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

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 deserved gentle 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