■.%. 1 KH IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I !f IM IIIIIM «^t> 11 3 2 iiiii o /^ 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 "^ 6" ► 7 «onfftt,*vo8 of "^"' "nd J,«,, ^«> i)nt truths ; '"" '• nnd thev '^^^' «ncl those «''fs that are 'P^'enu; rights f^n* was con- ' ^'•'umphed, *^ to restore ^'A'^' in their t''e worJd'a 'a'ic choice ^'oom and J construe '^e, none 'eft>rmed, included ouW not ttJement nd, and ^testant ist had eoostal . nurs- issert- Shtid 1 ftnd Very iter. cfs? 3n a "an. lay is n, eg with a fire that consumed much of its dross. But little truth, little heroism, little faith lived and reigned in it. True there were working clergy in every part of the country that feared God, honored the King, and did their duty in a manful enough way. There was a leaven of good men and pure women in all ranks : for you can say of every age that there are good people in it, and bad people too. But the question is, which set gives the tone to the whole — which reigns and is acknowledged to have right divine? Which — the rascals or the righteous, the hypocrites or the true men? By that, judge the country and the age. And of the 18th century, when expediency was made the basis of morals, and probability of religion, what shall we say? What, but that it seemed to have lost the tradition, not only of Puritanism, but of Christianity itself. If ft Court there was less coarseness than in the Nell Gwynn, and Duchess of Portsmouth period, there was more fluiikeyism. There was timeserving in the church, from the curate upwards, and a regular system of money bribery in Parlia- ment ; Horace Walpole wasthe Macanas of the century, and Straw- berry Hill the chef d'oeuvre of architecture. It was thought a clever thing in the clergyman who lost a bet to the King's mistress and thereby gained a Bishopric. And Dr. Biukes, in his sermon before convocation, draws a parallel between the sufferings of Jesus Christ and those of King Charles the Koyal Martyr, and gives the preference to the latter, in point of right, character, and station. The Deistical writers Avere answered by able works, on the evidences which proved that there was no reason why there should not be such a thing as religion ; in fact Porteous and Paley and others,* made out that there was a considerable probability in its favour. Was it any wonder that Wesley and Whitfield, should have the pulpits of London forbidden them, and have to go out as " the voice of one crying in the wilderness," to the savages of the Kingswood Collieries, moving them with the simple story of the Cross, till the tears made channels down their grimed faces, as rivers of water seam the black country. And the blight was on the Dissen- ters, perhaps more than on the National Church. Many of their congregations died out with the dry rot ; the most intellectual and *I need scarcely say that I do not refer here to Bishop Butler, whose works would be a contribution to ethics from any century. e wealtliy of thorn becnmo Unitarian. For a time it was not as bad in Scotland : for the common people pri/cd their faith, and clung to it with national tenacity, and tlie Parish Schools maintained a general intelligence that no other part of the Empire conld pretend to. The bulwarks of orthodoxy appeared intact ; there waa good preaching, respectable scholarship, and first rate society in Edm- burgh. But alas ! living faith had pretty well died out in town and country. David Hume goes on Sunday to hoar Dr. Jupiter Carlyle, preach in Home's pulpit, and hearing only heathen mor- ality, vits him before dinner for treating the honest Lothian folk to one uf Cicero's Academics, and Jupiter repeats the remark as if he considered it quite a compliment. The old forms wore kept up, but the old life was not in ihem. And not in Spain or Italy were grosser mummeries of holy things to be seen, than in Scot- land, till Robert Burns' sarcasm expelled them, and by demolishing the lies prepared the way for truth. Great was the consternation in the Church, both among the clergy and laity, and furious the denunciations, when the Holy Fair, and the Kirk's Alarm, and Holy Willie's prayer, and such like satires came out in quick suc- cession. But a good work was done ; it was felt by all that *' national manners were once more in the hands of a national poet ;" that here was a man with an eye that saw through all dis- guises straiglit to the heart of things, and with a soul that loathed hypocrisy, and shams, however respectable or sacred ; one that could sing with a melody that took all hearts captive, while he did a true prophet's work for his day and generation. On the Conti^ nent also the whole land seemed stricken with barrenness. Hol- land had gained its freedom, and then ceased to bear heroes. The simple faith of the Brethren of the Common Lot, the self-sacrifice and wisdom of William the Silent, and the Defenders of Leyden, of DeWitt and Ruyter, give place to mere huckstering, and ortho- doxy. The land of Luther produced a meagre rationalism, that took possession of the schools, though the mystics kept up a protest against the fashionable illuminism, and hymns kept the flame of piety alive in the peasantry of many districts. Geneva did some- thing positive for a new system of things, though it was a some- thing that Calvin would have stared at, when she sent forth Jean Jacques Rousseau. But certainly there was more living faith iu "'^''''"•' pretend '"'^'^y '•" Kd/n. '' ^'"^ '■" town ;■ ^^'•- J<'piter " ^«'nark as '•'^ ^^^''-0 kopt '"' or Italy "" '" Scot- '"•/ous the ''"■/ii, an(j '"'^'k sue- «'' that "ational ' ftll dis. 'oat/ied ne that ^e did ContU HoU The ■r-iRce t'dea, rtho- f/iat 'test B of ne- le- an in the truths of Christianity duriugthe Eighteenth century at the Vati- can, than at any of the head-quarters of Protestantism. In France Voltaire was educated by the Jesuits, who little guessed when luiudling the yotith that th^y were playing with odged tools; and that that keen eye was looking them through and through, and seeing how all tht! strings were pulled. He and the Encylopedists finished the work of destruction. David Hume tells of being at a supper party with a lot of them and finding that they hardly con- sidered him worthy of the name of philosopher, i.e. infidel. He was the only one present who thought that there miglit be a God. Faith was completely eaton away, and then the mine was sprung under the fabric of Society, and the whole existing order of things was blown into the air with a crash and destruction that seemed worthy to herald in nothing less than the end of all things mundane, and the immedia.o coming of the Day of Judgment. So ended the Eighteenth Century, with an event which forms the second great landmark in the history of modern times. The first landmark was the Reformation ; the second was the French Revolution. The key-note of the first was moral individualism : the key-note of the second was political icdividualism. The first principle has now thoroughly established itself. No sane mun doubts it, though all its relations have not been satisfactorily determined. The second after a struggle of now three quarters of a century is pretty gener- ally accepted, but by no means universally. A good deal of blood will need to be spilled over it yet, and perhaps another three quar- ters of a century elapse before Europe agree deliberately and final- ly to accept it. But what have we to do with the French Revolu- tion, you ask ? Was not that a matter wholly for the French, and without any more influence on general modern society, than the Taiping movement ? By no means, my friend, though I confess that the estimate formed of it by the general British mind, is ludi- crously disproportioned to the magnitude of the event itself and to the estimate formed by every one else ; and great is the astonish- ment of the man who has been brought up to regard the French Revolution wth simple horror as a bursting forth of the pit, and to regard it as something exclusively French, when he comes to find the importance attached to it by all Continental and not a few American and English writers. With them it is the breaking up of ill Hi 8 the old social order, and the dawn of the new era in which we are living. It means the abolition of class-legislation, and of all the forms, shows, disqualifications or privileges feudal or otherwise that had for centuries been connected therevnth all over Europe. It was the assertion of the Sovereignty of the people and of the doctrine of the liberty, equality, fraternity of all men. France is professedly based on these modern principles : so is Italy : Ger- many in 1848 made a dead lift to realize ♦hem but was thrown back, only however to rally for other eflPorts. And mutterings of them are heard over all the rest of Europe. The French Revolution meant two things : (1) The destruc- tion of old lies; (2) The assertion of a new truth. The work however, was accompanied with so much noise and fury that it inspired universal terror, and the men in other countries who at first hailed its approach with hope and joy, soon drew back from it as a terrible portent, instead of understanding it as the death throes of old falsities and injustice, and the bi.ih throes of a new birth of time ; and so for nearly half a century, no one vms able to look at it calmly and compute its exact meaning. Two other reasons pre- vented its being understood in Britain. (1) Bad as the state of things was in Britain, politically, morally, socially, there was not a tittle of the rottenness and hoUowness that was in France. A century and a half before, the British people had got up a consider- able conflagration on their own account, in which they bad burnt up a lot of abominations, such as Star Chambers, pillories. Divine right of King and Bishop to do wrong if they liked, and so forth. The French conflagration was long delayed, and so when it did come, it was an enormous one ard very thorough, and the bright- n<;ss of it and the sound of it, went through all the earth. But in Britain they could see no necessity for such a ^re, and so attribu- ted it all to the devil. They thought that there could be dragonneides, and the glitter of the Grand Mo?}arque bought by the drudgery of millions, and pares aux cer/s, and France burdened with debt to adorn a Pompadour, and sent to war because she willed it ; that there could be hungry crowds whose petition of grievances was an- swered only by a new gallows 40 feet high ; that there could be Bas- tilles and lettres de cachet, and laws enacting thrt when a seigneur returned from the chase with his feet cold, he was not to kill more t' '"' and of aJi ^'•otiienvise '^•^r Europe ■ ^"-^ of the ^I'ance is pa'7: Ger. ^^«^n back, , p of tf,e„, ^e destrnc- The work "^.v that it ^10 at first ^^001 it as *^iJ*oes of ' birth of o iook at 'ons pro- state of Was no( i ice. ^ >Dsider. ^ burnt Divine forth. it did 'jght- uf in 'ibu- des, y of to 3re n- ,s- ir e I 9 than two of his villeins to warm his feet in their warm entrails ; and that such a state of things could continue because it was con- venient for the Noblesse, and because the King was called most Christian and the eldest son of the Church, and the people should believe it was all for their good, or that if a change was to be made, it could be made in the way of peaceable reform. (2) Another reason why the Revolution was not understood in Britain, was that John Bull is not very anxious, and perhaps not very able to understand anything that is not an. exact copy of something in his own tight little island. And above all things the idea of learn- ing anything from France, was to him an absurdity. Frenchmen ! were they not merely skinny grimacing mounseers, monkeys rather than men, the whole of them Papists or infidels, did not they eat frogs, and was not one Englishman able to thrash a dozen of them? And so it was that though at that time there was Burn3 in Scot- land, and youths like Coleridge and Wordsworth, at Cambridge, and generous hearts rising up all over the laud, who yearned for better things than the social injustice and the no faith with lip ser- vice that their century offered them, yet public opinion ran strongly against all such new lights, and denounced them with loud universal hue and cry, as Jacobins, Levellers, Infidels, &c. &c. It is comparatively easy to stir the mob into a tumult, es- pecially if you can offer it some striking act, or some suspected person to abuse, or some taking cry to raise. But let the cry be as loud and many-throated as you will, can it alter the stern facts of the case ? Was it Avell, at that time, with " Merrie Eng- land," with "Protestant England," with "Bible-loving Britain!" Well, with Whiteboys and Captain Rock, with Orangemen rnd Ribbonnen, with hunger and anarchy, with petty persecution and dastardly retaliation, in Ireland ! Well, in England, with plural- ists and sinecures and Justices' justice ; with less money spent on the education of the whole people than " the first gentleman in Europe" spent on his waistcoats ; with a Church Establishment that gathered in its tithes but made no effort of extension at home or abroad, cried lustily "No Popery," but scarcely kept in repair the old Churches that Popery had built, — that blossomed out in no works of faith and charity, that inspii'ed not the heart of the people with hope and trust to swell out in miilion-toned psalms of praise to a 10 living God. It was a state of things that needed reform, and a reform that would go deeper than Ballot-boxes and Universal SuflFrage could. And what characterizes the Nineteenth Century- is that Reformers came, came with stern, wholesome, prophet-poet teaching and healing ; that there has been continual protest since against materialism in philosophy and theology, against unreality of all kinds and injustice of all kinds ; and that, though the old evils are not dead, and though new ones came in their train, and the Century had to bear the accumulated iTuquities of the past and the present, jet refo-m has been made, the battle of truth is being fought by men of " inwardness, faith and power," and not without hope of ultimate success. And now you ask me, what were the precise evils to be grappled with, and who are " the mighties" that went down into the arena ? I. The old faith in God as the living God had wholly died out, or been replaced by a faith in a system or a catechism. '' The English Squire of the Seventeenth Century," says Carlyle, "clearly appears to have believed in God, not as a figure of speech, but as a very fact, very awful to the heart of the English Squire. He wore his Bible doctrine round him as our Squire wears his shot belt; went abroad with it, nothing doubting." Very little of that will the man Avho studies the Eighteenth Century find in it. The forms of religion were pretty well kept up ; but people did not seem to consider that they were living a lie if they did not translate their avowed beliefs into practice. " Our incomparable Liturgy " Avas regularly read in the English churches, and in all parish schools in Scotland the rising genera- tion had the Shorter Cateshism well drilled into them by the aid of taws or birch, and by virtue of endless repetitions, which made urchins as glib on the mysteries of original sin, the covenant of works, or effectual calling, as on pitch and toss, hide and seek, or hunt the slipper. The religious framework of society was con- sidered by the orthodox to be as near perfection as possible, and to stand firm and four square, a pattern to the world. There were terrible penal laws against blasphemers, atheists, and any who attacked Christianity. Episcopalians had to keep very quiet in Scotland, so had Nonconformists in England, and so had Roman Catholics everywhere. True, there were some sad defections tiv S>1 ,0| A 'it 1 i i ^ si tl Porm, and a 1^ Universal r^^ Century r«Piet-poet p^est since 1st unreality Y'Sh the old ^^aj'n, and J6 past and f^ J« being P without '^' to he '»^n into ^'^ wholly Garlyie^ %iire of I Squire J ihtiug/> ^tecnth '^ tept '^'ng a ictice. igiish uerti- J aid lade t of efe, on- nd re 'J' 11 which it was feared might bring down the judgments of Heaven on the offending nation. Thus the Parliament had repealed the penal laws against witches, and the Scottish Seceders, in lifting up their testimony against the Church, made it one of their formal grounds of complaint that the General Assembly had discontinued to petition Parliament to re-enact them, although it was plainly written in Scripture, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Still the national testimony for Protestant truth, and against all other, was accepted " as on the whole satisfactory," by all except a few Davie Deans, who would take nothing less than the imposition of the Solemn League and Covenant on the three kingdoms. And so preaching went on and drill catechism went on, but somehow the machinery did not grind out living faith ; and ii would seem that men then persuaded themselves that the machinery was so perfect that it would do of itself, sans faith or life. It had worked wonders once, men said ; why should it not work wonders always. The fault could not be in it. So a serpent of brass that Moses had made once worked wonders ; but centuries after, when incense was burned to it by the children of Israel, it was considered a pious act in Hezekiah to break it in pieces. In proportion as faith in God died out, arguments for His existence multiplied. Elaborate proofs were r'rawn out with smallest possible result. To prove the being of God ! Alas ! alas ! if men don't believe in that, how can any formal proof satisfy them? The very attempt is a logical absurdity, for you must have more in your conclusion than you can have in your premises. Does the Bible begin with proving the existence of Deity, or construct an argument on the Trinity '? Do men seek to prove by something clearer than light that there is such a thing as light? The problem of "where shall I place myself to escape from my own shadow," or " how by lifting, shall I lift up myself," or " how shall I be able to fold my own body in my arms," could be more easily dealt with than this, of " how shall a man who lives in God include the idea of God under the forms of his under- standing?" But as fast as one proof was disposed of, another was prepared, vith, however, only one imdoubted result — that Religion was getting altogether destroyed in the contest. Men couldn't help thinking that the question was not very pressing or i essential, when so much could be said on both sides. The patient died while the rival doctors wrangled over him. And not only was God to be syllogistically proved, but morality also. A foundation and a standard of right and wrong must be found, and lo ! after much searching a notable one was found, — Bentham and Paley the finders thereof. Right was right because it was useful to us, because it ensured the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Wro^g was wrong for the contrary reason. Such was the sawdust that was ofTered to the soul for food Under the reign of Beelzebub, then, right would be wrong, and wrong right. Now the history of the last half century proves that, to whom- soever due, some very different principles have been operating silently, and that if a restoration of belief has not been effected, there has been at least the demolition and carting away of a good deal of rubbish, for which beneficent work let us be most thankful. It has come to be accepted now that a man's belief is one that ought to work, and that it is his first duty to make it work by modelling his life on it, and the outward world too, as far as lies in him. If he does not, his belief and his worship are called shams, and he himself is called hypocrite and humbug. This principle has had already a portentous influence on the old religious forms and insti- tutions, and it threatens changes still more startling. There is a terrible restlessness about men now-a-days, and Lord Melbourne's principle of •' can't you let it alone," is made no account of what- ever. What men believe, that they endeavour to express by action. Look at what this principle has brought about in Scotland, for principles develope themselves more thoroughly there than in England. The Church began to awake ; saw that it really had a Divine mission ; that as the work had increased far beyond its provision for meeting it, there must be fuller equipment provided straightway ; and that the ideal of a National Church required that to be supplied lo them by the State. But the Dissenters, who during the Church's sleep had multiplied greatly, had an ideal also, which was that religion, like any other commodity, should come under the ordinary laws of supply and demand, and that the State must have neither part nor lot in the matter. T!\ey set up their standard, and Socinians, Romanists, Infidels gathered round es. Th e patient [yP'ove^, hut '-'^^ ^nd wronc "^^We one was • %^t Was "^ ^^'egreafesf '^ered fo the ' '•^■g^it wouJ,i ^^ to whom- '° operating ^6" effeofed, ^ °^ «i good «t t^iankfuJ. ' ^'mt oug-hf ^^^odel/ino- as, and he ^' ^las had '^Q'««• Men '^« «''noe the '^'^' ^'-^^e the ^'^"ed the/r '^^^^^ ^X and ""'"'^h JVon. '^fi-^t/atfoDs '^-'^^'er task ^' and they except a ^^nj, and ^^^'- that, '^ party '^'Qgr to ind of '"orfty ^S- the Who '^i'jo/r feith, icted '^at ver,. mt bp 15 what half a million Scotchmen were taught, during the heat of a ten years' conflict, to believe to be truth ; the latter for what two hundred millions of human beings had always believed to be the truth. In both cases I disagree with the Church priuciples that the men held ; in both cases I admire the moral principle by which they were actuatedj Honestly had the Non-Intrusionists written bitter things against the Voluntaries : honesty compelled them to become Voluntaries. Honestly had the Tractarians written bitter things against Rome ; the most honest of them became Romanists. I shall not follow out the course that British Church History has taken during the last quarter of a century, for that would land lis in the conflicts of the present day, an interpretation of which I could give only from my own standpoint. To go into such details would be provocative of controversy, which it is the object of this Association to avoid, and my subject does not require me to dis- cuss them on their merits. fTnis one principle, however, we see clearly in every movement in the world of theology, whether it be the Sabbath question, or the relation of Moses to Christ, or subscription to Confessions of Faith, or Inspiration, or Ritualism ; — that men speak out and act out their belief, no matter what the consequences ; and that thereby the Churches generally are in a state of ferment that makes it utterly impossible to predict what institutions will stand the test of the next quarter of a century, or what organizations may arise. Is this to be deplored ? No : but rejoiced over. But what if our faith gets shaken ? If a true faith, it can take care of itself: if a false faith, a mere faith of personal comfort, the sooner it gets shaken, and shaken out of you, the better. If it be faith in articles or a system, the sooner they are thrust into the background, and faith in the living God take their place, the better. If faith be not that blessed, inexorable light of Heaven vouchsafed unto you, by which at your peril you are to walk, what is it ? A luxury carefully prepared and labelled, to be kept securely for your private delectation. What a pity such a bon-bon should be stolen from you ! I The comparative honesty and reality of the Nineteenth Century is seen not only in what it has undone, but also in a small degree in what it has done. It had a great leeway to make up, as well as its o^vn legitimate demand to attend to ; but it has gone into iil! ! i i II \m 16 whatever work was deemed necessary with an alraoat childlike freshness and ardour. It may be called a church-and-school- building, cathedral-restoring, asylum-founding century ; an age of societies and agencies and institutes; of Bible Societies, Mis- sionary Societies, Orphanages, Reformatories, and Shoe-Black Brigades ; of Sisters of Mercy and Christian Brothers, Colporteurs and Bible Women ; of Church Congresses, Sunday Schools, and Young Men's Christian Associations. By each and all of them people have been crying out, "We believe, or we think we believe ; we must see how our belief will work. We cannot be Atheists, and we shall not be the slaves of cant, and we must prove to ourselves that wo are sincere." When there is so much earnestness I cannot believe that it will pass away without corresponding result, though in what form or tlirough what con- vulsions that may come, I know not. In the meantime it is something that there is earnestness instead of the old indifference ; a yearning for truth and faith ; a confession of ignorance instead of the sleek Horace Walpole complacency of " I know nothing of those ages that knew nothing." II. When faith in God is lost, faith in the brotherhood of man is not retained long. I may not tarry now to depict the state of society in the Eighteenth Century; the isolation of classes, the cruelty of the punishments, the brutish ignorance of the peasantry, the deservedly little influence of the clergy, the vulgarity of senti- ment and manners, the polite indifference with which the upper ranks regarded all below them. Glimpses of these things you will get in the prosaic truthfulness of Crabbe, but, alas ! no prophet voice comes from the Church to denounce them. Now how comes it that, in spite of those evils, which in other countries have always brought on horrible social disorder or foreign con- quest, and which when they get to a certain height are'' apt to increase at a frightfully accelerated rate, England escaped a blood- bath, and stands to-day more secure than she did then? And those evils did bear fruit in this century. The threatened invasion by France postponed the inevitable operation of them, for that knit all Britons into a band of brothers, but it was only a postponement. The moral pestilence about the manufactories mcreased with every year and with the increase of the population. sP "•S SWfr i' fJ.i!**;;*; *; en":*":"-'"""- •'.' an age of ° ^o'oUoa, Uis. y Schoola, aad "'' «" of «-e„, C ""■"' -e "^e canoot be ;^^ ^e muse '"' '' «o much '"^^^^ ^vithout ^'^ '^hat con. ■^^^^ instead ^ flotiin^ of ^^e state of '^^««es, the peasantry, '^^ of senti- *!^^ upper ''""Ss you *^««.' no o«otriea ?n con-. m to Wood- And f'asion • that '^7 a ories tion. n The aliotiatiou of classes deepened as the rich seemed to get richer mid the poor poorer. And bread viots and reform riots, and 'Swing letters, and blazing liny-ricks and corn-stacks, and ''Glasgow Thuggery," and Chartist demonstrations, were all so many mut- ;terings indicating a volcanic state. How has England escaped so jiixr'i Because, with returning faith in God, there came returning faith in the brotherhood of man. Burns felt that that must come ; " For a' that, and a' that ; It's comin' yot tor a' tliat, That mail to man the world o'er, Shall hrothers he for a' that." This century, like all others, has had its one-sided laws, its social anomalies and cruelties, its want of sympathy between classes, but there has been perpetual effort to amend all that. If Avomen were found labouring, harnessed in the mines, or slowly starved as sempstresses ; if children were used as brooms lo sweep chimneys with, or sent to the factories when they should have been in nurseries : a cry has been raised and heard ; new laws have been made, labour has been regulated, education and emigration encouraged. The " Song of the Shirt,'' and " The Cry of the Human " thrilled through all England. If there were Corn Laws, there were also Ebeuezer Elliot's Corn Law Rhymes. Even if there was sin and the sorrow that sin causes, there has been for it pity rather than indignation. We read Hood's " Bridge of Sighs" with choking voice, and Rob rt Buchanan, in his London Poems, has for his burden the soul of goodness even in persons evil, and the sympathy due from us to them. Though I have to be brief, let there be no doubt as to my mean- ing. I have included the evils that had to be redressed under two heads that remind us by contrast of the two great divisions of the law. I might have included them all under the one word " unbe- lief." For with unbelief in the true there comes necessarily belief in the false, and bondage to it, which again is another and the worst phase of unbelief. When men cease to believe in God, they begin again to believe in ghosts, i. e. in shams. Good men there were in the darkest days, even as in Ahab's reign there were seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Over broad England many an obscure Methodist local preacher, not with cant- ing whine, but with earnest voice, " in dusky lane and crowded 18 i fltreet," in dark dcop pits, where the choke damp and the firo-damp lurked, and on harren wolds, called on the living God ; by whom their hearts hud been touched, and whom they knew by the name of Saviour. And in Scotland many a priest-like father on Saturday night, and on every night, brought out the " the big ha' bible ;" and many learned true wisdom from Boston's '• Fourfold State," and perhaps some even from the Confession of Faith. But these seemed as mere " snow flakes on the river." The tide of life swept on, uninfluenced by them. The roar of the world's business drowned their " still small voice." A civilization existed, independent of the Christianity which had given it birth. And all this has changed. We have not yet entered into the promised land, but instead of the great and terrible wilderness, " buds arc blowing, v/ntora flowing." Tlu vc are " lofts of storied thunder " yet to be set loose on us, but we fear them not. Who then have been the leaders in the new Reform? I find three separ- ate and ultimate centres of influence, in Britain (and it is of it alone I speak, for America is only in short clothes as yet, and need not be taken account of,) Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle. Arn- nold and Tennyson occupy places scarcely lower. When I place those men high above all others, I do not mean that they alone have done the Avork of giving us that spiritual atmosphere in which we live, move and have our being. That is the sum total of the result of ten thousand influences. In every man there is an originality. If you can only appeal to it and draw it out, then he will react on you in return for your action on him : and so subtle and manifold are the relationships thus established, that it is often difficult to know who is the teacher and who the scholar. Linked with each of those men, were names that some would place as high or higher ; and many of their followers have attained a moi'c immediate influence and a wider popularity. I am afraid that we coidd count in our fingers the number in Halifax who are well acquainted with the writings of all of them ; but hundreds of others have drank of their spirit in authors who would be proud to be called their disciples. But those men may be called Reformers, not only because they brought new life to Britain, and a light that has been life and strength to many a soul, but because they had faith in that light, lived by it, identified them- selves with it, suffered neglect and persecution for it, and always with a sublime assurance of victory. They were not absolutely original. The very keystone of Coleridge's philosophy, the dis- tinction between the reason and the understanding is taken en bloc from Kant. Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus," is based wholly on Fichte's central principle of the Divine Idea pervading the visible universe and always lying at the bottom of appearance. And all of them are disciples of the critical philosophy v/hich has given air il b"' "--no:/ ""'"pendent o/' r''"'.' '"'0 „,e C? *''''«'nes. not ^eao f'^ '^P^'^'^^ai Jn 'J^hiit ia 19 impulse to tho human mind, greater than any it has received since the Revival of Letters in Europe consefjuent on the capture ot Con- stantinople by tho Turks, and the dispersion of Greeks witii Greek literature through Europe. But they received trutli from other quarters, because they sought for truth Avith their whole souls, and would not be satisfied with " Sentences." And when they found it they did not chatter it like apes, but first made it wholly their own, and tiien preached it with original unquestioning authority. And men listened to them and believed, and went and preached likewise. What is the system these men teach? Are they High, or Low, Calvinists, or Arminians, Romanist, or Protestant ? They have no system. What:* are they not dangerous then? Is the Bible dangerous? Is Nature dangerous? Is tho soul of man dan- gerous ? I cannot find much of system in any of the Hebrew pro- phets. I fear they would fare ill were they now living, if they presented themselves to a Bishop to be examined, or applied to a Presbytery for license. System ! it is a good thing, a necessary thing. Every man must throw the truths that are credible to him into some shape or system, else his mind will be a mere chaos. But is not that form a mere human thing, a convenience for him- self? And woe to him wlieu he thereafter looks at all truth through that, when he substitutes that to himself for truth. For then he worships an idol, then he becomes a Pharisee. In fact one of the great Reforms effected by those men was to make their generation understand the relation between " our little systems" and God. It was a Reform much needed. Men called themselves Lutherans who had none of Luther's spirit ; and Protestants but protested against all innovation. They built sepulchres and raised monu- ments to the old Reformers, but they were not the representatives of the Reformers, but of those who had persecuted and killed the Reformers. For they bowed down before the systems of Dort and Westminster, of Owen and Newton, of Laud or Wesley, as the Schoolmen had bowed down before Aristotle, or the Monks before Pope or Council. And it was a great thing for men to be taught that as " Systems of Nature" have to be modified as science advan- ces, so much more systems of faith according to the essential law of life must be sloughed off, and kept not as shackles on faith but as suggestive historical documents, as landmarks showing whither and how high the tide of life in our forefathers had flowed. And so it has been truly said* that " while men now thirst not less for spiritual truth, they no longer believe in the capacity of system to embrace and contain that truth as in a reservoir for succeeding generations. They must seek for it themselves afresh in the pages of Scripture and the ever dawning light of spiritual life, or they will simply neglect and put it past as an old story." * TuUoch's Leaders of the Reformation, p. 169, and 88. «EcceHomo,"pp. 267,8. See also lU .! 20 Wlmt,fhcn, IS the positive tcnf).inne of hi, *od rev- ?^ iiie, '«! aud ertoa to ivas OQee 3C0 to a^ or Even ofed hte e of a^e 'ler ia 21 Bic to attempt rn exposition or analysis of Colerid^^o's roUj»ious {►liilosupliy to-nl;?ht, those testimonies itiay incline you to inqniro or yourselves. IJut do not ho taken in by the only American edition I have seen ; one that has the audacity to oiler you the Bioi^rapliia Literaria and Friend, as his collected i)roso works. Col(!ri(l;^e's prose without even the "Aids to Ueflectiou" ! A dish of bacon and beans without the bacon, is nothin;^ to that. And it was by his prose works and his conversation, rather than by hi.s poems that he moulded the aj^fo as far as it was moulded by him. Some have regretted that he turned from pootry to prose ; but never was tluM'o greater mistake. It was only in virtue of his beinj^ a poet that he was able to make the discoveries in morals and theoloj^y that he did ; and none but men who for;jjet how terri- bly real and presdnji; are the root questions there, woidd have kept him singin<^ail Iiis life even "(Jenevieves" and "Ancient Marinurs." For while Coleridge was everything, he was emphatically the religious philosopher. What was the path he trode? lie began life as a Radical ; ho ended as a Conservative politictian. If every man is born either an Aristotelian or a IMatonist, we may say that he began us the former and ended as the latter. He began life as an Unitarian preacher ; ho ended a profound believer in the Trinity, the Fall of Man, and the redemption by Christ. The eighteenth century hat gone on the principle that all our knowledge comes to us through the senses, and that what we can- not form a deiinito conception of, does not exist. It seemed a most satisfactory common sense principle, it offered to explain everything, it suited a sleek and shallow age. Of c )urse it explained everything that it could explain, but then it left all the great puzzles of thought and life untouclied. It is easy enough to construct a philosophy that ignores the primal instincts, the most stubborn facts of our nature, but what is the good of it? Yet such was the only system then taught in the English Universities, and they are the fountain-head of national life. As the Universities of Britain are to-day, so is the whole tone of British sentiment to- morrow. Of course such a philosophy made men Unitarians, or unbelievers altogether, it substituted utility for morals, egotism for reverence, jingle for poetry, and "wax figgers" for art. Coleridge accepted it — as he always accepted everything — devoutly, and every step of the way, from tliat Sahara to " the laud flowing with milk and honey " at Avhich at length he arrived, he had to fight. When from the Mystics who appealed to what he felt was a higher faculty in him than the logical understanding, he got to Kant and learned that there was a faculty in man in virtue of which he was brought into immediate contact with super-sensible truth, the scales fell from his eyes. The rest of his way as a philosopher was easy. I!!' ' 1 i iir 22 His old dogmas dropped from him one by one ; and when his own tiilt weakness, his own need of Christ, made him a Christian, he ^ave hiniself to the work of showing the reasonableness of Christ- ianity, of how it and man's moral nature fit into each other, of linking to It all mental products, of setting it on high as the crown and glory of humanity and society; in a word, of constructing a Christian philosophy which, while we may not agree with it in every particular, is yet the noblest that has been offered to us since the seventeenth century, and which has saved many of the most earnest spirits of our time from blank unbelief. If we have now a preacher like Maurice, who, educated as an Unitarian, and for the i3ar, turned asr'- from everything else to proclaim, to classes whom perhaps no other man could have reached, Jesus Christ as the representative ideal of humanity and the head of all human society, and the Church as God's means of educating the nationo into faith in His Fatherhood, and the brotherhood of man to each and every other man— let Coleridge more than any one else, be thanked. And yet he it was who in his time was most suspected by the orthodox, and most jeered at by the oracles of liberalism ; and one of whose most precious works, I .earn from a lecture of Kobertson's, of Brighton, was only a few years ago* " denounced as the most pestilential work of our day, by one of those miserable publications mis-called religious newspapers, whose unhallowed work it seems to be on earth to point out to its votaries whom they ought to suspect instead of whom thev ought to love, and to sow the seeds of dissension, malice, hatred and all uncharitableness." Reb-.ous Newspapers !"Tho Irish Church I believe means a church 7iot for the Irish people. So most certa-lnly " a Religious Newspaper,^' means a newspaper that has no religion^ Wordsworth was born two years before Coleridge and quitted Cambridge about the time that Coleridge entered. An ardent Republican at first in politics, though intended by nature for a speculative Tory ; a Radical in poetry, in religion, in everythint^ And no wonder ! What he wanted was to protest against the con- ventionalisms that oppressed him, the humbug with which men had agreed to chea** each other. When a student is hounded into ;' prayers" that the Tutors and Professors never dreamt of attend- ing, he IS apt to revolt. But Wordsworth was " a chimney that consumed its own smoke." His rebellion against his environments was different from Coleridge's. He did not enlist as a recruit in the Light Dragoons ; did not canvass for subscribers to impossible Radical Newspapers ; planned no pautisocracy for the banks of the Susquehanna or any other banks. What a contrast between the two, as there always has been between two Reformers raised up to Lectures and Addresses, p. 61. ^'^^d to us 1 '" ^^y of th °^e Ox all u ^ ^«an fo each °«« else, be ^^enouoced «e TOiserabie ' '^ ^"«J a,ey v''? '^ sovv « ^eaas a ^^%'ous " ardent n ^o one work ! Wordsworth, " his soul was like a star and dwelt apart," but blessed also iu his home and in all his domestic relations. Coleridge, weak, sinning, craving for sympathy, tossed from billow to billow, and not finding a port till life was drawing to its close. Wordsworth given to musing rather than talking, ever and anon uttering immortal lines, which would have been lost to the world had not sister or wife treasured them up. Coleridge pouring forth f to every comer a stream of mighty language, " like some great f Orellana or the St. Lawrence," freighted with the riches of the ; universe ; or as Lan^b put it in answer to his question, " Charles, did you ever hear me preach V" — " I n-never heard you d-do any- thing else." Coleridge had read everything, and observed little. Wordsworth had read almost noth'ag, but nothing in nature had escaped his observation. The one irresolute, never up to time, never finishing anything, shuffling and corkscrewy in his gait, never able to decide which side of the garden walk he would take. The other strong, confident in himself and in truth, bearing the burden and heat of the day and not even asking for the penny, — what more can we say of him ? " The star of the unconquered will. It rises in my breast Serene and resolute and still And calm and self-possessed." Sublimer life than Wordsworth's it seems to me has not been lived in those latter days. Coleridge always tried to combine in his writings two things, immediate popularity and profit, with new truth, deep truth, abstract truth, and always failed. No such com- promise was ever tried by Wordsworth. He had his message to deliver, and he delivered it. If men heard, well. If they did not, he knew they would. In 1814 the " Excursion" was published. Six years after, the first edition of five hundred copies was not exhausted. What was that to him? Calmly in a calm essay he writes ; " Foolish must he be who can mistake for the vox populi which the Deity inspires, a local acclamation or a transitory out- t ho ugh from a cry, — transitu.^ though it be for years, local nation." And to Lady Beaumont he had written* explaining why his poetry could never be popular with the world of fashion ; — " It is an awful truth that there neither is, nor can be any genuine enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those per- sons who live or wish to live, in the broad light of the world — among those who either are, or are striving to make themselves, people of consirfe>*a^ion in society. This is a truth and an awful one ; because to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be without love of human nature and reverence for God." And again, " Every great poet is a teacher. I wish * Menooirs of Wordsworth, Vol. I. p. 333-342. ' :i M 24 cither to be considered as a teacher, or notliing." And again to his friends jK-hc revered him, when they complained bitterly of the injustice of the public ; — '' Make yourselves at rest respecting me ; I speak the truths the world must feel at last." The world's taste had been vitiated ; but the only way in which you can make an old toper appreciate pure water, is by giving him pure water to drink for a considerable time. Poetry had abandoned its high mission of teaching the world, and trusted to " perfumers' and milliners' shops" rather than to nature and the immortal in man ; to jingle and glitter, to " storm and stress" rather than to the vision and the faculty divine? If the poet wished to interest, he did not choose a subject that appealed to men's ordinary experience and feelings. No : every thing at home was hackneyed ; the farther away he went the better. And so at last the world was getting nothing but "veiled prophets of Khorassan," and Ghebres, and Giaours and Corsairs, and blood and thunder. And what then could the world make of a poet to whom " The meanest flower that blows could give Thoughts do often lie too deep for tears," or of an epic, the hero of which was an old Scotch pedlar ! What could a critic like Jeffry, who though a " smart man" had as much poetry in him as a saw-mill has, make of it, when as he snarled, " the other persons of the drama are, a retired military chaplain, grown half an atheist and half a misanthrope, the wife of an un- fortunate weaver, a servant girl with her natural child, a parish pauper, and one or two other personages of equal rank and dignity." The vulgarity Avas frightful ; equal almost to that of the Bible. In fact as Coleridge had early told Wordsworth, " every author as far as he is great and at the same time original must create the ti'Ste by which he is to be enjoyed," a profound remark that sug- gests much to me. We can hardly understand now the Revolution that " the Lakers" as they were absurdly called, effected, or how iittterly fallen was ;!ie public taste then, or how absurd the recog- nized canons of criticism. You have all read " We arc Seven." Well, think of friend James Tobin imploring Wordsworth not to publish that, " as it Avonld make him everlastingly ridiculous" : or of the gentleman who when the " Cumberland Beggar" was read to him, said, " Why, that is very pretty : but you may call it any- thing hut poetry." But the world did " feel at last." In 1817 Blackwood's Magazine was started, with men on its staff who judged poetry not by the Jeffrey canons ; and in the very next year John Wilson came forth in its pages to proclaim again and again what, manner of man he had found Wordsworth to be ; and the tide turned, and to wdiat extent may be judged from the reception he received at Oxford in 1839, when he and Bunsen went up to receive the degrees that had been conferred on themt Dr. Arnold Pan m.,t *'^*^ f «nf/ fool;,. ^^^0 .snar/ed, °^ an un- ; f. Par/s/j y author r^«fe the 25 wlio was present v/rites ; — " to me, remembering how old Cole- ridge had inoculated a little knot of us with the love of Wordsworth when his* name was in general a by-word, it wap striking to wit- ness the thunders of applause, repeated over and over again with > which he was greeted in the theatre by undergraduates and mas- j ters of Arts alike." Truth had triumpl.ed. England could once more appreciate spiritual truth. And Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Teunyson, (forgive me for classing Tennyson with any others) and Jean Ingelow have learned of him and continue his influence. What then Avas Wordsworth's mission, for mission he had,. and never did ancient prophet or consecrated priest feel his call more impressively, or live up to it more truthfully. He said that he made no vows, but that unknown to him vows were made for him. Robertson of Brighton, in his lecture on him, says, and in all rever- ence, that what he did* " was the work which the Baptist did when he came to the pleasure-laden citizens of Jerusalem to work a reformation ; the Avork Avhich Milton tried to do Avhcn he raised that clear calm voice of his to call back his countrymen to simpler manners and to simpler laws." To Wordsworth this life of ours in itself Avas an infinitely little thing. " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting." To him, " Our noisy years seemed moments in the being Of the eternal silence." And yet he saw men slaves to time and earth, to appearances and customs, as if they had no souls, as if there were no reality beyond the seen and temporal. His preaching to them by Avord aud life was, •' The wise man I affirm can find no rest In that which perishes ; nor will he lend His heart to aught that doth on time depend." And the professed teachers of the day had neither eyes nor ears. Lofty Avas his contempt for them ; shalloAV moralist, shal- loAV man of science, shalloAv philosopher ; — " One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling Nor form nor feeling, great nor small ; A reasoning, self-sutlicing thing, An intellectual all in all ! The general Atheism of men's lives terrified him. They professed to be Christians, but they held no communion with God. There Avas one all-prevailing spirit of worldliness. Nature Avas to them a heap of husks, the bible a catechism of truths imposed on them from Avithout. The soul Avas so steeped in the world that it could not interpret either. And the prophet-poet felt that it Avas * Lectures and Addresses, p. 244. Im 26 laid on him to cry out against this and to caU the dead to life. Idsten first to his protest ; — "The world is too much with us; late and soon. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in nature thiit is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers;— For this, for everything, we are out of time;— It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn," And next, as to what he felt to be his work.* " The Sun " he said, -' was personified by the ancients as a charioteer drivin"-'four fiery steeds over the vault of heaven ; he was called Phocbul and was regarded as the god of poetry, of prophecy, and of medicine. ±;hoebus combined all these characters. And every poet has a similar mission on earth; he must diffuse health and lio-ht; he must prophesy to his generation ; he must teach the present a-e by counselling with the future ; he must plead for posterity ; aSd he must imitate Phoebus in guiding and governing all his faculties fiery steeds though they be, with the most exact precision, lest instead of being a Phoebus, he prove a Phaeton, and set the world on fire, and be hurled from his car; he must rein in his fancy and temper his imagination, with the control and direction of sound reason, and drive on in the right track with a steady hand " This, then, was Wordsworth's work ;— to exalt the spiritual over the material, the eternal over the transitory, the future over the present lu Christ he himself found all truth ; and in Christian education alone had he any faith, while he had no faith at all in highly-wrought religious expression in youth ; and the essence of Christian education was a contemplating of the character and per- sonal history of Christ. " Work it," he said, " into your thoughts, mto your imagination, make it a real presence in the mind." What distinctive work was accomplished by Wordsworth as a religious reformer of his age ? We pointed out that the Eighteenth Century had lost faith in God as the living God, and in human brotherhood. Now I believe that while Coleridge had most to do with restoring faith in God, Wordsworth had most to do with restoring faith in humanity. He has been accused of losin- his own taith ;— of beginning as a Democrat and ending as an Aristo- crat. .But stationaryness is not consistency; and a man must sometimes change the form of his views if he would be true to the ' Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 7. thi rs; /.,f dead 27 to lifQ^ f )r a ) he nge >^"«, and P°et iias ,^7^; and "^« ^vorid ^""^"^y and ^P'Wfiia] ;'-e over ^ aii ia 3Qce of 'f^ per- ^Shts, md." as ^^ fnan >do ii/s ^o- 1st le principle of them. So, when Wordsworth was a Radical, h didn't mean that one man was actually as good as another, bu I that the divine was in every man, and that, if he were true to it no matter at what work he was engaged, he was worthy of al honor. In later years, when he was a Tory, he didn't mean tha the name, or the wealth, or the plush made the man, but tha insight, independence, worth were the true standards, and that th( best way both of encouraging and of discovering such qualities wa; to have different orders in society, and the lines of each wel defined. Ho may have appeared extreme at both periods ; but ir principle he never varied. And there can be no doubt that he was the great teacher to his age of the actual oneness and the true glory of humanity. In opposition to the old, conventional habit of looking at " persons of quality" and the " masses" as two dis- tinct orders of beings ; in opposition to the two great facts of modern society, viz., the accumulation of wealth and the division of labour, the tendency of which is to strengthen that habit, and even to give it a basis in fact, he drew his characters to show that there is but one human heart, and that the great lack in the land was the lack of sympathy between the different classes, while he protested against cutting off any man's life from nature or stunting its general growth. For, said he,* " not by bread alone is the life of man sustained ; not by raiment alone is he warmed ; — but by the genial and vernal inmate of the breast, which at once pushes forth and cherishes ; by self-support and self-sufficing endeavours ; by anticipations, apprehensions, and active remembrances ; by elasticity under insult, and firm resistance to injury ; by joy and by love ; by pride, which his imagination gathers in from afar ; by patience, because life wants not promises ; by admiration ; by gratitude, which — debasing him not when his fellow-being is its object — habitually expands itself, for his elevation, in complacency towards his Creator." To heal the barrenness of the age, to dispel its darkness, and bring in the wider day, the man of large thought and the man of profound meditation and observation had been given. Another man was needed, and he too was sent. When unbelief reigned, shams, lies, hollow forms cropped up. Men bolstered themselves up on words that did not represent things. There was a parade and fuss, as if work were being done, but it was " all action and no go." A destructive Reformer then was needed as well as the two constructive, and Thomas Carlyle came. Born A. D. 1795, in the Border Country that has given birth to Edward Irving, Mungo Park, and many another name well- known in African, and Indian, and British story ; brought up a ♦ Convention of Cintra, p. J 64, 165. 28 Scotch Presbyterian of the old-fashioned sort, and intended at first for the Cliuroh — he breaks away, but can't help carrying much of the fixith and its traditions with him, to mould them into new shapes, and to ^o with them wliithersoever he was led. " Iron- mouth " Avas the family nickname in their native district. No better name for Carlylc, for no grip is like his. In the year that Coleridge died he took up his abode at Chelsea, and ever since he lias exercised the influence over the most earnest young minds of the day, that Coleridge had wielded for 18 years previous. No prophet lias spoken with so authoritative voice since Luther's time, if then. He does not argue : he announces truth with authority. He takes his stand on the ultimate fact that there is a conscience, that there is a right and a wrong, that the two are eternally and infinitely different, and that therefore " thou shalt " and " thou shalt not" are the two great laws men must obey, and the one as unhesitatingly as the other. Action, therefore, and not thought, is '• the final object of man, the highest reality of thought, and the safest, if not the only safe, standard of truth."* " The melodious speaker," he says, '' (as Shakespeare) is great : but the melodious worker is greater than he. Our time cannot speak at all, but only cant and sneer, and argumentatively jargon and recite the multiplication table. Neither as yet can it work, except at mere railroads and cotton-spinning. It will apparently return to chaos soon ; and then more lightnings will be needed, lightnings enough, to which Cromwell's was but a mild matter ; to be fol- lowed by light, we may hope."f Do you call this " stuff? " Well, I am not so sure of that. Take four or five years to read not " extracts," but the great works of Carlyle, and then think over them for other four or five years. If you have anything to say then it Avill probably be better worth listening to than anything you could say now. The chances are, too, that you will have less to say. But the m.ost astonishing thing of all is to hear Carlyle called an infidel. To me it would be incredible did I not remember that so has it always been on this side Anno Domini, and on the other side. No such robust faith has there been in Britain since the days of the puritans, as his. Indeed, he has been called a puritan in the guise of the nineteenth century. That does not mean that his creed would square with that of any of the existing Churches ; but when will men learn that to identify faith with any organization is the root of all Pharisaism, of all persecution, and of all unbelief? If Coleridge was the broadest, and Wordsworth the deepest, then Carlyle is the most intense man of the age, and the fittest therefore to carry out their principles to the actual moral Reform of man. * TJunscn's Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History, p. 27, t Croimvell's Letters and Speeches, vol. ii . p. 75. ,'!^"^«^? at nv,t h '^^° «'-e "'^«y, and P' ^"<^ nor ^Peak at '^'^ recipe ■^^«Pt at ^trira to ^e fol ^