Persecution Of A Christian

Her father tells her to stop

Listening to the sermon, so she

Stops and goes to her room.

I Will Follow Him

I think the argument for women submitting to their husbands would be far stronger if women lusting were ever addressed in any way, since there are some men who don’t like it whenever their wives cheat on them in some way. It could be having an affair with another man, it could also be having a crush on somebody else or reading smutty books. I don’t think this will be openly discussed in any way, if because a lot of people will get super defensive over this.

Another is that not a lot of people believe that women lust, even though they do and in some cases it’s so terrible that it ruins families and relationships. Some people dismiss erotic literature and celebrity crushes as fluff, even though it could be just as damaging as visual porn in some cases or at least have the same potential for it if one’s not careful. Some men aren’t into their wives having crushes on men other than them, so that’s something women need to be careful with if they’re in relationships with their husbands and boyfriends.

If lust is bad for the gander, it’s also bad for the goose. Likewise if something causes a woman to lust, then she should cut it off because it will ruin her relationship with her husband or boyfriend. I ruined my potential relationship with a classmate by deliberately reading sinful stuff, likewise someone else in the family would experience losing her husband because she herself is prone to lust. Which goes to show you how susceptible some women are to lust.

So much so it ruins their relationships with the men they’re entrusted with or love, another example would be this one Backstreet Boys fan who admitted to being a Christian but became a single mum because she often writes smutty BSB stories. But I think this would not be popular with Christians, not just due to defensiveness but also because not many realise how other women struggle with lust in big and small ways.

Some women struggle with lust by reading smutty stories, some struggle by having a crush on a celebrity they like and some struggle by having affairs with men other than their husbands. Just as the Devil tempted Eve with a fruit, he can tempt women away from their husbands with these kinds of things and circumstances. It doesn’t have to be feminism, since the spirit of Jezebel can live on in romance books and celebrity crushes.

Sadly, the biggest argument for women submitting to their husbands is the one people will overlook for many reasons even if this is the best one yet. Though it’s also the most practical and realistic one around, in light of the many smutty books that get published. If the wife is called to be devoted to her husband as Christians are to God, she should abstain from the things that would make her romantically stray from him.

No porn, no crushes, no affairs. Not an easy one, but a necessary cutoff.

What happens to America and Europe?

There has been a lot of prophecies regarding America in WWIII, the ones that I remember involve it being nuked by Russia and China as well as being invaded by these two. I personally feel much of it concerns the contiguous United States of America, since I feel for Hawaii its fate would turn out differently. If God were to allow America to get nuked by Russia and China, Hawaii might be shielded from this. But I also think it would come under Chinese occupation alongside the Mariana islands, but I also think it’s just as likely for them to secede from America and form their own nation-state.

If America were to get nuked real badly by Russia, Hawaii and Puerto Rico would be safe but secede out of necessity. Russia would become a world power by allying itself with various Middle Eastern countries, which is already happening to some extent when it has a quadrilateral relationship with Syria, Turkey and Iran. They will conspire together to bomb America, which dashes Puerto Rico’s chances of becoming the 52nd state of America. China will also nuke America and take Hawaii and Guam by force, only to have them secede from America. Then Japan and others will follow.

Mexico will finally claim New Mexico, California and Texas since these three used to be part of the former before. Because Russia has gotten so aggressive with claiming Ukraine, it will get belligerent when it claims Poland and the Czech Republic from Europe. Europe will get into a fight with Russia should it claim the three, though Russia may unleash a biological weapon of mass destruction to defeat Europeans. Europe will not be as devastated as America will be, if because the Antichrist will rise to power in Italy and turn it into a global hegemon. If Emmanuel Macron is bad for Europe, the actual Antichrist would be worse.

He will make LGBT more mainstream and popularity in Italy, watch out if Italy becomes the richest country in the world if it does happen after WWIII. America became a big world power in the 20th century, Italy would take the world by surprise by becoming the biggest global hegemon this decade. Perhaps more shockingly, occult practices become more commonplace in the mainline churches to the horror of devout Catholics and Protestants alike. They will ally themselves with Evangelicals and Eastern Orthodox to protest against these, once the Antichrist comes to power in Italy.

This would even take place in WWIII, should Europe need a country to beat up Russia. Italy would even establish bases by converting US bases into European ones, should it and the entire European Union arrive to protect countries from both China and Russia. This is where Italy starts becoming a superpower, especially as America burns.These will come to pass and it will come to pass sooner than expected beginning this decade.

Extremely bad

Even as a Christian, I still think it’s unfair that Harry Potter got all the flack while X-Men got off scott-free. No pun intended. I mean if you look at the X-Men comics more closely, there’s a strongly anti-Christian worldview that most people (even most Christians) ignore. Not just because it promotes the things Christians hate or fight against like evolution, but also because there are a lot of LGBT characters there, polyamory and openly demonic characters. The character Illyana Rasputin sometimes looks like a demon, practises magic and is one of the good guys. I personally feel you don’t see that many Christians protesting against X-Men is really because Satan works in much subtler ways than that.

It doesn’t have to be something that’s openly evil, all he has to do is use something as innocent as superheroes to seduce the unsuspecting. It takes a more sophisticated form of grooming to grab attention, even though its anti-Christian philosophy becomes more evident not just in having an openly demonic heroine but also because we see churches getting destroyed and Christians demonised in the world of X-Men. Almost no other superhero comic does this, actually not even Harry Potter has come close to doing this despite its use of magic. If you go over to Spirit Reports, you have people saying that demons can appear as superheroes. Satan can appear as an angel of light, it’s not a stretch that he can appear as a superhero when he wants to.

The fact that Christians have ignored the X-Men for so long makes you wonder how subtle the Devil gets away with influencing people, it’s pretty much why for all of Angelica Zambrano’s talk about demons appearing as Ben10 characters not a lot of Christians protest against superheroes the way they do with Harry Potter. Not to mention there are even testimonies by Christians who say that demons behind superhero comics make people queer or something, which explains why so many of them do smutty fanfictions based on the stories they like. There must be something wrong with them, even though so many Christians sleep over them. Almost to the point where the Devil successfully gets their attention, because it appears so innocent they don’t even suspect it.

Not saying you should be entirely against superheroes, but that you really have to be more careful around them. Especially if Satan’s tactics are subtler than this, to the point where if you’re going to avoid Harry Potter because it’s anti-Christian you should also avoid X-Men. In fact, you should avoid superhero media featuring openly demonic characters. If because this is how the Devil gets his way into people’s lives, he can make demons appear in superhero media when he wants to. They can even appear as superheroes themselves, be it Blue Devil or Illyana Rasputin herself. It doesn’t have to openly feature magic to have demons, if because demons sometimes deploy subtler methods than that.

It doesn’t get any subtler than using a superhero comic, which sadly only a few Christians have warned against.

Hannah–A mother’s wish granted

After we’ve talked about Mother Mary, we’ll move onto Hannah. Hannah was barren for some time now, so frustrated about her inability to bear children that she turned to God to give her a son. That son is Samuel, who became a prophet and sort of advisor to King David. I remember reading somewhere on a website about her that God does answer prayer, though not always in ways we’d expect but that’s because he operates by his own rules and logic. Hannah could’ve wanted an ordinary child, but her son’s an extraordinary man. We may want something, but God can give us something better than that.

That’s the case with Hannah, who always wanted a child. She prayed to God to give her one, but one who’ll illuminate the sin-ridden darkness with his wisdom and advice. Miracles do happen, sometimes in ways we don’t expect. Hannah wanted a child after all those years of barrenness but her son became a prophet, both Abraham and Sarah also wanted a child but got one in old age. That son is Isaac, who is the father of Jacob (later Israel). The Bible has no shortage of admirable mothers, we have Jochebed who risked everything to spare Moses from being killed by the Egyptians so he got adopted by an Egyptian when he was a baby. We have the lovely Rachel, who too felt barren and was given a son in the form of Benjamin.

There’s Mother Mary who bore Jesus, the man who saved the world from itself. Then we have Hannah, who felt terrible from being unable to beget any children until she got one in the form of Samuel. Miracles happen all the way, sometimes in ways we don’t expect nor understand immediately.

Mother Mary

There are many Marys in the Bible, we have Miriam the sister of Moses. Then we have Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha. Another Mary is Mary Magdalene who followed Jesus a lot, but the best known Mary is his mother. So to begin, we’ll honour. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with me. Blessed art thou among women. Admittedly that’s what I can remember, but her role in the Bible is important. She was chosen by God to bear his son, despite being unmarried at the time of her pregnancy, so that’s why he set her up with Joseph. She probably raised Jesus well enough, despite her modest upbringing.

She’s quite venerated in Catholic and Orthodox circles, the latter’s where she’s known as Maria Theotokos. In art, she’s usually shown in blue. She may’ve loved another colour in real life. But as the female face of Christianity, she’s chosen for her role to bear Jesus into the world. Just as Jesus was born into poverty despite being called the King of Kings, Virgin Mary wasn’t particularly rich though she’s descended from royalty. After all, Jesus is said to descend from King David. There are other mothers in the Bible, we have Hannah who prayed for a son and begat the prophet Samuel. Rachel who begat Joseph, was loved by Jacob despite having an affair with another woman who begat several more children.

But Virgin Mary’s the most well known Biblical mother, she is the mother of the Messiah and can be viewed as an intermediary between him and God. That’s why she’s so beloved in Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

The other type of modesty

It seems when it comes to most Christians, their idea of modest clothing is just restricted to hemlines and silhouette. Not so much in whether if she actually dresses plainly, since the Bible also speaks of her not dressing in really expensive and gaudy apparel. One could have a far better argument for dressing modestly, if somebody also spoke against not following fashion trends that much since that too can risk drawing attention. If somebody wants to deliberately draw attention, like say they’re following the latest fashion trend, that too is immodest. But not many Christians will admit this, if because that involves actually withdrawing from the world in ways they’d never imagine.

If I’m not mistaken, among some churches women’s dress is even more sober and plain to the point of being rather frumpy. Especially the Mennonites, where they’ve devised a dress that detracts unwanted sexual attention. Though admittedly any loose fitting, triangular dress would do since they hide bodily contours more efficiently and can kindly accommodate a pregnant body. But even then, I feel there’s a lot to learn from the Mennonites when it comes to the need for modesty, as well as peace with one’s neighbours. The other problem with Evangelicals, I feel, is that they don’t have a good standard for what is modest.

Let alone something that successfully repels worldly attention the way the Mennonites do with the cape dress, since such a garment’s already kind of ugly and not the sort that tends to be stylish and trendy. But that’s better than trying to increase the hemlines of a secular garment, since that involves actually adhering to an anti-worldly dress code. I guess with the exception of Pentecostals with their insistence on women wearing long skirts and dresses, Evangelicals don’t seem to have much of a concrete dress code let alone one that repels the need to be trendy.

If modesty doesn’t just end in hemlines and how close-fitting a garment is, it should also encompass the need to not draw so much attention by not actively following trends that much. The last one’s harder to do, especially for those who still want to be in fashion. But I feel this is just as necessary, especially if one has to avoid dressing in a worldly way. Not just in not showing off the body, but also in not following trends that go against one’s conscience. There are even Christians who claim that certain fashion trends come from demons, which if this is true, then one really has to avoid following certain clothing trends as they go against God’s design.

Not just in avoiding bikinis, but also avoiding fashion trends that go against our consciences.

The Christian Observer (Google Books)

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

—oCURZON’S VISTS TO MONASTERIES IN THE LEWANT. Visits to Monasteries in the Levant. By the Hon. Rob ERT CURzoN, jun. With numerous Wood-cuts. Second Edition. London: Murray. 1819. A cuRIous little work has recently fallen under our notice, which, though published in Germany nearly a century since, may not, we think, be known to our readers. It is entitled, “Specimen Monachologiae, Methodo Linna and ;” and does not so much profess to exhibit a complete scientific arrangement of the genus, with its different species, and the particulars which characterize each individual variety, as modestly to shew how the principles of systematic analysis and classification may be applied to that portion of the animal kingdom. The learned naturalist, a German Baron, having given to the world a treatise on Conchology, and still feeling the strongest impulse towards similar pursuits, was nearly settling down in the conviction that almost all the materials for writing on such subjects were exhausted, when, by some unaccountable train of ideas, his attention was directed to man, and to an inquiry into his nature and physiology. “When,” he exclaims, “behold ! I unexpectedly detected a new genus, which intimately connects man, the most perfect of created beings, with the ape, the most foolish of animals, and occupies the great hiatus between the two; I allude to the monk, a genus which appears in the form of man, although widely different in essential particulars.”

Without reflecting on the blindness of other naturalists who had not been so fortunate as to make this discovery, our author could not forbear congratulating himself on having had the happiness to crown his own studies by the opening of so ample a field, in which the lovers of nature might ramble and exercise their industry. The mode of classification and description in this new science, he makes mainly to depend, not on arbitrary principles, but on dress and habit. The genus he divides into three families; and the several species are to be distinguished by peculiarities as to the head, the feet, the cowl, the paunch, and the vestments. The nomenclature of the varieties into which the five points above enumerated divide themselves is comprised in three tables, and these are illustrated by three ingenious sheets of engravings, which would do credit to the neatest botanical manual. Those who are curious in such matters we must, however, refer to the work itself; and, passing by the scientific definition and description of the genus Monachus, we must content ourselves with quoting only the Differentia. “Man speaks, reasons, wills. The monk is often mute, has no reason or will, is governed solely by the orders of his superiors. The head of man is erect.

“Qs homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.”

The head of the monk is depressed, with the eyes turned to the ground; man seeks his bread by the sweat of his brow, the monk grows fat by laziness; man dwells among men, the monk seeks solitude, and hides himself, avoiding the light. Whence it follows that the monk is a genus of mammalia distinct from man, intermediary between him and the ape, approaching nearest to the latter, from which it differs very little in voice or manner of living.” We give this extract rather as a matter of curiosity, than as ourselves much entering into its spirit. We have no taste for indiscriminate attacks upon large bodies of men. We have no doubt that the monasteries have in many instances been the scenes, not only of egregious absurdity, but of atrocious wickedness. But we cannot, with our recollections of Thomas Aquinas, of Bonaventura, of Father Paoli, the Benedictine editions of the Classics, and the Jesuit edition of Newton’s Principia, accede to so sweeping a charge of ignorance, Neither can we question that, in those deep recesses of superstition and melancholy, many devout minds have groped their way through the thick darkness to the Cross of Christ;-that, while they have spoken most unscripturally of many intercessors, they have really cast themselves upon the one only Mediator between God and man. But leaving our German physiologist, it is time to turn to the book before us. When we took up Mr. Curzon’s publication, “Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant,” it was natural for us to suppose that he might be one of those lovers of nature who had gone forth to ramble and exercise his industry in that ample field which had been opened by the Baron; but a glance at the “Contents” satisfied us that his object was not merely to survey scenery. It was neither to assault the monks, nor to fraternise with them. It was not to study monasticism, nor even to inspect the venerable ecclesiastical remains of former generations; but to search out the ancient manuscripts known to be embedded in such localities, and, if possible, to become possessed of some of those hidden treasures, wherever they were to be found. Nor was he unsuccessful in his endeavours, as the well-stocked panniers on his ass frequently testified. And it is to this success we are mainly indebted for the volume before us; for as he sat in “solitude some time after the termination of his labours, with his literary treasures around him, and looked about for some occupation to solace the tedium of his situation, it happily occurred to him to write some account of the most curious of his manuscripts, and of his own adventures in pursuit of them. It was a natural consequence that some of his friends should urge the publication of his recollections, especially as they referred to localities seldom visited in modern times. The book is written in an easy style, with many pleasing descriptions and lively anecdotes interspersed, some of which we are tempted to give, though our attention must be chiefly directed to its professed object. The specimens of monks which Mr. Curzon inspected have left an impression on his mind more favorable than he had anticipated with respect to their moral condition. They were chiefly of the Coptic, Abyssinian, and Greek Church. He never met with the prototype of Friar Tuck. Quietness, simplicity, united with profound ignorance of the world, are their usual characteristics; but their ignorance in other respects is no less conspicuous, as may be collected from the following anecdote,

told by another writer. It forcibly illustrates the slight esteem in which conventual libraries are held by their possessors. It is related that a traveller, in pursuit of ancient manuscripts, visited a great monastery near Cavalla, in Bulgaria, in which he had heard that books were preserved remarkable for their antiquity. To his dismay and disappointment, after the long journey which he had undertaken expressly for the purpose of beholding these treasures, he was informed by the Agoumenos or Superior, that the monastery contained no library whatever. Fortunately his vexation did not prevent his accompanying the Agoumenos into the choir where the church service was almost continually going on; and he there beheld the double row of long-bearded fathers standing, to save their bare legs from the cold and damp of the marble floor, each upon a huge folio volume, which had been removed from what had been the library, and then applied to the only purpose of practical utility for which they were considered fit. The books, on examination, were found to be of the greatest value, and many of them of the earliest date; and he was readily allowed to carry them all away in exchange for more commodious hassacks,—an arrangement all the more agreeable to this unsophisticated community, as many of these now discarded foot-stools were armed with antique bindings, ornamented with iron bosses and nail heads, which inflicted a superfluous penance on the soles of the worshippers. The following account of Mr. Curzon’s operations in the Coptic monastery of Souriani, in the neighbourhood of the Natron Lakes, where he did not find the manuscripts in situ, but had to sift them out from the alluvial deposit, may be regarded as a fit companion to the Bulgarian exhibition. It is too curious to be passed by lightly; and shall, therefore, be related chiefly in his own words.-In the library he found several Coptic manuscripts, scattered over the floor; all of them on paper, except three or four. One was a superb manuscript of the Gospels, with commentaries, by the early Fathers, almost the only one, by the way, with a commentary, which he saw in all the monasteries that he visited—two others were doing duty as coverings to a couple of large open jars which had contained preserves. Mr. Curzon was allowed to purchase the vellum manuscripts, perhaps among the oldest in existence, as no longer of any use to the monks. The old blind Abbot solemnly declared that there were no other books in the monastery; but as Mr. Curzon’s voyage of discovery had been prosecuted in this direction chiefly with reference to certain ancient manuscripts which a French gentleman assured him were to be found in the monk’s oil cellar, he was not to be easily diverted from his object. Accordingly he invited the abbot, and the monk who constantly accompanied him, to the room which they had hospitably provided for the accommodation of their guest, and thus he describes the plan of opperations. We are obliged, before giving this narrative, to protest against the mode adopted by Mr. Curzon to carry his point with the abbot; and we may have afterwards occasion to refer to this in common with some other similar statements in this volume.

“The abbot, his companion, and myself, sat down together. I produced a bottle of rosoglio from my store, to which I knew that all Oriental monks were partial…. Next to the golden key which masters so many locks, there is no better opener of the heart than a sufficiency of strong drink—not too much, but exactly the proper quantity judiciously exhibited. I have always found it to be invincible: and now we sat sipping our cups of the sweet pink rosoglio, and firing little compliments to each other, and talking pleasantly over our bottle till some time passed away, and the face of the blind abbot waxed bland and confiding; and he had that expression on his countenance which men wear when they are pleased with themselves and bear goodwill towards mankind in general. I had, by the bye, a great advantage over the good abbot, as I could see the workings of his features, and he could not see mine, or note my eagerness about the oil-cellar, on the subject of which I again gradually entered. “There is no oil there,” said he. “ } am curious to see the architecture of so ancient a room,” said I; “for I have heard that yours is a famous oil-cellar. ‘It is a famous cellar,’ said the other monk. ‘Take another cup of rosoglio,” said I. “Ah, replied he, “I remember the days when it overflowed with oil, and then there were I do not know how many brethren here with us. But now we are few and poor; bad times are come over us, we are not what we used to be.’ ‘ I should like to see it very much,” said I; ‘I have heard so much about it, even at Cairo. Let us go and see it; and when we come back we will have another bottle; and I will give you a few more, which I have brought with me for your private use.’ This last argument prevailed. We returned to the great tower, and ascended the steep flight of steps which led to its door of entrance. We then descended a narrow staircase to the oil-cellar, a handsome vaulted room, where we found a range of immense vases which formerly contained oil, but which now, on being struck, returned a mournful hollow sound. There was nothing else to be seen : there were no books here; but taking the candle from the hands of one of the brethren (for they all wandered in after us, having nothing else to do) I discovered a narrow low door, and, pushing it open, entered into a small closet, vaulted with stone, which was filled to the depth of two feet or more with the loose leaves of the Syriac manuscripts which now form one of the chief treasures of the British Museum. Here I remained for some time, turning over the leaves, and digging into the mass of loose vellum pages; by which exertions I raised such a cloud of fine pungent dust, that the monks relieved each other in holding our only candle at the door, while the dust made us sneeze incessantly as we turned over the scattered leaves of vellum. I had extracted four books, the only ones I could find which seemed to be tolerably perfect, when the monks who were struggling in the corner pulled out a great big manuscript, of a brown and musty appearance, and of prodigious weight, which was tied together with a cord. ‘Here is a box,’ exclaimed the two monks, who were nearly choked with the dust; ‘we have found a box, and a heavy one too.” “A box,” shouted the blind abbot, who was standing in the outer darkness of the oilcellar, ‘a box! Where is it? Bring it out! bring out the box Heaven be praised 1 we have found a treasure Lift up the box! Pull out the box.’ ‘A box a box | Sandouk’ sandouk!’ shouted all the monks, in various tones of voice. “Now then, let us see the box! bring it out to the light,” they cried. “What can there be in it?’ and they all came to help, and carried it away up stairs, the blind abbot following them to the outer door, leaving me to retrace my steps as I could with the volumes which I had dug out of their literary grave.” (pp. 84–86.)

“In due time the abbot and his companion came to me. “You found no treasure,” I remarked, “but I am a lover of old books; let me have the big one which you thought was a box, and the others which I have brought out with me, and I will give you a certain number of piastres in exchange. By this arrangement we shall be both of us contented, for the money will be

useful to you, and I shall be glad to carry away the books as a memorial of my visit to this interesting spot.’”

The bargain was soon struck—the treasures were secured and removed, and have recently been purchased by the Lords of the Treasury and presented to the British Museum. Sixty of the volumes, which have been put together with great labour and perseverance by Mr. Cureton, exhibit dates the most ancient in existence, from the year 464 down to 1292; of these, twelve were transcribed in the sixth century, the first in 509 and the last in the year 600. The whole number of manuscripts, perfect and imperfect, obtained in this monastery, amounts to about a thousand volumes; a collection which adds considerably to the importance of the national library. The most remarkable of this collection is a Syrian manuscript of the date of 411, written in Ur of the Chaldees, and containing three treatises—one of Eusebius, one of St. Clement, and the third of Titus, Bishop of Bosra in Arabia. The discovery of two other manuscripts in this curious library, of the Syrian Epistles of Ignatius, all of them being more ancient by many centuries than any Greek or Latin versions now in existence, has enabled Mr. Cureton to detect many spurious passages which had been interpolated in the works of that Father, and to restore to their genuine state the writings of one of the most famous of the disciples and companions of St. John.

The Nitrian monasteries furnished Mr. Curzon with but few other literary treasures. Out of the multitude which lay scattered in this desert, so famous in the ammals of monastic history, only four monasteries remain entire. The best apology for a life of asceticism is perhaps to be found in the history of Paul the Hermit, who was the first of that class of whom any distinct account is given in the Christian church. A native of lower Thebais, learned, gentle, and full of love to God, he had a large estate left him by his parents, when he was but fifteen years of age. When the fierce persecution broke out under Decius, Paul, apprized of the base design of his sister’s husband to betray him, fled to the desert, and thenceforward remained secluded from the habitations of men. Having found in deep retirement that communion with God so difficult to maintain amidst the struggles and corruptions of the world and of the Church, he forgot, it may be, the duties which he owed to his brethren in the absorbing pursuit of his own spiritual good; or it may be supposed that, by his privations and self renunciation, he meant to raise a protest against the sins of the times. The state of the Church at this period was awfully bad. Every one, says Cyprian, sought exclusively the enlargement of his possessions ! Pastors and deacons forgot their duties; works of mercy were neglected; luxury and effeminacy prevailed; frauds and deceit were practised among brethren ; Christians united in marriage with unbelievers; men despised their superiors, railed against each other, conducted quarrels with malice; bishops gave them

[ocr errors]
selves up to secular pursuits, they deserted their flocks, they travelled to distant provinces in search of pleasure and gain, they gave no assistance to the needy, they were insatiable in their thirst for money. God visited them for these things, and chastised them with a rod.—Well might Paul adopt any means which he conceived to be the best, of protesting against such enormities. The same apology, which served as some excuse for the conduct of Paul, cannot be pleaded for his townsman Anthony, at a later period. The Church was then at rest, and in some degree purified in the furnace of affliction. Anthony, without apparent motive, and governed mainly by tumultuous impulses, devoted himself to the establishment of monastic communities; and at length found himself attended by no less than five thousand followers. The movement thus originating in Egypt, extended itself into other countries. Before the close of the fourth century, the zeal of Basil imparted form and stability to the monastic institution in Greece; and, in Italy, it received a similar patronage from Athanasius. In Egypt, at this time, the spiritual progeny of monasticism, which had become popular in other nations, amounted to a hundred thousand men. Two centuries after Anthony, Benedict arose. The previous corruptions of monastic societies greatly facilitated his progress. By the rule of Benedict, of every twenty-four hours of the day, nearly half were to be invariably assigned to devotion and severe labours. It may, therefore, be easily seen how little time remained for study and mental improvement. And we can readily enter into the feelings of the venerable Bede when he speaks of having composed his voluminous work amid “the innumerable restraints of monastic service.” The spirit of asceticism, though in different degrees, belongs to every age. It is to be found no less among the Eastern devotees, than amongst the Therapeutae of Judea, the Pythagoreans of Egypt,and the Platonists of Greece. Nor is this a matter of wonder. It appeals to the vanity of the mind. It secures a reputation for sanctity. To the plebeian it holds forth improvement in his temporal condition. The mind embittered by disappointment, may here indulge its spleen and solace its griefs; and even those who make the greatest sacrifice of wealth and honor are flattered by the possession of another species of authority and distinction. We are told, indeed, with regard to these establishments, that they confer political advantages in giving refuge and protection to the victims of lawless tyranny; that they supply gratuitous ministration to the spiritual wants of the surrounding neighbourhood; that their inhabitants often exhibit the noblest examples of devotion and self-sacrifice. Mr. Hallam calls them the “green spots in the wilderness where the feeble and persecuted find refuge,” and exclaims, “How must this right [of sanctuary] have enhanced the veneration for religious institutions. How gladly must the victims of internal warfare have turned their eyes from the baronial castle, CHRIST. Observ. No. 146.

the dread and scourge of the neighbourhood, to these venerable walls within which not even the clamour of arms could be heard to disturb the chant of holy men, and the sacred service of the altar.” And, with regard to the subject which gave rise to our observations, “the cloister,” says another, “is not the tomb and charnel-house of learning, but its asylum in times of external gloom and trouble, till a more genial sun arises, in which the germ of science and literature may expand and blossom. It has preserved the records of divine truth, the classic models of antiquity, the treasures of ancient philosophy, and almost all we possess of historical information has been preserved there; nor were the Muses, with their attendant arts, idle in the cloister.” Of all these benefits we are not unmindful; but, giving them their full weight, we must nevertheless believe, that in a religious point of view (and such is the real character in which they are to be regarded), and in securing or promulgating the principles of the Gospel, monastic institutions have been not only essentially defective, but radically mischievous. Their contributions to real knowledge have been comparatively small. And it may be affirmed that the low servility and heartless selfishness of character, which is apt to be engendered by monastic observances, render a monk one of the worst qualified of human beings to discharge the duties of a faithful instructor towards the men of his own generation.

“It is difficult,” Mr. Curzon says, “to understand by what process of reasoning they could have persuaded themselves that, by living in this useless, inactive way, they were leading holy lives. They wore out the rocks with their knees in prayer; the cliffs resounded with their groans; some wore chains and iron girdles round their emaciated forms; but they did nothing whatever to benefit their kind. Still,” he adds, (though we think the Fakeers of India, and other devotees, may put in their claim for similar commendation) “there is something grand in the strength and constancy of their faith. They left their homes and riches, and the pleasures of this world, to retire to these dens and caves of the earth, to be subjected to cold and hunger, pain and death, that they might do honour to their God after their own fashion, and trusting that, by mortifying the body in this world, they should gain happiness for the soul in the world to come.” (pp. 260, 261.)

Macarius of Alexandria, who established himself in a solitary cell on the borders of the Natron lakes about the year 373, was the chief and pattern of all the recluses of Nitria. His austerities were the subject of special commendation by the writers of the dark ages.

“It is related that a traveller having given St. Macarius a bunch of grapes, he sent it to another brother, who sent it to a third; and, at last, the grapes, having passed through the hands of some hundreds of hermits, came back to St. Macarius, who rejoiced at such a proof of the abstinence of his brethren, but refused to eat of them himself. This same Saint having thoughtlessly killed a gnat which was biting him, he was so unhappy at what he had done, that to make amends for his inadvertency, and to increase his mortifications, he retired to the marshes of Scete, where there were flies whose powerful stings were sufficient to pierce the hide of a wild boar; here he remained six months, till his body was so much disfigured that his brethren, on his return, only knew him by the sound of his voice.” (p. 76.)

[ocr errors]
What puerilities, to say the least, are these; but, in truth, what libels upon the character of a God who will have all things to be richly enjoyed; who created man to be the delighted inhabitant of a world covered with the evidence of his love and compassion.

Mr. Curzon met, near the monastery of Suriani, with some Abyssinian monks, who appeared to be genuine followers of this dismal fanatic. They were tall, thin, black, ascetic-looking men, of a most original aspect and costume, types of another age, and of a state of things the opposite to European. They were all clothed in tunics of leather, with bare legs, and their bo. dies were profusely smeared with castor oil;

“True disciples of the great Macarius, the founder of these secluded momasteries, and excellently calculated to figure in that grim chorus of his own invention, or which, at least, is called after his name, “La danse Macabre,’ known to us by the appellation of the “Dance of Death.’” (p. 91.)

Before taking leave of Egypt, there is but one incident of travel which we will take leave to notice, as it refers to a fact in natural history which Mr. Curzon was fortunate enough to witness; and which, although it is mentioned so long ago as the times of Herodotus, has not, as he believes, been often observed since. It refers to the crocodile and its guardian bird, and is thus described.

“I had always a strong predilection for crocodile shooting, and had destroyed several of these dragons of the waters. On one occasion I saw, a long way off, a large one, twelve or fifteen feet long, lying asleep under a perpendicular bank, about ten feet high, on the margin of the river. I stopped the boat at some distance; and, noting the place as well as I could, I took a circuit inland, and came down cautiously to the top of the bank, whence, with a heavy rifle, I made sure of my ugly game. I had already cut off his head in imagination, and was considering whether it should be stuffed with its mouth open or shut. I peeped over the bank. There he was, within ten feet of the sight of the rifle. I was on the point of firing at his eye, when I observed that it was attended by a bird called a ziczac. i. is of the plover species, of a greyish colour, and as large as a small pigeon.

“The bird was walking up and down close to the crocodile’s nose. I suppose I moved, for suddenly it saw me, and instead of flying away, as any respectable bird would have done, he jumped up about a foot from the ground, screamed ‘Ziczac ziczac 1 with all the powers of his voice, and dashed himself against the crocodile’s face two or three times. The great beast started up, and immediately spying his danger, made a jump into the air, and dashing into the water, with a splash which covered me with mud, he dived into the river and disappeared. The ziczac, to my increased admiration, proud apparently of having saved his friend, remained walking up and down, uttering his cry, as I thought, with an exulting voice, and standing every now and then on the tips of his toes in a conceited manner, which made me justly angry with his impertinence. After having waited in vain for some time to see whether the crocodile would come out again, I got up from the bank where I was lying, threw a clod of earth at the ziczac, and came back to the boat, feeling some consolation for the loss of my game in having witnessed a circumstance, the truth of which has been disputed by several writers on matural history.” (pp. 138–140.)

The monasteries which Mr. Curzon visited in the Holy Land were the Latin convent of St. Salvador, which belongs to a community of Franciscan friars; the Greek monastery, which adjoins the church of the Holy Sepulchre; and that of St. Sabba, near the Dead Sea. To the first he had letters of introduction from two Cardinals, which he presumed would ensure a warm and hospitable reception, and where he expected to enjoy all the comforts and luxuries of European civilization, after his weary journey over the desert from Egypt. But he soon discovered his mistake ; for the monks treated him and his companions as the dust under their feet. They were put into a wretched hole in the Casa Nuova, a house belonging to the monks near the convent, in which there was scarcely room even for their baggage. It was probably owing to their being heretics that they were not better received. Fortunately they had their own beds, cooking utensils, and carpets, so that they soon made themselves comfortable in the bare vaulted rooms which were allotted to them; for which, however, they had to pay handsomely. At St. Sabba he was allowed to purchase three manuscripts; and at a subsequent period, seven others, among which was an Octoteuch of the ninth or tenth century, which he esteems one of the most rare and precious volumes in his possession. Mr. Curzon describes a horrible scene which he witnessed at the exhibition of the sacred fire, that mendacious and scandalous miracle of the Greek Church at Jerusalem. On that occasion every window and cornice, and every place where a man’s foot could stand, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, appeared to be crammed with people. In consequence of the crowd, and the number of lamps, the heat was excessive. Seventeen thousand pilgrims were said to be in Jerusalem, almost the whole of whom had come for no other reason than to see the sacred fire. Ibrahim Pasha sat in the gallery, on a divan, which the monks had prepared for him. At about one o’clock the Patriarch went into the Holy Sepulchre, and the door was closed. The people, who were worn out with standing in such a crowd all night, had become furious at the delay. As the time approached for the exhibition of the holy fire, they could not contain themselves for joy; their agitation was extreme, and they screamed aloud; the dense mass of people shook to and fro like a field of corn in the wind. “There is a round hole in one part of the chapel over the sepulchre, out of which the holy fire is given ; and up to this the man who had agreed to pay the highest sum for this honour, was conducted by a strong guard of soldiers. There was silence for a minute; and then a light appeared out of the tomb, and the happy pilgrim received the holy fire from the Patriarch within. It consisted of a bundle of thin wax candles, lit, and inclosed in an iron frame, to prevent their being torn asunder and put out in the crowd; for a furious battle commenced immediately; every one being so eager to obtain the holy light, that one man put out the candle of his neighbour in trying to light his own. Soon you saw the lights increasing in all directions, every one having lit his candle from the holy flame; the chapels, the galleries, and every corner where a candle could possibly be displayed, immediately appeared to be in a blaze. The people in their frenzy put the bunches of lighted tapers to their faces, hands, and breasts, to purify themselves from their sins…. In a

short time the smoke of the candles obscured everything in the place, and I could see it rolling in great volumes out at the aperture at the top of the dome. The smell was terrible; and three unhappy wretches, overcome by heat and bad air, fell from the upper range of galleries, and were dashed to picces on the heads of the people below. One poor Armenian lady, seventeen years of age, died where she sat, of heat, thirst, and fatigue.” (pp. 201–203.)

Ibrahim Pasha now left the Church; his numerous guards making a way for him by main force. He narrowly escaped with his life; for he was so pressed upon by the crowd on all sides, —and, as it was said, attacked by several of them,–that it was only by the greatest exertions of his suite, several of whom were killed, that he gained the outer court. He fainted more than once in the struggle; and some of his attendants at last had to cut a way for him with their swords through the dense ranks of the frantic pilgrims. The soldiers made a way also for Mr. Curzon and his friends across the church. He proceeds with his horrible narrative:—

“I got as far as the place where the Virgin is said to have stood during the Crucifixion, when I saw a number of people lying one on another all about this part of the church, and as far as I could see towards the door. I made my way between them as well as I could, till they were so thick that there was actually a great heap of bodies on which I trod. It then suddenly struck me they were all dead. I had not perceived this at first, for I thought they were only very much fatigued with the ceremonies, and had lain down to rest themselves there; but when I came to so great a heap of bodies, I looked down at them, and saw that sharp, hard appearance of the face, which is never to be mistaken. Many of them were quite black with suffocation; and farther on were others all bloody, and covered with the brains and entrails of those who had been trodden to pieces by the crowd. Every one was doing his utmost to escape. The guards outside, frightened at the rush from within, thought that the Christians wished to attack them, and the confusion soon grew into a battle. The soldiers with their bayonets killed numbers of fainting wretches, and the walls were spattered with blood and brains of men who had been felled like oxen with the butt-ends of the soldiers’ muskets. Every one struggled to defend himself, or to get away; and in the melée all who fell were immediately trampled to death by the rest…. I was carried on by the press till I came near the door, where all were fighting for their lives. Here, seeing certain destruction before me, I made every endeavour to get back. An officer of the Pasha’s, who by his star was a colonel, or bin bashee, equally alarmed with myself, was also trying to return ; he caught hold of my cloak, or bournouse, and pulled me down on the body of an old man who was breathing out his last sigh. As the officer was pressing me to the ground we wrestled together among the dying and the dead with the energy of despair. 1 struggled with this man till I pulled him down, and happily got again upon my legs, (I afterwards found that he never rose again), and scrambling over a pile of corpses, I made my way back into the body of the church….The dead were lying in heaps even upon the stone of unction; and I saw full four hundred wretched people, dead and living, heaped promiscuously one upon another, in some places, above five feet high.” (pp. 203–205.)

The precise number that perished is not known. Three hundred were reported to have been carried out of the gates to their burial places next morning. Two hundred were seriously injured, many of whom probably died; and it is supposed that others were buried in the courts and gardens of the city by their surviving friends. It seems strange that so bare-faced a device as that of the sacred fire should be tolerated in these more enlightened times, but it has its parallel in the blood of Januarius at Naples. The Pasha seemed aware of its absurdity; and as a punishment for the misfortunes which had been the consequence of the blasphemous imposition and juggling of the Greek Patriarch, the money which he had received from the deluded pilgrims passed into the coffers of the Pasha’s treasury. It had been well if its falsehood had been publicly exposed, and a stop put to such an impious imposition for the future. The next scene of Mr. Curzon’s exploration of monasteries was in Albania. That country was in a state of great disturbance at the time; and he obtained a letter from the Vizier of Yamina to the chief man in Mezzovo, authorizing him to supply Mr. Curzon with an escort of soldiers. By a singular coincidence this letter fell into the hands of a robber chief, who, however, took our traveller under his protection, and afforded him better security by a guard of klephti than he could have received from any regular force. Of the twenty-four monasteries which were perched on the tops of very tall, thin, needle-like rocks, at Meteora, seven still remain. The travellers had to fire a gun near the base of the rocks, in order to attract attention. Their ascent to the summit of the perpendicular cliff was two hundred and twenty-two feet, either by means of a rope attached to a capstan, which was worked by twelve brawny monks, or by climbing a series of suspicious ladders, suspended by wooden pegs on the face of the precipice.—The library in the monastery of Barlaam contains about a thousand volumes; chiefly, however, printed books. The only manuscript in it of value was a copy of the Gospels of the eleventh century, which they refused to part with; for though the monks cannot read either the Hellenic or ancient Greek, they regarded their books with a certain degree of awe for their antiquity and incomprehensibility. In the great monastery of Meteora, Mr. Curzon met with a grievous disappointment. He was allowed to purchase two splendid mamuscripts of the Gospels, and the Agoumenos pocketed the gold with the sincerest satisfaction; but on a quarrel arising among the monks as to the division of the spoil, the money was restored to him. On hearing the decision of the Agoumenos, he says:

“To my great sorrow I was obliged to receive it back, and to give up the two beautiful manuscripts which I had already looked upon as the chief ornaments of my library in England. My bag was brought forward, and when the books were extracted from it, I sat down on a stone in the court-yard, and for the last time turned over the gilded leaves, and admired the ancient and splendid illuminations of the larger manuscript, the monks standing round me as I looked at the blue cypress trees, and green and gold peacocks, and intricate arabesques, so characteristic of the best times of Byzantine art. Many of the pages bore a great resemblance to the painted windows of the earlier Norman cathedrals of Europe. It was a o old book. I laid it down upon the stone beside me, and placed the little volume with its curious silver binding on the top of it; and it was with a sigh that I left them there with the sun shining on the curious silver ornaments.” (pp. 283, 284.)

On his return to terra firma, which the ill-humour of the

monks at the windlass rendered perilous, he was received with open arms by his affectionate protectors, who had taken a great fancy to him, and who handed him out of his net with many extravagant screeches of welcome. When informed by the servants of the recent disappointment,

“‘What,’ cried they, “would they not let you take the books? Stop a bit, we will soon get them for you!’ And away they ran to the series of oil; which hung down another part of the precipice; they would have been up in a minute, for they climb like cats; but by dint of running after them, and shouting, we at length got them to come back… After all, what an interesting event it would have been—what a standard anecdote in bibliomania history— if I had let my friendly thieves have their own way, and we had stormed the monastery, broken open the secret door of the library, pitched the old librarian over the rocks, and marched off in triumph with a gorgeous manuscript under each arm Indeed I must say that, under such aggravating circumstances, it required a great exercise of forbearance not to do so; and in the good old times many a castle has been attacked, and many a town besieged and pillaged, for much slighter causes of offence than those which I had to complain of.” (pp. 285,286.)

On this same day, the protection of his Palicari guards proved of great service to him ; for as he was travelling in advance of his party, a man jumped out of a thicket and seized his horse’s bridle, at the same time drawing a pistol from his belt. His men, hearing the scuffle, soon came up.

“‘Hallo!’ said one of them; ‘is it you? You must not attack this gentleman. He is our friend; he is one of us.” “What,” said the man who had stopped me ; ‘is that you, Mahommed 7 Is that you, Hassan? What are you doing here? How is this? Is this your friend? I thought he was a Frank?” In reply, they explained the kind of brotherhood we had entered into; where we had been, and where we were going, and all about it.”

Their friend had evidently made a great impression on them. When their period of duty had expired, and they were about to part, L

“‘Why won’t you come with us?” said they. “Don’t go back to live in a confined, stupid town, to sit all day in a house and look out of the window. Go back with us into the mountains, where we know every pass, every rock, and every waterfall: you should command us; we would get some more men together; we will go wherever you like, and a rare jolly life we will lead.” ‘Gentlemen,” said I, ‘I take your kind offers as highly complimentary to me; I am proud to think that I have gained so high a place in your estimation.’”

And with thanks to their Captain, who had given him such gallant and faithful guards, Mr. Curzon took leave of his klephti friends, and shortly of Albania.

In the spring of the year 1837, three or four years after his monastic visitations in Egypt, Palestine, and Albania, Mr. Curzon put into execution a project which he had long entertained of examining the libraries in the monasteries of Mount Athos. He was armed with a firman from the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, recommending him to all whom he should visit, and requiring them to lend themselves readily to all his wants and desires. All the monks of Mount Athos follow the rule of St.

[ocr errors]
Basil; indeed all Greek monks are of this order. Their discipline is very severe. They never eat meat: they have fish on feast-days; but on fast-days, which are above a hundred in the year, they are not allowed any animal substance, or even oil. Their prayers occupy eight hours in the day, and about two during the night, so that they never enjoy a real night’s rest. They never sit down during their services, which are of great length; but are allowed to rest their arms on the elbows of a sort of stall without seats; and at other times they lean on a crutch. In the great monastery of St. Laura there are a hundred and twenty monks, and room for many more. In this monastery every thing belongs to the monks in common. Mr. Curzon, therefore, did not attempt to buy anything there. In that of Caracalla, however, things were very different. The monastery is one of those over which the Agoumenos has absolute control; and he was then repairing one side of the court, and rebuilding a set of rooms which had been destroyed during the Greek war. In a dark closet near the entrance of the church, our traveller found about four or five hundred volumes, lying on the ground, and upon some broken-down shelves. He picked up a single leaf of a very ancient Greek manuscript of St. Matthew’s Gospel; and he says: “As I had found it impossible to purchase any manuscripts at St. Laura, I feared that the same would be the case in other monasteries; however, I made bold to ask for this single leaf as a thing of small value. “Certainly,” said the Agoumenos, “What do you want it for?’ My servant suggested that perhaps it might be useful to cover some jam pots, or vases Öf preserves, which I had at home. “Oh s” said the Agoumenos, “take some more;’ and, without more ado, he seized upon an unfortunate thick quarto manuscript of the Acts and Epistles, and drawing out a knife, cut out an inch thickness of leaves at the end before I could stop him. It proved to be the Apocalypse, which concluded the volume, but which is rarely found in early Greek manuscripts of the Acts: it was of the eleventh century. I ought perhaps to have slain the tomecide for his dreadful act of profanation, but his generosity reconciled me to his guilt, so I pocketed the Apocalypse, and asked him if he would sell me any of the other books, as he did not appear to set any particular value upon them. ‘Malista, certainly,’ he replied, “how many will you have 7 . They are of no use to me; and as I am in want of money to complete my building, I shall be very glad to turn them to some account.” After a good deal of conversation, finding the Agoumenos so accommodating, and so desirous to part with the contents of his dark and dusty closet, I arranged that I would leave him for the present, and, after I had made the tour of the other monasteries, would return to Caracalla, and take up my abode there until I could hire a vessel, or make some other arrangement for my return to Constantinople. Satisfactory as this arrangement was, I nevertheless wished to make sure of what I had already got, so I packed them up carefully in the great saddle-bags, to my extreme delight.” (pp. 350,351.) In many of the monasteries Mr. Curzon found large libraries, but no disposition to part with the books. At Xenophou, however, he procured, after hard bargaining, three valuable manuscripts for twenty-two pounds; one of them a splendid book, said to be in the autograph of the Emperor Alexius Comenus. His most successful enterprise, however, was in the monastery of St. Paul. He was there received with cheerful hospitality, and treated with much respect. He there saw a folio of the Gospels, in the ancient Bulgarian language, in uncial letters. This manuscript was quite full of illuminations from beginning to end. He had seen no book like it any where in the Levant. He describes himself, in true bibliomanic language, as almost tumbling off the steps on which he stood, on the discovery of so extraordinary a volume. He saw that the books were taken care of, and did not much like to ask whether the owners would part with them. After walking about the monastery with the monks, as Mr. Curzon was going away, the Agoumenos said he wished he had anything which he could present to him as a memorial of his visit to the convent of St. Paul.

“On this a brisk fire of reciprocal compliments ensued, and I observed that I should like to take a book. “Oh by all means,’ he said; “we make no use of the old books, and should be glad if you would accept one.” We returned to the library; and the Agoumenos took out one at a hazard, as you might take a brick or a stone out of a pile, and presented it to me. Quoth I, “If you don’t care what book it is that you are so good as to give me, let me take one which pleases me ;’ and so saying, I took down the illuminated folio of the Bulgarian Gospels, and I could hardly believe I was awake when the Agoumenos gave it me into my hands. Perhaps the greatest piece of impertinence of which I was ever guilty, was when I asked to buy another; but that they insisted upon giving me also ; so I took the folio of the Gospels in uncial letters, with fine illuminations at the beginning of each Gospel, and a large and curious portrait of a patriarch at the end; all the stops were dots of gold; several words also were written in gold. It was a noble manuscript. I felt almost ashamed at accepting this last book; but who could resist it, knowing that both were utterly valueless to the monks, and were not saleable in the bazaar at Constantinople, Smyrna, Salonica, or any neighbouring city? However, before I went away, as a salve to my conscience, I gave some money to the Church.” (p. 387.)

After Mr. Curzon had completed his circuit of the monasteries, he returned, as he had promised, to Caracalla, where he was allowed to make his own selection of manuscripts to his entire satisfaction. Retaining only sufficient money for the expenses of his voyage to the Asiatic Castle of the Dardanelles, he gave the Agoumenos all his remaining gold, and in return was provided with an old wooden chest, in which he stowed away several goodly folios; for the saddle-bags, although distended to their utmost limits, did not suffice to carry all the great manuscripts and ponderous volumes that were now added to his store.

On the peninsula of Mount Athos, or Monte Santo, there are no less than twenty-one monasteries subjected to different regulations. No female animal of any kind is admitted within the sacred precincts of the peninsula; and since the days of Constantine, the soil of the Holy Mountain has never been contaminated by the tread of a woman’s foot. Mr. Curzon had some conversation with a monk who arrived from one of the outlying farms, at the monastery of Simopetra, which was founded by St. Simon the Anchorite. He was a magnificent-looking man of about thirty years of age, with large eyes, and long black hair and beard. His parents had been murdered, he was told, in

CHRIST. Observ. No. 146.

some village of Roumelia, where he was born. He had been taken as a child, and educated in one of the monasteries of the Holy Mountain; and there he had passed his whole life. This he said was the case with very many other monks. He did not remember his mother; he did not seem quite sure that he ever had one. He had never seen a woman ; nor had he any idea what sort of things women were, or what they looked like. He asked Mr. Curzon whether they resembled the pictures of the Panagia, the Holy Virgin, which hung in every church. The monasteries in the Levant possess considerable interest, as exhibiting the most ancient specimens extant of domestic architecture. They are all constructed in that style which is called Byzantine. In ordinary situations, they resemble a small village, built mostly without much regard to any symmetrical plan, around a church, the roof of which is covered either with one dome or five. All the buildings are surrounded by a high strong wall, built as a fortification, to protect the brotherhood within. The windows are always very small, often not larger than loop-holes, with semicircular tops. They have tall square towers or keeps, built for the defence of the monasteries, not as belfries, but purely as fortresses. These towers are arched in every story, and have embattled parapets on the summit. Their churches, which are small, are built in the form of a Greek cross; and in this respect differ from the earlier Christian churches, which were not cruciform, and sclaom had transepts, and which were not built with reference to any points of the compass. And one of the most interesting circumstances connected with these Eastern churches, to us Protestants, is that the communion table is not called the altar, but the holy table, and that the Communion is given before it, as with us, and in both kinds. We trust that better days are approaching for the Eastern Church, which has so long and, in many instances effectually, maintained a protest against the errors of the papacy. Corrupt indeed it has become, and deeply sunk in ignorance; but it is not, we know, beyond the reach of the mercy and power of God. We ourselves supply an example of a fallen Church recalled to life, and to Scriptural purity. The religion of Christ flourished, we have reason to believe, in Britain in the times of the Apostles; and His Church was established here in its integrity and in all its beautiful proportions. Bishops, priests, and deacons here discharged their respective duties, and their work was acknowledged of God. When this heavenly plant was well nigh rooted up by the persecuting hand of Rome, we were reduced, perhaps, to a lower condition than the ancient Churches of the Levant are at the present time. Why, then, need we despair of an effectual resuscitation of these churches? Even now, there appears to be a “shaking among the dry bones.” A native of Asia tells us, “After travelling through a great part of Syria, I was satisfied that the people are awake to the cause of education, and that a great thirst for knowledge exists everywhere; so much so, that

[ocr errors]
in every town and village the natives are struggling to erect schools; and Bibles, New Testaments, Tracts, and elementary books are most thankfully received. The clergy universally are eager to possess the Word of God; and I cannot help believing that a brighter day is dawning upon Syria, and that God’s promises are about to be accomplished. I was cheered in finding here and there some devout and pious people among the ancient Asiatic Christians; so true is it that God has preserved to Himself true witnesses in the midst of ignorance and corruption: and it is a great mistake to suppose that these poor Eastern Christians have all fallen down before Baal.” (See “A Voice from Lebanon,” by Asaad Y. Kayat.) Let us hope and entreat that God may, in his infinite mercy, raise up from among them some mighty Reformers, who, strong in His might, may go forth to the restoration of these prostrate churches. The light which first streamed from the East, will find its natural residence there. And there is something cheering in the thought that, in any assistance we may endeavour to render these nations, the act is that of children repaying the debt of obligation to the parent. May all be united in the band of a common brotherhood to the great Head and Father of the Church. And now for a few words on the style in which this book is composed. Some years ago, books of travels were not unlike the journeys of their authors, dull and slow. But now that we live in an age of express trains, electric telegraphs, and transatlantic steam navigation, it was fit also that a change should come over the art of description. And truly it has come. Long sentences and laboured reflections are abandoned. Short, brisk periods follow one another with a smartness like the whiffs of steam from the chimney of a locomotive. Nor do we desire to complain of the alteration. Human nature would have sunk exhausted under the perusal of the countless journals of Eastern tourists without some such alleviation. But, unhappily, it is not every one who can write brilliantly at will. There are divers classes under which works pretending to brilliancy may be arranged. First, we have the spontaneous vivacity which flows from a clean heart and a cheerful spirit, and which is almost priceless. Then we have the more laboured efforts of artificial writers, whose cumbrous attempts at amusement resemble AEsop’s beast of burden, imitating the sportiveness of the lapdog. Such book-makers, however, so long as they are harmless, are of a far higher grade than the writers whose wit (in despair, we suppose, of presenting any other attraction) ventures upon forbidden ground. It was the saying of a great critic, that while a religious man would scruple to parody Scripture because it was wrong, a wit would scorn to do it because it was easy. The laws of language make it evident, on the least consideration, that an Oriental style, abounding in metaphors, must, when the words are used in a modern and literal sense, afford thousands of apparent paronomasias and witticisms ready made. And if it

be true that there is no greater cause of visible emotion than the unexpected juxtaposition of widely different ideas, it is obvious that the use of words of habitual sacredness in a ludicrous manner, must be the readiest possible way of exciting a smile in every case where it is not suppressed on the instant, by better habits and feelings.

“It seemed so like a sin it pleased the more.”

Nay, there are worse men still—men whose mocking laughter is detestable—whose brilliancy is born of corruption, like the lurid vapours of a charnel-house. We say not, at present, whether there be any such writers as these last in our language, and in our generation. Mr. Curzon, at all events, stands quite clear of them. His style of composition, however, has betrayed us into this digression. We could wish that his facetiae, which lend on the whole a great charm to his book, were somewhat less perpetual, and trenched less upon matters which ought to be approached in another spirit. We could have wished for a graver and more Christian tone, when he visited Jerusalem; a tone which we should venture to hope was more in harmony with his real feelings. Writing some time after his travels were concluded, and when the freshness of their impressions was worn off, we suspect our author to have laboured under a morbid dread of producing a stupid book; and to have endeavoured, at all hazards, to give a lively turn to all parts of his narrative. This is a mistake, though not an uncommon one. We hope there is some room to doubt whether Mr. Curzon really plied the monks with his wine as strenuously as he says, and are sure he must feel it deep matter for self-reproach, if he really signalized the visit of a Protestant Christian to the high places of Eastern devotion, by tempting the recluses to indecorous excesses. We desire to give him the benefit of all these charitable hopes and doubts, and we trust that, in any future researches after sacred MSS. of which he may give the interesting narrative to the world, he will not be ashamed to let it appear that he values them as a Christian, not less than as a biblomaniac.

[ocr errors][merged small]
Sermons and Essays on the Apostolical Age. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of University College, Oxford. Parker, 1847.

It is a harmless, and perhaps not a wholly uninstructive, fancy to conceive of the mind of Europe at the present day, as subjected, under the excitement of increased knowledge and civilization, to a process resembling that subtle analysis which the ingenuity of Faraday applies to material substances. The great forces by which the mind is impelled or controlled, seem, in crises like the present, to be suddenly disengaged; and, their balance being destroyed, to become singly apparent, like the liberated elements of chemistry. It is observable too, that, as upon the decomposition of material bodies, the forces set free manifest a polar or opposite character—so, in the intellectual disturbance of which we speak, minds appear to be driven into the widest and most opposite extremes. Are we desired to exemplify this statement? It is perhaps impossible to find a more striking example than is afforded by the two pairs of brothers who have filled so large a space of late in the eye of the theological world. All of them are men gifted, though in very different degrees, with more than ordinary talents. All of them have been brought under the stimulus of a high degree of mental culture; all are persons who, at one period or another, have been honoured sons of the University of Oxford. In the case of either pair of these brothers, the event has been strangely similar. One in each of the pairs has displayed a speculative, and eventually sceptical, tendency of mind; while the other has appeared to cultivate that excessive habit of belief, or rather of assent, which glories in the very deficiency of evidence, and takes credit, like a true anchorite, in proportion to the meagreness and indifferent quality of its sustenance. The particular dispositions of mind, commonly described as the inclination to believe too much and the inclination to believe too little, which are those more especially illustrated in these instances, are doubtless the most important of all the conflicting tendencies presented by our age. For if we extend our view from individuals to nations, we shall but observe like causes at work. Romanism and Rationalism—the spirit which produces the Ecstatica and the Dolorosa, and the spirit which gives birth to the theories of Strauss in Germany, and to the Unitarianism of Channing in America—these are the two mighty agents which are warring for the empire of Christendom. These are the forces which work more or less visibly in every great revolution of thought. As to the result of the conflict between these opposite tendencies in the coming generation, we confess ourselves to entertain little doubt. It is in the spirit of scepticism and infidelity that our children, if not ourselves, are likely to find the most formidable antagonists. Many of the leading spirits of the age will, it is to be feared, be found on that side. The attempt to impart a galvanic life to the departed Church system of the later Fathers has been indeed, for a time, marvellously successful. But we believe that its days are numbered. The socalled Via Media will not satisfy any longer. Those who, in the intellectual strife which is approaching, feel dissatisfied with the intelligent faith of Protestantism, will not stop short of the gates of Rome on the one hand, or of those true TvXav Adov which open to the dark abyss of doubt and scepticism on the other. And inasmuch as the practical temper of Englishmen, and other causes, have for a long period led to a strong repugnance in the national mind towards genuine Romanism, it is in the opposite direction that our chief danger appears to lie. Not indeed that the philosophical spirit of utter negation can ever be extensively prevalent in its pure form. Now and then it has embodied itself in a Pyrrho or a Hume; but on the whole it has been, in all ages and countries, a spirit “walking up and down, seeking rest and finding none.” It has troubled mankind by occasional glimpses, rather than found a settled residence among them. Least of all is it likely to find an abiding place among a people whose turn of mind is so little speculative, and whose habits are as active as our own. But then it is incalculable how much mischief it may effect, without reaching this point. The mind which denies the attainableness of positive truth, and the mind which, repelled by the difficulties of Biblical criticism, contents itself with gradually retiring from the study of the Bible, may differ much in a philosophical point of view. Yet the moral effect is as clearly, though not as hopelessly, injurious in the latter case as in the former. And this we are inclined to believe is the most probable form of our coming trial. It is not the obstinate unbelief of a depraved heart (though doubtless this will not be wanting) but the dark doubts of a tempted—perhaps an erring—yet certainly not a hardened mind—which should be looked for as the more general characteristic. And after saying this, it can hardly be needful to add that in our humble judgment knowledge, learning, much thought and yet more patience, are the means wherewith, in the spirit of earnest prayer for the influences of the Holy Spirit, this temper of mind must be met.* “Of some have compassion,” says St. Jude, “making a difference.” He is speaking of “the last time,” and his words might well be adopted as a rule for the ministers of Christ in dealing with minds thus tried among ourselves. Works on the inspiration of Scripture, and on the reconcilement of its apparent discrepancies, treatises on the laws of Prophetic Interpretation (as distinguished from those which merely propose to trace particular fulfilments past or anticipated)—these, with a laborious study of the sacred text itself, will, as it seems to us, shortly take the place, in the studies and publications of our more learned clergy, of discussions on Transubstantiation, or controversies on the construction of Rubrics. There is some one kind of literature which is the appropriate food of each generation. Vast stores of most valuable erudition have been brought to light by the ecclesiastical disputes of the last fifteen years, for which we feel most thankful, and we desire not to doubt that equal learning and thought will be forthcoming to do the appointed work of the next generation.

their own minds, they would find their

• Above all, let there be perfect candour. Let us beware of any approach to “lying for God” by ever denying the existence of a real difficulty. Is it not sometimes the case that men speak of a Scriptural argument as clear and convincing, when in truth, if they examined

meaning to be that its conclusion was noble and consolatory? This is an obvious stumbling-block to closer inquirers who are investigating real obscurities in the reasoning unperceived by the former.

Screen reader users: click this link for accessible mode. Accessible mode has the same essential features but works better with your reader.
Books
eBook – FREE
Get this book in print

AbeBooks
Find in a library
All sellers »
Front Cover
0 Reviews
Write review
The Christian Observer

About this book

Terms of Service
111 – 115

Page images
PDF
EPUB
The mention of the laborious study of Scripture leads naturally to the volume of Sermons before us. They exhibit much of this spirit. A tone of diligent research pervades the work. Nor are there wanting indications of those habits of deep and patient thought which eminently qualify the author for dealing with the questions of our age.

We are now speaking rather of the general character of the work, than of any particular opinions expressed in it. There are those, we are aware, who have found or sought reason to condemn it on the score not merely of the novelty, but the supposed heterodoxy of some of the opinions affirmed to be contained in it. But we think this verdict is pronounced upon insufficient evidence. Expressions indeed are now and then introduced upon which a hostile or prejudiced critic may fasten, and in which he may discover ground of serious complaint. But we are bound to say,that, wherever the great principles of Christianity are referred to by the author, he appears to us to speak the language of Scripture, and of the Church of which he is a member. We have no means of knowing what may be his opinions upon some of the subjects in which so strong an interest is felt by many of the ardent spirits of the age. Our business at present is with his published Sermons. And in them, it is but just to say, that we find no fundamental error. The task he has undertaken involves considerable difficulties. It is no easy task vividly to set forth the distinctive circumstances and capacities of the Apostles as men, without seeming to trench upon the truth that these men of God “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” Even the most cautious and least ambitious theological writers, when thus employed, do not wholly escape from what may be termed equivocal language; as may be seen, for example, in Mr. Hartwell Horne’s article on St. Mark’s Gospel, in Vol. IV. of his admirable work on the Scriptures. And yet, who suspects that laborious and valuable divine of heterodoxy? We give the following extract to prove that, on a subject with regard to which the strongest objections have been urged against Mr. Stanley, he employs the most unequivocal language.

“The prophets,” he says in one place, “were not less certainly inspired by God, because the vision of Messiah’s kingdom presented itself to them in the earthly images of their age and country. And in like manner the apostles of Christ were not less the heaven-sent lawgivers of the Christian world for ever, because they spoke the language, and breathed the atmosphere, and represented the feelings of a time which is past away. “What God hath joined, let no man put asunder. Let us contemplate them not merely as lifeless instruments, or empty shadows, but as “men of like passions with ourselves,” and we shall not be the less, but the more able to enter into the higher truth, that while Paul planted and Apollos watered, it was God that gave the increase; that how different soever were their individual gifts, it was the selfsame Spirit working in each of them severally as he would.” (p. 10.)

And again—

“In every part of Scripture there is this two-fold method of Divine instruction; not the message only, but the circumstances of its communication; not the matter only, but the form. It is to the latter alone that I have wished to confine myself as heretofore, so now; and although, in comparison with those who are employed in unfolding and applying the truths themselves, we may seem to be but as hewers of wood and drawers of water in the temple of God, yet it is surely a useful though an humble task to gather such lessons as we can from the time and circumstances under which these eternal truths were delivered. There have been, as we know, extraordinary exceptions when the two have been wholly disjoined, as when we are told that God through the voice of the dumb ass rebuked the madness of the Prophet, or that Caiaphas spake by Divine inspiration the words which even from Apostles had been hitherto withheld. But this is not the usual process; it is not through the unconscious agency of an irrational animal, or an apostate priest, but through the living words of his own holy Evangelists and Apostles, that God has caused his will to be known. To learn with what object and in what spirit these words were first uttered, is not all, but it surely is something; to place ourselves at the feet of our inspired instructors, and catch, so far as we may, the look, the emphasis, the feeling with which their lessons were accompanied, is surely a fitter posture for truly understanding them, than if we merely sit afar off and hear the sound of their voices as they come to us over the waste of so many centuries, borne indeed on the wings of a mighty rushing wind, but with no visible form on which our thoughts or imaginations can repose.” (p. 354.)

But we now turn more distinctly to the work before us. And here, the variety of topics, and the mass of matter crowded into a small space, would render it impossible, in a criticism necessarily of limited dimensions, to touch on any large number of the topics to which Mr. Stanley calls our attention. Our endeavour will be, to refer to such of them as appear to have the most general interest. The general subject of the work is an historical examination of the character and position of the three Apostles, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John. In the first Sermon, the author insists upon the advantage of the kind of criticism which he proposes to himself, as it bears on the evidence of Christianity; as an assistance in studying the apostolic writings; as a sanction to the unity of spirit among a variety of forms; as a proof of the Divine mission of the Apostles; and as supplying a practical example to all ages of the Church. After two essays on the traditionary character of the apostolic age, and the apostolical office (the last of which especially adverts to topics on which we are unwilling, from their importance, cursorily, or at present, to enter), the author proceeds, in the second Sermon, to investigate the history and circumstances of St. Peter; in the third, those of St. Paul; and in the fourth, those of St. John ; after which we have discussions on the Epistle of St. James, and on that addressed to the Hebrews. It will be inferred from this analysis—and the design is obvious in every part of the volume—that one of the leading desires of the author is to reproduce, with distinctness, before his own mind and the minds of his readers, the state of society and the phases of thought prevailing at the time when the Epistles of the New Testament were written. It is not our intention to follow him through the whole of his argument; but, having given a specimen of his mode of reasoning and writing, we shall be content to throw out a few suggestions which we address especially to his own candid consideration.

The following extract gives a fair illustration, both of the views of the author, and of his mode of presenting them; and herein he reminds us of his former master, Dr. Arnold. He considers that the Jewish opposition to Christianity may be divided into three periods:

1. “That ‘which coincides with the latter chapters of the Acts, from the 15th chapter to the end, and the six earliest Epistles of St. Paul, viz. those to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans.’”

The character of the conflict during this period is well worked out, but we have not space to extract the description, as it consists of well-known features.

2. “The period from the close of St. Paul’s Roman imprisonment to the fall of Jerusalem.”

“The great aim of the Judaizers hitherto had been to restrain, so to speak, the energies of Christianity within Jewish limits, chiefly on purely fanatical grounds, as has been before stated, partly also with something of the worldly prudence which formed at least one element in the speech of the chief priests, “lest the Romans should come and take away their place and nation.” Then, as on that more awful occasion, they thought it expedient that one man should die, and the whole nation perish not (John ii.49), they joined their unbelieving countrymen, in fear of the odium which they might incur from the extravagances of a rising sect, which threatened ‘to turn the world upside down, and to do contrary to the decrees of Caesar.” (Acts xvii. 6, 7.) But when, in proportion to the diffusion of Christianity and the recognition of its universal character, any such attempt became more and more hopeless, it is perfectly conceivable that the very same party should suddenly shift its ground, and that, instead of endeavouring to check the new religion, they should see that it was possible to use it as an engine for effecting their own purposes. The very fact, however, of this change of position, at once introduced elements which were either wholly new, or which, having been before subordinate, now rose to the surface of the movement. Christianity was now about to share the common lot of every great moral change which has ever taken place in human society, by containing amongst its advocates men who are morally the extreme opposites of each other, some being the really best and noblest of their kind, and others the vilest.”

Mr. Stanley here quotes the well-known passage of Arnold, in which he expands the assertion that “when the Church began to shew its wide range of action and its singular efficacy, all who longed to see the existing system overthrown, rallied themselves round its assailant.” Whence it came to pass that “those seemingly incongruous evils, superstition and scepticism, ferocity and sensual profligacy, when from any particular circumstances they turned against the monster society which had bred them, sheltered themselves under the name of Christianity, and became the heresies of the second period of the Apostolic age.” He then proceeds,

“The vastness and reality of the danger which this crisis threatened not only to the purity but (humanly speaking) to the very existence of the Christian Church, is evident both from heathen authors and from the apostolical

writings themselves. Far and near, the front rank of the Christian society, as it moved forward in its aggression on the heathem world, was pre-occupied

CHR1st. Observ. No. 146.

by those dreadful shapes of error and wickedness, which alone attracted the attention of the superficial observer, and which rendered the Christian name a bye-word amongst its enemies for licentiousness and fanaticism, prevented the wisest and best of Roman historians from seeing anything in the Christianity of the age of Nero, except a “hateful superstition, known only by the “shameful and abominable crimes’ of those who professed it. One point alone these heresies shared in common with the Church, and that was the intense—and the Scriptures justify us in adding, the preternatural energy of its operations. Even the Apostles themselves seem to have gazed with awe on the portentuous forms, half human half diabolical, which confronted them either close at hand or in immediate prospect. The ‘working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders’ (2 Thess. ii. 9); the seducing spirits and teachings of demons, who” speak lies and hypocrisy, and have their consciences seared with a hot iron’ (2 Tim. iii. 1); the ‘synagogue of Satan’ (Rev. ii. 9, 13); ‘the false prophet” (Rev. xvi. 13, and xvii. 13); the “antichrists” (1 John ii. 18); the ‘spirits that were to be tried whether they were of God’ (1 John iv. 1–3); the sorceries of Balaam, of Egypt, of Jezebel’ (2 Pet. ii. 15; Jude l l ; Rev. ii. 14; 2 Tim. iii. 8, 9; Rev. ii. 20); such are the figures under which the Apostolical writings express their sense of the danger which impended over them.” (p. 210.) 3. “The period between the fall of Jerusalem, and the close of the first century—being that of the Gospels and Epistles of St. John. “It is a remarkable proof of the indiscriminate transference of our own notions to that time, that most readers of ecclesiastical history, if asked what was the most controversial period of the first century, would fix upon that which seems in fact to have been the least controversial of all. It is precisely because the energy of the primitive antagonism to apostolical truth was gradually dwindling away into the ordinary operations of error, such as have provoked the controversies of later ages, that we therefore insensibly come to regard the writings of St. John as more polemical than those of St. James, St. Paul, or St. Peter. But the apostolical controversies were not like ours, they were carried on not against .. and blood,’ not against the mere outward figure of mortality in which evil may chance to clothe itself, but ‘against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,’ against the real principles of moral evil which lay at the root of the whole matter, and which shewed themselves in their naked undisguised depravity of avowed hostility to goodness, and avowed love of wickedness. And if therefore in St. John’s writings the vehemence of St. Paul and the severity of St. James has disappeared, it is not merely because the fire of the Son of Thunder has been superseded by the peaceful temperament of the Apostle of love, but because St. James, and St. Paul, and St. Peter had thoroughly done their work, because the evils with which he had to contend, however malignant in spirit, were at least less rampant and less powerful in form, because it was only a solitary Diotrephes here and there, and not whole masses of Christian communities who “received him not.’” (p. 233.) We wish that we had space to extract the passages which follow, and in which the doctrines of the Ebionites and of Cerinthus are considered. But in truth we have throughout only given the mere propositions whichareworked out at lengthin theremaining pages of the Dissertation. The second period, in particular, affords the opportunity for some interesting discussion as to the magical pretensions of the heretics, and their Asiatic origin; but

• “The English version is ambiguous. All the participles in 1 Tim. iv. 2, 3, relate not to Tiver, but 3alpéviov.” (Note to the Dissertation.)

We presume “and hypocrisy” is a misprint for “in hypocrisy.” The ma

jority of critics, however, render the passage “through the hypocrisy of lying teachers;” thus disconnecting the participles from 8auovowy. See Macknight, Burton, Doddridge, Schleusner.

it would be impossible to condense it. This difficulty of abridgment renders it necessary for our readers to take upon trust, in a greater degree than we could have wished, our assertion of the very able critical character of the Essays. It will, however, be easier to exhibit specimens of the practical eloquence of the Sermons; and this we shall now gladly proceed to do.

“The great and crowning lesson of St. Paul’s teaching is lost upon us, if, while learning from him, as learn we must, the principles of entire freedom from all that is around or below us, we fail to learn the no less essential dependence on what is above us. Independent in some sense you must be of outward institutions, and of mere human opinion; your own matural feelings of youth recommend it; the course of the world in which you will have to act, requires it; Christ through the voice of his own Holy Apostle sanctions it. But it seems to have been specially ordered that he, who was to be so mighty a witness to the liberty of man, should have been a witness no less mighty to the power of God; that he who was so entirely removed from everything that was earthly or local as not to ‘have known after the flesh” even Christ Himself, yet should have been united in the very closest communion with Him in spirit. I have described up to this point the undoubted life and teaching of St. Paul, as I might have described the career of any other great benefactor to the human race, who was to be held up for our example. And now I would ask the question which is to receive its no less undoubted answer from those of his Epistles whose genuineness has never yet, so far as I know, been disputed by the extremest criticism, whether of German sceptic or of French infidel,-What was the principle by which through such a life he was animated, what was the strength in which he laboured with such immense results? We may, if we will, represent him to have been an enthusiast, or his words to have lost their meaning for us, but we cannot pretend to doubt for one moment the full sincerity of his own belief that “the life which he lived in the flesh be lived by the faith of the Son of God, who died and gave Himself for him.” To believe in Christ crucified and risen, to serve Him on earth, to be with Him hereafter—these, if we may trust the account of his own motives by any human writer whatever, were the chief, if not the only thoughts which sustained Paul of Tarsus through all the troubles and sorrows of his twenty years’ conflict. “His sagacity, his cheerfulness, his forethought, his impartial and strong judging reason’—all the natural elements of strong character which I have tried to set before you, are not indeed to be overlooked; but the more highly we exalt these in our estimate of his work, the larger share that we attribute to them in the performance of his mission, the more are we compelled to believe that he spoke the words of truth and soberness, when he told the Corinthians that “last of all Christ was seen of him also,” that by “the grace of God he became what he was,” that “whilst he laboured more abundantly than all, it was not he but the grace of God that was in him? Some doubtless there must be in almost every Christian congregation, and I trust here also, to whom such words of St. Paul will suggest a whole world of thought on which I have hardly ventured to touch; some who, whilst I have been going over the outward glory of his life and the effects of his of on the course of human history, will have felt that St. Paul himself stil remains to be described; that the interest of his outward conflict and victory fades into nothing before the interest of that inward conflict and inward peace, which have made his Epistles the storehouse of comfort to thousands of humble believers, who know no more of the controversy of Jew and Gentile than if it had never been. For them, it needs no formal words to set forth that life of his life which was ‘hid with Christ in God,” and which must find 8. far deeper and truer explanation, it may be, in their own personal experience, it may be in what they have seen in others. For the rest of us, even for the most sceptical, or the most indifferent, it surely is not without instruction to feel that there is something in St. Paul’s life beyond what we can understand, that there is a height veiled from our view because we are not fit to see it.

« PreviousContinue »

Screen reader users: click this link for accessible mode. Accessible mode has the same essential features but works better with your reader.
Books
eBook – FREE
Get this book in print

AbeBooks
Find in a library
All sellers »
Front Cover
0 Reviews
Write review
The Christian Observer

About this book

Terms of Service
116 – 120

Page images
PDF
EPUB
We can trace the presence of a great mystery, even though we cannot comprehend it; we can be moved by the sight or sound of acts and words, even though we dare not imitate or adopt them for ourselves. If we see that a man so holy as St. Paul was yet penetrated with so deep a sense of his own sin and of his own need of God’s forgiveness; if one so wise and energetic as St. Paul should still feel that he owed all to ‘the grace of Christ strengthening him,’ what are we if such thoughts as these are utterly strange to us! or if, on the other hand, we can find something like a response to them, however faint, it surely is no presumptuous fancy, but the very simple truth, that we are approaching, however remotely, to that standing place from which St. Paul moved the world; that in all our difficulties and temptations, here and hereafter, we may rest assured, like him, that we are not the slaves of our own passions or prejudices, nor yet the victims of our unchangeable destiny; but that we may go on as he did, advancing still in all Christian goodness, from youth to manhood, from manhood to old age, and in the end be more than conquerors through the selfsame living and eternal Saviour in whom he trusted. Let us realize thoughts like these, and then we shall indeed feel, that St. Paul’s Epistles may be read with a deeper than any mere theological interest; we shall indeed enter more and more into the truth of his memorable words, not as the text of a worn-out controversy, but as the life of our inmost being, ‘That being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (p. 184.)

These passages, it need not be said, are in general of a highly satisfactory character; and the thoughts lose nothing by any deficiencies in vigor or beauty of expression. Indeed we cannot forbear to congratulate the author on his escape from any of those peculiarities of language which deform the works of many able writers of our times. Though a German scholar, he has not thought it necessary to inlay his pages with a Mosaic of Anglo-Teutonic compounds or idioms. We have already intimated our generally favorable impression of the work before us. But we are far from subscribing to all that it contains. Mr. Stanley’s maturer judgment will, in all probability, lead him to repress a certain temerity of theorizing, of which (as it seems to us) there are occasional examples. Thus, for instance, we think a man must have been strongly possessed with the influence of a favourite hypothesis, when he could write that “the power of the Apostles was moral not magisterial, their influence spiritual not official.” (See the Dissertation on the Apostolical Office, p. 51.) In the same Essay we find the following statement in relation to the Deacons:— “On the one hand, were the Apostles, maintaining the essentially moral and spiritual character of their office by giving themselves up to prayer and the Word–on the other hand, were the seven, directing all the outward arrangements of the visible society.” (p. 62.) We trust, for more than one reason, that this portion of the work will undergo revision before another edition appears. Another singular statement contained in it is as follows:— “The comparison of 1 Tim. iv. 14, and 2 Tim. i. 6, with 1 Tim. i. 18, confirms the conclusion to which we are led by the general analogy of the apostolical history, and to which this transaction, if otherwise interpreted, would form the only exception, that the “gift” which Timotheus was to “stir up,’

had been received by him at his final conversion. Acts xvi. 1, 2; compare Acts ii. 38; viii. 17; ix. 17; x, 44; xix. 6; Gal. iii. 5.” (p. 71.)

We are at a loss to follow this reasoning. It apparently assumes that St. Paul communicated the spiritual gift to Timothy during his first visit to Derbe (Acts xiv. 20); of which, however, there is no indication in the Scriptural account. It is more in accordance surely with the narrative in Acts xvi. 1, 2, to suppose that it was on occasion of St. Paul’s taking him forth with him, that the laying on of his hands (2 Tim. i. 6) took place. In the Sermon on St. Peter, and in the Dissertation which is appended to it, the Apostle is considered as himself intended by the “rock” in the celebrated passage, Matt. xvi. 17—19. Of course, many theologians will differ from this interpretation. We do not purpose to go into the question here, merely remarking that the view put forward differs widely from that which Romanists and semi-Romanists have deduced from the passage. Few will deem it worth while seriously to quarrel with an author who sums up the whole in the words of Origen, as applicable to all the “characters of simple unhesitating zeal,” who have taken the first “critical step in advance” in “any great movement for good in the world,” viz., “He who has Peter’s faith is the Church’s rock; he who has Peter’s virtues has Peter’s keys.” (p. 101.) The whole passage, however, needs much revision; and the author will find it, we think, most difficult to get rid of the almost universal Protestant opinion on the passage.— Another instance of singular interpretation occurs at page 209:— “At Rome alone, that particular phase of Judaism which we are now considering had not yet manifested itself. There had been the ‘weaker brethren,” as we have seen already, whom St. Paul addressed in the 14th chapter; there had been another class, of whom we shall see more hereafter, who had been addressed in the 13th and 16th; but as there is no trace in the Epistle itself of the peculiar form with which we are now concerned, so also it is expressly stated that when, on St. Paul’s arrival at Rome he addressed the Jewish Christians, evidently expecting that his implacable enemies had been there before him with their usual accusations, they answered at once, “we neither received

letters from Judea concerning thee, neither any of the brethren [i. e. Christians] who came shewed, or spake any harm of thee.’ Acts. xxviii. 21.”

It is most difficult to us, to conceive by what process any reader of the passage, much more a theologian and a scholar, could persuade himself that the persons mentioned in Acts xxviii. 21, were Christians. In the first place, it is obvious that St. Paul’s introductory speech is completely in the manner of the conciliatory addresses which we find him making, on more than one occasion, to those of his own nation whom he had any grounds for supposingless inveterately prejudiced againstChristianity than ordinary, though still adhering to the ancient faith. In the next place, the “sect everywhere spoken against,” is manifestly Christianity, not any particular school of its disciples. Lastly, the whole turn of the disputation was evidently such as would only have taken place with persons ignorant of the first rudiments of the faith. It was clearly directed to prove the Messiahship of Jesus, and did not enter in the least on the necessity of circum

cision or any other of the vexed questions which would have formed the topics of discourse with Judaizing Christians. Nor would the strong phrase “some believed not ” have been applied to such. At p. 196 we find a slighter error, yet one which we notice, because the text is not unfrequently quoted in the sense in which Mr. Stanley uses it, for the purpose of founding inferences contrary to the spirit of the passage.

“Although St. Paul spoke of ‘the holy days, and new moons and Sabbath-days, the observations ‘of days and months and times and years’ as merely a shadow of things to come, still he did not hesitate himself to keep the feasts of the Passover and of Pentecost, and to the Romans he spoke of it as a thing indifferent whether ‘one man esteemed one day above another, or another esteemed every day alike.’ ‘The kingdom of God,” they well knew, ‘ was not meat or drink;’ but here again St. Paul would not eat meat while the world standeth, lest he should make his brother to offend.”

What we desire to point out is, that there is no opposition or contrast between the texts which are connected by the words in italics. The sense is not, (we conceive), that, since the kingdom of God does not lie in such trivial matters as meat and drink, therefore Christian liberty allows us to please ourselves about them. On the contrary, the former words quoted above are the ground and reason of the latter, and the force is—“There is no religious duty to eat meat; the kingdom of God does not lie in the eating it—and therefore we may well forbear it, (though lawful) for the sake of another’s conscience. Our eating is not so incumbent on us as to justify us in thereby destroying one “for whom Christ died.”

Again,in the dissertation on the Traditions respecting St.John, some ancient accounts come under consideration, leading to the conclusion that both he and James were of the tribe of Levi. But the objection is stated that,

“If James the Just was the same as James the brother of our Lord, and if there is any ground for the late tradition that John was a near relation of our Lord, they must have been of the tribe of Judah.” (p. 283.)

Now so far as John is concerned,there really seems nothing in this difficulty, and we are surprized that so acute a writer should have felt hampered by it. Except in the case of an heiress, (Num. xxxvi. 6–9), the Jews were not restricted in marriage to their own tribe, and therefore a female of the tribe of Judah might well marry a Levite, and the progeny would be Levites. Professor Burton, in his note on Luke i. 36, where Elisabeth is called the cousin of Mary, remarks—“There are other instances of the tribes of Judah and Levi intermarrying. Thus Aaron (Levi) married Elisheba (Judah); Exodus vi. 23; Numb. ii. 3. Eleazar (Levi) married the daughter of Putiel (Judah), Exod. vi. 25.” And even as regards James, the objection is invalid, unless it could be shewn that the word “brother ” is used in the strict sense, and not in that of “near relation,” as is usually contended.

It is impossible not to see that the tendency to overstatement,

which is the common temptation of ardent minds, has its place in this volume. It as surely exhibits itself in the dissertation on the Apostolic Office, from which we have already briefly quoted, and it is also perceptible, as it seems to us, in the following paragraph on St. Paul. “Who was this founder of a new epoch in the Christian religion? Who was it to whom a greater prominence is given in the New Testament than to any one else save our Lord Himself? Who was this to whom alone of the sons of men our Lord revealed Himself on earth after his Ascension,-for whom not merely the laws of the world of nature, but the order and continuity of the world of grace, seemed to be suspended and interrupted?” (p. 160.) What reason have we for believing that our Lord revealed himself to St. Paul on earth (Acts xxii. 17, we suppose, is the passage referred to), or in any manner otherwise than to St. Stephen (Acts vii. 55) * We fully admit that the great Apostle was favoured with a miraculous view of Christ glorified, to compensate for his not having seen him during the days of his flesh, and to enable him to claim the Apostolic distinction (1 Cor. ix. 1); but that Christ again descended, even in vision, to the earth before the eyes of St. Paul, we know no reason to suppose. If there was any Apostle to whom Mr. Stanley’s words would be applicable, we should think it would be St. John, to whom our Lord revealed himself “walking in the midst of the golden candlesticks.” But we have spent enough, and perhaps too much, time upon the minor inaccuracies of a really remarkable book. We return to a more pleasing duty, and proceed to extract a part of the Sermon on St. James, in which the question is considered whether the statements of that Apostle were intended to correct and limit the doctrine of St. Paul. “It would surely be against the whole order of progress so manifest in the revelation of Christianity, if we could suppose that the more perfect statement of Christian truth in St. Paul should be intended to receive its completion from the less perfect statement in St. James; and even if this were possible, it would be precluded by the very nature of the circumstances under which the Epistle was written. So far from its readers being likely to have fallen into an exaggerated zeal for St. Paul’s assertion that “a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law,’ it is probable that they had either never heard of it at all, or if they had, would have rejected it with scorn; and at any rate to have warned them against an excessive or licentious use of it, would have been like insisting on the dangers of knowledge to a man who has not learned to read, or on the dangers of liberty to one who has spent his life in slavery. It was, as we have seen, a far different teaching which they needed, and which he gave; it was not an abuse of Christian faith, but of Jewish faith, against which they had to be warned; it was not the Apostle’s teaching of “faith in the blood of Jesus Christ,’ but the Pharisee’s teaching

of faith ‘that there is one God;’ not the wild extravagance which said, * Let us continue in sin that grace may abound,’ but the stiff formalism which

rested satisfied in its correct belief.” (p. 311.) In a note to this passage there are the following additional remarks:—

“For the whole view here, and in the earlier part of the Sermon, taken of the relation of the statement of St. James to that of St. Paul, (see Mander’s

History of the Planting of Christianity, p. 295; Schneckenburger’s Commentary on St. James, App. 2; Thiersch’s Essay on the Criticism of the New Testament Writings, p. 257–269; Archdeacon Hare’s Victory of Faith, p. 32.) It is there maintained, with the same arguments as are used here, that the faith spoken of in James ii. 15. is a perversion not of Christian but of Jewish faith, corresponding in modern times not to the Evangelist perversion of grace, but to the Ecclesiastical perversion of creeds. This false faith or famaticism, being identical with that described in Matt. xxiii. 15. Rom. ii. 17–20, shewed itself in two forms, (1) a desperate trust in their privileges as the people of God, like the Mahometan belief that death in battle for the faithful is a passport to heaven. Compare for earlier instances, Jer. vii. 4; 2 Macc. xii. 43–45; Eccl. vii. 4; and for its worst and latest excess, the fatalism described in James i. 13; Jos. Ant. xiii. 5, 9. and the last days of the final siege of Jerusalem: (2) a trust in their orthodox belief in the Unity of God, James ii. 19. Comp. Rom. ii. 17; Justin c. Tryph. 378; Clem. Hom. iii. 3, 7, xiii. 4, xii. 23. Of course the great objection to this view, which to many perhaps will appear insuperable, is the apparently designed antithesis between the expressions of St. James and those of St. Paul. But if we can suppose that the words, “faith,’ ‘works,” “justification,’ were, as is most probable, not invented by St. Paul, but taken by him from the ordinary Jewish phraseology, and invested with a higher Christian meaning, as the parallel case of Aðyos and TAñpoua in the writings of St. John, the difficulty would be greatly diminished. The selection of Abraham and Rahab is sufficiently accounted for by the reason given in p. 306, not to mention that the only Pauline passage in which ..i. occur is contained in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and there not injuxtaposition, and therein no connexion whatever with the contrast of faith and works. After all, the practical difference between this and the common explanation is not so great as would at first sight appear. On the one hand, even if we suppose that St. James had in view the phraseology of St. Paul or St. Paul’s followers, we are still compelled by the context to conclude that the example of its perversion which he attacks was to be found in the barren faith of the Jew; on the other hand, if we adopt the interpretation followed in the text, and thus avoid even the appearance of a collision between the two Apostles, we may still, from the pointed contrast of their expressions, derive the lesson which seems thus to have been, as it were, providentially brought before us, and remember that, as I have ol to show further on, there is still a sense in which the teaching of St. James may at times be used as a useful supplement to that of St. Paul.” (Note, p. 311.)

It is a matter of much interest, not unmixed with some anxiety, to contemplate what the future course of Mr. Stanley may probably be. He is destined, we think, to take a high place among the writers of his age; and the department of theology which he seems to have selected as his own, and which he will explore, perhaps, hereafter more fully, is one which, while it possesses peculiar attractions, is surrounded with peculiar dangers. We trust that his mind may be so strengthened and sanctified under the highest influences, to be secured only by habits of watchfulness and prayer, that he may escape those perils to which a speculative and original intellect is especially exposed, and against which, it has been supposed by some, from certain sentences in the present volume, that the author is too little on his guard.

Our own fervent desire is, less to give way to gloomy anticipations, than to express our hearty desire for him, and for all who are called by position, or by natural endowments, to tread in slippery places, that “by the light of God’s Holy Spirit, they

« PreviousContinue »

Screen reader users: click this link for accessible mode. Accessible mode has the same essential features but works better with your reader.
Books
eBook – FREE
Get this book in print

AbeBooks
Find in a library
All sellers »
Front Cover
0 Reviews
Write review
The Christian Observer

About this book

Terms of Service
121 – 125

Page images
PDF
EPUB
may have a right judgment in all things, and evermore rejoice in His holy comfort.” We accept the following passage from the Sermon on St. John as an evidence of a very Christian tone and spirit.

“May God grant to us a truer sense of our position and duties, and then no evil tendencies of the present, no gloomy prospects of the future, ought really to deprive us of the example of St. John’s life and doctrine. It is, indeed, the highest consummation, in which any practical lessons which any of us may have derived from these discourses, find their fullest exemplification. ‘To all but one in ten thousand,’ it has been well said, ‘Christian speculation is barren of great fruits; to all but one in ten thousand, Christian benevolence is fruitful of great thoughts.” There may be many here present to whom the various intellectual questions on which i have touched may be wholly useless; there are none who cannot derive benefit, both moral and intellectual, from recollecting the all-sufficient importance of that Divine Love of which we know, even from the life of St. Peter, that the one condition of Apostolical power was that he “loved’ his Master “more than others:” of which we should know, even from the words of St. Paul, that though “there abide these three, Faith, Hope, and Charity, yet the greatest of these is Charity.’ Much more do we know that it bore St. John on eagle wings into the Eternal Presence, and that it will bear us also, if only we dare to trust it. Let us not fear for visible institutions, or for the cause of Divine truth. Even here the Apostle’s life may fitly remind us that it was not under St. Peter, but St. John, that there grew up that framework of Christian society in the Asiatic Churches which eventually became the model of all ecclesiastical government; that it was not the Apostle of Faith, but of Love, who was emphatically called “Theologos’; and whose words supplied the foundation of the most universal of the Catholic Creeds. Truth, if spoken in love, will not become indifferent to us, but its several parts will then assume their proper harmony and proportion. Outward institutions will not perish, but will then be used in .. dination to the higher ends, which alone can give them their proper value. Former ages and ancient associations, future ages and lofty aspirations, will not be trampled under foot, but will alike acquire their true meaning in the light of that Charity which “beareth all things, believeth all things—hopeth all things, endureth all things.’ Let us not think that in the great work that is before us, we shall meed the bonds of an elaborate system, and the combination of party or professional ties; let us think rather, as every thoughtful man must think if only he looks round on the familiar faces of his own College Chapel, that as in this place he would not dream of resting our true bond of union one to another on sameness of intellect, or of theological schools; so in the greater struggle of life itself we shall have enough to occupy and to unite us, if we have in common a due sense of those great practical evils which as Christians we are bound to subdue—and of that great moral good which as Christians we are bound to accomplish; that whether here or elsewhere, the natural sympathy and practical co-operation which such a feeling cannot but engender, is, if we would but so regard it, our true shelter from the strife of tongues, until this tyranny be overpast; our true refuge from the storms and waves of this troublesome world, until we have attained a more certain view of our destined haven.” (p. 271.)

• The Life of Wesley, and Rise and Progress of Methodism. By Rob ERT SouthEY, Esq., D.D. Third Edition, with Notes by the late S. T. Col.BRIDGE, Esq., and Remarks on the Life and Character of John Wesley, by the late ALEXANDER KNox, Esq.

Edited by the Rev. C. C. SouthEy, M.A., curate of Cockermouth. Two Vols. 8vo.

We well remember the difficulty we found—some readers may Christ. Observ. No. 146. R

say fancied—in reviewing Southey’s Life of Wesley on its publication, now thirty years ago. (See Christian Observer for 1820.) Easy were it, said Lord Eldon, to decide Chancery suits, were they all white or black, but most of them are grey. And so of divers books, and not least of books biographical; add to which, grey itself has many shades, through every neutral tint, so that not only false “Candour,” but stern truth, often opines that

“Black is not black; nor white so very white.”

Poor Southey!—for we loved the man, and love his memory— he rejoiced to write stirring biographies; and if there was anything odd, quaint, eccentric, or out of the smooth-shaven course of the work-day world, in his hero, high were his raptures. It was in an auspicious, or evil, day—as men will variously judge— that the memorialiser of Chatterton, and Amadis de Gaul, and Thalaba the Destroyer, and the pseudo Espriclla, and the genuine Kirk White, and the Cid, and Roderick the last of the Goths, and Nelson, not the last of England’s or Southey’s heroes; the indefatigable collector, who had a shelf in his mind, and a pigeon hole in his study, for theologians and theologues of cvery class, from Baxter and Bunyan to Count Zinzendorf and Coalheaver Huntington, bethought him of condensing his voluminous readings anent “the founder of Methodism.” At his potent spell some fifty volumes of Wesleyana, and AntiWesleyana, started up on his table; flanked right and left by the Arminian (afterwards Methodist) Magazine “from its commencement;” and the Anti-Arminian “Gospel Magazine,” to its extermination. Yet to dive into all this, and to fetch up the pearls from the bottom—if there were any—and to collect the straws on the top, and the waifs, strays, and debris on every side, was but play to the magician of Skiddaw. How Robert Southey, amidst his innumerable vocations and avocations, as a student and writer, could find time or strength for the laborious research and elaborate analysis of facts condensed in his Life of Wesley, was, and is, beyond our feeble comprehension. For he was not a more plodder or literary drudge;—he was a poct, a man of genius, a man scnsitive, vivacious, and imaginative; a man engaged in multifarious and oppressive literary labours; and yet he seems as much at home and at his case in the annals of Methodism, as though he had been all his life Secretary to the Conference, or Librarian to Mr. Wesley himself.

Not that we mean to say, he rightly understood what Wesleyanism was or is; or that he was duly qualified to pronounce upon the doctrines or religious character of Mr. Wesley. He was a long way off from this, as his book clearly evinces. He could diligently collect striking anecdotes; vividly describe remarkable incidents; and compile the most full, readable, and entertaining biography which has ever appeared of “Wesley and his Times.” He could also comment shrewdly, and often powerfully, upon the matters before him; could make picturesque

sketches out of the most unpicturesque materials; still more, he could admire and defend much that an ungodly world had scoffed at without investigating ; and he afforded to the principles and exertions of Wesley a larger measure of candour, not to say of justice, than had been ordinarily meted out by the arbiters of taste and literature. But still he was not a besitting historian of Wesleyanism; just as we should say, and for the self-same reasons, neither better nor worse, that he could not have penned a correct and satisfactory account of Calvinism, or of Arminianism, or of Quakerism, or any other “ism” which involved questions of doctrinal discussion, or their application to men’s hearts and lives. The rise, progress, and tendencies of Methodism were not susceptible of being rightly discussed in the cool philosophical spirit which affected—(for in this, Southey and Sydney Smith, Gifford and Jeffrey, the Edinburgh and the Quarterly, differing on most other points, fraternally coalesced)— to hold fairly the balance of lunacy, and to discriminate between the varying shades of spiritual monomania. For there is a latent assumption in all such books as Southey’s Wesley, that earnest religionists, of every class and grade, are mad; only each writer undertakes to shew that his own favourite madman had lucid moments, and was also a much more respectable madman than many others; and indeed, that great advantage accrued to society from his biting those of his neighbours whose moral constitution necdcd a stronger stimulus than the ordinary inoculation of sound teaching and judicious admonition. “Do you mean to say, then,” we may be asked, “ that Robert Southey was not a religious man, and therefore could not fitly write a religious history?” This is a home question, adroitly put; and our reply, most candid questionist, is, that if you will define what you mean by “a religious man,” we will tell you frankly whether or not Wesley’s delineator—judging by his book, for we are not opening personal discussions—would fall under your category. Southey was transcendently more thoughtful and serious than the great mass of the literary mem of his day; and his respect and reverence for Christianity were indisputable; but if we were to specify all that Holy Scripture leads us to include in the definition of “a religious man *—and such a one as would be spiritually, as well as mentally and morally, qualified to write the life of an Augustine, or Luther, or Hooker, or Wesley, or Cecil, or Wilberforce, or Simeon—we have purposely jumbled a few widely-divided yet characteristic names—we apprehend that Southey would have cried “Hold’’ long before we finished the portrait, and have protested that we were blending fanaticism with religion. The inspired record tells us that Barnabas was “a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.” A writer ought to appreciate, and to keep in mind, this scriptural definition of “a good man,” before he undertakes to write the life of one; otherwise he may blunder as much as Southey, with all his genius, must have done if he had attempted to write the “life and times” of Euler or La Place, with the “ origin and progress” of differentiation; or as a very learned divine might do, if he attempted to rival Soyer’s Art of Cookery, or farmer Brown on “Protection.” The Laureate mistook his qualifications when he undertook to write the life of the author of the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and “Grace Abounding to the chief of Sinners.” He could admire talent ; he could revere piety as a curious and interesting phase of the human mind; and he was very far indeed from joining in the sneer which the name of Bunyan used to provoke, till it came to be discovered that every man of genius should have a nook on his shelves for the Pilgrim’s Progress as much as for Robinson Crusoe, and for the self-same reason. But Southey did not prove that “the offence of the cross” has ceased; nor will it till the day when “the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea;” and until then, therefore, there must be a repulsion between those who are pilgrims and strangers upon earth, and those who are not. Southey admired Bunyan when he met him in the temple of Genius; but was he with Bunyan asking the way to “the holy of holies?” And here, now, we return to our first point, the difficulty we felt in suitably reviewing Southey’s book. What could we intimate respecting it that would approve itself to the very different classes of persons who were commenting upon it 2 The sayings and doings of Wesley had been for more than half a century matter for debate and strife, for jest and sneer, for laudation or indignation, according to the opinions of friends or foes; while neutrals passed them off with quiet contempt. Southey undertook to write an impartial life; he was not to panegyrise with Coke, and Moore, and Benson; or to satirize and lie with Nightingale; or even to “compare the enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists,” after the fashion of Bishop Lavington, or to “Vindicate the doctrines of grace and the office of the Holy Spirit,” as Warburton accounted vindication; much less, with the fervid Toplady and his colleagues, to consign Wesley and his adherents to everlasting destruction (in terms too awful to be repeated), for their rank Arminianism.” He was to decide as a judge, not to attack or defend as an advocate. But what was the result of his summing up 2 Why, that Mr. Wesley was not a knave, as some supposed; nor a fool, as others; nor was he altogether the divinely-inspired teacher which certain of his sect considered him; but that he was a good, able, and zealous man; anxious to promote the glory of God and the salvation of souls; a politic, far-seeing, statesman, with a strong dash of enthusiasm. Now some, may all, of this was true, in its fair mode and measure; but who was to adjust that mode or measure ? and who did, or could, admit that Southey had discovered the required boundaries? The Wesleyan body (at least some of its zealots) fell on him, beak and talon, as a libeller, a slanderer, an infidel, and a blasphemer. He wrote his book, expressly,–so ran the indictment—to oppose the work of God, and to bring the operations of the Holy Spirit into contempt; and he altogether falsified the character of Methodism, and the principles and proceedings of its founders. The impression upon the great mass of what were called “reading men”—meaning men who had not condescended, with all their reading, to read anything seriously upon questions of divinity—was that Southey had made Methodism far more decent and picturesque than they had hitherto regarded it; that Wesley was shown to have wanted little of being a scholar, a statesman, and a gentleman; and might easily have been a Walpole, if hehad not preferred being a Loyola. It appeared to us, therefore, that Wesley would rise, not sink, in estimation in literary society, and among educated men of the world nonconversant with theological discussions, by Southey’s sketches. But then, was either the praise or the blame rightly awarded? Was Southey’s Wesley the real Wesley We thought not. Southey pourtrayed him as “a character;” and men are interested about “a character,” whether in a poem, a novel, an obituary, or a Bow-street report. Of late years the bookmarket has been inundated with memoirs in which, as the phrase runs, “a character” is to be exhibited. Men who never dreamed of stage-effect, men as straight-forward as Howard, and Bunyan, and Swartz, have been bedizened after this fashion; and doubtless a poetical life of Sir Isaac Newton, and a sentimental memoir of the iron Cromwell (though that is forestalled) would be highly popular. True, Wesley was a character, a remarkable character; but when he went out to preach in the fields or the streets, it never occurred to him that he was furnishing materials for “picturesque” biography. He would have said to his biographer, “If you sketch my life, let it be to tell men what God has done for me, or with me, or by me; weigh the doctrines I uphold in the balance of the sanctuary; treat Methodism as a struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil; and if you have to relate extraordinary incidents, regard them in a religious view, and not to make a pretty story.” Southey’s Wesley is a man to be alternately esteemed, admired, venerated, blamed, pitied; but always, and above all, to be stared at. The biographer addressed himself to make an exhibition, and he succeeded; but every man who takes up such a book, with a religious object, and not merely to be entertained, feels that he is disappointed; when he is expecting some “good thing” after a spiritual definition, he is put off with a “good thing” after the literary acceptation; and as proof paramount that the book is not what it should be, as a life of the founder of Methodism, certain it is that the majority of its readers have not been those who were looking for spiritual profit, but those who could appreciate a curious story well-told. Lord Brougham would enjoy it more than Jabez Bunting; even if the latter and his friends had not some esoteric reasons for their disapprobation and dislike.

« PreviousContinue »

Screen reader users: click this link for accessible mode. Accessible mode has the same essential features but works better with your reader.
Books
eBook – FREE
Get this book in print

AbeBooks
Find in a library
All sellers »
Front Cover
0 Reviews
Write review
The Christian Observer

About this book

Terms of Service
126 – 130

Page images
PDF
EPUB
And here we get upon another quaking spot in this smoothlooking peat-moss. The mere literary reader skimmed lightly over it without perceiving any of those boggy tracts which even we, who are not of Mr. Wesley’s sect, could not pass; but the whole Wesleyan body foundered decply at every step, and declared that the whole territory was one continent of morass. Their anger was loftiest just where their cause was weakest; and, as might be expected, they were most earnest in defending those ravelins and counterscarps of their citadel which were most vulmerable. Now, unless we admit that there is nothing in Methodism which can be enfiladed; it might be, that some shots from Southey’s battery had really told upon the outworks, and possibly a shell or two might have exploded rather too near the magazine itself. To drop our belligerent metaphor, and to recur to Lord Eldon’s more peaceful illustration; some things both in doctrine and practice might be grey, which a Conference optician would consider snowy white; but the exact shade of grey which belonged either to the book or the system, would be variously decided. For it is in moral, as in physical, optics, that by long poring upon one tint we acquire a morbid susceptibility to its opposite. After gazing at the sun, a moderately enlightened object appears black; whereas, coming from a dungeon, it would be dazzlingly lucid. And not only in the extremes of black and white, but, if we may pursue the metaphor without running it to earth, in every intervening gradation of the moral prismatic spectrum. For taking any two complementary colours, say red and green; after looking intensely at red, the closed eye sees green; and at green, sees red; the sensorium being so overstimulated by the original impression, that it becomes morbidly sensitive to the opposite, and finds the accidental colour where it existed only in imagination, or at least in such blending that it would not have been noticed but for the contrasted sensibility. Thus the late Mr. Watson, an able and excellent man, and other of Southey’s assailants, had lived so long in the noontide of Methodism, that they saw in Southey’s pages large black spots, where exoterics could not discern them; and far from giving the biographer credit for having meant, so far as he could, to take a favourable view of Wesley’s character and institutions, they seem to have considered that it was his express object to vilify them. We, living in a different atmosphere, thought that both white and black, and also various shades of grey, might be found in these optical pages; but the exact analysis of each was not easy. Some Wesleyans were hurt that Southey did not see everything good in Methodism; and they stood up as zealously for the dreams, visions, supernatural voices, and famatical ravings, which characterized its early days, and which Wesley himself regarded as the finger of God, as for its doctrine of perfection in the flesh, and the necessity of “assurance.” Some Calvinists abused Southey because he did not denounce Wesley’s Arminianism. Some who called themselves orthodox Churchmen almost forgave what was best in Methodism, because of that very Arminianism; for it was some atonement for a field-preacher’s telling men they must be born again, if he could only add, “Nota bene, Calvin was a rascal.” The darker shades of the book, to our eye, were of a different hue. For instance, in pointing out what he considered exceptionable in Methodism—as, among other points, in relation to the doctrine of regeneration or conversion, and the influences of the Holy Spirit, Southey aimed his blow at what is not merely Methodistic but Christian; confounding the error and fanaticism, with much that, however misunderstood or perverted, is in its germ, sound-minded and scriptural. He never represses what he considers a good story—a story which has point or fun in it— a story which tells well,—on account of any scruple of its touching irreverently upon sacred topics. He quotes—and without any necessity—much worse than trash from well-meant but insufferable Moravian hymns, long obsolete, and as much condemned by modern Moravians as by himself, and shows that he thought more of amusing a thoughtless reader than of edifying a serious one. Calvinism is his chief horror; and he delights to laud Wesley for his anti-Calvinism; but Wesley would not have thanked him for his aid; and Bishop Horsley would have told him that, in aiming his shafts at Calvinism, he should have ascertained what Calvinism is, for want of which precaution he injured “the common salvation.” He did not appear to have any definite views of the economy of the Gospel; and he was therefore unable to exhibit the true genius and bearing of Methodism, and scripturally to point out its merits, its defects, and its evils. There is no decided evidence in these volumes that he was even barely orthodox in regard to the divinity of our Lord, and the doctrine of the atonement. To the awful subject of Satanic agency, he alludes rather jocosely than seriously; and we fear we may say much the same as to the influences of the Holy Spirit, which not all the extravagancies of some of the early methodists should tempt a holy man to jest upon. As respects the doctrine of “justification by faith only,” or, in Wesley’s own words, “the allowing no cause of Justification but the death and righteousmess of Christ, and no instrumental cause but faith ;” which doctrine he declared to be “the overturning of Popery from its foundations,” Southey does not affect to disguise his disapprobation; though he comforts himself with believing that “It was not preached in all the naked absurdity of its consequences;” that naked absurdity, we suppose, which certain judicious objectors, cited by the Apostle Paul, anticipated Mr. Southey in urging against the doctrine, namely, that it would “lead men to sin” in order that “grace might abound.” The compilers of our Anglican Articles—for instance, of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth—were not deterred by this “naked absurdity” from insisting upon the doctrine, and saying in regard to such falsely alleged consequences, “God forbid.” The difference between

the two parties, Mr. Southey’s, and the Church of Rome, on the one side, and Mr. Wesley with the Church of England on the other, is that the former consider that the absurd consequences follow from the doctrine; whereas the latter concur with St. Paul in considering that these consequences altogether flow from the perversion of it. * And now for Coleridge and Knox. We propose paying our respects to the former in our present Number, extracting some of his off-hand marginal notes; and reserving what we have to say upon Knox’s more systematic dissertation on Wesley, his opinions, and his system, to a future paper. Knox in Ireland, and Coleridge in England, were among the best talkers in their respective countries. Knox’s reasoning harangues, and Coleridge’s splendid declamation, gained them attentive and captivated auditors; and their Wesleyan comments are a specimen of their table-talk taken down by their own pen. Both of them felt a sort of physical necessity for giving vent to their imaginings; they felt that “thoughts pent up, want air;” and therefore, when they had not an associate at hand to share them, sooner than allow them to spoil “like bales unopened to the sun,” they dotted them down, Coleridge on the margins of books, and Knox in epistles; as Walter Scott, when immured in Piccadilly, because he could not sing or whistle, “let the humour run to waste on paper.” In quoting some of Coleridge’s notes, we trust no reader will accuse us of the vanity of presuming to understand all that we may quote. Truth forbids that we should pretend to dive so deeply into the dark psychological profound of the bard of Christabel—a metrical puzzle that matched his prose conundrums—as always to discern his meaning. Burke tells us that non-intelligibility is one of the sources of the sublime; which maxim he illustrates from Virgil’s AEmeid, Keble’s “Christian Year” not having then been written. We mean no irreverence to Mr. Keble in this passing remark; for who has not read, and re-read, and repeated, and loved to linger upon his fascinating poetical effusions; and found his spirit raised to lofty and holy contemplations at each successive perusal, notwithstanding the mysticism, and the far from satisfactory theological character, which attach to them 2. But their frequent obscurity not unaptly elicited the apocryphal pleasantry, that the writer could give some fair questionist no better explanation of certain enigmatical passages, than that he meant something when he wrote them, but that he could not recal what it was. Coleridge is profound, notwithstanding his seeming affectation of profundity; as Keble is intensely poetical, not in virtue of, but in spite of, his too frequent dreaminess. Coleridge often corrects Southey with good effect; but to us it sometimes seems that both are wrong;-a conclusion which some readers may think befitting our gentle craft as critics; but which, with all humility, we would refer rather to our having been led to try questions of this mature by more correct standards than those with which Southey and Coleridge, with all their ability and reading, were, for the most part, conversant.

Coleridge writes as follows, in a blank leaf of his copy of Southey’s work:

“Memento! It is my desire and request that this work should be presented to its Donor and Author, Robert Southey, after my death. The substance and character of the marginal Annotations will abundantly prove the absence of any such intention in my mind at the time they were written. But it will not be uninteresting to him to know, that the one or the other volume was the book more often in my hands than any other in my ragged bookregiment; and that to this work, and to the Life of R. Baxter, I was used to resort whenever sickness and languor made me feel the want of an old friend, of whose company I could never be tired. How many and many an hour of self-oblivion do I owe to this Life of Wesley; and how often have I argued with it, questioned, remonstrated, been peevish, and asked pardon—then again listened, and cried Right! Excellent —and in yet heavier hours intreated it, as it were, to continue talking to me—for that I heard and listened, and was soothed, though I could make no reply. Ah! that Robert Southey had fulfilled his intention of writing a History of the Monastic Orders—or would become the Biographer at least of Loyola, Xavier, Dominic, and the other remarkable Founders. “S. T. Cole RIDGE.”

“Grove, Highgate, August, 1825.” (pp. xv. xvi.)

It cannot but be interesting to follow such a mind as that of Coleridge, thus communing with such a mind as that of Southey; and under circumstances which open before us the most secret impressions of his spirit.

His first note is upon the strange disturbances which occurred at Epworth, the pastoral residence of Wesley’s father, and which Southey says “Every person by whom they were witnessed, believed to be supernatural.” Southey’s own solution was, that they were “preternatural, and yet not miraculous.” He says—

“The letters which passed at the time between Samuel Wesley and the family at Epworth, the journal which Mr. Wesley kept of these remarkable transactions, and the evidence concerning them which John afterwards collected, fell into the hands of Dr. Priestley, and were published by him as being “perhaps the best authenticated and best told story of the kind that is any where extant.” He observes in favour of the story, “that all the parties seem to have been sufficiently void of fear, and also free from credulity, except the general belief that such things were supernatural.” But he argues, that where no good end was to be answered, we may safely conclude that no miracle was wrought; and he supposes, as the most probable solution, that it was a trick of the servants, assisted by some of the neighbours, for the sake of amusing themselves and puzzling the family. In reply to this it may o be asserted, that many of the circumstances cannot be explained by any suc supposition, nor by any legerdemain, nor by ventriloquism, nor by any secret of acoustics. The former argument would be valid, if the term miracle were applicable to the case; but by miracle Dr. Priestley evidently intends a manifestation of Divine power, and in the present instance no such manifestation is supposed, any more than in the appearance of a departed spirit. Such things may be preternatural and yet not miraculous: they may be not in the ordinary course of nature, and yet imply no alteration of its laws. And with regard to the good end which they may be supposed to answer, it would be end sufficient if sometimes one of those unhappy persons, who looking through the dim glass of infidelity, see nothing beyond this life, and the narrow sphere

CHRIST. Observ. No. 146.

of mortal existence, should, from the well-established truth of one such story (trifling and objectless as it might otherwise appear), be led to a conclusion that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy.” (pp. 24, 25.) This is a pious use of the narrative; but we do not believe that there was anything “preternatural” in the occurrences. The greatest rage of “Old Jeffrey,” as the “alleged ghost” was … was when the rector of Epworth prayed in his family for King George; and we have not much doubt that the whole transaction was managed by some Non-jurors, one or more of Wesley’s own daughters perhaps being among the confederates. It seemed very like an imitation of the devices of Joe Collins, the Royalist, at Woodstock, to frighten the Oliverian parliamentary commissioners. Coleridge’s solution differs equally from Southey’s and ours. He says— “All these stories, and I could produce fifty at least equally well authenticated, and as far as the veracity of the marrators, and the single fact of their having seen and heard such and such sights or sounds, above all rational scepticism, are as much like one another as the symptoms of the same disease in different patients. And this, indeed, I take to be the true and only solution, a contagious nervous disease, the acme or intensest form of which is catalepsy. N. B.-Dogs are often seen to catch fear from their owners.” (p. 19.) But how did the alleged “catalepsy” begin 2 Without question, nervous disorders are contagious; and nervous impressions often kill or cure; but “catalepsy” could not account for the strange phenomena at Epworth parsonage. But a good contriver, especially with confederates, might easily conduct such a plot. That highly-gifted merry young lady, Hetty (or Mehetable) Wesley, whose subsequent domestic afflictions and early death are among the most touching incidents of domestic life, was just the damsel to carry out this exciting device; and if our readers will turn to the documents as given by Southey and by Adam Clarke in his Life of the Wesley family, they may gather some shrewd intimations that Miss Hetty figured largely in the affair; and there are other notices in the memoirs and correspondence of this numerous household, of the young ladies not being destitute of out-of-doors admirers, some of whom might enjoy the frolic of Old Jeffrey; besides which there was the man-servant Robert Brown, who was, or pretended to be, “most visited by it;” and there were the maid-servants also; but when Samuel Wesley, writing from Westminster School, asks his mother, “Was there never a new maid or man in the house that might play tricks?” his mother replies, “We had both man and maid new this last Martinmas; yet I do not believe they occasioned the circumstance, both for the reason above mentioned [that it was beyond the power of any human creature to make such strange and various noises] and because they were more affrighted than any body else;”—which of course they would affect to be if they were in the plot. A better reason is that the noises were sometimes heard when they were in the room with members of the family; so that (whether they were

« PreviousContinue »

Screen reader users: click this link for accessible mode. Accessible mode has the same essential features but works better with your reader.
Books
eBook – FREE
Get this book in print

AbeBooks
Find in a library
All sellers »
Front Cover
0 Reviews
Write review
The Christian Observer

About this book

Terms of Service
131 – 135

Page images
PDF
EPUB
confederates or not) others were busy in the matter; and part of the jest might be to frighten these new comers, if they were not let into the secret. Coleridge’s “catalepsy” and Southey’s “preternaturalism” are merely words implying ignorance of the true solution; and as to Southey’s declaration that it could not be a trick, he might as well say—as many did say—that there was no juggle in the similar devices at Woodstock;-our reference to which is taken from the authentic narrative; not from Sir Walter Scott’s novel, in which the story might be possibly suspected of fictitious embellishment. Southey might as well say that there could be no trick when the juggler at Balmoral astonished the Prince of Wales with appearing to tear Prince Albert’s handkerchief to tatters, and to restore it; or in seeming to pour out several kinds of liquor from a bottle of water; the trick of which (a chemical device) is daily explained at the Polytechnic Institution. The Epworth prodigies of “a noise like the strong winding up of a jack” (perhaps the reality); “a sound like a dashing among the bottles under the staircase” (probably again the reality); “a knocking under their feet, though nobody was in the chambers below” (a fact not proved, for one of the seemingly terrified parties might be the knocker); the “gobbling like a turkey-cock;” and, in short, all the devices are such as have been performed elsewhere, and have been discovered to be juggles. It is no part of our present subject or purpose to go through the evidence; but we may just mention that the Wesley family had for many years been divided in bitter feud about the Revolution of 1688. John Wesley himself, in the account published by him many years after in the Arminian Magazine, solved the difficulty in a way not much to the credit of his soundness of judgment; more especially as throughout the detail he states facts which prove that “Old Jeffrey’’ was a merry or malignant Jacobite. In opening the narrative, he says that the first time his father heard it was “When he began the prayer for the king ” (George the First). There were “thundering knocks” round the room; especially at the Amen; and “the same was heard from this time every morning and evening while the prayer for the king was repeated.” The circumstance occurred in the year 1716. The kingdom had been in a ferment, may a civil war; the Jacobite party having set up the standard of rebellion against the House of Hanover; the Pretender having landed in Scotland, whence he was driven by force of arms, great numbers of his followers being put to death on the scaffold, including “the rebel Lords,” besides those who perished in battle. It was at this moment of excitement, when the members of too many families, and not least that at Epworth, were at daggers drawn about “praying for the king ” (one party meaning King George and the other the Pretender), that Old Jeffrey commenced his devices against the simple-minded rector of Epworth, whose son “Jack” furnishes us with “a key’’ which threads every ward of the lock, though he himself neglected to use it aright. He says, in the paper in the Arminian Magazine: “As both my father and mother are now at rest, and incapable of being pained thereby, I think it my duty to furnish the serious reader with a key to this circumstance;”— namely, to the clamours of Old Jeffrey, when the rector of Epworth prayed for King George. “The year before King William died (he died in 1702) my father observed my mother did not say Amen to the prayer for the king. She said she could not, for she did not believe the Prince of Orange was king. He vowed he would never live with her in conjugal relations till she did. He then took his horse and rode away; nor did she hear of him again, till the death of the king, about twelve months afterwards, released him from his rash engagement.” In this domestic political feud the young people of course took sides. All the family agree that Old Jeffrey wished to deter the rector from praying for King George; but John Wesley, instead of suspecting imposture, gravely gives his opinion that Old Jeffrey “was a messenger of Satan, sent to buffet his father for his rash promise of leaving his family, and very improper conduct to his wife in consequence of her scruple to pray for the Prince of Orange as king of England.” But be it remembered that this “improper conduct” occurred in the reign of King William ; and that during the reign of Queen Anne Jeffrey did not molest the delinquent; but waited for fourteen years, till King George had ascended the throne, and the Jacobites were plotting his downfall. John Wesley’s “key’’ indeed unlocks the story, but not in the way he suggests. The Jacobite bias is plain enough ; but to represent Jeffrey as a messenger of Satan, commissioned by God to punish the rector of Epworth for his conduct to his wife many years before—except in the large sense which rightly brings all occurrences within the range of divine providence—is an exemplification of the credulity and superstition which characterised the Wesley family.

Our next note from Coleridge will not require a lengthened comment. Wesley (in the year 1738; he was born in 1703) is saying;

“I now believe the Gospel is true. I shew my faith by my works, by staking my all upon it. I would do so again and again a thousand times, if the choice were still to make. Whoever sees me, sees I would be a Christian. Therefore are my ways not like other men’s ways : therefore, I have been, I am, I am content to be, a bye-word, a proverb of reproach. But in a storm I think, what if the Gospel be not true? then thou art of all men most foolish. For what hast thou given thy goods, thy ease, thy friends, thy reputation, thy country, thy life? For what art thou wandering over the face of the earth 7 a dream 2 a cunningly devised fable 2 Oh, who will deliver me from this fear of death? What shall I do’ Where shall I fly from it ! Should I fight against it by thinking, or by not thinking of it? . A wise man advised me some time since, ‘Be still, and go on.’ Perhaps this is best: to look upon it as my cross.” (p. 109.)

Upon this Coleridge remarks,—

“A sad, but natural temptation, of an ever active intellect ready at all times to account for the existing state of the sensations, as by images during sleep. so by thoughts and reasonings during wake. Next to not attending to its suggestions, the best way is to cut it short by a And what better would it be, if I had not taken up this Cross 2 Is it not less wretched than ennui, worldly anxiety, a restless conscience?” (p. 109.)

This does not seem to be “the best way.” Is it not best to go at once to “the throne of grace,” with all our sins, our sorrows, and our difficulties; through Him Who is such a High Priest as befitted us, being touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and having been tempted in all points, like as we are, though without sin?

Coleridge thinks his friend somewhat unjust towards the Puritans. He says:

“This sentence will, I doubt not, be savoury enough to Messrs. &c.; but there are readers who love and admire Robert Southey more than the above-named gentry have head or heart to do, who would have been glad to have been informed by Southey, what these evils were. Even the Tory Stewartite and miso-fanatic Hume, has found himself compelled by truth of history to reply, Our present political liberty is the direct consequence of this puritanism and religious toleration, indirectly. The eight or nine years’ suspension of the hierarchy and of the privileged aristocracy by hereditary senatorship, with the, alas ! too brief substitution of a hero for an imbecile wouldbe despot, was the effect of the crash of collision of two extremes, viz. the prelatic prerogative party, and the puritan parliamentary. Why attribute these evils to the latter exclusively?” (p. 12S, 129.)

Southey having attributed the “instantaneous conversions” in the early Church to “plain miracles,” Coleridge exclaims:

“Strange that Southey should ascribe such a power to plain miracles, which left ninety-nine in every hundred scoffers and starers” (p. 134.)

In this remark—meaning, we suppose, that even “plain miracles,” without the understanding and heart being influenced by the Holy Spirit, would not convert a sinner from the error of his ways—Coleridge shews himself the more scriptural divine; for if they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither would they believe though one rose from the dead.

The following occurs on the subject of “assurance.” Wesley says (anno 1738) that he attended a meeting in Aldersgate Street, where one of the assembly was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans.

Southey relates —

“Mr. Hutton asked him, “If faith only was necessary to save us, why did

our Saviour give us his divine sermon on the mount?” But Wesley answered, ‘that was the letter that killeth.’” (pp. 143, 144.)

On this Coleridge discriminately remarks:–

“At a later period Wesley would have replied: “It is included in faith. In your sense of the term, indeed, it is not faith alone that saves us; but your sense is not the sense of the New Testament.” (p. 144.)

The following remark on Romanism is thoroughly Coleridgian:—

“It is so long since I have read any Protestant ecclesiastical history, that I have forgotten at what period the Apostacy of the Romish and withal of the Western Church is supposed to have been consummated, whether in the 6th or the 7th century. I should think, the disuse of vernacular liturgy and the systematic discouragement of all versions of the Old and New #. would, could the date be ascertained, supply the boundary line between Cachexy and Putrefaction.” (p. 148.)

Southey quotes from Wesley the following observations of Christian David, whom Wesley met at the Moravian establishment at Herrnhut —

“This was his doctrine concerning the ground of faith. “You must be humbled before God; you must have a broken and contrite heart. But observe, this is not the foundation It is not this by which you are justified. This is not the righteousness, it is no part of the righteousness by which you are reconciled unto God. This is nothing to your justification. The remission of our sins is not owing to this cause, either in whole or in part, Nay, it may i. justification if you build anything upon it.” (pp. 174, 175.)

Upon this Southey says:–

“Wesley, who wrote down the substance of this discourse, did not perhaps immediately perceive how easily this doctrine might be most mischievously abused; but he saw at once with what forcible effect it might be preached, and it will be seen how well he profited by the lesson.” (p. #.

Coleridge defends David —

“This doctrine of Christian David I believe to be orthodox, as far as the orthodox doctrine of Justification can be expressed in the language of antithesis. It is fitted to convey, or rather to conduct to the truth, for the man who has learnt to use logical antithets as their master, and for that in which their proper use consists, namely, for the removal of false notions, or alien conceptions, that would refract the light, or eclipse the disk of the unique idea.” (pp. 174, 175.)

On Holiness, Coleridge well says:—

“Holiness is both a fountain and a source; but the streams (doing good, outward actions, &c.) do not constitute its work; but prove and demonstrate the earcellency of its worth, and that the spring at the bottom is inexhaustible and incessant.” (p. 182.)

Of Methodism, Coleridge gives us his pro and contra opinion.

• “Logic, successive volitions, voluntas perpetua et discontinua, and the first pronoun personal in all its cases, but only in the singular number, justs being of apop’ spe—these were Wesley–Boy Wesley, Youth Wesley, Young Man, Man, Elder, Patriarch Wesley; as such he was fitted for his calling; but of whom was this calling? of God? I cannot say Yes! I dare not, will not say, or even think, No! That Arminian Methodism contains many true Christians God forbid that I should doubt . That it ever made, or tends to make, a Christian, I do doubt; though, that it has been the occasion, and even cause, of o: thousands from their evil deeds, and that it has made and tends to make bad and mischievous men peaceable and profitable neighbours and citizens, I delight in avowing.” (p. 184.)

b The following is to our minds a just censure upon Southey’s ook.

“O dear and honoured Southey ! this the favourite of my library among many favourites, this the book which I can read for the twentieth time with delight, when I can read nothing else at all; this darling book is nevertheless an unsafe book of all unsettled minds. How many admirable young men do I know or have seen, whose minds would be a shuttlecock between the battledores, which the bi-partite author keeps in motion A delightful game between you and your duplicate—and for those like you, harmless. But oh! what other duplicate is there of Robert Southey, but of that his own projection The same facts and incidents as those recorded in Scripture, and told in the same words—and the workers, alas ! in the next page, these are enthusiasts, fanatics; but could this have been avoided, salvå veritate?—Answer. The manner, the way, might have been avoided.” (p. 186.) This is excellently said: “The manner, the way, might have been avoided.” This is the very comment we would make upon Macaulay’s History, where he touches upon ecclesiastical and religious matters. There may be nothing untrue in a statement; yet the effect may be injurious because of “the manner.” We express our best thanks to Mr. Coleridge for a pregnant query. Wesley had said: “When will ye understand that the most destructive of all those errors which Rome, the mother of abominations, hath brought forth (compared to which transubstantiation, and a hundred more, are trifles light as air.) is that we are justified by works, or (to express the same thing a little more decently) by faith and works. Now do I preach this? I did for ten years; I was fundamentally a Papist and knew it not. But I do now testify to all (and it is the very point for asserting which I have to this day been called in question), that no good works can be done before justification, none which have not in them the nature of sin.” (pp. 244.) Southey, to liberate Wesley from the enormity of holding such a doctrine, interposes: “This doctrine, however, was not preached in all the naked absurdity of its consequences.” Whereupon Coleridge significantly asks,— “Did Robert Southey remember, that the words in italics are faithfully quoted from the articles of our Church.” (p. 245.) Again, Samuel Wesley having designated Whitfield’s auditors and his own brother Jack as “tatterdemalians,” Coleridge exclaims, “Oh! what an advantage such language must have given to his brothers.” To be sure it did. It was like sneering at schools for ragged outcasts; or preaching the Gospel to the poor. When Rowland Hill (the anecdote, we believe, was never in print, but it is genuine) was told that he would only have “tag, rag, and bobtail” to hear him on some occasion, he, with great gravity —and more humour than decorum—rebuked the remonstrant by praying for those tatterdemalians under these very names. Southey, defending the pride, ambition, and gorgeousness of the Church of Rome, says:—

“The Church could not have effected all this good, if it had not employed means which have been too indiscriminately condemned. A religion of rites and ceremonies was as necessary for the rude and ferocious nations which overthrew the Roman empire, as for the Israelites when they were brought out of Egypt. Pomp, and wealth, and authority were essential for its success.” (p. 265.)

Coleridge asks upon this, and we thank him for the question:—

“Is Southey a Christian? If he be—nay assuredly he is. But a Christian declares superstitious will worship, with the power, pomps, and vanities of the world, essential to the success of Christianity But the number and kind of Wicliffe’s followers, poor and simple men, falsify the whole scheme.” (p. 265.)

« PreviousContinue »

The Eclectic Magazine, Volume 61, Issue 4 (Google Books)

Cecil was in conviction a Protestant. But in 1559, De Feria said, concerning Elizahis religion was that of the statesman; it beth: was not that of the martyr or of the saint. The science of politics is eminently a! “I have ceased to speak to her about reli. science of compromise. The statesman gion, although I see her rushing upon perdimust know how to cede the less for the tion. If rede the less for the tion. If the marriage (with Philip) can be

brought about, the rest will provide for itself. sake of the greater. It was imperative

If she refuse, nothing which I can say will that Cecil should be a statesmen of this

| move her. She is so misled by the heretics order to the end of his days if he was to who fill her court and council, that I should be successful. Elizabeth might well weep, ‘büt injure our chances in the principal matter as she is said to have done, when death by remonstrating.” had taken him from her side, though even – ” . her favor toward him had its seasons of Writing some weeks later, he says: fickleness, and he was rarely to be free

“After we had talked a short time she said from troubles Irom the mmuence of court she could not have married your Majesty befactions.

cause she was a heretic. I said I was astonishThe Dauphiness of France, the future ed to hear her use such words. I asked her Mary Queen of Scots, was the rival to why her language was now so different from Elizabeth set up by the French court; what it had been. But she would give no exand the first advisers of Elizabeth knew, I planation. The heretics, with their friend the that do what they might. Philip would devil, are working full speed. They must not cease to be the friend of England

land have told her that your Majesty’s object in prorather than see the English crown pass in ‘ ” she spoke carelessly. ‘indifferently, alto

“posing for her was only to save religion.” that direction. Hence the Bishop of Ar-gether unlike herself, and she said positively ras, writing to Philip in May, 1559, says : that she meant to do as her father had done. ” The French, I think, would have tried I told her I would not believe that she was a a descent on the Isle of Wight before this, heretic. I could not think it possible she had you not given them to understand

would sanction these new laws. If she changed that you would not permit it.” Great ac

her religion she would ruin herself. Your cordingly was the perplexity of Philip’s he normlarity of Philinis Majesty,’ I said, ‘would not separate yourself

from the church for all the thrones in the ambassadors. They were intent upon sav

world.’ ing English Catholicism, and upon crush- oo So much the less,’ she replied, “should ing English Protestantism; but how to your Majesty do it for a woman.’ accomplish those objects they saw not. 1° “I did not wish to be too harsh with her, so To attempt to bring them about by per- I said men sometimes did for a woman what suasion seemed a hopeless task. To at- | they would do for nothing else. tempt to realize them by force would be

« She told me she did not intend to be callto see France, England, Scotland, and the

ed head of the church, but she would not

let her subjects’ money be carried out of the Low Countries marshaled against them.

; | realm to the Pope any more, and she called The correspondence of these distressed the bishops a set of lazy scamps. envoys furnishes in consequence many an «• The scamps,’ I said, “were the preachers instructive glance into the character of to whom she had been listening.’ Elizabeth, and into the real state of affairs “At this moment Knolles came in to tell her both in the court and through the nation. I that supper was ready—a story made for the The Spanish ninister, Count de Feria,

occasion, I fancy. They dislike nothing so was in England at the juncture of Mary’s |

much as her conversations with me.

“Cecil governs the queen. He is an able last illness, and was deputed by Philip to

plo | man, though an accursed heretic.”— Vol. i. pp. put himself into communication with Eliz- | 66. 67. abeth at that crisis. De Feria spared no pains to influence the new queen in fa- Not many weeks afterwards De Feria vor of her sister’s policy. Philip himself was superseded by Alvarez de Quadra, descended so far as to offer his hand to Bishop of Aquila, a diplomatist of the Elizabeth, in the hope of securing that ob- first order, and one who by his spies be. ject. But husbands were proffered to the came acquainted with nearly every thing Ocean Queen from nearly a dozen quar- said or done in the court. But the most ters, and on nearly all these proposals her sagacious politicians, while guided by Majesty bestowed some courtesy and bye- nothing higher than their own worldly play, while she secretly resolved that no maxims, often prophesy falsely. Concernone of them should be accepted. Early ling the rising of the Protestant party in Scotland, De Quadra writes that they and the church was not united again.”-Vol. i. pp the English together “are to expel the 245–247. French between them, and establish heresy all over the island. Such is the pro

It was certainly true that Elizabeth was gramme, which I regard myself as a

not a Protestant in the sense in which the

Puritans were Protestants ; nor even in chimera. But the spirit of the woman (Elizabeth) is such, that I can believe any

the sense in which men like Cecil were thing of her. She is possessed by the

such. In some respects she had no doubt devil, who is dragging her to his own

been induced to go further than she would place.” (Vol. i. 98.)

have chosen ; but these facts were hardly Twelve months later, the unsatisfactory

such as to justify the above language : aspect of the queen’s affairs, and her fond

and there are graver matters behind.

The Dudley project hung on during the ness for Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, disposed her Majesty to

next six months, and seemed to become look with more interest towards a Spanish

more serious every day. The queen’s alliance, and led her to express herself con

best friends, the wisest men about her, cerning Protestantism

without knowing all the lengths to which

in language of a somewhat startling and hardly credible

she had seemed disposed to go, risked her description. At that time a Papal nuncio

displeasure by remonstrating against her was on his way to seek an audience of

waywardness. And, after all, De Quadra

has to write as follows touching the the queen. The question as to the reception of this functionary awakened in

proposed Dudley marriage, and the case of

Lady Dudley, the ill-fated Amy Robsart: terest every where.

“There came lately to me Sir Henry Sidney, “Leaving other matters,” says De Qua- who is married to Lord Robert’s sister, a highdra, “we talked of the mission of the Abbot spirited, noble sort of person, and one of the of St. Saviour’s from the Pope. She seemed best men the queen has about the court. surprised, and remembering the humor of the “ After speaking generally on ordinary matCatholics, even alarmed.

ters, he came to the affair of his brother-in“I said his Holiness, being a wise prince, law, and the substance of his words to me and a loving father to his children, could have was this : The marriage was now in every no object, save to give her paternal admoni-body’s mouth, he said, and the queen, I must : tion and advice. I thought perhaps the mission be aware, was very anxious for it. He was had originated in a suggestion from the king surprised that I had not advised your Majesour sovereign, who always hoped that a woman ty to use the opportnnity to gain Lord Robso gifted and so wise would find a way to re- ert’s good will. Your Majesty would find unite her subjects with the Universal Catholic Lord Robert as ready to obey you, and do Church. His Majesty, I knew, had expressed you service, as one of your own vassals, with this conviction to the Pope, to obviate the de more to the same purpose. … He is evsigns of the French, and the Pope perhaps idently well acquainted with what has passed, wished to ascertain her real feelings.

and he is not too prejudiced to see the truth. “She was evidently pleased. She was afraid But he added that if I could be satisfied about his Majesty had withdrawn his support from Lady Dudley’s death, he thought I could not her at Rome, and a declaration of the Pope object to informing your Majesty of what he against her at this moment, she knows, would had said. The queen and Lord Robert were be most unseasonable. For this reason she lovers, but they intended honest marriage, and went on to tell me that she was as good anothing wrong had taken place between them Catholic as I was. She called God to witness which could not be set right with your Majthat her belief was the belief of all Catholics esty’s help. As to Lady Dudley’s death, he in the realm.

said that he had examined carefully into the “I said that if this was true she had done circumstances, and he was satisfied that it had wrong in dissembling against her conscience on been accidental, although he admitted that a question of so vast importance. She had com- others thought differently. He allowed that mitted a crime against her poor subjects, who there was hardly a person who did not believe had been led by her example to desert their re- there had been foul play. The preachers in ligion. Her very honor was touched by it. their pulpits spoke of it, not sparing even the

“She replied that she had been compelled honor of the queen, and this, he said, had at the time to act as she did, and that if I brought her to consider whether she could not re. knew how she had been driven to it, she was store order in the realm in these matters of resure I should excuse her. . . .

ligion. She was anxious to do it, and Lord “I brought her to say that the nuncio Robert, to his own knowledge, would be ready which the Pope was sending should be wel. to assist. . comed, and that it should not be her fault ifl “He mentioned a multitude of things most

distressing, and he assured me, on his solemn / another and a deep shadow over the glory oath, that the queen and Lord Robert were of Elizabeth. determined to restore the religion (Romanism) Who this Lord Robert Dudley was is by way of the General Council, and he then went on to press me to write to your Majesty

sufficiently known. His grandfather was to forward the affair in such a form that Lord

a baron of the Exchequer, and the Dudley Robert should receive the prize for which he executed with Empson in punishment of aims at your Majesty’s hands.

the oppressions perpetrated by him to “ Of this I am certain, that if she marry gratify the rapacity of Henry VII. His Lord Robert without your Majesty’s sanction, father was the Duke of Northumberland, your Majesty has but to give a hint to her

who had set up the pretensions of Lady subjects, and she will lose her throne. But

ut Jane Grey against Mary, and had expiatI am certain, also, that without your Majesty’s sanction she will do nothing in public, and

ed his offense on Tower Hill. Lord Robit may be when she sees that she has nothing

nothing ert, with the other Dudleys, had been to hope from your Majesty, she will make a thrown into the Tower, and had been a worse plunge.”—Vol. i. pp. 308–312. prisoner there with Elizabeth. He had,

when young, married Amy Robsart, the Mr. Froude feels bound to admit, from daughter of Sir John Robsart ; the match the evidence of these letters, that Eliza- I was a love affair, but the marriage had beth’s interest in the Reformation was been public in the court of Edward VI. eclipsed for an interval by her interest in

Since then the lady had lived alone in Lord Robert Dudley.

a manor house in Oxfordshire ; and as “ Stung by the reproaches of the Protestant | the star of Dudley rose at court, this folpreachers, which in her heart she knew to be ly of his youth, as it was deemed, was re. deserved, she was tempted to forsake a cause garded as a sad impediment in the path of to which, in its theological aspect, she was his ambition. His handsome person, and never devoted. If Philip would secure her his courtly manners, were his only possithe support of his friends in making a husband | ble recommendation to man or woman. of the miserable son of the apostate Northumberland, she was half ready to undo her work,

He possessed neither talent, nor courage, and throw the weight of the crown once more

nor any kind of virtue. He was more on the Catholic side.

woman than man, and the marvel to all “ Self – witted, self-confident, and utterly men was that he should have become a fearless, refusing to believe in her lover’s in favorite with Elizabeth. The caprices infamy, and exasperated at the accusations which cident to women, in such relations, bardly she might willfully have considered undesery

seemed enough to account for such a fact. ed, she could easily conceal from herself the Before the death of Amy Robsart. it was nature of the act which she was contemplating, and the palace clique might have kept her

rumored that she was to be taken off by blind to the true feeling of the country. The poison, or by some other means. Such bishop’s story has not the air of an invention ; was the court talk, and ambassadors specand it is incredible that Sir Henry Sidney ulated upon it in their dispatches. This could have ventured to have made a commu- may have been no more than the conjeccation of such a character unless he had be.tnre of Dudley’s enemies as to what he lieved himself to have the queen’s sanction. I

| was likely to do. But the deed was done; “But the bishop learnt afterwards that Eliz

and the fact that it was done in the face of abeth had consented with extreme reluctance, and only at the passionate entreaties of Lord

such predictions, seems to warrant the Robert, who had persuaded her that her life conclusion that the rumors which went was in danger. Cecil’s efforts, then and always. / before had not been without reason. had been to divert her from the wrong course, In the autumn of 1560, more than a year by forcing her to commit herself to another; had passed since the bruit had become and before Sidney was allowed to speak to common that Elizabeth was likely to marDe Quadra, the league with the Huguenot ry Dudley. On the 11th of September, leaders which Throckmorton had so earnestly D.O

De Quadra writes as follows to the Duch

d advised, and the Spanish ambassador had so anxiously dreaded, was already under consid

ess of Parma: eration.”—Vol. i. pp. 314, 315.

“On the 3d of this month the queen spoke In the end, the men who watched and

and I to me about her marriage with the archduke.

‘¡ She said she had made up her mind to marry, worked for the better cause were success

%) and that the archduke was to be the man. ful. But it was a protracted and diffi- | She has just now told me dryly that she does cult business, and the result of the dis- not intend to marry, and that it can not be. closures made in these papers is to cast “After conversation with the queen, I met the Secretary Cecil, whom I knew to be in dis- | pected from him. On the 8th of Septemgrace. Lord Robert, I was aware, was endeav- / ber Cecil told De Quadra that the report, oring to deprive him of his place. With little

was, that Dudley’s wife was ill and not difficulty I led him to the subject, and after many protestations and entreaties that I would

| likely to live, while he knew her to be keep secret what he was about to tell me, he

well, but knew also that a plot was laid said that the queen was going on so strangely against her life. On that day, or at the that he was about to withdraw from her ser- | latest on the day following, Amy Robsart vice. It was a bad sailor, he said, who did is found dead at the bottom of a staircase, not make for port when he saw a storm com- as if killed by a fall, all the servants of the ing, and for himself he perceived the most house having been sent away to amuse manifest ruin impending over the queen

themselves at a neighboring fair. The through her intimacy with Lord Robert. “The Lord Robert had made himself master of the

scene of this tragedy was Cumnor Hall. business of the State, and of the person of the

It is observable that while no period queen, to the extreme injury of the realm, | in our history bad been so marked by the with the intention of marrying her, and she action of great men, and by great events, herself was shutting herself up in the palace, as the latter half of the sixteenth century, to the peril of her health and life. That the during those years the most prominent realm would tolerate the marriage, he said, he did not believe. He was therefore determined

country were three women-Mary Tudor, to retire into the country, although he supposed they would send him to the Tower before

Elizabeth, and Mary Queen of Scots. In they would let him go.

Mary Tudor, we see capacity, hereditary “He implored me for the love of God to re-courage, and a heart, not perhaps naturmonstrate with the queen, to persuade her ally ill disposed, soured by misfortune not utterly to thow herself away, as she was and bodily infirmity, and drugged with doing, and to remember what she owed to superstition. Elizabeth was of another herself and to her subjects. Of Lord Robert

| mould; and so was her great rival, the he twice said, he would be better in Paradise

Scottish queen. Married to the Dauphin, than here. “Last of all he said that they were thinking

ce thinking | Mary Stuart had become Queen of France, of destroying Lord Robert’s wife. They had and during the short reign of her husband given out that she was ill, but she was not ill she had cherished the hope of seeing the at all. She was very well, and was taking crowns of France and England united in care not to be poisoned. The day after this her person. But the event which made conversation the queen, on her return from her a widow left her simply Queen of hunting, told me that Lord Robert’s wife was

Scotland, and with her highly French na dead, or nearly so, and begged me to say nothing about it…

ture, and French culture, she had to seek * Since this was written the death of Lord an ungenial home north of the Tweed. Robert’s wife has been given out publicly. | The shades of identity and difference beThe queen said in Italian : “Que si ha rotto il tween Elizabeth and Mary are nicely collo. It seems that she fell down a stair. given in the following paragraphs : caise.”— Vol. i. pp. 277–281.

“Rarely perhaps has any woman combined From the documents relating to the end in herself so many noticeable qualities as Mary of Amy Robsart before accessible, and Stuart; with a feminine insight into men and from those cited in these pages, Mr. things and human life, she had cultivated herFroude considers the following points self to that high perfection in which accomas clear: first, that Amy Robsart was plishments were no longer adventitious ornamurdered ; second, that those who per

ments, but were wrought into her organic

constitution. Though luxurious in her ordipetrated that deed did so either under the

nary habits, she could share in the hard field direction of Dudley, or well knowing that

the life of the huntsman or the soldier with the act would be acceptable to him; and graceful cheerfulness; she had vigor, energy, thirdly, that if Elizabeth did not hold him tenacity of purpose, with perfect and never to have been more or less implicated in failing self possession; and as the one indisthe proceeding, she ought so to have done. I pensable foundation for the effective use of all On her part, in this affair. we see the other qualities, she had indomitable courage. indications of a rough, hard, and selfish

She wanted none either of the faculties neces

sary to conceive a great purpose, or of the nature, little accessible to the finer vibra

abilities necessary to execute it: except pertions of moral feeling; and in the case of haps only this, that while she made politics Dudley we see the timidity, the cunning, the game of her life, it was a game only, and the want of principle to have been ex- though played for a high stake. In the deep

er and nobler emotions she had neither share beth in her view bad usurped a crown nor sympathy.

which did not belong to her, and dissim“Here lay the vital difference of character

ulation, falsehood, treason in any form, between the Queen of Scots and her great rival, and here was the secret of the differ

was allowable, in her apprehension, if it ence of their fortunes. In intellectual gifts only promised an approach toward a sucMary Stuart was at least Elizabeth’s equal; cessful seizure of her own. When gay in and Anne Boleyn’s daughter, as she said her the court of Paris, and under nineteen self, was no angel. But Elizabeth could feel years of age, her malicious wit was rife like a man an unselfish interest in a great against the Queen of England. Dudley cause. Mary Stuart was ever her own center

was master of the horse to Elizabeth. of hope, fear, or interest; she thought of no-los

“So,” said the Queen of France, “her thing, cared for nothing, except as linked with the gratification of some ambition, some de

Majesty of England is about to marry her sire, some humor of her own; and thus Eliza- | horse-keeper, who has killed his wife to beth was able to overcome temptations before make room for her.” After all the agitawhich Mary fell.”— Vol. i. p. 360.

tion in relation to her own marriage on

her arrival in Scotland, Mary was to beAn English minister writing of Mary come the wife of Lord Darnley. Through Stuart when she was under twenty years that connection she was to hold the Scotch of age, says: “Whatever policy is in the and English Catholics in her service, and chief and best practiced heads in France, to find some happy juncture in which whatever craft, falsehood, or deceit is in Elizabeth might be brought to the dust. all the subtle brains of Scotland, is either. But it soon became known that the fresh in this woman’s memory, or she can newly – wedded pair were not on good gette it with a wet finger.”

terms. Darnley was not faultless. Mary Great was the solicitude to see these was sure not so to be. She had humored ladies suitably married. Elizabeth some- her husband in allowing him to be called times spoke of married life in such terms king; and her husband humored himself as to seem to say that she would never into the notion that being king it became marry. Mary at the same time claimed him to show that he was not to be wholly that she should be at once and formally ruled by his queen. The result was disacknowledged as next in succession to the astrous. As Darnley declined in Mary’s English throne, in default of issue from esteem, if he can be said ever to have had Elizabeth. But Mary was not the only a place there, David Ritzio, the man who person in whose favor the right of suc- played and sang her love songs in her bedcession might have been with some reason chamber, became more her companion; declared, and Elizabeth had valid grounds and the Earl of Both well, the able and for refusing to grant what her sister across bad earl, was more than ever in her the Scottish border was so anxious to ob- thoughts. The tragedies of which all the tain. The point settled that on the death world has heard, followed. Darnley was of Elizabeth, Mary must be queen, the to survive Ritzio, but not for long. Mary life of Elizabeth would have become ex- said passionately concerning Darnley, in posed to dangers from which escape could the presence of the official persons about hardly have been possible. Moreover, her, that “unless she was freed of him in who was to become the husband of the some way, she had no pleasure to live; Queen of Scots ? It might be the King and if she could find no other remedy, she of France, the Prince of Spain, or a scion would put hand to it herself.” Her friends of the house of Austria. In such case, a marked this language, and much like it, ‘brief space might suffice to bring in an- and talked first of bringing about a di. other Marian persecution. The horrors vorce, and afterwards of finding some perpetrated by the first Mary from mo- other means by which her Majesty should tives of superstition, might have been re- be quit of her husband. Mary’s friends peated by the second from pure levity and say she did not assent to these dark, hardambition.

ly dark, utterances. But it is certain that The feeling of Mary toward Elizabeth those who knew her best, were satisfied was that of a tigress ever watching to they had nothing to fear from her resent- . pounce upon her prey and to rend it with ment if the end promised should come. out mercy. Whatever in her words or The bond which doomed the unhappy policy might seem to be of another na- king was accordingly signed by those ture, was such only in seeming. Eliza-‘ who were to execute it. “I know what

Screen reader users: click this link for accessible mode. Accessible mode has the same essential features but works better with your reader.
Books
eBook – FREE
Get this book in print

AbeBooks
Find in a library
All sellers »
Front Cover
0 Reviews
Write review
The Eclectic Magazine, Volume 61, Issue 4

About this book

Terms of Service
413 – 417

Page images
PDF
EPUB
is in the queen’s mind,” said Both well : , questioned him anxiously on the subject. “she would have it done.”

“I pressed him,” he says, “ to tell me

whether he thought the queen was inno“On the 14th of January, the queen brought cent; he did not condemn her in words, the king to Edinburgh. On the 20th she but he said nothing in her favor.” The wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Glasgow at

disconsolate envoy adds: “The spirits of Paris, complaining of her husband’s behavior

the Catholics are broken ; should it turn to her, while the poor wretch was still lying on his sick-bed, and about the same time she was

out that she is guilty, her party in Eng. rejoined by Bothwell on his return from the

land is gone, and by her means there is no border. So far the story can be traced with more chance of a restoration of religion.” confidence. At this point, her conduct passes In decribing these events, Mr. Froude into the debatable land, where her friends meet to bear comparison with Mignet. It is those who condemn with charges of falsehood only just to say that in his narrative there and forgery. The evidence is neither conflict

is a calm intelligence and a simple pathos ing nor insufficient. The dying depositions of the instruments of the crime taken on the steps

which are his own. of the scaffold, the “undesigned coincidences”

We must confess that we have looked between the stories of many separate witnesses,

forward with some solicitude to the manwith letters which, after the keenest inquiry, ner in which Mr. Froude would deal with. were declared to be in her own hand writing, the ecclesiastical affairs of this reign, espeshed a light upon her proceedings as full as it is cially with the case of our English Puri. startling; but the later sufferings of Mary tans. We are ourselves painfully sensible Stuart have surrounded her name with an

to the imperfections which marked the atmosphere of tenderness, and half the world

principles and the reasonings of the Purihas preferred to believe that she was the innocent victim of a hideous conspiracy.”-Vol. i.

tans; but from some expressions dropped pp. 351, 352.

by the way in the earlier writings of our

author, we have been afraid lest his perWith the Queen of Scots, as with her ception of the short-comings of that class grandson, Charles I., death may be said to of religionists should render him insensihave been as life. Had they been allowed ble to the real worth of the men, and to to die in their beds, few would have been their great service in relation not only to found to bewail their loss. To send them our English piety, but to English liberty. to the scaffold, was to raise them to We are glad to have reason to think that martyrdom, and to put the misguided Mr. Froude, while at times under a somesympathies of mankind upon a new read what unfriendly bias on this subject, is ing of every chapter in their history. In not likely to err so seriously as we had 1567, when the Darnley murder became | imagined the whispered or indignant talk of court The writers who have been concerned and country, at home and abroad, the to defend the policy of Elizabeth in so far wide impression was, that there had been resisting the demands of the Puritans, foul play, and that the queen herself had have commonly done so on the plea that been a party to it. But though Mary the Cåtholics in the land were still a large might rid herself of her husband, and majority, and that it would have been Bothwell might rid himself of his wife, dangerous to extend her innovations and the guilty lovers might be thus far much further. Mr. Froude supposes at successful, the power of the Queen of least two thirds of the people to have Scots, as the head of the Catholic interest been Romanists, and it is a fact that the in these nations, was broken by that deed, Catholics themselves were wont to make so broken as not to admit of being re- that assertion. Lord Macaulay, in one of paired. “Lady Lennox,” says the Span- his dashing speculative moods, has insisted ish ambassador, “ demands vengeance that the Protestants were not only a miupon the queen of Scots; nor is Lady nority, but a very small one, even to the Lennox alone in the belief of her guilt. end of this reign, founding his opinion on The heretics denounce her with one voice ; the fact that the dramatists said so little to the Catholics are divided; her own friends the disparagement of Romanism in their acquit ber; the connections of the king cry plays. It would be easy to show that the out upon her without exception.” Three vices of Catholicism have had as little weeks after the event, the ambassador of place on our stage representations during the Duke of Savoy at Edinburgh passed the first half of the nineteenth century through London. The Spanish minister as during the latter half of the sixteenth. But who will say that this has happened | ly hope to go free. Then there is the evi. because since the year 1800 the Protes- dence arising from the constant complextants of England have been a very small ion of the House of Commons during this number compared with Catholics? There reign. It should be remembered that no are many ways of writing history, and man was excluded from that House in this is one of them. Every one knows those times on account of his being a that if players were to “live” at that Catholic. It is certain that Catholics time, their living must be obtained among were returned as members. In Elizabeth’s the people in London and in our large first House of Commons, the most intolertowns; and every one knows also, that ent Papistical sentiments were uttered. whatever may have been the state of The ambassadors of the Catholic powers things in the rural districts, the mass of often speak of the majority of the Comthe people in our towns, and especially in mons as being heretics, never of the whole London, were Protestants. Play-goers as being so. Yet it is a notorious fact, that have never been people of strong re- not only did the constituencies return a ligious feeling, and there has been little vast majority of Protestants, but in some temptation accordingly for endeavoring Parliaments the majority showed them. to bring the stage into the controversy selves to be zealously Puritan. In mariy between Romanists and Protestants of the counties we can suppose the ma

Cecil said five years after the queen’s jority of the constituents to have been accession, that “scantly a third part” | Catholics. But it is certain that even among the magistrates of the realm could there it was not invariably so, and it is be confided in to enforce the penal laws well known that in the towns and cities against recusants, and Mr. Froude takes the preponderance went the other way. this, as sufficient evidence that two thirds Government influence may have been much of the general community must have been greater in those days than in our own, and Catholics. But we require evidence of the custom of elections may not have been a much more decisive character to set the organized affair it became not long tle this point. It should be remember- afterwards. But still the difference in these ed that during all the years of Mary’s respects was not such as to allow us to reign, the government had been naturally suppose that electors who were two thirds assiduous in placing the administration of Catholics, would have so uniformly stultithe laws in the hands of men on whom it fied themselves as they must have done in could depend. The fact, accordingly, that allowing Elizabeth’s Parliaments to be not more than a third of the magistrates constituted as they were. Could the Com. seem to have been Protestants at the time mons have had their way in those times, mentioned, is not extraordinary. The the Church of England would have become wonder rather is that the men of that a Puritan Church. The lawn of Episco- , creed filling such offices were so numerous. pacy might have given place to the GeneAssuredly the fact stated by Cecil is no va cloak of the Presbyter, and England proof that not more than a third of the and Scotland have become one in ecclepersons in that rank of life were of the siastical matters, or very nearly so. reformed faith, or that not more than a But however it may have been as to the third of the people were of that creed. preponderance of numbers, it is clear that What a government as much Protestant the young and earnest blood of the counas Catholic would do in respect to the ap- try went with the Reformation, taking pointment of magistrates, is one thing; with it enough of the older and more and what a government would do in that thoughtful element to secure to it an effirespect, so rabidly and mercilessly intol-cient leadership. In English history, the erent as the government under Mary, is great changes for the better have come, not another. Beside which, an indisposition from majorities, but from men who have to enforce the penal laws against religious compensated for their lack of numbers by errors, was not in itself a proof that the their greater intelligence and their public functionary must have been a Papist. virtue. Many Protestants shared in that reluc- Many of the ruling clergy under Mary tance, some from doubting the policy of now refused the oaths submitted to them, such measures, and others from feeling that and did so with a dogged firmness. But if the penal laws were made to bear severe- their courage came not from any thing they ly upon Papists, the Puritans could hard- I could expect from the English people. It

came from the assurance of Spanish emis- of principle between Catholics and Protsaries that help would soon be sent to them estants at this juncture with considerable from Madrid. Change had followed change fairness, and shows how vain, when you so quickly of late that the next, it was have to do with an infallible church, must thought, could not be far distant. Ccur- be all attempts at compromise. age, therefore, said the brave man. By conforming now we may lose every thing. “Revolution can not be controlled with the By waiting a little we may recover all. logic of moderation, and toleration of those The following is Mr. Froude’s account of

who are themselves intolerant is possible only the posture of affairs as it must bave pre

when the common sense of mankind com

pels them to an inconsistency with their theosented itself to Elizabeth and her advisers

ries. The Lutheran might seem nearer to the io 1558:

Romanist than he was to Beza or Zwingle, “Seven years later Elizabeth told Guzman

but the vital differences were not the apparent de Silva, then Philip’s ambassador, that at the

differences, and the distinctions between the beginning of her reign she had not been wholly

Reformers were after all but insignificant a free agent, and that she had been driven by

shades of variety compared with the principle the pressure of the Protestants beyond the

which parted all of them from the orthodox point where she would have preferred to rest.

Catholic. The Catholic believed in the auIt is possible that she was intentionally de

thority of the church, the Reformers in the ceiving De Silva, but it is likely also that, if authority of reason. Where the church had left to herself, she would have accepted a less |

spoken, the Catholic obeyed. His duty was innovating policy. Politically there was much to accept without question the laws which to recommend it. The Council of Trent had

councils had decreed, which popes and bishops proved a failure. The Lutherans had recover

administered, and, so far as in him lay, to ened the ascendancy in Germany, and the Ultra

force on others the same submission to an outmontanes had not yet succeeded in dividing |

ward rule which he regarded as divine. All the Church of Rome by any sharply-defined

shades of Protestants, on the other hand, line from the communion of the more moderate

agreed that authority might err, that Christ Reformers. The chances were equal that if a had left no visible representative whom indi. general council should reässemble, the Confes- / vidually they were bound to obey, that relision of Augsburg might be acknowledged,

gion was the operation of the Spirit on the while the Genevan Theology, and the Articles,

mind and conscience, that the Bible was God’s and the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI., I

| Word, which each Christian was to read, and would be certainly condemned. The Premu

which, with God’s help, and his natural innire. Statutes would secure the national inde

telligence, he could not fail to understand. pendence, and so long as the critical doctrine

The Catholic left his Bible to the learned. of the Eucharist was unimpugned, the Church

The Protestant translated the Bible, and of England might still consider itself in com

brought it to the door of every Christian munion with Catholic Christendom, while the

family. The Catholic prayed in Latin, and great powers could have no pretext for interfer

whether he understood the words, or repeatence or complaint. Personally and individual-lea

ed them as a form, the effect was the same, for ly, the dogmatism of Calvin was as distasteful

it was magical. The Protestant prayed with to Elizabeth as the despotism of Rome. The

his mind as an act of faith in a language inpractical complexion of her genius gave her a

telligible to him, or he could not pray at all, dislike and distrust of speculation. She was

The Catholic bowed in awe before his wonderherself, in her own opinions, studiously vague,

working image, adored his relics, and gave and she would have been contented with a toler

his life into the guidance of his spiritual diated orthodoxy which would have left to Catho

rector. The Protestant tore open the machinlics their ritual, deprived only of its extrava

ery of the miracles, flung the bones and raggances, and to the more moderate of their op.

ged garments into the fire, and treated priests ponents free scope to feel their way towards a

as men like himself. The Catholic was intollarger creed.”— Vol. i. pp. 22, 23.

erant upon principle, persecution was the corollary of his creed. The intolerance of the

Protestant was in spite of his creed. In deThat Elizabeth would have given the

nying the right of the church to define bis liberty here indicated to Catholics we

atnoncs we own belief, he had forfeited the privilege of do not doubt, but it does not appear, we punishing the errors of those who chose to think, from her history, that it ever en- differ from him.”—Vol. i. pp. 23, 24. tered her thoughts to cede to their opponents “free scope to feel their way to- It was even so. The question to be wards a larger creed.” Too often such settled was the question of “liberty as presumption on their part was little less opposed to submission, the natural intelin her eyes than a sort of treason. The ligence of the living man as opposed to following passage sets forth the difference the corporate sovereignty of the outward

and visible Church.” To retain all that old spiritual courts had been to parts of Henry VIII. had retained, and at the the kingdom, the Court of High Commissame time to reject what Henry VIII. sion became to the whole. rejected, small as the rejected element To that court it pertained to determine may seem, was to take sides with Luther what should be accounted “error, heresy, and Calvin. The authority of the Papal or schism.” But the things so declared Church was in either case discarded ; and must be shown to be such “by the authat being discarded, it mattered little thority of the Canonical Scriptures, or by what else might be perpetuated. The rent the first four general councils, or any of had come. The garment that should have them, or by any other general council, been without seam became divided. Hence wherein the same was declared heresy by the error of Elizabeth’s attempted mid- the express and plain words of Scripture; way policy. To discountenance Puritan or such as shall hereafter be ordered, ism availed nothing. Submission to Ro-judged, or determined to be heresy by the manism was the thing demanded. Some high court of Parliament, with the assent English Romanists, indeed, pleaded the l of the clergy in their convocation.” (1 Catholic character of the Prayer Book as Eliz. cap. 1.) This mixture of the authora reason why they should perhaps be al- | ity of general councils and of the English lowed to attend the services of the church, | Parliament with the authority of Scripand so to escape the fines and inconve- I ture, is eminently characteristic. It will niences to which they were exposed as be seen that this statute left the commisrecusants. No, was the answer of his sioners a wide field of interpretation. And Holiness, and of his advisers—you can memorable was the use they made of it, not engage in such services, however un- especially in their dealings with Puritans exceptionable and Catholic, without hear and Separatists. This phase of ecclesiasing sermons which shall be surely false tical rule under Elizabeth is touched upon and heretical. Elizabeth was thus to find but briefly in these volumes. The test of that to go one mile, or to go twain, was Mr. Froude’s candor, in relation to this not enough. Nothing short of the whole significant chapter in our history, is still journey would suffice. The Romish idea to come. No man of sense will affect to of church authority made this inevitable. be ignorant of the faults chargeable on The Vatican would show no more favor the Puritans. But the question is, were to Canterbury as fashioned by Elizabeth, not those faults the almost inevitable rethan to Geneva as fashioned by Calvin. sult of their circumstances ? Were they So long as this unbending pretension is not in a great degree provoked ? Were maintained there is no place for compro- they not allied with qualities which made mise. Where there is absolute infallibility those men comparatively the free men of there should be absolute submission. their time, and the great conservators of

The truth is, Elizabeth, in her mongrel freedom for their country ? adjustment of past and present, was not We must repeat, that while we are choosing so much for her subjects as for hopeful we are not without some misherself. Her mind was ever in a haze be- giving as to the manner in which Mr. tween the two creeds. If her intelligence Froude may deal with this section of his revolted against superstition, her imagi great subject. In his description of the nation was fascinated by dreamy, mystical, opening of Parliament in 1563 he has and imposing elements in worship; and given expression to some just and noble her faculty for organization, and her love sentiments. of rule, did the rest. It was the pleasure « Sir Thomas Williams, the Speaker of the as many oaths as words. Then turning to I duced, by which, without mention of doctrine, the queen herself, he went on thus :

en mi me consciousness of holding the Lower House, followed next in the very noreins and guiding the chariot of the state, blest spirit of English Puritanism. With which made the Court of High Commission quaint allegoric and classical allusions, interso acceptable to her. The old spiritual laced with illustrations from the Bible, he concourts had enabled the ‘Popish bishops to veyed to the queen the gratitude of the people hold a diocese assize in relation to all sorts

for their restored religion, and her own moderof ecclesiastical delinquencies within their

ate and gentle government. He described the

country, however, as still suffering from ignorespective jurisdictions. Elizabeth, in the

rance, error, covetousness, and a thousand true spirit of her policy, did not restore

meaner vices. Schools were in decay, yniverthis power to the prelates, but retained it sities deserted, benefices unsupplied. As he virtually in her own hands. What the passed through the streets he heard almost

Protestant or Catholic, all persons who main”We now assembled, as diligent in our tained the Pope’s authority, or refused the calling, have thought good to move your oath of allegiance to the queen, for the first Majesty to build a fort for the surety of the offense should incur a præmunire, for the secrealm, to the repulsing of your enemies abroad; ond the pains of treason. Cecil, in a passionwhich must be set upon firm ground and ate speech, declared that the House was steadfast, having two gates—one commonly bound in gratitude not to reject what was open, the other as a postern, with two watch- necessary for the queen’s security. . men at either of them ; one governor, one “After Cecil, arose Sir Francis Knowles, lieutenant, and no good thing there wanting ; ) who said that there had been enough of the same to be named the Fear of God; the words : it was time to draw the sword. The governor thereof to be God, your Majesty the Commons were generally Puritan. The oppolieutenant, the stones the hearts of your faith- sition of the Lords had been neutralized by a ful people; the two watchmen at the open special provision in their favor, and the bill gate to be called Knowledge and Virtue, the was carried. The obligation to take the oath two at the postern-gate to be called Mercy was extended to the holder of every office, and Truth.

lay or spiritual, in the realm. The clergy «« This fort is invincible, if every man will were required to swear whenever their ordifear God; for all governors reign and govern nary might be pleased to offer them the oath. by the two watchmen Knowledge and Virtue; The members of the House of Commons were and if you, being the lieutenant, see Justice required to swear when they took their seats. and Prudence, her sisters, executed, then shall Members from the Upper House were alone you rightly use your office; and for such as exempt. depart out of this fort, let them be let out at “Heath, Bonner, Thirlby, Feckenham, and the postern by the two watchmen Mercy and the other prisoners, at once prepared to die. Truth, and then shall you be well at home and The Protestant ecclesiastics would as little abroad.’

spare them as they had spared the Protestants. “All that was most excellent in English | They would have shown no mercy themselves, heart and feeling—the spirit which carried and looked for none. England safe at last through its trials-spoke “ Nor is there any doubt what their fate in these words. Those in whom that spirit would have been had it rested with the English lived were few in number; there was never bishops. Immediately after the bill had rean age in this world’s history when they were ceived the royal assent, the hated Bonner was other than few; but few or many, they are at sent for to be the first victim. Horne, Bishop all times the world’s true sovereign leaders, of Winchester, offered him the oath, which it and Elizabeth, among her many faults, knew was thought certain he would refuse, and he these men when she saw them, and gave them would then be at the mercy of his enemies. their place, and so prospered she and her Had it been so the English Church would country. The clergy cried out for the blood | have disgraced itself, but Bonner’s fate would of the disaffected: the lay speaker would let have called for little pity. The law, however, them go by the postern of Mercy and Truth.” | stepped in between the prelates and their prey -Vol. i. pp. 480, 481.

-as Portia between Shylock and Antonio

and saved them both. By the act archbishops Good, very good: but is it true that and bishops might alone tender the oath, and the “clergy cried out for the blood of the Bonner evaded the dilemma by challenging disaffected,” while the laymen would have his questioner’s title to the name. When allowed them to go free? More than Horne was appointed to the see of Winchester, once our author speaks of the Protestant

his predecessor was alive; the English bishclergy as though there was not a whit to

ops generally had been so irregularly conse

crated that their authority, until confirmed by choose between them and the Romanists

| Act of Parliament, was of doubtful legality; on the score of a readiness to persecute, and

and the judges of the Court of Queen’s Bench to persecute even to the death. In support caught at the plea, to prevent a needless of such censures, so grave in their reflection cruelty. Bonner was returned to the Marshal. on the character of the dead, and so injuri. sea, and Horne gained nothing by his eagerous to the reputation of principles dear to (ness but a stigma upon himself and his breththe living, the most unexceptionable evi- ren.”

le living the most unevcentionable evi. | ren.”— Vol. i. pp. 489-491. dence should be given. But such evidence is not given, and we venture to affirm that

| Here it is to be observed that the bill it can not be given. In our author’s ac

so much reprobated by our historian, is a count of this same session of Parliament

bill debated and carried, not in an Upper we find the following passage:

House of Convocation, but in an English

House of Commons; and we not only see “On the 20th of February a bill was intro. it carried there, but approved by the Lords,

« PreviousContinue »

Screen reader users: click this link for accessible mode. Accessible mode has the same essential features but works better with your reader.
Books
eBook – FREE
Get this book in print

AbeBooks
Find in a library
All sellers »
Front Cover
0 Reviews
Write review
The Eclectic Magazine, Volume 61, Issue 4

About this book

Terms of Service
418 – 422

Page images
PDF
EPUB
with the large number of Catholic peers would thus punish Bonner, but that he inwho had seats there, and assented to by tended to go further, and to press the oath the queen. It is clear that if it was a se- a second time, and on Bonner’s refusal, to vere and oppressive enactment, the guilt call for his being sent to the block. Secof that severity and oppression rested on ond, that what Horne would thus have the gravest, the most honest, and the done in respect to Bonner, the English wisest of the lay statesmen about Eliza- prelates were all prepared to join in doing beth. Every student of history knows, towards the whole of his brethreu! Sureand no man better than Mr. Froude, that, ly this is a very grave accusation. Where under the Tudors, it was common to pass is the evidence? We ask in vain. The such laws without the slightest thought only reference given is to Sirype, and in of their being generally enforced. In this that reference we find nothing more than case, too, it must be observed, the penal- the paper in which Bonner sets forth the ty of the first refusal did not go beyond sort of defense made by him. It does not deprivation and a loss of property. The furnish a particle of evidence as to the enforcement of the act in a second instance, bloody-minded intentions thus attributed where the refusal might expose the re to the whole bench of bishops. Mr. cusant to the penalties of treason, was Froude, we believe, is incapable of conleft to be wholly optional, and no man scious unfairness; but his mind seems to dreamt of that step as being other than a bave its fits of humor on such questions. very rare one.

At times he appears as if disposed to starWe have then to look at the passage tle his readers by saying very unexpected cited bearing these facts in mind. Horne things. There are connections in which he regarded Bonner as belonging to his dio- can utter great and noble words in behalf cese of Winchester. Bonner grounded of men on whom the philosophical world his refusal to take the oath on a series of has rarely bestowed even a scant justice; quibbles, and did so, as was his wont, in and there are other times in which he will the most offensive manner. The excep- say of good men the very things which tion which denied Horne to be a bishop bad men would wish him to say of them. was only one of these. The difficulty Protestants under Elizabeth had indeed thus raised was one of a sea of embarrass-much to learn on the subject of religious ments of this nature, consequent on the liberty ; but to say that they had as much imperfect legislation which has never ceas- to learn on that subject as the Papists ed to characterize the Anglican Church. themselves, is to do them great wrong. Had Cranmer completed his digest of ec- Protestantism was ascendant during the clesiastical law, and thus severed the leg- reign of Edward IV., and Protestant islation of the reformed Church of Eng- ecclesiastics were in great power during land entirely and forever from the past, all that reign, but no drop of Romanist no such question as this could have been blood was shed. Bonner and Gardiner raised. But that digest was not perfect- were in the hands of those ecclesiased, and our Acts of Parliament on church tics. They insulted prelates and laymen matters have left a large portion of the almost without limit. But not a hair of old canon law to come into force in such their head was injured. We know the cases. According to those unrepealed course of things under Mary. Look on regulations Bonner was right. Horne this picture, and on that. What the man was not Bishop of Winchester. The ci did who preceded Edward VI., was a tation sent to him was not valid. But matter for which neither Protestants nor this point has nothing to do with the Romanists can be held responsible. Had purpose with which we call attention to the government of Elizabeth proceeded so the preceding extract.

far as to send Bonner to the stake, there Horne, Bishop of Winchester, requires would have been scarcely a comparison Bonner to take the oath. The effect of between its deed and the deeds with which Bonner’s refusal would be, that he would that brutal man was chargeable. We be formally deprived of ecclesiastical office, earnestly hope that in a second edition Mr. and his substance would be at the mercy Froude will be led to reconsider some pasof the crown. On this fact Mr. Froude sages of this nature in his history which grounds the following assertions, in effect, greatly mar the general caution and integif not formally. First, that Horne not rity of his narrative. only expected that the secular power! Unfortunately, among the lessons which

Mr. Froude appears to have learnt from Mr. I may be in him to believe as he does, it Carlyle, and which he has not yet forgot would be as certainly wrong in him to atten, is the maxim, that all religionists who tempt to force that belief upon others ? ” claim exclusive possession of truth,” are, The Teacher who prohibited the rooting up in proportion to their sincerity, intolerant of the tares growing among the wheat, and persecuting. The consequences of this and said let both grow together until the paradox should have sufficed to prevent | harvest, certainly seemed so to think. It any thoughtful man from adopting it. If is no doubt true that some of the most eartrue, mankind may be said to be doomed, nest religionists have been, and apparently by the necessities of their condition, to as the consequence of their earnestness, become either skeptics caring nothing for among the most zealous persecutors. But truth, or bigots cutting men’s throats to both logic and fact show, that it does not uphold it. In such cases, the only hope follow that men zealous to convert their felthe world can have of tranquillity, is in the lows to their own faith, must of necessity probability that society may some day be- evince a passion for burning the bodies of come so wise as to be indifferent to the such persons when they bappen to find their distinctions between true and false; or, souls incorrigible. What is wanting in such rather, so happy as to be wholly ignorant cases is not that men should be less zealof such differences. Amity should be ex- ous, but that their thinking should be pected in proportion to the absence of broader, and that their truth should be truth; the contrary in proportion to its more comprehensive, embracing their presence. But may not a man be convinced whole duty. The study of the human that the truth which he holds is truth’ mind should teach us this lesson, and the necessary to salvation, and be at the same book whence the truth necessary to salvatime convinced, and in no less a degree, on tion must be derived reiterates it in a hun. another point-namely, that, right as it | dred forms.

From the Leisure Hour.

THE WOMAN LESS REGION.

THERE are many islands, and not a few brightest, bluest of all skies—the reader large continental districts, which have no will then have before his mind’s eyè a stated representatives of the human race. general outline of the locality, as far as But as far as information extends, there relates to its natural features. The sons is only one territory of any size, and never of Eve are there, but none of the daugh. has been but one, occupied by a goodly ters; and lest they should attempt to innumber of the descendants of Adam, from trude, influenced by the curiosity attributwhich that exquisite variety of the species ed by common fame to their primal mother, -woman-is carefully excluded, the socie- there is a guard stationed for the express ty being entirely masculine. A description purpose of keeping them out. So well of this singular spot may be readily given. I has watch and ward been maintained, that Suppose Flamborough Head to stretch some of the gentlemen who entered in some forty miles into the North Sea, early years, and have not since mingled varying in the midst from two to nine with the outlying world, have lost almost miles, and traversing at the extremity to all idea what kind of creatures women are. the height of six thousand feet above the Reference is here made to the easternwaters; imagine it attached to the coast most of the three tongues of land which of Yorkshire by a low narrow isthmus ; project in so striking a manner from the and to be well clothed with woods, gay north coast of the Greek Archipelago. with flowers, rich with odors, and stock. This is the old peninsula of Acte, now called with song-birds, while overbung by the led Monte Santo, or the Holy Mountain, of which Mount Athos forms the terminațing protection, which has been generally reis point-a conical mass of limestone, shoot- spected by his successors. Though the

ing up gradually and abruptly to the height|domain is of course part of the Turkish of six thousand three hundred and fifty empire, not a single rood of it is claimed feet. It has a very magnificent appear in property by the Sultan, or by any ance, the base being clothed with pines, Mussulman subject. An annual tribute of while the upper slopes and the peak are one hundred and fifty thousand piasters, bare, and shine with dazzling whiteness about fifteen hundred pounds, is paid by when lit up by the sunbeams. The moun- | the whole peninsula, towards which the tain is easily ascended, and commands a different societies contribute their share, splendid view of the principal Thessalian according to an assessment determined by and Macedonian summits, with shores on their representatives. Each convent sends every hand, deeply penetrated by the a deputy to a kind of diet, which manages clear blue water. Ninety miles to the general interests, and holds its sittings at westward, Pelion, Ossa, and Olympus Karyes, a small central town, answering may be discerned on the horizon, when to the communities of Mount Athos, as the atmosphere is free from baze. A small Washington to the United States. It is chapel at the top, under the name of the occupied by a few artisans, who carve Transfiguration, is annually visited by crosses and ornaments of cypress wood, some monks, on the 6th of August, for and is the residence of a solitary Turkish the purpose of saying mass. In the days official, who collects the revenue, and is of inexpert and timid navigation, this the medium of communication with the lofty promonotory was greatly dreaded government. Besides the representatives, by mariners, owing to the rough seas en- there are four presidents of the confederacountered in its neighborhood. Hence, tion, upon whom the duties of administrato avoid rounding it, Xerxes, on his fa- tion devolve. They are taken from four mous invasion of Greece, had a canal cut different monasteries each year, so that in for his fleet through the narrow neck of five years each of the twenty monasteries the peninsula, some traces of which re- has its turn to name one. Precedence is main. From this point, through the prop- given to one of these functionaries with er peninsular district to the foot of the the style and title of “The First Man of mountain, the country is a table-land of Athos.” moderate elevation, rugged and intersect. At the entrance of the peninsula, a few ed by numerous ravines. It is for the most soldiers in the pay of the monastic bodies part beautifully wooded. Fine chestnuts, are stationed, for the purpose of excludoaks, beeches, and plane-trees intermingle ing unauthorized parties. No female is with the ilex, bay, wild – fig, wild – olive, ever allowed to cross the frontier. Any and much underwood; but the landscape woman, with the requisite ability and will, is diversified by many small clearings and may climb Mont Blanc, but not Mount patches of cultivation.

Athos, or indeed come within some forty The bold headland itself is not inhabit-miles of it, at least by land. The prohibition ed, only the country between it and the is of long standing, originated partly by isthmus, the whole of which belongs to a superstition, and partly by an idea that it monastic confederation of from two to was necessary for the maintenance of asthree thousand Greek Christians. They cetic discipline. But rumor states that occupy some twenty convents; besides two of our countrywomen once landed these, there are a great number of places from a yacht on the coast, and certainly of ascetic retirement, cells and hermitages, without confirming the belief of the Greek often romantically situated, which are so sailors, who were persuaded that any many dependencies of the great houses. woman guilty of such a trespass would The date of the first foundations is entire- be infallibly struck dead for her prely unknown. Two of the monasteries sumption. The rule is absurdly extendclaim Constantine the Great for their ed to every other female creature, as founder. Two more claim the Empress far as practicable. Hence, from time Pulcheria. The majority arose in the immemorial, no cow, mare, ben, or she: tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. cat, has here been suffered to make acThese fraternities had the prudence to sub- quaintance with hill, vale, or shady grove. mit to Mohammed II., prior to the fall of But travelers say, that both the king and Constantinople, and received from him al queen of the fileas keep their court in the convents, and reign over legions of sub-1 “Of Canterbury.” jects, who are particularly partial to the rich “ Yes, of Canterbury, for I do not see juices of Europeans from the northwest, how he who is only an archbishop can especially the beef-eating English. If she- by any possibility be the head of a Chriscats are not tolerated, toms are in high tian hierarchy. But as you come from the favor, huge fellows, imported from the British Embassy, I will give my letters world without as kittens, which are taught as you desire.” by the younger brethren to perform sum- So the long-bearded dignitary summonmersets, and other tricks, for their diver- ed his secretary and wrote the desired sion. Karyes has a weekly market, as- mandatesuredly unique. Chanticleer is there ex- “To the blessed Inspectors, Officers, posed for sale, but without his mate; and Chiefs, and Representatives of the Holy all the other live-stock consists of he’s, Community of Monte Santo, and to the while the buyers and sellers are exclusive- Holy Fathers of the same, and of all other ly men. Even the Turkish resident offi- sacred convents, our beloved Sons : cial can not have his wife with him.

“We, Gregorius, Patriarch, Archbishop Few of our countrymen, except those Universal, Patriarch of Constantinople, of the learned class, have thought it worth etc., etc., etc. while to peep into the peninsula, long “The bearer of the present, our patriarcelebrated, though perhaps not justly, for chal sheet, the Hon. Rob. Curzon, of a its literary treasures of classical and eccle- noble English family, intending to travel, siastical antiquity, preserved in the con- and wishing to be instructed in the old ventual libraries. Dr. Pococke and Mr. and new philology, thinks to satisfy his Tweddie were there in the last century; curiosity by repairing to those sacred conProfessor Carlyle and Dr. Hunt at the vents which may have any connection with commencement of the present, as well as his intentions. We recommend his perDr. E. D. Clarke. More recently it was son, therefore, to you all,” etc., etc. visited by Mr. Curzon, in 1837, and Mr. This epistle acted as a talisman. Every Bowen, in the summer of 1850. The attention was paid to the wants and wishfirst named of the recent tourists went es of the traveler, from the monastic auout with a letter from the then Arch- thorities; and he obtained at a cheap rate bishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, com- several MSS., finely executed, though not mending the bearer to the good offices of of much intrinsic worth. A magnificentthe Greek Patriarch, at Constantinople, in looking monk told him the brief story of furtherance of the objects of his journey. / his life. He came from a village in RouUpon presenting the missive, a curious melia, but did not recollect its name or exdialogue occurred.

act position. His parents and most of the “And who,” said the great dignitary, other inhabitants had been massacred in “is the Archbishop of Canterbury ?” some revolt or disturbance; so he had

“What !” replied the traveler, not a been told, but he remembered nothing little astonished

about it. He had been educated in a “ Who is the Archbishop ?”

school belonging to one of the convents, “ Why, the Archbishop of Canterbury.” and had never quitted the peninsula since “ Archbishop of what?”

he entered it in early boyhood. He did “ Canterbury.”

not recollect his mother, nor was he quite “ Oh! ah ! yes! and who is he?” sure that he ever had one. He had never

It was explained to his venerableness, seen a woman, and his only notion of the that the person in question was head of phenomenon was put together by fancy the Church of England, who had crown and hearsay. Mr. Bowen encountered a ed William IV., and would soon crown brother specimen of the genus. The man the young Queen Victoria.

startled him by suddenly asking, “ What “Well,” said the Patriarch, “but how sort of human creatures are women ?” is that? How can it happen that the He had only seen his mother, and had forhead of your church is only an archbishop? gotten even her appearance, having been whereas I command other patriarchs, and a recluse ever since he was four years under them archbishops, archimandrites, old. An amusing incident occurred durand other dignitaries. How can these | ing Mr. Curzon’s stay at Karyes, in the things be? I can not write an answer to house of the Turkish officer. One day a the letter of the Archbishop of-of | cat came into the room with two kittens.

VOL. LXI.–N0. 4

[ocr errors]
“Ah!” said he, “how is this? Why, I priately might the editor of the “ Euterpe” this is a she-cat, a cat feminine! What have lamented, or been indignant, at the business has it on Mount Athos ?”

degeneracy of his countrymen, for valuing “Hush !” replied the host, with a sol- pounds, shillings, and pence above the emn grin; “do not say any thing about antique monuments of their own literait. Yes, it must be a she-cat. I allow, ture. certainly, that it must be a she-cat. i Several of the monasteries are very picbrought it with me from Stamboul; but turesquely seated, perched on high cliffs do not speak of it, or they will take it of difficult access. Reared in turbulent away; and it reminds me of my home, times, when attacks from banditti and where my wife and children are living, far pirates might not be improbable, they are away from me.”

fortress – looking buildings, with massive Little did the monks imagine, at the pe walls, answering to the description of riod of the visit, that there was one among Lindisfarn, in “ Marmion”— them “ taking notes,” who would make them known to the world. As little did! “And needful was such strength to these, the traveler fancy, when writing an ac Exposed to the tempestuous seas, count of his tour, which simply contained Scourged by the winds’ eternal sway, some good-humored quizzing, that the Open to rovers fierce as they.” fame thereof would reach the Hellenic land, and excite, in no slight degree, the | The offices within the walls commonly incholer of a touchy race; but so it was. clude a granary, mill, bakehouse, kitchen, His book, published some ten years ago, workshop, and infirmary. Being recruithas since been translated into Greek, and ed from the outward world, the inmates appeared by piece-meal in the pages of the come from every part of the Turkish emEÚtéptin, a monthly publication at Athens, pire where the Greek language is spoken, containing versions from the lighter litera- and are chiefly Greeks in blood and ture of England, France, and Germany. speech from Roumelia, although there is There is a preface appended to the transla- a large number from the adjoining kingtion, from which an extract may be made: dom, late of Otho. As there is no unap” When the English traveler, Clarke, plun-propriated ground, every new comer has dered the monasteries of Athos of the to seek admission into one of the existing MSS. of Plato, our countryman, Coray, societies. To obtain this, he must devote broke forth into loud lamentation for that his time and labor to the common service, deed of sacrilege. At the present day, we such as till the lands, tend the vines, enhave a certain Robert Curzon, also an gage in house – work, or in the necessary Englishman, publishing his recent tour in handicrafts for which he is qualified. For Athos, in which he sarcastically relates three years after admission he is called a how the Patriarch of Constantinople gave probationer, and at the end of that time, him a letter to the monks of the mountain ; if he has proved his ability and willingand how, by means of this letter and a ju-ness to keep the monastic discipline, he dicious use of money, he succeeded in ex- receives the first tonsure, and becomes a tracting from them sundry valuable na- caloyer, literally “good elder,” or monk. tional heir-looms of Byzantine art; as if The discipline observed by the brotherit had been fated that unhappy Greece hoods is in no slight degree oppressive to should never cease to be a windfall to for- the bodily inclinations. Their church sereigners, and, according to the proverb, vices last six or seven hours every day• spoil of the Mysians.’ The tour of this sometimes twice, now and then even Englishman we now translate into our thrice as long. Their sleep does not exown language, both for the reasons already ceed four or five hours. Their food is given, and because it embraces many curi- always meager in quality, and often also ous matters relating to that national his- in quantity. They never taste meat. On tory which is an object of so much study one hundred and fifty-nine days in the to every Greek; but we leave as we find year they have only one meal; and at this, it all his bitter mockery of the Patriarch, eggs, cheese, fish, wine, and oil are forthat it may serve as a lesson, for the time bidden them. In some of the establish. to come, to the ecclesiastical chiefs of our ments a candidate is admitted on paying ra ce in Turkey.” These angry strictures to the common stock five thousand piasare quite uncalled for. Much more appro- ters, about forty-five pounds, and then he

« PreviousContinue »

becomes a kind of gentleman-caloyer, be-them the learned have occasionally looked ing exempted from all servile work. For as likely to contain some of the hither to this sum he obtains a cell, with the usual lost works of ancient writers. daily allowance of bread and wine; but For some years past, a Greek named additional fare he must provide for him- Simonides has claimed the attention of self. These monks do not eat together western scholars, alleging himself to be in the refectory, except on some great the possessor of a large number of Greek festival occasions; nor are they bound to manuscripts derived from this region. He. a common attendance on all the services has appeared in many countries, dealing of the church, but may repeat some of with scholars, and endeavoring to gain the offices in their own rooms. They are for his literary treasures the notice conat liberty to possess money, and make ceived to be their due, receiving countewhat use of it they please in life; but at nance from some, and regarded by others death it becomes the property of the par- as an impostor. At any rate, if an imticular house to which they belong. Few postor, he is unmistakably a clever one; care to take orders and become priests, and Mount Athos may number among its but prefer to remain lay – brethren, owing celebrities, with tom-cats and monks, the to the onerous duties of the church ser- accomplished Dr. Simonides. vice.

The most recent questions raised in And now, what of the long and widely connection with these disputed manurenowned libraries of Mount Athos ? To I scripts will be stated in a separate article.

Kind of disrespectful

I still think that some people do have good reasons for owning cats and dogs that it would be really rude and disrespectful to always chide them for it, though that could be me growing up and realising they could do good in some circumstances.

Like if you’re a shepherd having a dog to guard livestock, then your reason for having a dog’s understandable. Likewise you’ve got a cat to hunt at the barn, that’s also understandable. This also extends to many other reasons and circumstances.

Like for some (neurotic or introverted) people allergic to cats, unless if they’re going to put up with them in some cases like churches and farms they’re going to gravitate to dogs more.

If some monasteries and churches do allow dogs to guide the blind and guard premises or cats to hunt vermin, then these are fine and doable. If you make your dog/cat hunt mice, then that’s understandable too.

So I can’t disrespect them for having animals, especially for good reasons that it would be really rude to always disrespect them for it.