The Press. — London, England, 1858-11-13 00:00:00

1111 "r'ri nea r For i n stances t h e extra the fir which b lines, ofb best edits In the is the fol Some b passed ma contempla separation deathbed, physician faced the ( informed Some ha , There is a suffer; he knelt dow the whole by all its spared. cold water remained in the re many eau last trial. meter are intrepid 1 tears and miserable Immine ! his proof dying. I to speak bed, anno " This gcs physician of Nelson anchor." over Chat " fear n character his last I scaffold, I safe, and Sir Walu the sea& The an passage Quarter same su exampl4 "Gelid and Ns to be a d'armec equivall The on " T cient in of phi mind. a resolt the ton would mixtur ticism. ments concha this po paper, a good sent sh Studies Pap ( Mar IT is n contra a volt Englis dogm a occupi they hand We (lc with d ever a true b they candoi religi c It ma , have 7 , bitter] them THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 13, 1858. 2ortsmouth ; and we could cite many other instances. Isaac Disraeli omits all reference to extraordinary mansion built at Broadstairs by first Lord Holland (of the Fox family), became the subject of Gray's scathing often so unaccountably omitted even in the 'itions of that fastidious poet. the article on " The Book of Death " there following passage:— , have composed sermons on death, while they many years of anxiety, approaching to madness, in iplating their own. The certainty of an immediate separation from all our human sympathies may, even on a ' , bed, suddenly disorder the imagination. The great • of our times told me of a general, who bad often cannon's mouth, dropping down in terror when by him that his disease was rapid and fatal. lave died of the strong imagination of death. a print of a knight brought on the scaffold to , he viewed the headsman ; he was blinded, and down to receive the stroke. Having passed through ?hole ceremony of a criminal execution, accompanied disgrace, it was ordered that his life should be Instead of the stroke from the sword, they poured ter over his neck. After this operation the knight ' motionless; they discovered that he had expired very imagination of death! Such are among the causes which may affect the mind in the hour of its trial. The habitual associations of the natural cha. are most likely to prevail, though not always. The ' Marshal Biron disgraced his exit by womanish d raging imbecility ; the virtuous Erasmus, with miserable groans, was heard crying out, " Domino ! e! fac finena! fac finetn !" Bayle having prepared for the printer, pointed to where it lay when The last words which Lord Chesterfield was heard were, when the valet, opening the curtains of the announced Mr. Dayroles; Dayroles a chair ! " is good breeding," observed the late Dr. Warren, his physician, " only quits him with his life." The last words 4 Nelson were, " Tell Collingwood to bring the fleet to an 'her." The tranquil grandeur which cast a new majesty Charles I. on the scaffold, appeared when he declared, not death ! Death is not terrible to me! " And the characteristic pleasantry of Sir Thomas More exhilarated moments, when, observing the weakness of the he said, in mounting it, ' I pray you, see me up and for my coming down, let me shift tor myself! " ' , her Itawleigh passed a similar jest when going to scaffold. annotator ought to have appended to this an extract from the article in the Quarterly Review of a few years ago, where the • subject is illustrated with several authentic , pled, like Lord Tenterden's last words, Gentlemen of the jury, you may now retire," lapoleon's last words, " ttlte d'arm4e," not confounded, as they often are, with " chef armee"—the word " tiite " so employed being 'ralent to " van." . articles on " Political Religionism" and Toleration," though interesting, are deft ,in results of thought, and show the want philosophical synthesis in Isaac Disraeli's mind. He roamed over too many themes to be Ante thinker, and we are not satisfied with tone of these articles. A Jesuit or a Deist artfully use, for the worst purposes, their mixture of half-admissions and sentimental seep- Space prevents us from further corn on this most interesting work, and we rude by expressing our gratification at seeing popular edition. It is printed on excellent T, the typography is clear and neat, there is good index to it, and it cannot fail, in its pre -t shape, of receiving fresh appreciation. a of Christianity. A Series of Original Papers, now first collected, or new. By James Martineau. London : Longmans. not desirable to fill our pages with religious :roversy, and we do not intend, in reviewing Annie written by the most distinguished of , nglish Unitarians, to controvert his theological dogmas, but rather to consider the position now Tied by his party, and the relation in which stand just now to orthodoxy on the one and to the unbelief of the age on the other. do not wish to speak of the Unitarian body t disrespect. Their theological defects, how serious, are strictly defects—the absence of belief rather than the ,presence of false ; and have de serve d gent l e treatment by the daldour and good temper which, more than most religious sects, they have shown in controversy. It may be from lack of zeal, but certainly they have not hated those from whom they differ so bitterly as many other religious parties. Let them meet with the candour they have often shown : we at least, who have found Mr. Marti neau's essays —heretical as they are—to be candid, able, thoughtful, and learned, cannot refuse to admit the fact, though we do so without abating a jot of our opposition to his creed. The religious body to which we commonly refer when we speak of Unitarians is not pro bably very influential in England. They seem to have no Gospel for the poor ; their piety is too tame to be infectious. Their theology does not commend itself to plain people, because in Eng land plain people believe obstinately in their Bibles. But those who are practically and essen tially Unitarians constitute a large class ; per haps, if we take Unitarianism in this extended sense, it is among the most influential creeds of the day. For among Unitarians ought really to be reckoned all those who, without much study of theology, or unable to master the science or bewildered by the divisions among theologians, have no formal creed, yet retain a strong sense of moral order, a strong belief in God's righteous government. All these are practically Unit arians, and we suspect that even among good men at the present day this class might be found to outnumber the more advanced Christians. For it cannot be denied that though the more dis tinctive doctrines of Christianity are still effective and still as true as ever, yet for the last century and a half they have been more or less suffering an eclipse. Two centuries ago an infidel was a rare phenomenon ; now among the laity of the male sex and (what is still more striking) of the more educated classes a perfectly orthodox Chris tian is rare. Among these probably the ordinary attainment in religion is a belief in God, an unfeigned reverence for the New Testament, but of the characteristic doctrines of Christianity neither assured practical belief nor decided dis belief. Men like this may feel, and generally do feel, little sympathy with professed Unitarians, yet in strictness of language they are Unitarians themselves. And from this class during the last century and a half a large proportion of the eminent and energetic men of Christendom have sprung. If we compare the great public men of the last two hundred years with many of those of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, and with all those of the time of the Crusades, we cannot but confess that if the former have had as much faith in God as the latter, they have had much less faith in Christ. The fact is, that after an age of violent contro versy in the Christian Church, Unitarianism has more than once spread with irresistible and, it may be, with beneficial effect. For the belief in God languishes in the close air of controversy; when the dust that gathered round the com batants subsides, God becomes visible to them again. It was after the miserable theological debates of the sixth century that the proclama tion of the Unitarianism of Mahomet had so impressive a sound. The seventeenth century was an age of religious controversy. It closed in lethargy and indifference. Then grew up modern science, and the laws of the universe were brought into clearer light. The wonderful order of the world, the unchangeable peace and regularity of nature, proved and made visible to the very eye, appeared inconceivably impressive to philoso phers, who were wearied with the discord of the schools. The Christianity in which they had been educated seemed now an artificial and a cumbrous system ; it seemed that in listening to the voice of nature and in worshipping the Unity of God they were returning to the simpler and more primitive faith. So grew up the Unit arianism of the eighteenth century, and though even its advocates must now confess that it has not accomplished what was expected of it, yet the causes are not yet extinct which maintain and perennially reproduce it. Religious controversy is not dead, nor has it yet lost its fatal power to bring religion itself into discredit. The per plexity arising from infinite divisions in the Church is more widely spread than ever; the persuasion that the true creed must be simple and grand, free from intricacies, and not too subtle for use, is deeply felt ; and so long as it is so, Unitarianism will continue to commend itself to many minds by its imposing simplicity. It becomes, however, much less attractive when it reduces itself to a system and calls itself by the name of Christianity. There are many. as we have said, who earnestly believe in God, yet find themselves perplexed by the Apostles' Creed. These might be attracted by a creed in which the name of Christ should be omitted. They might be content to pronounce no opinion upon His character. But to dethrone Him they silently feel to be a task which they had rather not have any hand in. They feel Him to be one about whom it is better to keep silence than to weave flimsy theories. For this judicious silence we have always respected Mr. Carlyle. Appa rently he cannot see his way to the Nicene faith, but the faith of Christendom and the majesty of Christ overawe him ; the facile cant of neology about " myths and the evolution of the religious " consciousness of the first century " does not seem to him more impressive than the ancient creeds; the complimentary style of Emerson and the Unitarian sect, the phrases " man of genius," " saintly ideal," are not more satisfactory to him; he feels that the adoration of centuries is a mighty thing, that of Christ we must say all that the Church has said or nothing, and that if universal empire and that sole filial seat beside the Maker of us all must be denied Ilim, then it were better that His name were never mentioned again, and mankind ought to blush and wonder that He had ever been able to command their homage. We respect Mr. Carlyle for his silence on this matter. The Unitarians and Mr. Martineau do not follow his example ; we can respect them too, for we believe them to be honest men, but their philoso phical fluency and complacency on this subject is painful to us, and will, we believe and hope, long be painful to most Englishmen. We trust that even in these days of divided religion the spirit of personal allegiance to the living, present, and crowned Christ is not so entirely dead but that those who can speak of Him with distant courtesy or friendly critical approval shall still seem strange and foreign and not quite English to us. But enough of our theological differences with Mr. Martineau, upon which we promised not to enlarge. Mr. Martineau presents to the public in this volume a collection of sermons and reviews of religious books. The mixture is not an injudicious one, for in what may be called a doctrinaire Christianity a sermon naturally sinks into a review. Mr. Martineau is a man of reading, no mean thinker, and a considerable rhetorician, but he is not a great or commanding writer, and, accordingly, his style has not escaped the besetting literary vices of his sect. In our churches we do not often hear good composition, but at least the phraseology of the Church pulpit, being chiefly scriptural, is seldom corrupted by the literary cant of the day. It may not satisfy the intellectual part of the audience, but at least it does not unnecessarily perplex the illiterate. But Mr. Martineau's sermons are such as only people accustomed to turn over the Quarterly or the National could understand. They are not so much expositions of Christianity as essays upon the excellences of Christianity. The preacher is not so much a prophet as a lecturer ; you would not describe him as proclaiming eternal truths, but rather as discussing religion with an easy and gentlemanly vivacity. We do not mean that we find in them any misplaced levity or lack of earnestness, but that they seem to be as truly literary efforts and addressed as exclusively to the literary world as the reviews with which they are bound up. Probably this is the actual state of the case, and we do not find fault with a preacher for adapting himself to his audience, but at least it is a serious question for a Unitarian, and one which we wish Mr. Martineau had found an opportunity to discuss, why it is that he finds an audience only among literary people, why only one class can be brought to listen to him, why he cannot claim for himself that distinction which he rightly claims for the Apostles, the distinction, namely, of addressing man as man, and arresting the attention of all classes alike. In a sermon called " Five Points of Christian Faith," Mr. Martineau sketches the outline of his creed. his " five points" are these :—" 1. " We have faith in the moral perceptions of man ; " '2. We have faith in the moral perfection of " God ; 3. We have faith in the strictly Divine " and inspired character of our own highest de " sires and affections ; 4. We have faith in Christ " as the perfect and transcendent outward reve " lation of God; 5. We have faith in human " immortality." This paper, though short, we consider the most perfect in the volume, nor do we dissent from many of the opinions expressed in it. Under the first three heads, he takes op portunity to impugn many popular theological notions, but we believe that the opinions he ex presses are quite consistent with orthodoxy. Under the fourth, he lets fall an observation •-.,