The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-21 00:00:00

and from the indulgence of inaction and indolence as de-
grading if less hurtful—
Pleriis pollent studiii, multoque redundant
Eloquio ;,nec desidils, dapibusque piratic
Indulgere juvat ; nec tanta licentia vitm,
Abripit, cut mores :etas lasciva relaxat
Bed gravibus curls animum, sortita senilem,
Ignea longcevo fraenatur corde juventus.'

If in action good intentions avail nothing without deeds,
and even deeds are of no merit, however well meant, unless
wisely done, so opinions as opinions, and without reference
to actions, are of no value except for their truth, their
soundness ; and this is alone to be regarded in their adoption.
Their favour with man, their subserviency to a articular
pure ose, their accordance with a prevailing prejudice,their
striking novelty and originality or repugnance to commonly
received doctrines—are all wholly extraneous to that which
alone must be considered in our inquiries, and especially
ia
regardedliyie
our teaching—their truth or falsehood alone to be
and nothing else. But in the same degree in whi.ehthepur-
suit of truth must be the sole object, so is the bearing entirely
with those who dissent from us a paramount duty. Indeed the
one position is involved in the other. We cannot be in search
of truth alone, but in pursuit of something else, and we
do not allow others to hold their opinions, however diffe.
rent from ours. These differences can only be the ground
of our disapproving or pitying, but on no account of blam-
ing. If they have honestly formed their opinions upon
whatever subject, moral, political, or religious, they may be
blamed for the misconduct of the understanding, but not
for the opinions, however erroneous, to which it has led
them. To God they are responsible, and not to man, and
in proportion to the importance of the subject is the respone
sibility heavy ; in the subject of religion, therefore, heaviest
of all, because there even carelessness, oversight, is crimi-
nal ; deeply to be blamed by me, though not to be punished,
and in the sight of God one of the gravest offences. It is
strange how great in all ages has been the confusion of
ideas on this subject, and greatest upon matters where
it was most hurtful—religious opinion. Men justly re-
garded these as of all others the most important, and error
most to be deplored ; and that every temporal considera-
tion was comparatively insignificant. But they also sup
posed that belief was voluntary ; therefore, having the
power,:: they drew the inference that they had not
only a right, but a duty to exercise their power in corn-
pellinglhe unbeliever or destroying him, as Louis IX. (St.
Louis), the mildest and most conscientious of Princes, held
it the duty of a true knight when he met unbelievers not to
reason with them, but put them to death; so little could he
have opened his mind to comprehend, much less to em-
brace, the doctrine of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, delivered by
him as that of all rational men—" No man can change his
opinion when he will, and using force may make a hypo-
crite, but never a right believer. All intolerance of every
kind proceeds from the same confusion of ideas, the more
mischievous because sometimes perfectly honest, from that
of St. Louis and the Inquisition down to its mildest form of
attaching civil disqualifications to religious opinions, and
even to political, when they have at some period been con-
nected with religious belief. The prejudices and gross
errors in which such persecution in all its forms originates
cannot be too carefully guarded against in practice, or too
fully exposed in teaching. The sound doctrines on all
subjects of moral, poli ical, and theological science, at
all times taught within these walls, have esta-
blished the character of the University upon a solid
foundation. But it is not to be forgotten that injury to the
cause of truth has been done by a very eminent person, in
whose great capacity and celebrity this city takes a just
pride, how much soever his talents may have been misape
plied ; and it well becomes the instructors of youth strenu-
ously to counteract the influence of David Hume, both on
account of the incalculable importance of the subject on
which he was misled, and also in respect of a far less mate-
rial circumstance—the disposition of ignorant persons in
other countries to represent him as having founded an in-
fidel school or sect in Scotland. It is fit that on this point
the truth should be plainly spoken—Mr. Hume was not a
sceptic either in his political or religious errors. His opi-
nions were perfect, decided when they could be held upon
positive or affirmative positions, and as decided as any that
could be held upon mere negation. He was the adversary
of popular rights, and the ally of the English High Church
patty against those rights, widely as he differed from all
Churchmen upon the grounds of their belief and the founda-
tions of their power. He was upon all religion, natural and
revealed, a disbeliever, rather than an unbeliever, rejecting
the evidence of the former, and declaring it to be wholly in-
sufficient to prove the existence of a Deity or the immorta-
lity of the soul ; and holding the statements upon which
the latter rests to be not only false but impossible. This is
not scepticism, but dogmatism. It is the assertion that of a
miracle there can be no proof; that ofa God and future state
there is no proof—no reason whatever to believe it. This,
then, is atheism as much as any person of sound mind can
hold the opinion, and this ought constantly to be exposed as
such and refuted. Fortunately there are the means of tri-
umphant refutation ; for upon natural religion the whole
argument of Mr. Hume rests upon an entire misconception
of the nature of inductive reasoning ; and it is not too much
to affirm that if he had ever attended to any branch of
natural philosophy he could not have fallen into so mani-
fest an error. There is no one part of the argument which
would not destroy all inductive science; all generalization
would be put an end to; experiment -1 inquiry must stand
still; no step could be made, no conclusion drawn, beyond
the mere facts observed, and the science mast be derived
from the process or general reasoning upon particular facts,
into the bare record of those particular facts themselves.
The late discoveries in fossil osteology afford additional
proofs of Mr. Hume's hasty assumptions both on the ques-
tion of a Providence or that of miracles. It is now proved by
evidence which he must have admitted to be sufficient, that
at one remote period in the history of our globe there was
an exertion of creative power to form the human and cer-
tain other races not before existing; so that he must have
believed in the miracle of creation—that is, the interposi-
tion of a Being poweitirenough to suspend the established
order of things, and make a new one. The argument rests
on the same grounds as to a future state, in so far as lie
denies the proof of a power to continue the soul apart from
the body,' But there is this material difference in the
evidence, that an induction is conclusive as to the exist-,
ence of the Deity, and the independent and separate
nature of the soul, but only proves the probability
of its continued existence. Its entirely different,
nature from matter, as shown in the quickness of its opera-
tions, its independence of the body, proved by the faculties
ometimes becoming stronger as the body decays—above all,
its surviving the complete change of the body, so that
hardly a particle of the corporeal -frame remains while the
mind continues unchanged, unless perhaps by gaining
strength—all demonstrate its different constitution and its
independent existence ; and, as there is no one example of
annihilation in the universe—what is termed destruction
being only dissolution and new combination, and the soul,
from the singleness of its nature without parts, being inca-
pable of such destruction—we are left to infer, from the
prevalence of benevolent design in all the Creator's works,
that He will continue what He has formed, and so largely
endowed, and so bountifully cherished. It is not, perhaps,
just to consider Mr. Hume's unfortunate views as adopted
from the desire to take a line different from the com-
monly received opinions, though the force of this temp-
tation to a young author may have been naturally
enough suspected. But that his political prejudices biassed
his mind can hardly be doubted. He had formed the worst
opinion of the Commonwealth men in the 17th century,
and of their successors the Whigs in his own day, and the
fanaticism of the former gave him a prejudice against their
religious principles, like that of the Tories and Free-
thinkers in Queen Anne's time. His inaccuracy as an his-
torian, from his Tory prejudices and his habitual careless-
ness, is now universally admitted ; indeed, even where he
had no bias of opinion or feeling to mislead him, that inac-
curacy appears manifest, as in the suppression of all men-
tion of the Limoges massacre when describing the Black
Prince's whole conduct through life as without a stain. Of
the like carelessness in some instances, and prejudices in
others, his writings on religious subjects give constant
proofs. The entire misapplication of Archbishop Tillot-
son's argument on the real presence is one instance, and
the perversion or ignorance of inductive science is another ;
to which may be added his failing to observe that the argu-
ment against miracles would apply to cases of test imony
which may be put as quite decisive, and which he himself
must have admitted. The admirable style of this great
author, and his acuteness and ingenuity, have only in his
religious and historical works served for the'propagat.ion of
error; and the contrast is very remarkable which they pre-
sent to his writings on subjects of which he had made him-
self master, and on which he had no bias to mislead him.
In his political discourses, when he was only in search of
truth, and uninfluenced by the authority of particular inte-
rests, he first unfolded and enforced the sound principles
which guide the commercial policy of modern times. It would
be impossible too highly to commend these discourses, or too
steadily to keep in view the cause of their superiority to his
other works. Greatly as thiscelebration writer is to beblamed
for the rashness of his speculations, and his yielding to the
bias which appeartto have influenced him in these and other
inquiries, he is almost entirely free from the charge justly
made against Voltaire and his contemporaries, some of
whoin, as Voltaire himself, were deists, of treating these
matters with ridicule, or with ribaldry, or with a levity
wholly unsuited to the sacred subject, and fitted only to
inflict pain upon conscientious believers. With the excep-
tion of a sentence or two in the "Essay .on Miracles" his
writings preserve the most unbroken gravity, crud indeed
the seriousness which is so becoming, The same praise
belongs to Rousseau, who, indeed, was a reluctant nn •
believer; but, having none of that reasoning power which
llama possessed and abused, his unbelief is less to be cen-
sured. It has been deemed necessary to state these things
respecting Mr. flume in order that his authority may be
reduced to i's just dimensions, especially with young men,
led away by his gnat name, and his incontestably great
merits in some important particulars. But, beside counter-
acting that influence, the studies themselves in which he
has been the promoter of error are of such vast importance
—one of them the most P:eportant of all—that no pains can
be deemed too great, no care too unremitting, to exclude
false doctrine, and inculcate sound opinions. 'Nor is it only
in teaching divitfty, technically so called, in unfolding the
truths of resealed religion, that this duty can be discharged.
The great doctrines of Natural Theology demand the closest
attention, and afford the most valuable support to teachers
of the revealed Wonl. Nothing can be more ground-
less than the jealousy sometimes felt, but oftener professed,
of natural religion by the advocates of revealed ; Bacon,
who. had his prejudices on the subject of final causes,
occesioned by the abuse of that doctrine, describes natural
religion as "the key of revealed, which," he says, " opens
our understanding to the genuine spirit of the Scriptures,
unlocking our belief, so that we may enter upon the
serious contemplation of the Divine Power, the characters
of which are so deeply engraver in the works of the cite-
tion."—De Dig. et Aug. Lib. 61. Newton has said "de
Dee, de quo ea pha,norninis di3e rere ad philosc,phiam
naturalom pertinet."—Principia Schol. Gee. Locke de-
clares " that he who would take away reason to make way
for revelation puts out the light of both, as if we should
persuade a man to put out his eye the better to receive
the remote light of an invisible Aar by a telescope."
—Hum. (Jude,-. /V 19, 4. And Tillotson, in his great
sermons preached before the King and Queen upon the
occasion of the naval victory in 1672, affirms that " the
principles of natural religion ate the foundation of that
which is revealed." It is therefore most desirable that
a line of demarcation should not be drawn by the teachers
of revealed religion so as to exclude from their province
the great truths of natural religion, as the subject of deep
and continual attention ; and the teachers of the latter and
of moral philosophy generally ought to be less shy than
they too often are (not Paley, however) of a refer•
vice to the truths of the Gospel dispensation. That dis-
pensation may.be safely rested upon its own proofs; but,
should the weight of authority be required in its favour, we
may assuredly ask if any one can pretend to be a better
judge of physical and mathematical evidence than Sir Isaac
Newton, of moral evidence than Mr. Locke, of legal evi-
dence than Lord Hale, all of whom, ani after full inquiry,
were firm believers of the Gospel truths. But not only is
the habit to be deplored of drawing a line between theology
and the other branches of learning, it is equally necessary
that no line should be drawn between these and natural
religion. There is hardly any head of philosophy which is
net connected, with it; and these sciences, as well as natural
religion, must gain by keeping this coon, ction constantly in
view, and not considering that to treat of the one subject we
must go out of the other. The wonders of the natural world
have in all ages been dwelt upon es showing the hand of the
Creator and freserver at every step of ourinnuiries; and each

discovery nas added to the devout confidence of the student.
For instance, the late proof of the stability of the universe,
so little suspecteZ afore our day that men argue on the ne-
cessity of interference to retain the planets in their path,
ha.s thus afforded a very striking illustration of the rational
optimism which is the best solution of the ancientbut-con-
stantly recurring question 1160ev rd xcucOv. Thus,
the natural theology stands at the head of all sciences,from
the sublime and elevating nature of its objects. It tells of
the creation of all things, of the mighty power that fashioned
and sustains the universe, of the exquisite skill that con-
trived the wings and beak and feet of insects, invisible to
the naked eye, and that lighted the lamp of day, and
launched into space comets myriads of times larger than
the earth, whirling 10,000 times swifter than a cannon ball,
and 2,000 times hotter than red-hot iron. It passes the
bounds of material existence, and raises us from the creation
to the Author of Nature. Its office is not only to mark what
things are, but for what purpose they were made by the infi-
nite wisdom of an all-powerful Being, with whose existence
and attributes its high prerogative is to bring us acquainted.
If we prize,and justly, the delightful contemplations of the
other sciences, if we hold it a marvellous gratification to have
ascertained exactly the swiftness of the remotest planets, the
number of grains that a piece of lead would weigh at their
surfaces, and the degree in which each has become flat-
tened in shape by revolving on its axis, it is surely a yet
more noble employment of our faculties, and a still higher
privilege of our nature, humbly but confidently. to ascend
il.om the universe to its great first cause, and investigate
the unity, the personality, the intentions, as well as the
matchless skill and mighty power of Him who made and
moves and sustains those prodigious bodies, and all that
inhabit them. But moral science lends liberally the same
lights and bestows the same enjoyments. For He also
created the mind of man, bestowed upon him a thinking, a
reasoning, and a feeling nature, placed him in a universe of
wonders, endowed him with faculties to comprehend them,
a- d to rise by his meditations tom knowledge of their Di-
vine cause. The connection of attention with memory, the
helps furnished by the influence of curiosity and the force
of habit, the uses to which the feelings and the passions
are subservient—as love to the continuance of the race, the
affections to the rearing of it, hope to encourage and sustain;
fear to protect from danger—all the instincts of all creatures
in some acting with a marvellous accuracy such as reason
could not surpass, and all perfectly suited to the position of
the individuals—these are not more marvels of Divine skill
than of the benevolence which pervades all creation, moral
as well as material. But societies of men, even in his social
capacity, are the special object of Divine care—"Nihil est
principi illi Deo qui omnem hunc mundum regit quod qui-
dem. in terris fiat acceptius quam concilia costusque homi-
num jure sociall quay civitates appellantur."—Cic., Somn.
Scip. And the same pleasing and useful effects result from
the study of man in his social as in his individual state,
and from a contemplation of the structure and functions of
the political world. The nice adaptation of our species for
the secial state, the increase of our power as well as the
multiplication of our comforts and our enjoyments by
union of purpose and of action, the subserviency of the
laws governing the nature and motions of the natural
world to the uses of man in his social condition, the
tendency of his mental faculties and moral feelings to
further the progress of social improvement, the predisposi-
tion of political combinations, even in unfavourable circum-
stances, to produce good and the inherent powers by which
evil is avoided, compensated. and repaired ; the singular
laws, partly physical and partly moral, by which the num-
bers of mankind are maintained and the balance of the sexes
preserved with unerring uncertainty—these form only a
portion of the marvels to which the eye of the political ob-
server is pointed, and by which his attention is arrested ;
for there is hardly any one political arrangement which, by
its structure and formation, does not shed a light on the
capabilities of human nature, and illustrate the powers and
the wonders of the Providence to which man looks up as
his maker and preserver. But most important, and to our
feeble nature most consolatory, is the impression which all
our study of this vast subject leaves of perfect wisdom
being accompanied by constant benevolence. _ This is de-
clared by all the works around us, and is deeply felt in all
the sentiments of our mind. We find everywhere proofs
that we live under a ruler who, unlike human
lawgiv.rs, far oftener proclaims rewards than de-
nounces punishments. Furthermore, it is a general rule,
and would be found absolute and universal, if our knowledge
embraced the whole system, that while pleasure is held out
to induce much more than pain to deter, the pleasure is be-
yond what would suffice, there is some gratification more
than requisite. And this can only be because the giver of
good delights in the happiness of his creatures. Such con-
templations at once gratify a scientific curiosity and afford
a moral indulgence. They prove that the awful Being, of
whose existence we are made certain, and whom we know
as our Creator, is the good Being by whose preserving care
we are cherished, and sentiments of piety andodevotion arise
to fill our minds which he only can reject who has the faith
of Epicurus and the feelings of a Stoic. The thorough expos-
ing of these truths and dwelling incessantly upon them is
not required for supporting the character of this famous Uni-
versity, but it must afford pure delight both to the teacher
and the student. Above all, the necessity of making
upon the mind of early youth an impression which never
can wear out by lapse of time, or be effaced by
the rival influences of other contemplations or be oblite-
rated by the cares of the world. The lessons thus learned,
and the feelings engendered or cherished, will shed their
auspicious influence over the mind through life ; protecting
against the seductions of prosperous fortune, solacing in
affliction, preparing for the great change that must close the
scene by habitual and confident belief in the King eternal,
immortal, invisible, the only wise God, and in the humble
hope of immortality which the study of His works has in-
spired, and which the gracious announcements of His re-
vealed will abundantly confirm.

The delivery of Lord Brougham's address was frequently
interrupted by applause, and at its conclusion his lordship
sat down amid enthusiastic and prolonged cheering.
In the evening Lord Brougham was entertained to dinner
by the Senatus Academicus in the Hopetoun Rooms, and he
afterwards attended an evening party in the palace of Holy-
rood House, given by Lady Belhaven, which was largely
at tended by the nobility and gentry residing in and around
Edinburgh, by various distinguished strangers from a dis-
tance, and by members of the General Assembly of th.,
Church of Scotland.