Leading Articles on Various Subjects Part 15

'What has pained me most in all this controversy,' remarked the conjurer, 'has been the insidious manner in which certain persons have endeavoured to sow disunion--in some cases too successfully--between ministers and their hearers.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 3.

'Sir,' exclaimed the true Mr. Clark, 'Sir, every individual would do well to remember, when summoned to such a contest as this, the curse denounced against Meroz for remaining in neutrality when the battle raged in Israel. This curse was denounced by the angel of the Lord, and is written for the admonition of all ages, as a demonstration of the feelings with which G.o.d regards the standing aloof, in a great religious struggle, by whatever motives it may be sought to be justified.'--_Sermon_, p. 59.

'The men who thus sow disunion,' said the conjurer, 'never venture to deny that they, whose usefulness they endeavour to destroy, are ministers of the gospel,--urging on the acceptance of a slumbering world the message of celestial mercy, which must produce results of weal or woe destined to be eternally remembered, when the strifes of words which have agitated the Church on earth are all forgotten.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 4.

'Hold, hold, sir,' said the true Mr. Clark. 'On the event of this struggle depends not merely the temporal interests of our country, but the welfare of many immortal spirits through the ceaseless ages of future being.'--_Sermon_, p. 60.

'It is so distracting a subject this Church question,' said the conjurer, 'that I make it a point of duty never to bring it to the pulpit.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 3.

'In that you and I differ,' said the true Mr. Clark, 'just as we do in other matters. I have written very long sermons on the subject, ay, and published them too; and in particular beg leave to recommend to your careful perusal my sermon on the _Present Position_, preached in Inverness on the evening of the 19th January 1840.'

'I suppose you have heard it said, that I changed my views from the fear of worldly loss,' said the conjurer.--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 4.

'Heard it said!' said the true Mr. Clark. 'You forget that I have been bottled up on the hill-side yonder for the last three years.'

'Sir,' said the conjurer, with great solemnity, 'when the West Church was built, in order to secure this valuable addition to the church accommodation of the parish, I did not hesitate to undertake, on my own personal risk, to guarantee the payment of three thousand pounds. This obliged me to diminish, to no small extent, my personal expenditure, as the only way in which the pecuniary burden could be met, without diminishing my contributions to the public charities of the town, and to the numerous cases of private distress brought continually under my notice, in the various walks of ministerial duty. And though the original debt is now reduced to half that amount by the liberal benefactions received from various individuals, still nearly three-fourths of my stipend this year has been expended on this object, in terms of my voluntary obligation. The large sum which I am now in advance, I believe, will be eventually repaid; but for this I have no security beyond my confidence in the goodness of the cause, and the continued liberality of my countrymen. All this respecting the West Church is known to few, and would not have been mentioned by me at this time, had it not been for the perseverance with which some, inaccessible to higher motives themselves, have endeavoured to persuade my hearers that mercenary considerations have produced the position I have felt it my duty to take in the present discussion.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 5.

For a few seconds the true Mr. Clark seemed as if struck dumb by the intelligence. 'Ah! fast anch.o.r.ed!' he at length e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

'Fairly tethered to the Establishment by a stake of fifteen hundred pounds. Demas, happy man, had a silver mine to draw him aside--a positive silver mine. The West Church is merely a negative one. Were it to get into the hands of the Moderates, it would become waterlogged to a certainty, and not a single ounce of the precious metal would ever be fished out of it; whereas you think there is still some little chance of recovery when you remain to ply the pump yourself. Most disinterested man!--let your statement of the case be but fairly printed, and it will serve you not only as an apology, but as an advertis.e.m.e.nt to boot.'

'Printed!' said the conjurer; 'I have already printed it in English, and Mr. M'Donald the schoolmaster is translating it into Gaelic.'

But we have far exceeded our limits, and have yet given scarce a t.i.the of the controversy. We found ourselves sitting all alone in front of our own quiet fire long ere it was half completed; and we recommend such of our readers as are desirous to see the rest of it in the originals, to possess themselves of the Rev. Mr. Clark's _Sermon_, and the Rev. Mr. Clark's _Dialogues_. They form, when bound up together, one of the extremest, and at the same time one of the most tangible, specimens of inconsistency and self-contradiction that controversy has yet exhibited; and enable us to antic.i.p.ate the character and standing of the evangelic minority in the Erastian Church. 'If the salt has lost its savour, wherewithal shall it be salted?'

_April 12, 1843._

PULPIT DUTIES NOT SECONDARY.

There are two antagonist perils to which all evangelical Churches, whether established or unendowed, are exposed in an age in which men's minds are so stirred by the fluctuations of opinion, that though there may not be much progress, there is at least much motion. They lie open, on the one hand, to the danger of getting afloat on the tide of innovation, and so drifting from the fixed position in which Churches, as exponents of the mind of Christ, possess an authoritative voice, into the giddy vortices of some revolving eddy of speculation, in which they can at best a.s.sume but the character of mere advocates of untried experiment; or, on the other hand, they are liable to fall into the opposite mistake of obstinately resisting all change--however excellent in itself, and however much a consequence of the onward march of the species--and this not from any direct regard to those divine laws, of which one jot or t.i.ttle cannot pa.s.s away, but simply out of respect to certain peculiar views and opinions entertained by their ancestors in ages considerably less wise than the times which have succeeded them.

An evangelistic Church cannot fall into the one error without losing its influential voice _as_ a Church. It may gain present popularity by throwing itself upon what chances to be the onward movement of the time; but it is a spendthrift popularity, that never fails in the end to leave it exhausted and weak. The political ague has always its cold as certainly as its hot fever fits: action produces reaction; great exertion induces great fatigue; the desired object, even when fully gained, is sure always, like all mere sublunary objects of pursuit, to disappoint expectation; and the Church that, forgetting where its real power lies, seeks, Antaeus-like, to gather strength in this way from the earth, contracts in every instance but the soil and weakness inherent in those earthy and unspiritual things to which it attaches itself. It, too, comes to have its cold ague fits and its reaction--periods of exhaustion, disappointment, and decline. And the opposite error of clinging to the worn-out and the obsolete produces ultimately the same effect, though it operates in a different way. A Church that, in behalf of some antiquated type of thought or action, opposes itself to what is in reality the onward current of the age, is sure always to fare like stranded ice-floes, that, in a river flooded by thaw, retain the exact temperature under which they were formed, when the temperature all around them has altered. The ice-floes and the obsolete Church may be alike successful for a time in keeping up the ancient state of things within their own lessening limits, but both are eventually absorbed and disappear. While the more versatile ecclesiastical body, tossed by the cross currents and eddies of novel and uncertain change, loses its true course and makes shipwreck, the rigidly immoveable one, anch.o.r.ed over the worn-out peculiarities of bygone days, is borne down by the irresistible rush of the stream, and founders at its moorings.

The Free Church, as a body, is, we trust, not greatly in danger from either extreme. They are the extremes, however, which in the present day const.i.tute her true Scylla and Charybdis; and it were perhaps well that she should keep the fact steadily before her, by laying them down as such on their chart. Not from the gross and earthy fires of political movement in the present day, or from the cold grey ashes of movement semi-political in some uninspired age of the past, must that pillar of flame now ascend which is to marshal her on her pilgrimage through the wilderness, at once reviving her by its heat and guiding her by its effulgence. The light borrowed from the one would but flicker idly before her, a wandering and delusive meteor; the other would furnish her with but an unlighted torch, unsuited to cast across her way a single beam of direction and guidance. Her light must be derived from an antiquity more remote than that of the uninspired ages, and her heat from a source more permanent than that of present excitement, social or political: the one direct from the unerring record of those times when G.o.d walked the earth in the flesh; the other from that living spirit without whose influence energy the most untiring can be influential in but the production of evil, and earnestness the most intense may be profession, but cannot be revival.

Strength must be sought by her, not in the turmoil of evanescent agitation, nor in the worn-out modes of an age the fashion of which has perished, but in the perennial verities of the everlasting gospel.

While so far adapting herself to the times as to present an armed front to every form of error, she must preach to her people as if the prisoner of Patmos had but just completed the record of Revelation.

There is one special error regarding this the most important portion of her proper work--the preaching of the word--to which it may be well to advert. It has become much the fashion of the time--most unthinkingly, surely--to speak of preaching as not the paramount, but merely one of the subsidiary duties of a clergyman. 'He is not a man of much pulpit preparation,' it has become customary to remark of some minister, at least liked if not admired, 'but he is diligent in visiting and in looking after his schools; and preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' Or, in the event of a vacancy, the flock looking out for a pastor are apt enough to say, 'Our last minister was an accomplished pulpit man, but what we at present want is a man sedulous in visiting; for preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' Nay, ministers, especially ministers of but a few twelvemonths' standing, have themselves in some cases caught up the remark, as if it embodied a self-evident truth; and while they dare tell, not without self-complacency, that their discourses--things written at a short sitting, if written at all--cost them but little trouble, they add further, as if by way of apology, that they are, however, 'much occupied otherwise, and that preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' We have some times felt inclined to a.s.sure these latter personages in reply, that they might a little improve the matter just by making preaching no part of their duty at all. But where, we ask, is it taught, either by G.o.d in His word or by the Church in her standards, that preaching is merely one of the minor duties of the minister, or indeed other than his first and greatest duty? Not, certainly, in the New Testament, for there it has invariably the paramount place a.s.signed to it; as certainly not in our standards, for in them the emphasis is '_especially_' laid on the 'preaching of the word' as G.o.d's most 'effectual means' of converting sinners. If it be a truth that preaching is but comparatively a minor part of a minister's duty, it is certainly neither a Scripture nor a Shorter Catechism truth; and, lest it should be not only not a truth at all, but even not an innocuous _untruth_, we think all who hold it would do well to inquire how they have come by it.

We have our own suspicion regarding its origin. It is natural for men to exaggerate the importance of whatever good they patronize, or whatever improvement or enterprise they advocate or recommend. And perhaps some degree of exaggeration is indispensable. In order to create the impulse necessary to overcome the _vis inertiae_ of society, and induce in the particular case the required amount of exertion, the stream of the moving power has--if we may so speak--to be elevated to the level of hopes raised high above the point of possible accomplishment. To employ the language of the mechanist, the necessary _fall_ would be otherwise awanting, and the machine would fail to move. If, for instance, all men had estimated the advantages of free trade according to the sober computations of Chalmers, the country would have no Anti-Corn-Law League, and no repeal of the obnoxious statutes. And yet who can now doubt that the calculations of Chalmers were in reality the true ones? In like manner, if it had been truly seen that the 'baths for the working cla.s.ses' could have merely extended to the humbler inhabitants of our cities those advantages of ablution which the working men of our sea-coasts already possess, but of which--when turned of forty--not one out of a hundred among them ever avails himself, we would scarce have witnessed bath meetings, with Dukes in the chair; nor would the baths themselves have been erected. But the natural exaggerative feeling prevailed. Baths for the working cla.s.ses were destined somehow to renovate society, it was thought; and so, though Chartism be now as little content as ever, baths for the working cla.s.ses our cities possess. And, doubtless, exaggeration of a similar kind has tended to heighten the general estimate of the minor duties of the clergyman; and were there no invidious comparisons inst.i.tuted between the lesser and the paramount duties,--between what is secondary in its nature magnified into primary importance, and what is primary in its nature diminished into a mere secondary, and standing as if the one had been viewed by the lesser, and the other through the greater lens of a telescope,--we would have no quarrel whatever with the absolute exaggeration in the case, regarded simply as a mere moving force. But we must quarrel with it when we see it leading to practical error; and so, in direct opposition to the common remark, that preaching is but a small part of the minister's duty, we a.s.sert that it is not a small, but a very large, and by far the most important part of it; and that it is not our standards or the Scriptures that are in error on this special head, but the numerous cla.s.s who, taking up the antagonist view, maintain as a self-evident proposition what has neither standing in the New Testament, nor yet guarantee in the experience of the Church.

No apology whatever ought to be sustained for imperfect pulpit preparation; nay, practically at least, no apology whatever has or will be sustained for it. It is no unusual thing to see a church preached empty; there have been cases of single clergymen, great in their way, who have emptied four in succession: for people neither ought nor will misspend their Sabbaths in dozing under sermons to which no effort of attention, however honestly made, enables them to listen; and what happens to single congregations may well happen to a whole ecclesiastical body, should its general style of preaching fall below the existing average. And certainly we know nothing more likely to produce such a result than the false and dangerous opinion, that preaching is comparatively a small part of a minister's duty. It is supereminently dangerous for one to form a mean estimate of one's work, unless it be work of a nature very low and menial indeed. 'No one,' said Johnson, 'ever did anything well to which he did not give the whole bent of his mind.' It is this low estimate--this want of a high standard in the mind--that leads some of our young men to boast of the facility with which they compose their sermons,--a boast alike derogatory to the literary taste and knowledge and to the Christian character of him who makes it. Easy to compose a sermon!--easy to compose what, when written, cannot be read; and what, when preached, cannot be listened to. We believe it; for in cases of this kind the ease is all on the part of the author. We believe further, we would fain say to the boaster, that you and such as you could scuttle and sink the Free Church with amazingly little trouble to yourselves. But is it easy, think you, to mature such thoughts as Butler matured? And yet these were embodied in sermons. Is it easy, think you, to convey in language exquisite as that of Robert Hall, sentiments as refined and imagery as cla.s.sic as his? And yet Hall's n.o.blest compositions were sermons. Is it easy, think you, to produce a philosophic poem, the most sublime and expansive of any age or country? And yet such is the true character of the Astronomical Sermons of Chalmers. Or is that spirituality which impresses and sinks into the heart of a people, independently at times of thought of large calibre or the polish of a fine literary taste, a thing easily incorporated into the tissue of a lengthened sermon? Think you, did Maclaurin's well-known _Sermon on the Cross_ cost him little trouble? or the not less n.o.ble sermon of Sir Matthew Hale, on _Christ and Him crucified_? Look, we beseech you, to your New Testaments, and see if there be ought slovenly in the style, or loose and pointless in the thinking, of the model sermons given you there. The discourse addressed by our Saviour from the mount to the people was a sermon; as was also the magnificent address of Paul to the Athenians, where he chose as his text the inscription on one of their altars, 'To the unknown G.o.d.' There may be a practical and most mischievous heterodoxy embodied in the preacher's idea of sermons, as certainly as he may embody a heterodoxy theoretic and doctrinal in the sermons themselves.

The ordinary course of establishing a Church in any country, as specially shown by New Testament history and that of the Reformation, is first and mainly through the preaching of the word. An earnest, eloquent man--a Peter in Jerusalem--a Paul at Athens, on Mars Hill--a John Knox in Edinburgh or St. Andrews--a George Whitfield in some open field or market-place of Britain or America--or a Thomas Chalmers in some metropolitan pulpit, Scotch or English--addresses himself to the people.

There is a strange power in the words, and they cannot but listen; and then the words begin to tell. The heart is affected, the judgment convinced, the will influenced and directed: ancient beliefs are, as the case may be, modified, resuscitated, or destroyed; new or revived convictions take the place of previous convictions, inadequate or erroneous; and thus churches are planted, and the face of society changed. We limit ourselves here to what--being strictly natural in the process--would operate, if skilfully applied, as directly on the side of error as of truth. It is the first essential of a book, that it be interesting enough to be read; and of a preacher, whatever his creed, that he be sufficiently engaging to be attentively listened to; and without this preliminary merit, no other merit, however great, is of any avail whatever. And when a Church possesses it in any great degree, it is sure to spread and increase. Are there churches in the Establishment which, though thinned by the Disruption, have now all their seats let, and are crammed every Sabbath to the doors? If so, be sure there is popular talent in the pulpit, and that the clergyman who officiates there does not find it a very easy matter to compose his sermons. Nay, dear as the distinctive principles of the Free Church are to the people of Scotland, with superior pulpit talent in the Establishment on the one hand, and in the ranks of the disendowed body, on the other, a goodly supply of those youthful ministers who boast that they either never write their sermons, or write them at a short sitting, we would by no means guarantee to our Church a ten years' vigorous existence. These may not be palatable truths, but we trust they are wholesome ones; and we know that the time peculiarly requires them. It is, however, not mainly with the Establishment that the Free Church has to contend.

We ask the reader whether he has not marked, within the last few years, the _debut_ of another and more formidable antagonist, with which all Christian Churches may be soon called on to grapple?

Our newly-inst.i.tuted athenaeums and philosophical a.s.sociations form one of the novel features of the time,--inst.i.tutions in which at least the second-cla.s.s men of the age--Emersons, and Morells, and Combes--with much that is interesting in science and fascinating in literature, blend sentiments and opinions at direct variance with the great doctrinal truths embodied in our standards. The press, not less formidable now than ever, is an old antagonist; but, with all its appliances and powers, it lacked the charm of the living voice. That peculiar charm, however, the new combatant possesses. The pulpit, met by its own weapons and in its own field, will have to a certainty to measure its strength against it; and the standard of pulpit accomplishment and of theological education, instead of being lowered, must in consequence be greatly elevated. The Church of this country, which in the earlier periods of her history, when Knox was her leader, and Buchanan the moderator of her General a.s.sembly, stood far in advance of the age in popular eloquence, solid learning, and elegant accomplishment, and which, in the person of Chalmers in our own days, was vested in the more advanced views and the more profound policy of a full century hence, must not be suffered to lag behind the age now.

Her troops must not be permitted to fall into confusion, and to use as arms the rude, unsightly bludgeons of an untaught and undisciplined mob, when the enemy, glittering in harness, and furnished with weapons keen of temper and sharp of edge, is bearing down upon them in compact phalanx.

We know what it is to have sat for many years under ministers who, possessed of great popular talent and high powers of original thought, gave much time and labour to pulpit preparation. We know how great a privilege it is to have to look forward to the ministrations of the Sabbath,--not as wearinesses, which, simply as a matter of duty, were to be endured; but as exquisite feasts, spiritual and intellectual, which were to be greatly relished and enjoyed. And when hearing it sometimes regretted, with reference to at least one remarkable man, that he did not visit his flock quite so often as was desirable--many of the complainants' sole idea of a ministerial visit, meanwhile, being simply that it was a long exordium of agreeable gossip, with a short tail-piece of prayer stuck to its hinder end--we have strongly felt how immensely better it was that the a.s.sembled congregation should enjoy each year fifty-two Sabbaths of their minister at his best, than that the tone of his pulpit services should be lowered, in order that each individual among them might enjoy a yearly half-hour of him apart. And yet such, very nearly, was the true statement of the case. We fully recognise the importance, in its own subordinate place, of ministerial visitation, especially when conducted--a circ.u.mstance, however, which sometimes lowers its popularity--as it ought to be. But it must not be a.s.signed that prominent place denied to it by our standards, and which the word of G.o.d utterly fails to sanction.

It is, though an important, still a minor duty; and the Free Church must not be sacrificed to the ungrounded idea that it occupies a level as high, or even nearly as high, as 'the preaching of the word.' To that peculiar scheme of visitation advocated by Chalmers as a first process in his work of excavation, we of course do not refer. In those special cases to which he so vigorously directed himself, visitation was an inevitable preliminary, without which the appliances of the pulpit could not be brought to bear. Philip had to open the Scriptures _tete-a-tete_ to the Ethiopian eunuch, for the Ethiopian eunuch never came to church.

But even were his scheme identical with that to which we particularly refer, we would say to the young preacher who sheltered under his authority, 'Well, prepare for the pulpit as Dr. Chalmers did, even when he had the West Port congregation for his audience, and we shall be quite content to let you visit as much as you may.' The composition of a sermon was never easy work to him. He devoted to it much time, and the full bent of his powerful mind; and even when letting himself down to the humblest of the people, the philosopher of largest capacity might profitably take his place among the hearers, and listen with an interest never for one moment suffered to flag.

_May 3, 1848._

DUGALD STEWART.

It is now more than forty years since it was remarked by Jeffrey, in his _Review_, that metaphysical science was decidedly on the decline in Scotland. Dugald Stewart, though in a delicate state of health at the time, was in the full vigour of his faculties, and had still eighteen years of life before him; Thomas Brown had just been appointed his a.s.sistant and successor in the Moral Philosophy Chair of the University of Edinburgh; and the _elite_ of the Scottish capital were flocking in crowds to his cla.s.s-room, captivated by the eloquence and ingenuity of his singularly vigorous and original lectures. Even fifteen years subsequent, Dr. Welsh could state, in the Life of his friend, that the reception of his work on the _Philosophy of the Human Mind_ had been 'favourable to a degree of which, in metaphysical writings, there was no parallel.' It has been recorded as a very remarkable circ.u.mstance, that the _Essay_ of Locke--produced at a period when the mind of Europe first awoke to general activity in the metaphysical province--pa.s.sed through seven editions in the comparatively brief s.p.a.ce of fourteen years. The _Lectures_ of Dr. Brown pa.s.sed through exactly seven editions in _twelve_ years, and this at a time when, according to Jeffrey, that science of mind of which they treated was in a state of gradual decay. The critic was, however, in the right. The genius of Brown had imparted to his brilliant posthumous work an interest which could scarce be regarded as attaching to the subject of it; and in a few years after--from about the year 1835 till after the disruption of the Scottish Church--metaphysical science had sunk, not in Scotland only, but all over Britain, to its lowest ebb. A few retired scholars continued to prosecute their researches in the province of mind; but scarce any interest attached to their writings, and not a bookseller could be found hardy enough to publish at his own risk a metaphysical work. We are old enough to remember a time, contemporaneous with the latter days of Brown, when young students, in their course of preparation for the learned professions, especially for the Church, used to be ever recurring in conversation to the staple metaphysical questions,--occasionally, no doubt, much in the style of Jack Lizard in the _Guardian_, who comforted his mother, when the worthy lady was so unlucky as to scald her hand with the boiling tea-kettle, by a.s.suring her there was no such thing as heat, but which at least served to show that this branch of liberal education fully occupied the mind of the individuals ostensibly engaged in mastering it; and we remember a subsequent time, when students--some of them very clever ones--seemed never to have thought on these questions at all, and remained silent in conversation when they chanced to be mooted by the men of an earlier generation. During, however, the last ten years, mainly through the revival of a taste for metaphysical inquiry in France and Germany, which has reacted on this country, abstract questions on the nature and functions of mind are again acquiring their modic.u.m of s.p.a.ce and importance in Scotland. Our country no longer takes the place it once did among the nations in this department, and never again may; but it at least begins to remember it once was, and to serve itself heir to the works of the older masters of mind; and we regard it as an evidence of the reaction to which we refer, that a greatly more complete edition of the writings of Dugald Stewart than has yet appeared is at the present time in the course of issuing from the press of one of our most respected Scotch publishers--the inheritor of a name paramount in the annals of the trade--Mr. Thomas Constable.

The writings of Dugald Stewart have been unfortunate in more than that state of exhaustion and syncope into which metaphysical science continued to sink during the lapse of more than half a generation after the death of their author, and the commencement of which had been remarked by Jeffrey more than half a generation before. From some peculiar views--founded, we believe, on an overweening estimate of their pecuniary value--the son and heir of the philosopher tabooed their publication; and it is only now that, in consequence of his death, and of the juster views entertained on the subject by a sister, also recently deceased, that they are permitted to reappear. The time, however, from that awakened interest in metaphysical speculation which we have remarked, seems highly favourable for such an undertaking; and we cannot doubt that the work will find what it deserves--a sure and steady, if not very rapid sale. Stewart may be regarded as not merely one of the more distinguished members of the Scottish school of metaphysics, but as peculiarly its historian and exponent. The mind of Reid was cast in a more original mould, but he wanted both the elegance and the eloquence of Stewart, nor were his powers of ill.u.s.tration equally great. His language, too, was not only less refined and flowing, but also less scientifically correct, than that of his distinguished exponent and successor. We would cite, for instance, the happy subst.i.tution by the latter of the terms 'laws of human thought and belief,' for the unfortunate phrases 'common sense'

and 'instinct,' which raised so extensive a prejudice against the vigorous protest against scepticism made in other respects so effectively by Reid; and he pa.s.ses oftener from the abstractions of his science into the regions of life and character in which all must feel interested, however slight their acquaintance with the subtleties of metaphysical speculation. The extraordinary excellence of Professor Stewart's style has been recognised by the highest authorities.

Robertson was perhaps the best English writer of his day. The courtly Walpole, on ascertaining that he spoke Scotch, told him he was heartily glad of it; for 'it would be too mortifying,' he added, 'for Englishmen to find that he not only wrote, but also spoke, their language better than themselves.' And yet the Edinburgh Reviewers recognised Stewart as the writer of a more exquisite style than even Robertson. And Sir James Mackintosh, no mean judge, characterizes him as the most perfect, in an artistic point of view, of the philosophical writers of Britain. 'Probably no writer ever exceeded him,' says Sir James, 'in that species of eloquence which springs from sensibility to literary merit and moral excellence; which neither obscures science by prodigal ornament, nor disturbs the serenity of patient attention; but, though it rather calms and soothes the feelings, yet exalts the genius, and insensibly inspires a reasonable enthusiasm for whatever is good and fair.' Now, it is surely not unimportant that the writings of such a man, simply in their character as literary models, should be submitted to an age like the present, especially to its Scotchmen. It is stated by Hume, in one of his letters to Robertson, that meeting in Paris with the lady who first gave to the French a translation of Charles V., he asked her what she thought of the style of the work, and that she instantly replied, with great _navete_, 'Oh, it is such a style as only a Scotchman could have written.' Scotland did certainly stand high in the age of Hume and Mackenzie, of Robertson and of Adam Smith, for not only the vigour of its thinking, but also for the purity and excellence of its style. We fear, however, it can no longer arrogate to itself praise on this special score. There have been books produced among us during the last twenty years, which have failed in making their way into England, mainly in consequence of the slipshod style in which they were written. A busy age, much agitated by controversy, is no doubt unfavourable to the production of compositions of cla.s.sic beauty. 'The rounded period,' says an ingenious French writer, 'opens up the long folds of its floating robe in a time of stability, authority, and confidence. But when literature has become a means of action, instead of continuing to be used for its own sake, we no longer amuse ourselves with the turning of periods. The period is contemporary with the peruke--the period is the peruke of style. The close of the eighteenth century shortened the one as much as the other. The peruke reaching the middle of the loins could not be suitable to men in haste to accomplish a work of destruction. When was J. J. Rousseau himself given to the turning of periods? a.s.suredly it was not in his pamphlets!'

Now the style of Stewart was first formed, we need scarce remark, during that period of profound repose which preceded the French Revolution; and his after-life, spent in quiet and thoughtful retirement, with the cla.s.sics of our own and other countries, ancient and modern, for his companions, and with composition as his sole employment--though the world around him was fiercely engaged with politics or with war--had nothing in it to deteriorate it. He never heard the steam-press groaning, as the night wore late, for his unfinished lucubrations; nay, we question if he ever wrote a careless or hurried sentence. His naturally faultless taste had full s.p.a.ce to satisfy itself with whatever he deemed it necessary to perform; and hence works of finished beauty, which, as pieces of art, the younger _literati_ of Scotland would do well to study and imitate. There may be differences of opinion regarding the standing of Stewart as a metaphysician, but there are no differences of opinion regarding his excellence as a writer.

With regard to metaphysics themselves, we are disposed to acquiesce in the judgment of Jeffrey, without, however, acquiescing in much which he has founded upon it. To _observe_ as a mental philosopher, and to _experiment_ as a natural one, are very different things; and never will mere observation in the one field lead to results so splendid or so practical as experiment on the properties of matter, to which man owes his extraordinary control over the elements. To the knowledge acquired by his observations on the nature or operations of mind, he owes no new power over that which he surveys: in at least its direct consequences, his science is barren. It would be difficult, however, to overestimate its _indirect_ consequences.

It seems impossible that the metaphysical province should long exist blank and unoccupied in any highly civilised country, especially in a country of active and acquiring intellects, such as Scotland. If the philosophy of Locke or of Reid fail to occupy the field, we find it occupied instead by that of Comte or of Combe. Owens and Martineaus take the place of Browns and of Stewarts; and bad metaphysics, of the most dangerous tendency, are taught, in the lack of metaphysics wholesome and good. All the more dangerous parties of the present day have their foundations of principle on a basis of bad metaphysics. The same remark applies to well-nigh all the religious heresies; and the less metaphysical an age is, all the more superficial usually are the heresies which spring up in it. We question whether Morrisonianism could have originated in what was emphatically the metaphysical age of Scotland, in the latter days of Reid, or the earlier days of Stewart. What became in our times a heresy in the theological field, would have spent itself, as the mere crotchet of a few unripened intellects, in the metaphysical one.

It would have found vent in some debating club or speculative society, and the Churches would have rested in peace. There are other indirect benefits derived from metaphysical study. It forms the best possible gymnastics of mind. All the great metaphysicians, if not merely acute, but also broad-minded men, have been great also in the practical departments of thought. The author of the _Essay on the Human Understanding_ was the author also of the _Treatise on Government_ and the _Letters on Toleration_. Hume, in those _Essays on Trade and Politics_, which are free from the stain of infidelity, was one of the most solid of thinkers; and he who produced the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ continues to give law at the present time, in his _Wealth of Nations_, to the commerce of the civilised world. From a subtile but comparatively narrow cla.s.s of intellects, though distinguished in the metaphysical province, mankind has received much less. Berkeley was one of these, and may be regarded as their type and representative. Save his metaphysics,--demonstrative of the non-existence of matter, or demonstrative rather that fire is not conscious of heat, nor ice of cold, nor yet our enlightened surface of colour,--he bequeathed little else to the world than his tar-water; and his tar-water, no longer recognised as a universal medicine, has had its day, and is forgotten. Without professing to know aught of German metaphysicians--for in the times when we used to read Hume and Reid they were but little known in this country--we can by no means rate them so high as the men whose writings they are supplanting. What, we have been accustomed to ask, are their trophies in the practical? Have any of them given to the world even tar-water? Where are their Lockes, Humes, and Adam Smiths?

The man who, according to Johnson, can walk vigorously towards the east, can walk vigorously toward the west also. How is it that these German metaphysicians exhibit their vigour exclusively in walking one way? Where are their works of a practical character, powerful enough to give law to the species? Where their treatises like those of Locke on _Toleration_ or on _Government_, or their essays like that of Hume or of Adam Smith on the _Balance of Power_ or the _Wealth of Nations_? Are they doing other, to use a very old ill.u.s.tration, than merely milking rams, leaving their admirers and followers to hold the pail?

Dugald Stewart, though mayhap less an original in the domain of abstract thought than some of his predecessors, belongs emphatically to the practical school. With him philosophy is simply common sense on that large scale which renders it one of the least common things in the world. And never, perhaps, was there a more thoroughly honest seeker after truth. Burns somewhat whimsically describes him, in a recently recovered letter given to the world by Robert Chambers, as 'that plain, honest, worthy man, the Professor. I think,' adds the poet, 'his character, divided into ten parts, stands thus: Four parts Socrates, four parts Nathaniel, and two parts Shakespeare's Brutus.'

The estimate of Sir James Mackintosh is equally high; nor will it weigh less with many of our readers that the elder M'Crie used to give expression to a judgment quite as favourable. 'He was fascinated,'

says the son and biographer of the latter, 'with the _beau ideal_ of academical eloquence which adorned the Moral Chair in the person of Dugald Stewart. Long after he had sat under this admired leader, he would describe with rapture his early emotions while looking on the handsomely erect and elastic figure of the Professor--in every att.i.tude a model for the statuary--listening to expositions, whether of facts or principles, always clear as the transparent stream; and charmed by the tones of a voice which modulated into spoken music every expression of intelligence and feeling. An esteemed friend of his happening to say to him some years ago, "I have been hearing Dr.

Brown lecture with all the eloquence of Dugald Stewart," "No, sir," he exclaimed with an air of almost Johnsonian decision, "you have not, and no man ever will.'" The first volume of the collected works of Stewart, now given to the world in a form at once worthy of their author and of the name of Constable, contains the far-famed _Dissertations_, and is edited by Sir William Hamilton. It contains a considerable amount of original matter, now published from the author's ma.n.u.scripts for the first time. It would be idle to attempt criticising a work so well established; but the brief remark of one of the first of metaphysical critics--Sir James Mackintosh--on what he well terms 'the magnificent Dissertations,' may be found not unacceptable. 'These Dissertations,' says Sir James, 'are perhaps most profusely ornamented of any of their author's compositions,--a peculiarity which must in part have arisen from a principle of taste, which regarded decoration as more suitable to the history of philosophy than to philosophy itself. But the memorable instances of Cicero, of Milton, and still more those of Dryden and Burke, seem to show that there is some natural tendency in the fire of genius to burn more brightly, or to blaze more fiercely, in the evening than in the morning of human life. Probably the materials which long experience supplies to the imagination, the boldness with which a more established reputation arms the mind, and the silence of the low but formidable rivals of the higher principles, may concur in providing this unexpected and little observed effect.'

_August 26, 1854._

OUR TOWN COUNCILS.

It is a grand, though doubtless natural, mistake to hold that the members of the Town Councils of our Scottish cities and burghs really represent in opinion and feeling their nominal const.i.tuencies the electors, through whose suffrages they have been placed in office. In very many cases they do not represent them at all: they form an entirely dissimilar cla.s.s,--a cla.s.s as thoroughly different from the solid ma.s.s of the community, on which they float like froth and spume on the surface of the great deep, as that other cla.s.s from which, because there are unhappily scarce any other men in the field, we have to select our legislators. The subject is one of importance. In the Sabbath controversy now carrying on, it has been invariably taken for granted by the anti-Sabbatarian press of the country, that our Town Councils _do_ represent the general const.i.tuency; and there has been much founded on the a.s.sumption. We shall by and by be finding the same a.s.sumption employed against us in the Popery endowment question; and it would be well, therefore, carefully to examine the grounds on which it rests, and to ascertain whether there may not exist some practical mode of testing its unsolidity.

It is not difficult to see how that upper cla.s.s to which our legislators of both Houses of Parliament mainly belong, should differ greatly from the larger and more solid portion of the middle cla.s.ses in almost all questions of a religious character and bearing. Bacon, in his _Essay on Kings_, has quaintly, but, we are afraid, all too justly remarked, that 'of all kind of men, G.o.d is the least beholding unto them [kings]; for He doth most for them, and they do ordinarily least for Him.' But the character applies to more than kings. It affects the whole upper layers of the great pyramid of society, from its gilded pinnacle down to the higher confines of its solid middle portion; and to these upper layers of the erection our legislators, hereditary and elective, with, of course, a very few exceptions in the Lower House, all belong. They are drafted from the cla.s.ses with which, if we perhaps except the lowest and most degraded of all, religious questions weigh least. There is, of course, no cla.s.s wholly divorced from good; and those exceptions to which Cowper could refer two generations ago obtain still:

'We boast some rich ones whom the gospel sways, And one who wears a coronet, and prays: Like gleanings of an olive tree, they show Here and there one upon the topmost bough.'