopped by three, Now who will stand on either haml. And keep the bridge with me ? ' ** Then out spake Spurius Lartius ; A Ramnian proud was he : * Lo, I will stand at thy right hand, And keep the bridge with thee.' And out spake stronj- Herminius ; Of Titian blood was he : * I will abide on thy left side, And keep the bridge with thee.' *• ' Horatius,' quoth the Consul, ' As thou sayest, so let it be.' And straight against that great array Forth went the dauntless Three. For Romans in Rome's quarrel Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, In the brave days of old. *' Then none was for a party ; Then all were for the state ; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great j 79 m if-' «; %, ^ M. Vii^. ^a; ''^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) V A ^. 1.0 I.I i28 u, 1^ I 2.2 Ijljl I 2.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 |||||IYS < 6" ► Va vQ V /A w^'w '/ Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. US80 (716) S72-4503 I/. i^i I MACAULAY. Then lands were fairly portioned ; Then spoils were fairly sold : The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old . « « -« • *' But all Etruria's noblest Felt their hearts sink to see On the earth the bloody corpses, In the path the dauntless Three I And, from the ghastly entrance Where those bold Romans stood, All shrank, like boys who unaware, Ranging the woods to start a hare, Come to the mouth of the dark lair Where, growling low, a fierce old beir Lies amidst bones and blood. " Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack : But those behind cried ' Forward ! ' And those before cried * Back ! ' And backward now and forward Wavers the deep array ; And on the tossing sea of steel To and fro the standards reel ; And the victorious trumpet peal Dies fitfully away. " But meanwhile axe and lever Have manfully been plied ; And now the bridge hangs tottering Alx)vc the boiling tide. ' Come back, come back, Horalius ! ' I.oud cried the Fathers all. 'Back, LartiusI back, Ilerminius 1 Back, ere the ruin fall I ' So MACAULAY. ' Back darted Spurius Lartius ; Herminius darted back ; And, as they passed, beneath their feet They felt the timbers crack. But when they turned their faces And on the farther shore Saw brave Horatius stand alone, They would have crossed once mort". "But with a crash like thunder Fell every loosened beam, And, like a dam, the mighty wreck Lay right athwart the stream ; And a long shout of triumph Rose from the walls of Rome, As to the highest turret-tops Was splashed the yellow foam. "Alone stood brave Horatius, But constant still in mind ; Thrice thirty thousand foes before. And the broad flood behind, • Down with him ! ' cried false ScxtuS, With a smile on his pale face. *Now yield thee,' cried Lars Porsena, •Now yield thee to our grace.' *' Round turned he, as not deign Hg Those craven ranks to see ; Nought spake he to Lars Porsena, To Sextus nought spake he 1 But he saw on T'alatinus The white porch of his home ; And he spake to the noble river That rolls by the towers of Ktune. 81 [I^ MACAULAY. ♦' ' Oh, Tiber ! father Tiber ! To whom the Romans pray, A Roman's life, a Roman's amis, Take thou in charge this day ! * So he spake, and speaking sheathed The good sword by his side, And with his harness on his back, Plunged headlong in the tide. *' No sound of joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank ; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gating where he sank ; And when above the surges They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce forbear to cheer, I « # « « t " Never, I ween, did swimmer, In such an evil case. Struggle through such a raging flootl Safe to the landing place ; But his limbs were borne up bravely Hy the brave heart within. And our good father Tiber Bare bravely up his chin. " ■■ Curse on him ! ' quoth false Sextus ; * Will not the villain drown ? But for this stay, ere close of day Wc should have sacked the town.' * Heaven help him ! ' quoth Lars Poriena. 'And bring him safe to shore ; For such a gallant feat of arms Was never seen before. ' 8a MACAULAY. " And now he feels the bottom ; Now on dry earth he stands ; Now round him throng the Fathers To press his gory hands ; And now, with shouts and clapping, And noise of weeping louii, He enters fhrough the River-gate, Borne by the joyous crowd. *' They gave him of the corn land, That was of public right. As much as two strong oxen Could plough from morn till night And they made a molten image. And set it up on high, And there it stands unto this day To witness if I lie. ** And in the nights of winter. When the cold north winds blow, And the long howling of the wolves Is heard amidst the snow ; When roui.d the lonely cottage Roars loud the tempest's din. And the good logs of Algidus Roar louder yet within — •• When the oldest cask is opened, And the largest lamp is lit ; When the chestnuts glow in the embers. And the kid turns on the spit ; When young and old in circle Around the firebrands close ; When the girls are weaving baskets, And the lads are shaping bows — 83 II MACAULAY. " When the gooclman mends his armour, And trims his helmet's plume ; When the goodwife's shuttle merrily Goes flashing through the loom ; With weeping and with laughter Still is the story told, How well Iloratius kept the bridge In the bmve days of old.'* It is undoubtedly as the historian that Micaulay will be longest remembered. His work, fragment though it is, possess- es a sort of dramatic unity, will survive at once flattery and criticism, and will be shrined among the classics of our litera- ture in calmer times than ours. It is amusing to read the va- rious opinions of reviewers, each convinced after the manner of such literary craftsmen that he is nothing if not critical, and gloating over some atom of inaccuracy as if he had found hid- den treasure. I deemed it my duty in the preparation for this lecture to go through a course of review reading, if haply I might find confirmation of the senUmcnts I had entertained, or some reason to change them ; and while I was delighted with and proud of the vast and varied talent of the articles, the result as to opinion was only to unsettle my own, and to induce a mental dyspepsia from which I was long to recover. I was told that it is t/ie History of England — a history of England — an attempt at history — a mistaken notion of history — an historiette — an historical picture gallery — an historical novel. I was intormed that it is thorough- ly impartial, and I was informed that it is thoroughly fac- tious : one critic tells me that his first object is to tell the story truly ; anotlier, that his first object is i)icturesque effect. Some christen him Thucydides, and others Walter Scott. One 84 ArACAULAY. eulogist exalts my confidence by assuring me that * he does not lie, even for the Whigs ;" and just as I have made up my mind to trust him thoroughly, I am thrown into terrible be- wilderment by the averment of another learned Theban, that " his work is as full of political prejudice as any of his partizan speeches, and is written with bad taste, bad feeling, and bad faith." The impression left upon my mind by all this conflict of testimony is a profound conviction of Macaulay's power. All the faults which his censors charge upon him reappear in their own writings, as among the supple courtiers of Macedon was reproduced the wry neck cf Alexander. They charge him with carelessness, but it is in flippant words. If they call him vituperative, they become atrabilious. If he is said to exagge- rate, not a few of them out-Herod him ; and his general im- partiality may be inferred from the fact, that while his critics are indignant at the caricatures which they allege that he has drawn of tlieir own particular idols, they acknowledge the mar- vellous fidelity of his likenesses of all the world beside. More- over, for the very modes of their censorship they are indebted to him. They bend Ulysses' bow. They wield the Douglas brand. His style is antithetical, and therefore they condemn him in antitheses. His sentences are peculiar, and they de- nounce him in his own tricks of phrase. There can be no greater compliment to any man. The critics catch the conta- gion of the malady which provokes their surgery. The eagle is aimed at by the archers, but " he nursed the pinion which impelled the steel." To say that there are faults in the history is but to say that it is a human production, and they lie on the surface and are patent to the most ordinary observer. That he was a " good hater " there can be no question ; and Dr. Joht • 85 MACAULAY. son, the while he would have called him a vile Whig, and a sac- religious heretic, would have hugged him for the heartiness with which he lays on his dark shades of colour. That he exagge- rated rather for effect than for partisanship, may be alleged with great show of reason, and they have ground to stand upon who say that it was his greatest literary sin. There are some move- ments which he knew not how to estimate, and many complex- ities of character which he was never born to understand. Still, if this be not history, there is no history in the world. Before his entrance history, for the masses of English readers, was as the marble statue ; he came, and by his genius struck the statue into life. We thank him that he has made history readable ; that it is not in his page the bare recital of facts, names and deeds in- ventoried as in an auctioneer's catalogue, but a glowing por- traiture of the growth of a great nation, and of the men who helped or hindered it. We thank him that he has disposed for ever of that shallow criticism, that the brilliant is always the superficial and unworthy, and that in the inestimable value of his work he has confirmed what the sonorous periods of John Milton, and the long-resounding eloquence of Jeremy Taylor, and the fiery passion-tones of Edmund Burke had abundantly declared before him, that the diamond flashes with a rarer lustre than the spangle. We thank him for the happy combination which he has given us of instruction and literary enjoyment, of massive truth decorated with all the graces of style- We thank him for the vividness of delineation by which we can see statesmen like Somers amd Nottingham in their cabinets, mar- shals like Sarsfield and Luxembourg in the field, and men lik<» 86 MACAULAV. Buckingham and Marlborough, who dallied in the councii-room and plotted at the revel. We thank him for the one epical character which he has left us — William, the hero of his story, whom he has taxed himself to the utmost to pourtray — the stadtholder adored in Holland — the impassive monarch who ' lived ai)art' in the kingdom which he freed and ruled — the audacious spirit of whom no one could discover the thing that could teach him to fear — the brave sol" dier who dashed about among musketry and sword-blades as if he bore a charmed life — the reserved man upon whom *' dan- ger acted like wine, to open his heart and loosen his tongue"— the veteran who swam through the mud at the Boyne, and re- trieved the fortunes which the death of Schomberg had caused to waver — " the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of England " at Landen — the acute diplomatist who held his trust with even-handed wisdom — the faithful friend who, when he loved once, loved for a lifetime — who kept his heart barred against the multitude, \ )ut gave pass-keys to the chosen ones so that they might go in and out at pleasure — the stern and stoical sufferer who wrote, and hunted, and legislated, and de- vised, while ague shook the hand which held the pen or the bridle, and fever was burning away the life which animated the restless brain — the rigid predestinarian, who though he grieved over noble works unfinished, and plans which could never become deeds, submitted himself calmly as a child when the inevitable hour drew nigh. We feel that, if there had been nothing else, the working out of that one character, its investi- ture with " newer proportions and with richer colouring," the grand exhibition which it gives us of the superiority of mind over matter and circumstance, and native repulsiveness and alien 87 MACAULAY. t" habits, is in itself a boon for which the woi.d should speak him well. Above all, we thank Macaulay for the English-heartedness which throbs transparently through his writings, and which was so marked a characteristic of his life. It may be well said of him as he said of Pitt, " he loved his country as a Roman the city of the Seven Hills, as an Athenian the city of the Violet Crown." Herein is his essential difference from the hero whom he celebrated, and whom in many things he so closely resem bles. William never loved England. She was but an appan- age of Holland to him. One bluff Dutch burgomaster would outweigh with him a hundred English squires, and he was never so happy as when he could escape from the foggy Thames to the foggier Meuse, or be greeted with a Rhenish welcome by a people to whom an enthusiasm was as an illness which came once in a lifetime, and was over. But with Macaulay the love of country was a passion. How he kindles at each stirring or plaintive memory in the annals he was so glad to record I Elizabeth at Tilbury ; the scattering of the fierce and proud Armada ; the deliverance of the Seven Bishops ; the thrilling agony and bursting gladness which succeeded each other so rapidly at the siege of Derry ; the last sleep of Argyle ; Lord Russell's parting from his heroic wife ; the wrongs of Alice Lisle ; the prayer upon whose breath fled the spirit of Algernon Sydney ; they touch his very soul, and he recounts them with a fervour which becomes contagious until his readers are thrilled with the same joy or pain. It is not unfashionable among our popular writers to de- nounce the England of to-day, and to predict for us in the future auguries of only sinister omen. There is a school of 88 I'll MACAU LAY. prophets to whom everything in the present is out of joint ; who can see nothing around theui but selfishness, and nothing beyond them but the undiscoverable bourn, to whom there is " cold shade " in an aristocracy, and in the middle classes but a miserable mammon-worship : and beneath a trampled people in whom the sordid and the brutal instincts strive from day to day. Of these extremes of sentiment, meeting on the common ground of gloomy prophesyings about England, her history, as Macaulay has told it, is the best possible rebuke. He has shown us the steps by which, in his own eloquent words, " the England of the Curfew and the Forest laws, the England of Crusaders, monks, schoolmen, astro! gers, serfs, outlaws, be- came the England which we know and love, the classic ground of liberty and philosophy, the school of all knowledge, the mart of all trade." He has shown us how, through the slow strug- gles of yerjrs, the component forces of society become equalized in their present rare and happy adjustment ; how each age has added to the conquests of its predecessors, by the truer solution of political problems ; by the readier recognition of human rights ; by the discovery of richer resources in nature, and of more magnificent capabilities in man. He has shown us how in health, in intelligence, in physical comfort, in industrial ap- pliances, in social and moral culture, the tide of progress has rolled on without a refluent wave. He has shown us how the despairs and hopes, the passions and lassitudes of the former generations have helped our national growth ; how our country has been rallied by her very defeats, and enriched by her very wastefulness, and elevated by her disasters to ascendancy ; how the storms which have howled along her coast have only ribbed her rocks the more firmly ; and the red rain of her slaughtered 89 MACAU! AY. II ! sires has but watered the earth for the harvest of their gallar^t sons. Oh, if the young men of our time would glow with a healthy pride of race ; if they would kindle with the inspirations of patriotism ; if they would find annals wealthier in enduring lesson, and bright with the radiance of a holier virtue than ever Rome embraced or Sparta knew, let them read their own land's history, as traced by the pen of its most fervent recorder ; and while grateful for the instruction of the past, let its unwavering progress teach them to be hopeful for the future. What hin- ders that the growth of England's i)ast should be but the type of the yet rarer splendours of its coming time ? There are many who wait for her halting, " wizards that peep and that mutter" in boodess necromancy for her ruin ; but let her be true to herself and to her stewardshij), and her position may be assured from peril. On the " coign of vantage " to which she has been lifted, let her take her stand ; let her exhibit to the wondering nations the glad nuptials between liberty and order ; let her sons, at once profound in their loyalty and manly in their inde- pendence, be fired with ambition greater than of glory, and with covetousness nobler than of gain ; let her exult that her standard, however remote and rocky the islet over which it waves, is ever the flag of the freeman ; let her widen with the ages into still increasing reverence for truth and peace and God, and " she may stand in her lot until the end of the days," and in the long after-time, when the now young world shall have grown old, and shall be preparing, by reason of its age, for the action of the last fires, she may still live and flourish, chartered among the nations as the home of those principles of right and freedom which shall herald the coming of the Son of man. 90 Af AC A CLAY. The one great defect in Maraul.i) "s life and writings, viewed from a Christian standpoint, is his negativism, to use no stronger ^'ord, on the subject of evangeHcal rchgion. Not that he ever impeaches its sa^redi.'^ss ; no enemy of rehgion can claim his championship : he was at once too refmed and too reverent for infidelity, but he nowhere upholds Divine presence or presi- dency ; nowhere traces the unity of a |)urpose higher than the schemes of men ; nowhere speaks of the precepts of Christian- ity as if they were Divinely-sanctioned ; nowhere gives to its cloud of witnesses the adhesion of his honoured name. As we read his essays or his history, when he lauds the philosophy of Bacon, or tells of the deliverances of William, we are tempted to wonder at his serene indifference to those great (juestions which sooner or later must present themselves to the mind of every man. Did it never occur to him that men were deej)cr than they seemed, and restless about that future into which he is so strangely averse to pry ? Did the solemn problems of the soul, the whence of its origin, the what of its purpose, the whither of its destiny, never perplex and trouble him ? Had he no fixed opinion about religion as a reality, that inner and vital essence which should be "the core of all the creeds?" or did he content himself with " the artistic balance of conflicting forces," and regard Protestantism and Popery alike as mere schemings of the hour, influences equally valuable in their day and equally mortal when their work was done ? Did it never strike him that there was a Providence at work when his hero was saved from assassination, when the fierce winds scattered the Armada, when the fetters were broken which Rome had forged and fastened, when from the struggles of years rose up the slow and stately growth of English freedom ? Did he 91 m 11 ;'-f^« : MACAULAY. never breathe a wish for a God to speak the chaos of events into order, or was he content to leave the mystery as he found it, deeming *' such knowledge too wonderful for man ? " Why did he always brand vice as an injury or an error? Did he never feel it to be a sin? Looking at the present, why always through the glass of the past, and never by the light of the future ? Did he never pant after a spiritual insight, nor throb with a religious faith ? Alas, that on the matters on which these questions touch, his writings make no sign ! Of course, no one expected the historian to become a preacher, nor the essayist a theologian ; but that there should be so stiidious an avoidance of those great, deep, awful matters which have to do with the eternal, and that in a history in which religion, in some phase or other, was the inspiration of the events which he records, is a fact which no Christian heart can think of without surprise and sorrow. It has become fashionable to praise a neutral literature which prides itself upon its freedom from bias, and upon the broad line of separation which it draws carefully between things secu- lar and things sacred ; and there are many who call this liberal- ity, but there is an old Book whose authority, thank God, is not yet deposed from the heart of Christian England, which would brand it with a very different name. That Book tells us that the fig-tree was blasted, not because it ^^ is baneful, but because it was baiTen ; and that the bitter curse was denounced against Meroz, not because she rallied with the forces of the foe, but because in her criminal indifference she came not up to the help of the Lord. Amid the stirring and manifold ac- tivities of the age in which we live, to be neutral in the strife is to rank with the enemies of the Saviour. There is no greater foe to the spread of His cause in the world than the placid in- 92 m\, MACAULAY. diflferentism which is too honourable to betray, while it is too careless or too cowardly to join Him, The rarer the endow- ments, the deeper the obligation to consecrate them to the glory of their Giver. That brilliant genius, that indefatigable industry, that influencing might of speech, that wondrous and searching faculty of analysis, what might they not have accom- plished if they had been pledged to the recognition of a higher purpose than literature, and fearless in their advocacy of the faith of Christ ! Into the secret history of the inner man, of course we may not enter ; and we gladly hope, from small but significant indications which a searcher may discover in his writings, as well as from intimations, apparently authentic, which were published shortly after his death, that if there had rested any cloud on his experience, the Sun of righteousness dispersed it, and that he anchored his personal hope on that "dear Name" which his earliest rhymes had sung ; but the regret may not be suppressed that his transcendant powers were given to any ob- ject lower than the highest. And when I see two life courses before me, both ending in Westminster Abbey, for the tardy gratitude of the nation adjudged to Zachary Macaulay's re- mains, the honour which it denied to his living reputation ; when I see the father, poor, slandered, living a life of strugde. yet secretly but mightily working for the oppressed and the friendless, and giving all his energies in a bright summer of consecration unto God ; and when I see the son, rich, gifted, living a life of success, excellent and envied in everything he undertook, breathing the odours of a perpetual incense-cloud, and passing from the memory of an applauding country to the tomb, b It aiming through his public lifetime only at objects which were "of the earth, earthy," I feel that if there be truth 93 il i III' I MACAULAV. in the Bible, and sanction in the obligations of religion, and immortality in the destinies of man, " he aimed too low who aimed beneath the skies;" that the truer fame is with the pains- taking and humble Christian worker, and that I had rather have the amaranth which encircles the father than the laurel which crowns the forehead of the more gifted and brilliant son. In 1856 he resigned his seat for Edinburgh, in consequence of failing health ; and in 1857 literature was honoured with a peerage in the person of one of the noblest of her sons, and the peerage was honoured by the accession of Lord Macaulay's illustrious name. Thenceforward in his retirement at Kensinir- ton he devoted himself to his History, " the business and the pleasure of his life." The world rejoiced to hope that succes- sive volumes might yet stimulate its delight and wonder, and wished for the great writer a long and mellow eventide, which the night should linger to disturb. But suddenly, with the parting year, a mightier summons came, and the majestic brain was tired, and the fluttering heart grew still. Already, as the months of that fatal year waned on, had the last harvestman multiplied his sheaves from the ranks of genius and of skill. There had been mourning in Prussia for Humboldt, and across the wide Atlantic there had wailed a dirge for Prescott and Washington Irving ; Brunei and Stephenson had gone down in quick succession to the grave ; men had missed the strange confessions of De Quincey, and the graceful fancies with which Leigh Hunt had long delighted them ; Hallam and Stephen had passed the ivory gates ; but, as in the sad year which closed upon our national sorrow, it seemed as if the spoiler had reserved the greatest victim to the last, that he might give to the vassal world the very proudest token of his power. MAC A UL AY, If Macaulay had an ambition dearer than the rest, it was that he might He in " that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried ; " and the walls of Westminster Abbey do enclose him "in their tender and solemn gloom." Not in ostentatious state, nor with the pomp of sorrow, but with hearty and mourning affection, did rank and talent, and office and authority, assemble to lay him in the grave. The pall was over the city on that drear January morn- ing, and the cold, raw wind wailed mournfully, as if sighing forth the requiem of the great spirit that was gone ; and amid saddened friends — some who had shared the sports of his child- hood, some who had fought with him the battles of political life — amid warm admirers and generous foes, while the aisles rang with the cadences of solemn music, and here and there were sobs and pants of sorrow, they bore him to that quiet resting-place, where he " waits the adoption, to wit, the re- demption of the body." Not far from the place of his sepul- ture are the tablets of Gay, and Rowe, and Thomson, and Gar- rick, and Goldsmith ; on his right sleeps Isaac Barrow, the ornament of his own Trinity College ; on his left, no clamour breaks the slumber of Samuel Johnson ; from a pedestal at the head of the grave, serene and thoughtful, Addison looks down ; the coffin, which was said to have been exposed at the time of the funeral, probably held all that was mortal of Richard Brins- ley Sheridan ; Campbell gazes pensively across the transept, as if he felt that the " pleasures of hope" were goi^.e ; while from opposite sides, Shakspeare, the remembrancer of mortality, re- minds us from his open scroll that the *' great globe itself, and all that it inhabit, shall dissolve, and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a rack behind ;" and Handel, comforting 95 MACAULAY. us in our night of weeping by the glad hope of immortality, seems to listen while they chant forth his own magnificent hymn, " His body is buried in peace, but his name liveth for evermore." There are strange thoughts and lasting lessons to be gathered in this old Abbey, and by the side of this latest grave. From royal sarcophagus, and carven shrine ; from the rustling of those fading banners, which tell of the knights of the former time ; yonder where the Chathams and Mansfields re- pose ; here where the orators and poets lie, comes there not a voice to us of our frailty, borne into our hearts by the brother- hood of dust upon which our footsteps tread ? How solemn the warning ! Oh for grace to learn it ! •' Earth's highest glory ends in — ' Here he lies ! ' And 'dust to dust ' concludes her noblest song." And shall they rise, all these ? Will there be a trumpet blast so shrill that none of them may refuse to hear it, and the soul, re-entering its shrine of eminent or common clay, pass upward to the judgment? " Many and mighty, but all hushed," shall they submit v/ith us to the arbitrations of the last assize ? And in that world is it true that gold is not the currency, and that rank is not hereditary, and that there is only one name that is honoured ? Then, if this is the end of all men, let the living lay it to heart. Solemn and thoughtful, let us search for an ass; red refuge ; childlike and earnest, let us confide in the one accepted Name ; let us realise the tender and infinite nearness of God our Father, through Jesus our Surety and our Friend ; and in hope of a joyful resurrection for ourselves, and for the marvellous Englishman we mourn, let us sing his dirge in the words of the truest poet of cur time : — 96 MACAULAY. nortality, ignificent iveth for essons to his latest from the hts of the sfields re- lere not a e brother- w solemn mpet blast I the soul, ss upward led," shall ze ? And and that Ime that is Ithe living Irch for an n the one nearness r Friend ; d for the Irge in the " Al! is over and done : Render thanks to the Giver I England, for thy son. Let the bell be tolled. Render thanks to the Giver, And render him to the mould. Let the bell be tolled And the sound of the sorrowing anthem rolled, And a deeper knell in the heart be knolled. To such a name for ages long To such a name Preserve a broad approach of fame, And ever- ringing avenues of song. Hush ! the dead march wails in the people's ears, The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears ; The black earth yawns — the mortal disappears j Ashes to ashes — dust to dust ; He is gone who seemed so great. Gone, but nothing can bereave him Of the force he made his own Being here, and we believe him Something far advanced in state, And that he wears a truer crown Than any wreath that man can weave him. But speak no more of his renown, Lay your earthly fancies down. And in the solemn temple leave him : God accept him, Christ receive him." 97 JOHN BUNYAN. 11 i JOHN liUNYAN. IT wrc liiipossiMc t(» ^.v/.v. upon the f'yrarnifis, thoHC vast sc|)iil( lues which rise, < olossal, (rorii thi- l,il»yan dcscrl, without sdli-iiiii Irchii}^'. They exist, hut where arc their build crs? Where is the ("uhihiicnt (jI Ihcrir large ambition? lOnler them. In I heir silent heart there is a sar(;o|>hagus with a hand- ful of dust in it, and Ihis is all that remains to us of a proud race »>( kings ! Histories are, in some sort, the pyramids of nations. They cnloml) in olden chronicle, or in dijn tradition, pco|Wcs which once fillererogative and freedom -the wild con- spiracy of Monmouth the military cruelties of Kirkeand Claver house, the butchers of the army, and the judicial cruelties of Jeffreys, the butcher of the bench— the martyrdoms of Elizabeth Oaunt, and the gentle Alice Lisle -the glorious acquittal of the seven bishops — the tinal eclii)se of the house of Stuart, that perfi dious, and therefore fated race — and England's last revolution, binding old alienations in marvellous unity at the foot of a parental throne. What a rush of history compressed into a less period than threescore years and ten ! These were indeed times for the development of character — times for the birth of men. And the men were there — the wit, the poet, the divine, the hero — as if genius had brought out her jewels, and furnished them nobly for a nation's need. Then Pym and Hampden bearded tyranny, and Russell and Sydney dreamed of freedom. Then Blake secured the empire of ocean, and the chivalric Falkland fought and fell. In those stirring times Chamock, and Owen, and Howe, and Henry, and Baxter, wrote, and preached, and prayed. "Cudworth and Henry More were still living at Cambridge ; South was at Oxford, Prideaux in the close at Norwich, and Whitby in the close of Salisbury. Sherlock preached at the Temple, Tillotson at Lincoln's Inn, Burnet at the Rolls, Stillingfleet at St. Paul's Cathedral, Beveridge at St. Peter's, Cornhill. Men," to continue the historian's eloquent description, *' who could set forth the majesty and beauty of 104 JOHN liUNYAN. Christianity with such justness of thoii)j;ht and sudi cncrf,'y of language that the indolent Charles roused himself to listen, and the fastidious Hu< kinghauj forgot to sneer." Hut twelve years before the liirlii of llunyan, all that was mortal of Shakespeare had descendi'd to the tomb. Waller still flourished, an easy and graceful versifier ; C'owley yet presented his " perverse metaphysics" to the world; butler, like the parsons in his own lludibras, " Proved his doctrine ortliodox Ly apostolic blows and knocks." Dryden wrote powerful satires and sorry plays "with long- resounding march and energy divine ;" (ieorge Herb rt clad his thoughts in (|uaint and (juiet beauty; and mid the groves of Chalfont, as if blinded on j)ur|)ose that the inner eye might be flooded with the " light which never was on sea or shore," our greater Milton sang. In such an era, and with such men for his contem[)oraries, John Tkinyan ran liis course, " a burning and a shining light," kindled in a dark place, for the praise and glory of God. With the main facts of Bunyan's history you are most of you, I presume, familiar ; though it may be doubted whether there be not many —his hearty admirers withal, — whose knowledge of him comjjrehends but the three salient particulars, that he was a Bedfordshire tinker, that he was confined in Bedford jail, and that he wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress." It will not be necessary, however, to-night, to do more than sketch, succinctly, the course of his life, endeavouring — Herculean project — to collate, in a brief page, Ivimey, and Philip, and Southey, and Offor, and Cheever, and Montgomery, and Macaulay ; a seven- 105 JOHN BUN VAN. fold biographical band, who have reasoned about the modern, as a seven-fold band of cities contended for the birth of the ancient Homer. He was born at Elstow, a village near Bedford, in the year 1628. Like many others of the Lord's heroes, he was of obscure parentage, " of a low and inconsiderable generation," and, not improbably, of gipsy blood. His youth was spent in ex'cess of riot. There are expressions in his works descriptive of his manner of life, which cannot be interpreted, as Macaulay would have it, in a theological sense, nor resolved into morbid self-upbraidings. He was an adept and a teacher in evil. In his 17th year we find him in the army — " an army where wick- edness abounded." It is not known accurately on which side he served, but the description best answers certainly to Rupert's roystering dragoons. At 20 he married, receiving two books as his wife's only portion — " The Practice of Piety," and " The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven." By the reading of these books, and by his wife's converse and example., the Holy Spirit first wrought upon his soul. He attempted to curb his sinful propensities, and to work in himself an external reformation. He formed a habit of church-going, and an attachment almost idol- atrous to the externalisms of religion. The priest was to him as the Brahman to the Pariah ; "he could have lain down at his feet to be trampled on, his name, garb, and work did so intoxicate and bewitch him." While thus under the thraldom which super- stition imposes, he indulged all the licence which supersition claims. He continued a blasphemer and a Sabbath-breaker, running to the same excess of riot as before. Then followed in agonizing vicissitude a series of convictions and relapses. He was arrested, now by the punL;cncy of a powerful sermon, now 106 \ 'i JOH^ BUN Y AN. by the reproof of an abandoned woman, and anon by visions in the night, distinct and terrible. One by one. under the lashes of the law, " that stern Moses, which knows not how to sjiare," he relinquished his besetting sins — from which he struggled successfully to free himself while he was yet uninfluenced by the evangelical motive, and with his heart alienated from the life of God. New and brighter light flashed upon his spirit from the conversation of some godly women at Bedford, who spake of the things of God and of kindred hopes and yearnings " with much pleasantness of scripture," as they sat together in the sun. He was instructed more perfectly by " holy Mr. Gifford," the Evangelist of his dream, and, in " the comment on the Gala- tians " of brave old Martin Luther, he found the photograph of his own sinning and troubled soul. For two years there were but glimpses of the fitful sunshine dimly seen through a spirit- storm, perpetual and sad. Temptations of fearful power assailed and possessed his soul. Then was the time of that fell combat with Apollyon, of the fiery darts and hideous yells, of the lost sword and the rejoicing enemy. Then also he passed, distracted and trembling, through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and a horror of great darkness fell upon him. At length, by the blest vision of Christ '* made of God unto him wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption," the glad deliverance came — the clouds rolled away from his heart and from his destiny, and he walked in the undimmed and glorious heaven. From this time his spiritual course was, for the most part, one of comfort and peace. He became a member of the Baptist Church under Mr. Giffbrd's pastorate, and when that faithful witness ceased his earthly testimony, he engaged in earnest exhortations to sinners, " as a man in chains speaking 107 JOHN BUN VAN. i4 ill to men in chains/' and was urged forward, by the concurrent call of the Spirit and the bride, to the actual ministry of the gospel. His ministry was heartfelt, and therefore powerful, and was greatly blessed of God. In 1660 he was indicted "as a common upholder of unlawful meetings and conventicles," and by the strong hand of tyranny was thrown into prison ; and though his wife pleaded so powerfully in his favour as to move the pity of Sir Matthew Hale, beneath whose ermine throbbed a God-fearing heart like that which beat beneath the tinker's doublet, he was kept there for twelve long years. His own words are, "So being again delivered up to the jailor's hand, I was had home to prison." Home to prison. Think of that, young men ! See the bravery of a Christian heart ! There is no affectation of indifference to suffering — no boastful exhibi- tion of excited heroism ; but there is the calm of the man " that has the herb heart'sease in his bosom." Home to i)rison ! And wherefore not ? Home is not the maible hall, nor the luxurious furniture, nor the cloth of gold. If home be the kingdom where a man reigns, in his own mo- narchy over subject hearts — if home be the spot where " fireside pleasuresgambol,"where are heard the sunny laugh of the confid- ing child, or the fond "what ails thee ?" of the watching wife— then every essential of home was to be found, " except these bonds," in that cell on Bedford Bridge. There, in the day-time, is the heroine wife, at once bracing and soothing his spirit with her womanly tenderness, and, sitting at his feet, the child — a clasp- ing tendril — blind and therefore best beloved. There, on the table, is the " Book of Martyrs," with its records of the men who were the ancestors of his fiiith and love ; those old and heaven patented nobility whose badge of knighthood was the 108 JOHN BUN Y AN. hallowed cross, and whose chariot of triumph was the ascending flame. There, nearer to his hand, is the Bible, revealing their secret source of strength ; cheering his own spirit in exceeding heaviness, and making strong, through faith, for the obedience which is even unto death. Within him the good conscience bears bravely up, and he is weaponed by this as by a shield of trii)le mail. By his side, all unseen by casual guest or surly warder, there stands the Heavenly Comforter ; and from overhead, as if anointing him already with the unction of the recompense, there rushes the stream of glory. And now it is nightfall. They have had their evening wor- ship, and, as in another dungeon, " the prisoners heard them." The blind child receives the fatherly benediction. The last good night is said to the dear ones, and Bunyan is alone. His pen is in his hand and his Bible on the table. A solitary lamp dimly relieves the darkness. But there is fire in his eye, and there is passion in his soul. " He writes as if joy did make him write. " He has felt all the fulness of his story. The pen moves too slowly for the rush of feeling as he graves his own heart upon the page. There is beating over him a stonn of inspiration. Great thoughts are striking on his brair, and flush- ing all his cheek. Cloudy and shapeless in their earliest rise within his mind, they darken into the gigantic, or brighten into the beautiful, until at length he flings them into bold and burn- ing words. Rare visions rise before him. He is in a dungeon no longer. He Is in the palace Beautiful, with its sights of renown and songs of melody, with its virgins of comeliness and of discretion, and with its windows opening for the first kiss of the sun. His soul swells beyond the measure of its cell. It is not a rude lamp that glimmers on his table. It is no longer the \\ 109 JOHN BUNYAN. dark Ouse that rolls its sluggish waters at his feet. His spirit lias no sense of bondage. No iron has entered into his soul. Chainless and swift, he has soared to the Delectable Mountains — the light of Heaven is around him — the river is the one, clear as crystal, which floweth from the throne of God and of the Lamb — breezes of Paradise blow freshly across it, fanning his temples and stirring his hair — from the summit of the Hill Clear he catches rarer splendours — the new Jerusalem sleeps in its eternal noon — the shinini^ ones are there, each one a crowned harper unto God — this is the land that is afar off, and that is the king in His beauty \ until the dreamer falls upon his knees and sobs away his agony of gladness in an ecstasy of prayer and praise. Now, think of these things — endearing intercourse with wife and children, the ever fresh and ever comforting Bible, the trancpiil conscience, the regal imaginings of the mind, the faith which realized them all, and the light of God's approving face shining, broad and bright, upon the soul, and you will understand the undying memory which made Bunyan quaintly write " I was had home to prison." In 1672, Richard Carver, a member of the Society of Friends, who had been mate of the vessel in which King Charles escaped to France after his defeat at Worcester, and who had carried the king on his back through the surf and landed him on French soil, claimed, as his reward, the release of hi? co-rel'gionists who crowded the jails throughout the land. After some hesitation, Charles was shamed into compliance. A cumbrous deed was prepared, and under the provisions of that deed, which was so framed as to include sufferers of other persuasions, Bunyan obtained deliverance, having lain in the prison complete twelve years. no JOHN BUNYAN. From the time of his release his life flowed evenly on. Escaped alike from Doubting Castle and from the net of the flatterer, he dwelt in the Beulah land of ripening piety and hope. The last act of the strong and gentle spirit brought down on him the peace-maker's blessing. Fever seized him in London on his return from an errand of mercy, and after ten days' illness, long enough for the utterance of a whole treasury of dying sayings, he calmly fell asleep. *' Mortals cried, 'a man is dead :' Angels sang * a child's born ;'" and in honour of that nativity " all the bells of the celestial city rang again for joy." From his elevation in heaven his whole life seems to preach to us his own Pentecostal evangel, "There is room enough here for body and soul, but not for body, and soul, and sin." There are various phases in which Bunyan is presented to us which are suggestive of interesting remark, or which may tend to exhibit the wholeness of his character before us, and upon which, therefore, we may not unprofitably dwell. As a WRITER he will claim our attention for a while. This is not the time to enter into any analysis of his various works, nor of the scope and texture of his mind. That were a task rather for the critic than the lecturer ; and although many mental anatomists have been already at work upon it, there is room for the skilful handling of the scalpel still. His fame has rested so extensively upon his marvellous allegories, that there is some danger lest his more elaborate works should be depre- ciated ; but as a theologian he is able and striking, and as a contributor to theological literature he is a worthy associate of the brightest Puritan divines. His terse, epigrammatic aphorisms, III JOHN BUN Y AN. his array of "picked and packed words," the clearness with which he enunciates, and the power with wliich he applies the truth, his intense earnestness, the warm soul that is seen beating through the transparent page, his vivacious humour, flashing out from the main body of his argument like lightning from a summer sky, his deep spirituality, chastening an imagination princely almost beyond compare — all these combine to claim for him a high place among that band of masculine thinkers who were the glory of the Commonwealth, and whose words, weighty in their original utterance, are sounds which echo still. The amount of actual good accomplished by his writings it would be difficult to estimate. No man since the days of the Apostles has done more to draw the attention of the world to matters of supremest value, nor painted the beauty of holiness in more alluring colours, nor spoken to the universal heart in tenderer sympathy or with more thrilling tone. In how many readers of the " Grace Abounding " has there been the answer of the heart to the histor5^ What multitudes are there to whom "the Jerusalem Sinner Saved" has been as "yonder shining light " which has led through the wicket gate, and by the house of the Divine Interpreter, to the blest spot "where was a cross, with a sepulchre hard by ;" and at the sight of that cross the burden has fallen off, and the roll has been secured, and, sealed and shining, they have gone on to victory and heaven. How many have revelled in silent rapture in his descriptions of the " Holy City" until there have floated around them some gleams of the "jasper light," and they felt an earnest longing to be ofi from earth — that land of craft, and crime, and sorrow — *' And wished for wings to flee away, And mix with that eternal day," 1 12 JOHISi BUN Y AN. Oh, to thousands of the pilgrims that have left the city of De- struction — some valiant and hopeful, others much afraid and fearing — has Bunyan come in his writings, to soothe the pang or to prompt the prayer, to scare the doubt or to solve the problem — a Great-heart guide, brave against manifold ill favoured ones — a faithful Evangelist, pointing the soul to the Saviour. Of the "Pilgrim's Progress" it were superfluous to speak in praise. It seizes us in childhood with the strong hand of its power, our manhood surrenders to the spell of its sorcery, and its grasp upon us relaxes not when " mingles the brown of life with sober gray," nay, is often strongest amid the weariness ot waning years. Its scenes are familiar to us as the faces of home. Its characters live to our perceptions no less than to our under- standing. We have seen them, conversed with them, realized their diversities of character and experience for ourselves. There never was a poem which so thoroughly took possession of our hearts, and hurried them along upon the stream of the story. We have an identity of interest with the hero in all his doubts and dangers. We start with him on pilgrimage ; we speed with him in eager haste to the Gate ; we gaze with him on the sights of wonder ; we climb with him the difficult hill ; the blood rushes to our cheek, warm and proud, as we gird ourselves for the combat with Apollyon ; it curdles at the heart again amid the Valley of the Shadow of Death ; we look with him upon the scoffing multitude from the cage of the town of Vanity ; we now lie, listless and sad, and now flee, fleet and happy, from the cell in Doubting Castle ; we walk with him amid the pleasantness of Beulah ; we ford the river in his com- pany ; we hear the joy-bells ringing in the city of habitations \ "3 H JOHN BUNYAN. \ 11 we see and greet the hosts of welcoming angels \ and it is to us as the gasp of agony with which the drowning come back to lile, when some rude call of earthly concernment arouses us from our reverie, and we wake, and, behold, it is a dream. There must be marvellous power in a book that can work such enchantment, wrought withal with the most perfect self- unconsciousness on the part of the enchanter himself. "The joy that made him write" was, in no sense, the prospect of literary fame. With the true modesty of genius he hesitated long as to the propriety of publication, and his fellow-prisoners in the jail were empanelled as a literary jury, upon whose verdict depended the fate of the story which has thrilled the pulses of the world. In fact his book fulfilled a necessity of his nature. He wrote because he must write : the strong thoughts within him laboured for expression. The " Pilgrim's Progress " was written without thought of the v'orld. It is just a wealthy mind rioting in its own riches for its own pleasure; an earnest soul painting in the colours of a vivid imagination its olden anguish, and revelling at the prospect of its future joy. And while the dreamer thus wrote primarily for himself — a "prison amusement " at once beguiling and hallowing the hours of a weary bondage — he found to his delight, and perhaps to his surprise, that his vision became a household book to thousands ; — worldlings enraptured with its pictures, with no inkling of the drift of its story ; Christians pressing it to their hearts as a " song in the night " of their trouble, or finding in its thrilling pages " a door of hope '^ through which they glimpsed the coming of the day. It has been often remarked that, like the Bible, its great model, the ** Pilgrim's Progress " is, to a religious mind, its own best interpreter. It is said of a late eminent clergyman and 114 JOHN BUNYAN. ;oners in commentator, who published an edition of it with numerous expository notes, that having freely distributed copies amongst his parishioners, he sometime afterwards inquired of one ot them if he had read the " Pilgrim's Prugress." " Oh, yes, sir :' "And do you think you understand it ?" *' Yes, sir, 1 understand //, and I hope before long I shall r.nderstand the notes as well." One of the most amusing and yet conclusive proofs of the popularity of this wonderful allegory is to be found in the liber- ties which have been taken with it in the versions into which it has been rendered, and in the imitations to which it has given rise. Mr Ofifor, in his carefully-edited edition of Bunyan's works, has enumerated between thirty and forty treatises, mostly allegorical, whose authors have evidently gathered their inspi- ration from the tinker of Elstow, The original work has been subjected to a thousand experiments. It has been done into an oratorio for the satisfaction of play-goers ; done into verse at the caprice of rhymesters ; done into elegant English for the delectation of drawing-rooms ; done into catechisms for the use of schools. It has been quoted in novels ; quoted in sermons innumerable ; quoted in Parliamentary orations ; quoted in plays. It has been put upon the Procrustes' bed of many who have differed from its sentiments, and has been mutilated or stretched as it exceeded or fell short of their standard. Thus there has been a Supralapsarian supplement, in which the Interpreter is called the Enlightener, and the House Beautiful is Castle Strength. There has been a Popish edition, with Giant Pope left out. There has been a Socinian parody, describing the triumphant voyage, through hell to heaven, of a Captain Single-eye and his Unitarian crew ; and last, not least note- worthy, there has been a Tractarian travesty, in which the editor 115 ' ! ■■ JOHN BUN Y AN. \ I digs a cleansing well at the wicket-gate, omits Mr. Worldl) Wiseman, ignores the town of Legality, makes no mention of Mount Sinai, changes the situation of the cross, gives to poor Christian a double burden, transforms Giant Pope into Giant Mahometan, Mr. Superstition into Mr. Self-indulgence, and alters, with careful cociuetry towards Rome, every expression which might be distasteful to the Holy Mother. Most of those who have published garbled or accommodated editions have done their work silently, and with some sense of shame ; but the editor of the last mentioned mutilation dwells with ineffable complacency upon his deed, and evidently imagines that he has done something for which the world should speak him well. He defends his insertions and omissions, which are many, and which affect important points of doctrine, in a somewhat curious style. "A reasonable defence," he says, "is found in the follow- ing consideration : — The author whose works are altered wished, it is to be assumed, to teach the tmth. In the editor's judgment, the alterations have tended to the more complete setting forth that truth, that is, to the better accomplishment of the author's design. If the editor's views of the truth, then, are correct, he is justified in what he does \ if they are false, he is to be blamed for originally holding them, but cannot be called dishonest for making his author speak what he believes that, with more knowledge, the author would have said." Exquisite logic ! How would it avail in the mouth of some crafty forger, at the bar of the Old Bailey ! " I am charged with altering a cheque, dra.vn for my benefit, by making ;!^2oo into ^1,200. I admit it, but a reasonable defence maybe found in the follow- ing consideration. The gentleman whose cheque I altered wished, it is to be assumed, to benefit me and my family. In 116 JOHi\ n UN VAN. my judgment, the alteration has tended to the better accom- plishment of the gentleman's design. If my views in this matter are correct, I am justified in what I have done ; if they are in- correct, I may be blamed for originally holding them, but cannot be called dishonest for doing what, with more knowledge of my circumstances and his own, the gentleman himself would have done." Out upon it ! Is there one shade of sentiment, from the credulousness which gulps the tradition and kisses the relic, to the negativism of "the everlasting No," which might not lay the flattering unction to its soul, that " with more knowledge" Banyan would have been ranged under its banner. Rejoicing as I do in substantial oneness of sentiment with the glorious dreamer, I might yet persuade myself into the belief that, with more knowledge, he would have become an Evangelical Armi- nian, and would hardly have classed the election doubters among the army of Diabolus : but shall I, on this account, foist my notions into the text of his writings ? or were it not rather an act from which an honest mind would shrink with lordly scorn ? I cannot forbear the utterance of an indignant protest against a practice which appears to me subversive of every canon of literary morality, and which in this case has passed off, under the sanction of Bunyan's name, opinions from which he would have recoiled in indignation, which war against the whole tenor of his teaching, and which might almost disturb him in his grave ; and especially is my soul vexed within me that there should have been flung by any sacrilegious hand, over those sturdy Protestant shoulders, one solitary rag of Rome. Though the " Pilgrim's Progress " became immediately popu- lar, the only book save the Bible on the shelf of many a rustic dwelling, and though it passed in those early times through 117 !,i JOHN BUNYAN. twelve editions in the space of thirty years, the " inconsiderable generation " of its author long prevented its circulation among the politer classes of the land. There was no affectation, but a well-grounded apprehension in Cowper's well-known line : " Lest so despised a name should move a sneer." At length, long the darling of the populace, it became the study of the learned. Critics went down into its treasure-cham- bers and were astonished at their wealth and beauty. The initiated ratified the foregone conclusion of the vulgar ; the tinker's dream became a national classic ; and the pontificate of literature installed it with a blessing and a prayer. No uninspired work has extorted eulogies from a larger host of the men of mark and likelihood. That it redeemed into momentary kindliness a ferocious critic like Swift ; that it sur- prised, from the lips of Johnson, the confession that he had read it through and wished it longer ; that Byron's banter spared it, and that Scott's chivalry was fired by it ; tha* Southey's analysis, and Franklin's contemplation, and Mackin. .^h's elegant research, and Macaulay's artistic criticism, should have resulted in a sym- phony to its praise ; that the spacious intellect and poet-heart of Coleridge revelled with equal gladness in its pages ; that the scholarly Arnold, chafed by the attritions of the age, and vexed by the doubt- clouds which darkened upon his gallant soul, lost his trouble in its company, and looked through it to the Bible, which he deemed it faithfully to mirror; — all these are testi- monies that it established its empire over minds themselves imperial, and constrained their acknowledgment of its kingly power. It would, we suspect, be of no account with Bunyan now ii8 JOHN BUN VAN. that critics conspire to praise him ; that artists, those bending worshippers of beauty, have drawn sumptuous ilhistrations from his works ; or that his statue, the tinker's effigy, standing in no unworthy companionship with statesmen, and heroes, and men of high degree, should decorate the British House of Commons. But if the faithful in glory have earthly sympathies and recog- nitions still ; if, from the region where they ** summer high in bliss upon the hills of God," they still look down lovingly upon the world which has missed and mourned them ; if their invio- late joy may be enhanced from aught below — it might surely thrill the heart of the dreamer with a deeper ecstacy, that his Pilgrim yet walks the earth, a faithful witness for Jesus ; that it has guided thousands of the perplexed, and cheered thou- sands of the fearing ; and that it has testified to multitudes, of many a clime and colour, *' in their own tongues, the wonderful works of God." No book but God's own has been so honoured to lift up the cross among the far off nations of mankind. The Italian has read it under the shadow of the Vatican, and thf. modern Greek amid the ruins of Athens ; it has blessed the Armenian trafficker, and it has calmed the fierce Malay ; it has been carried up the far rivers of Burmah ; and it has drawn tears from dark eyes in the cinnamon gardens of Ceylon. The Bechuanas in their wild woods have rejoiced in its simple story ; it has been as the Elim of palms and fountains to the Arab wayfarer ; it has nerved the Malagasy for a Faithful's martyr- dom, or for trial of cruel mockings, and tortures more intolera- ble than death. The Hindoo has yielded to i<^^s spell by Gunga's sacred stream ; and, crowning triumph ! Hebrews have read it on the slopes of Olivet, or on the banks of Kedron, and the tender ,hearted daughters of Salem, descendants of those 119 JOHN BUNYAN. who wept for the sufferings of Jesus, have " wept" over it " for themselves and for their children." Dr. Johnson, in his life of Waller, advances the strange opin- ion that spiritual subjects are not fit subjects for poetry; and he dogmatizes, in his usual elephantine style of writing, upon the alleged reason. He says : " The essence of poetry is inven- tion \ such invention as, by producing son^ething unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are few, and being few are universally known ; but few as they are they can be made no more ; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression." Such an unworthy definition of poetry might answer for an age of lampooners, when merry quips and conceits passed muster as sparks from the Heaven-kindled fire. We prefer that of Festus, brief and full: *' Poets are all who love, who feel great truths And tell them." And the greatest truths are those which link us to the invisi- ble, and show us how to realize its wonders. If, then, there be within each of us a gladiator soul, ever battling for dear life in an arena ofrepression and scorn — a soul possessed with thought, and passion, and energy invincible, and immortal hope and yearnings after the far off and the everlasting, which all the tyrann/ of the flesh cannot subdue ; if there be another world which sheds a holy and romantic light upon every object and upon every struggle of this, — if by the Word and Spirit divine there can be opened the soul's inner eye, that sublime faith which is " the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen " — to the visions of which our nature becomes 1 20 JOHN BUN VAN. a treasury of hidden riches, and which instates us in the heirship of " the powers of the world to come;" — then there can be poetry in this world only because light from heaven falls on it, because it is a subtle hieroglyph full of solemn and mystic mean- ings, because it cradles a magnificent destiny, and is the type and test of everlasting life. It must be so. All conceptions of nature, or of beauty, or of man, from which the spiritual ele- ment is excluded, can be, at best, but the first sweep of the finger over the harpstrings, eliciting, it may be, an uncertain sound, but failing to evoke the soul of harmony which sleeps in the heart of the chords. Macaulay shall answer Johnson : " In the latter half of the seventeenth century there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of those minds produced the 'Paradise Lost;' the other the ' Pilgrim's Progress.'" Religious epics these ! the one painting the lapse and the doom of our race in all shapes of beauty or of grandeur ; the other borrow- ing nothing from voluptuous externalisms, dealing only with the inner man in his struggles and yearnings after God. We want to see, in this age of ours, more and more of the genius that is created by piety ; of a literature informed with the spirit of the Gospel of Christ. Critics have predicted the decay of poetry with the spread of civilization ; and literary men speak with diffident hope of its " ultimate recovery from the stagger- ing blows which science has inflicted ;" and, in truth, if its in- spiration be all of earth, there may be some ground for fear. As mere secular knowledge has no antiseptic power, so mere earthly beauty has no perennial charms. But draw its subjects from higher sources, let it meddle divinely with eternal things, and it can never die. 121 Jii'"'^ JOHN BUXVAN. " O si\y not tliat ]ioesy waxclb old, That all her loj^oiuls were loiij; since told I It is not so ! It is not s) ! For while there's a l)K>sson» by sununer drest, A si^h for the sad, or a smile for (he blest, Or a changeful thoujjht in the luunan breast, There'll be a new string for her lyre, I trow. Do you say she is poor, in this land of the free ? Do yiHi call her votaries \xwy as she ? It may be so I It may be so 1 Vet hath she a message more high and clear, From the burning lips of the heaven-taught .-.ocr; From (he harp of /ion that charms the ear. From the choir where the seraph minstrels glow." Not, of" roufso. that the monotone shoviUl be tlie measure of every lito-sotii;: rather should it How after Scriptural precept ami preceilont. now in " psalms," grand, solemn, stately, the sonorous burst of the full soul in praise, now in '* hymns," earnest, hopeful, winning— the lyrics of the heart in its hours of hope or pensivenoss, — ami now in "songs" light and hearty — the roundelay, the ballad, the carol of a spirit full of sunshine, warbling its melodies out o'i its own exuberance of joy. Nor, o{ course, that literary men should write oidy on Christian themes. We woukl have them illustrate the goodliness of nature, the inductions of science, the achievements of art. They should speak to u in the language of the sweet affec- tions, give soul and sentiment to the harmony of music, and strike the chords of the resounding lyre. They should take, in comprehensive and sympathetic survey, all nature and all man. But tlicy must submit to the baptism of Christianity, and be leavened with her love divine, ere they can be chroniclers of 122 I i JOHN IWNYAN. the august espousals, or guests al the liapj)y bridal of the bcauti ful and true. Young men, lend your energies to this hallowed consuiniiia- tion. You are not [)oets, perhaps, and according to the old ^^ Poeta fwn fit " adage, you are not fit to he. If you have the " divine afflatus," by all means give it forth ; but if you have not, do not strain after it to the neglect of nearer and more practicable things. One would not wish to sec a race of Byron- lings, — things of moustache and turndown collar, — moody Manfreds of six feet three, with large loads of fine frenzy and infinitesimal grains of common sense. And it is woful enough to meet the weird youth of a later day, with his jargon of " sub- jective " and "objective,'' who looms dimly upon us through the blended smoke of mist and meerschaum, and who goes floundering after tran.scendental nonsense until iic is nearly nin over in Cheapside. It is given to very few of us to live ethereal lives, or to be on familiar terms with thunder. Hut if you are not the writers, you arc the readers of the age. You have an a|)i)reciation of the beautifiil, an awakened intelligence whirh pants hard after the true. Terminate, I beseech you, in your own experience, the sad divorce which has too often existed between intellect and piety. Take your stand, utiswcrving, heroic, by the altar of truth ; and from that altar let neither sophistry nor ridicule expel you. Let your faith rest with a child's trust, with a martyr's gripe upon the .ruth as it is in Jesus. Then go, humbly but dauntlessly, to work, and you c;in make the literature of the time. Impress your individuality upon others, and in so far as you create a healthier moral sen- timent and a purer taste, the literature of the future is in your hands. The literature of any age is hut the mirror of its pre- 123 fi Hi A l;'l m m JOllX nUA'YAN. vnlcnl tendencies. A liealthy appetite will recoil from garliage and carrion. Testilent i)eriodical.s and a venal ])ress reveal the depraved moral fechng which they pamper. Work for the uplifting of that moral feeling, and by the blessing of (iod upon the elTorts of the fair brotherhood who toil for Him, the dew of Hermon shall descend upon the hill Parnassus, and there shall be turned into the tabled Helicon a stream of living waters. Religion shall be throned ii. her own cpieenly beauty, and literature shall be the comeliest handmaid in her virgin train. There is no feature more noticeable in Ikmyan's character than i/it- derout carnesffiess with 7ohiih he studied the Dii'hie Word, and the ra'ercme which he cherished for it throughout the whole of his life. Jn the time of his agony, when, " a restless wanderer after rest," he battled with fierce temptation, and was beset with Antinomian error, he gratefully records, *' the 13ible was precious to me in those days ;'' and after his deliverance it was his congenial life-work to exalt its honour and to proclaim its truths. Is ho recommending growth in grace to his hearers? — The Word is to be the aliment of their life. " Every grace is nourished by the Word, and without it there is no thrift in the soul.'" Has he announced some fearless exposition of truth ? — Hark how he disarms opj)osition and challenges scrutiny ! " Give me a hearing : take me to the IJible, and let me find in thy hea' ■ no lavour if thou fmd me to swerve from the stand- ard"' Is he uplifting the Word above the many inventions of his fellows ? — Mark the racy homeliness of his assertion : " A little from God is better than a great deal from men. What is from men is often tumbled over and over ; things that we receive at God's hand come to us as things from the minting- 124 JOHN liUNYAN, house. Old truths arc always new to us if they come with the smell of Heaven u|»on them. " Is his righteous soul vexed with the indifference of the faithful, or with the impertinences of the profane? How manfully he proclaims his conviction of a pressing want of the times ! "'I'here wanteth even in the hearts of Ciod's peo[)le a greater reverence for the Word of (iod than to this day ajjpeareth among us ; and this let me say, that want of reverence for the Word is the ground of all the disorders that arc in the heart, life, conversation, or Christian commu- nion." If ever Bimyan saw with a seer's insight, and spoke with a pr{)|)het's inspiration, he has in this last (juotcd sentence fore- seen our danger, and uttered a solemn warning for the times in which we live. There never was an age in which reverence for the Word needed more impressive inculcation. There never was an age when there were leagued against it fiercer elements of antagonism. Not that infidelity proper abounds — the danger from this source is over. Some rare specimens of this almost extinct genus do occasionally flounder into sight, like the ichthyosaurus of some remote period, blurting out their blasjjhe- mies from congenial slime ; but men pity their foolishness or are shocked with their profanity. That infidelity is the most to be dreaded which moves like the virus of a plague, counterfeit- ing, by its hectic glow, the tlush of health and beauty, unsus- pected till it has struck the chill to the heart, and the man is left pulseless of a living faith, and robbed of the rapture of life — a conscious paralytic who " brokenly lives on." This kind oi scepticism, — a scepticism which apes reverence and affects candour — which, by its importunity, has almost wearied out some of the sturdy guardians of the truth — which seems to have >25 JOHN nUNYAN. i vn talked itself into a prescriptive right, like other mendicauts, to exhibit its sores among the highways of men, — has, it is not to be denied, done its worst to infect society, and to wither the energy of religion in multitudes of souls. It may be that som'e amongst yourselves have not altogether escaped the contagion. Could I place the young men of this country in the confessional to-night, or could their various feelings be detected, as was the concealed demon at the touch of Ithuriel's spear, I might find not a iQw who would tell that stranger doubts had come to them which they had not forborne to harbour — that distrust had crept over them — that unbelief was shaping out a systematic residence in their souls — that they had looked upon infidelity, if not as a haven of refuge amid the conflicts of warring faiths, at least as a theatre which gave scope for the ideal riot of fancy, or the actual riot of sense, in indulgences and excesses far fitter for earth than heaven ? And there are, unhappily, many around us, at the antipodes of sentiment from each other, and yet all after their manner hostile to the Divine Word, who fan the kindled unbelief, and whose bold and apparently candid > jections are invested to the unsettled mind with a peculiar charm. The Jew, with prejudice as inveterate as ever, rejects the counsel of God against himself, and crushes the Law and the Prophets beneath a load of rabbinical traditions, the Mishna and Gemara of his Talmuds. The papist still gives to the decretals of popes and the edicts of councils co-ordinate autho- rity with the Scriptures, and locks up those Scriptures from the masses, as a man should imprison the free air while men perish from Lvsphyxia around him. The rationalist spirits away the inspiration of the Bible, or descants upon it as a fascinating 126 .'ili; JOHN BUN Y AN. myth, to be reviewed like any other poem, by ordinary criticism, or postpones it to the proud reason of Eichhorn and Paulus, or Strauss and Hegel, or Belsham and Priestley. The mystic professes to have a supplemental and superior revelation drafted down into his own heart. Printing furnishes unprecedented flicilities for the transmission of thought, and man's perdition may be cheapened at the stall of every pediar. And finally, some ministers of religion, yielding to the clamour of the times, have lowered the high tone of Scriptural teaching, and have studiously avoided the terminology of the liible. What wonder, with influences like these, that upon many over whom had gathered a penumbra of doubt before, there should deepen a dark and sad eclipse of faith ? Brothers, nothing will avail to preserve you amid the strife of tongues but to cherish, as a habit ingrained into the soul — as an affection enfibred with your deei)est heart — continual rever- ence for the Divine Word. We do not claim your feudal submission to its sovereignty. It recks not a passive and unintelligent adhesion. Inquire by all means into the evidences which authenticate its divinity. Bring keenest intellects to bear upon it. Try it as gold in the fire. Satisfy yourselves, by as searching a process as you can, that the Eternal has really spoken it, and that there looms from it the shadow of a large immortality ; but do this '^ncefor all. Don't be '■'■ever learning, and ne^'er able to come to the knowledge of the truth." Life is too short to be frittered away in endless considerings and scanty deeds. There can be no more pitiable state than that of the eternal doubter, who has bid the sad " vale, vale, in jeternum vale," to all the satisfactions of faith, and who is tossed about with every wind of doctrine — a waif upon the wreckage 127 ■ f*! It I, »■ i' yo/ix nuxvAX. I '.'.. i! ' n o{ a world. Scdlc your principles early, and then place them " on the shelf," secure I'roni subseciuent assault or displacement. Then in after years, when some rude inlidel argiuuent assails you. and, busied amid hfe's activities, you are unable, from the absorption of your energies otherwhere, to recall the train of reasoning by which you arrivcHl at yom- conclusion, you will say. "1 tried this matter before— I threw these doctrines ituo the crucible, and ihey came out pme- the assay was satisfactory — the princii>les are on the shelf;" and when the Sanballats and Tobiahs gather malignantly below, you \\\\\ ciy with good Nehemiah, girt with the sword, and wielding the trowel the while, " I am doing a great work- I cannot come down — why should the work sto]i while I i ome down to you ?' Oh it will be to you a source of peremiial comfort, that in youth, after keen investigation of the lUble — the investigation, not of frivo lity or prejudice, but of candour, and gravity, and truth-loving, and prayer — you bowed before it as (lod's imperishable utter- ance, and swore your tealty to the monarch-word. Depend upon it the Bible demands no incjuisition, and requires no disguises. It does not shrink before the light of science, nor crouch abashed belore the audit of a scholarly tribunal. Rather does it seem to say, as it stands before us in its kingliness, all j>ride humbled and all profanity silenced in its majestic presence — Error lleeing at its approach — Superstition cowering beneath the lightning of its eye, '* I will arise, and go forth, for the hour of my dominion is at hand." As a Preacher of the Truth Buny. n had a high reputation in his day. Sympathy, earnestness, and ower, were the great characteristics of his successful ministry. He preached what he felt, and his preaching therefore corresponded to the various 128 f'l JOHN nUNYAN. stages of his personal experience. At first, hitnsolf in clmins, he thundered out the terrors of the law, like another I'.aptist, against rich and poor together ; then, happy in heUeving, he |)roelainied salvation and the blessedness of life hy Christ, "as if an angel stood at his hack lo encourage him ;" and then, with advancing knowledge, he disclosed the truth in its rounded harmony — "the whole counsel of (lod." Instances of conver- sion were fre(iuent under his nn'nistry— many < hun lies were founded by his labours. Dr. Owen assured King Charles that lor the tinker's ability to prate he would gladly barter his own stores of learning; and in his annual visit to I.cnulon, twelve hundred people would gather, at seven in the morning of a winter's working day, lo hear him. Nor can we wonder that his ministry should have had "favour both with (lod and man," when we listen to his own statements of the feelings with which he regarded it. " In my preaching I have really Ijeen in pain, and have, as it were, travailed to bring forth children to (icjd. If I were fruitless, it mattered not who commended nic ; but if I were fruitful, I cared not who did condemn." " I have counted as if I had goodly buildings and lordships in tho.se places where my children were born ; my heart hath been so wTappcd up in the glory of this excellent work that I counted myself more blessed and honoured of Ciod by this, than if He had made me the emperor of the Christian world, or the lord of all the glory of the earth without it." This is what we want now. We will not despair of the speedy conversion of the world if you give us an army of ministers who have, burned into their hearts, this passionate love for souls. There are those, indeed, who tell us that the mission of the l)ulpit is fulfilled. They acknowledge that in the former ages — I 129 f 1 JOHN BUNYAN. 1 in the times of immaturity, when men spelt out the truth in syllables, it did a noble work. But the world has outgrown it, they tell us. It is an anachronism now. Men need neither its light nor its warning. The all-powerful press shall direct them — from the chair of criticism they shall learn wisdom — the educational institute shall aid them in heavenward progress — they shall move upward and onward under the guidance of the common mind. But the divine institution of the ministry is not to be thus superseded. It has to do with eternity, and the matters of eternity are paramount. It has to deal with the most lasting emotions of our nature — with those deep instincts of eternal truths which underlie all systems, from which the man can never utterly divorce himself, and which God himself has graven on the soul. This opposition to the pulpit, however the inefficiency of existing agencies may have contributed to it, however the memories of olden priestcraft may have given it strength, cannot be explained but as originating in the yet unconquered enmity of the carnal mind to God. The teaching of the political theorizer, of the infidel demagogue, of the bene- volent idealist — why are they so popular ? The teaching of the religious instructor — why is it so repulsive to the world ? The main secret will be found in the fact that the one exalts, the other reproves, our nature— the one ignores, the other insists upon, the doctrine of the fall. If you silence the ministry, you silence the only living agency which, of set purpose, appeals to the moral sense of man, and brings out the world's conscience in its answer to moral obligation and to the truths of the Bible. The minister divides empire over the other faculties. He may speak to the intellect, but the philosopher will rival him; he may charm the imagination, but the poet is his master ; he 130 ii jiill'L'-^ JOHN BUN VAN. may rouse the passions, the mob orator will do it better : but in his power over conscience he has a government which no man shares, and, as a czar of many lands, he wields the sceptre over the master faculty of man. It is absolutely necessary, in this age of manifold activities and of spiritual pride, that there should be this ever-speaking witness of man's feebleness and God's strength. That witness dares not be silent amid the strife of tongues ; and however the clamour may tell — and it does tell and ought to tell, upon the time-serving and the indolent, upon the vapid and the insincere — it is an unanswerable argument for the mission of the ministry itself, even as the blast which scatters the acorns roots the oak more firmly in the soil. — Standing as I do to-night, in connection with an association * which I dearly love, and which has been so highly honoured as an instrument of good, I must yet claim for the pulpit the fore- most place among the agencies for the renovation of the world. Neither the platform nor the press can supersede it. So long as they work in harmony with its high purpose, and aim at the elevation of the entire man, it will hail their helpings with glad heart and free, but God hath set it on the monarchy, and it may not abdicate its throne. One great want of the times is a commanding ministry — a ministry of a piety at once sober and earnest, and of mightiest moral power. Give us these men, ^'fiiil ot faith and of the Holy Ghost," who will proclaim old truths with new energy, not cumbering them with massive drapery, nor hiding them beneath piles of rubbish. Give us these men ! men oi sound speech, who will preach the truth as it is in Jesus, not with faltering tongue and averted eye, as if the mind blushed at its own credulity — * The Young Men's Christian Association of London, England. 131 JOHN BUN VAN. " ii not distilling it into an essence so subtle and so speedily decomposed that a chemical analysis alone can detect the faim odour which tells it has been there — but who will preach it apostlewise, that is, ** first of all," at once a principle shrined in the heart and a motive mighty in the life — the source of all morals, and the inspiration of all charity — the sanctifier of ever)- relationshij), and the sweetener of every toil. Give us these men ! men of dauntless courage, fronj whom God-fear has banished man-fear — who will stand unblenched before the pride of birth, and the pride of rank, and the pride of office, and the pride of intellect, and the pride of money, and will rebuke their hypocrisies, and demolish their false confidences, and sweep away their refuges of lies. Give us these men ! men of sympa thy, who dare despise none, however vile and crafty, because the " one blood " appeals for relationship in its sluggish or fevered flow — by 'vhom the sleeper will not be harshly roused, and who will mourn over the wanderer, " My brother — ah ! my brother 1 " Give us these men ! men of zeal untiring — whose hearts of constancy quail not although dull men sneer, and proud men scorn, and timid men blush, and cautious men deprecate, and wicked men revile ; who " Think Wliat others only dreamed about, and do What others did but think, and glory in ■\Miat others dared but do." Give us these men ! in whom Paul would find congenial rea- soners \ whom the fervent Peter would greet with a welcome sparkle in the eye ; to whom the gentle John would be attracted as to twin souls which beat like his own — all lovingly. Give us these men ! and you need speak no more ol the laded greatness 132 JOHN nUNYAN. of the pulpit ; the true God-witnesses shall be reinstated in their ancient moral sovereignty, and '^ by manifestation of the truth shall commend themselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God,' One main reason of Bunyan's repute among the people was his thorough humaftness. He was no bearded hermit, sarcastic in his seclusion upon a world which he had forsaken, or which he never knew. He was no dark ascetic, snarling at his fellows from some cynical tub, inveighing against pleasures which were beyond his reach, and which he had toiled in vain to enjoy. He was a brave, manly, genial, brotherly soul, full of sympathy with the errors and frailties >f men, mingling in the common grief and in the common cheerfulness of life. See him as he romps with the children in their noisy mirth, himself as great a child as they. Listen to him as he spins out of his fertile brain riddles to be guessed by the pilgrims, such as " keep Old Honest from nodding." Mark the smile that plays over his countenance as he writes how Ready-to-halt and Much-afraid footed it right merrily, in dance of joy, for the destru«^tion of Giant Despair. Observe the ineffable tenderness with which he describes Feeblemind and Fearing. See in his real life the wealth of affection which he lavishes upon his sightless child. Oh ! it is charming — this union of the tender and the faithful in a master-mind — this outflow of all graceful charities from a spirit which bares its breast to danger, and which knows not to blench or quail ! Beautiful are these gushes of sensibilit) from a manly soul, — as if from some noble mountain, with granite heart and crest of cedar, there should issue a crystal rill, bright- ''ning the landscape with its dimpled beauty, or flashing archly beneath the setting sun. 133 1 :^i I 1 I, >iiii \:( iii ];>: yOJ^.V IiUA]AN. Strength and gentleness are tinis coinMned, in grandest liar tnony, o\\\y under the lunuanizitig rule ot" Cliiistianity. Wo might exjieel, under the old stoical morality, to lind rndnranc c and bravery — the perfection of an austere manhood Roman virtue and Spartan pride. Under the precepts of a philosophy whicii .lever compromised with human weakness, we do not wontlerat a 1 .eonidasat the pass of 'rhcrmopyl;v%or at a Milliades on the plains o( Marathon, at a high souled l''i)amiMondas or a meditative Nuvia. at an Aristides consenting to his own ostra- cism, or a Hrulus pronouncing the death doom of his son. They arc the natural clUotoseence of such culture and such soil. Aiul, in truth, there is a hardy endeavour, an heroic self abandonment, n < apacity tor deed aiul sulVering, in s