The Sun.
London, England, 1835-06-15 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, JUNE 15, 1835.

LITERATURE.

LORD BROUGHAMSDISCOURSE ON NA-

TURA L THEOLOGY.
C. Knight, London, 1835.

The object of this work is to prove the great truths
of religion, by arguments drawn from the well-stored
armoury of science, in direct opposition to that French
system of philosophy, of which D'Alembert and Diderct
were among the chief and most specious advocates ;
and which tended to inculcate principles of scepticism,
as the necessary consequence of an intimacy with those
of science. The French sophists would hare had us
believe that religion, however it may adapt itself to the
feelings of the imaginative, or the half-instructed, can-
not stand the test of a minute and searching investi-
gation ; that the matter-of-factness of science is de-

structive to it : but Lord Brougham, in the admirable
dissertation before us, shows that, so far from this be-
ing the case, religion has no auxiliary so powerful
as that of science, whose first, best, and most direct
aim is to prove, first, the existence of a great first Cause,
exerting an active and benevolent influence over the
meanest as well as the mightiest, objects of his crea-
tion: and secondly, the immortality of the soul, which
is a sort of necessary corollary or sequel of the first pro-
position. In the enforcement of these sublime truths,
Lord Brougham displays an almost inexhaustible va-
riety of abstract,• as well as practical, knowledge ;
and lays the basis of a sound theological sys-
tem, which no metaphysical sophistry will ever
be able to shake. In the style and quality of his
reasoning he is as concise, as simple, and as familiar,
as it is possible to be, considering the abstruse nature
of his inquiries. He does not encumber his argu-
ments with verbiage, or set them off—as Burke in his
later Tracts was so apt to do--by the meretricious aids
of simile and metaphor, which dazzle only to bewilder
the understanding, but says all he has to say, in the
fewest and the plainest terms. This is the great art of
writing—to give simplicity to the abstruse, and clear-
ness to the complicated. Let no one be deterred from
the perusal of Lord BROUGHAM'S Treatise, by an
apprehension that it is perpetually referring to the
mysteries of science with which he has no acquain-
tance, and which it is vain for him to think of
unravelling ; he will find no more difficulties here, than
he would find in the Natural Theology of Paley—an
author whose chief merit is the perspicuity and con-
ciseness with which he treats a subject that in other
hands would be full of the most tortuous ambiguities.
It must be confessed, however, that his Lordship is
apt occasionally to take for granted, that his readers
possess more various and profound knowledge, than
the majority of them, we fear, possess ; and is there-
fore at times a little obscure and puzzling in his ob-
servations ; but this occurs but seldom, the major
portion of his Essay may be perused with advantage
by all who have the ordinary average of understanding.
The noble and gifted author is no advocate for the
erection of a theological system on mere hypothesis.
He will have good reason for the faith that is in him.
Religion, in his view of the question, is not a mere
matter of temperament or prejudice ; but one on which
the understanding alone—all other propelling influ-
ences being sternly rejected—is to decide. And by
proofs the most direct and undeniable, he shows us
that all the arguments with which we are supplied by
science, philosophy, and common sense, are in favor
of a system of belief. If, therefore, his Lordship had
done nothing more than overthrow, by a calm and
deep-thoughted process of ratiocination, the specious
sophistries of the French School of Philosophy, as
paraded in every page of the boasted " Systems de la
Nature," he would have conferred immense benefits on his
age ; but he has done more ; he has settled the faith of

thousands, who were before wavering in their belief, not
so much from indifference, as from not having had the
subject so fully and lucidly explained as it is in the pre-
sent instance. The book, we perceive, is dedicated to
Lord Althorp, as one, to whom theological specula-
tions have always been matters of deep interest, and is
marked by a gentle, kindly tone of feeling, in places,
approaching to the pathetic. A few notes are added
by way of supplement to the Discourse—by far the
most important of which is that wherein Lord
BROUGHAM attempts to refute HUME'S doctrine of
Miracles. This is the weakest part of the work, and
was almost superfluous, after CAMPBELL'S masterly
exposure of the same fallacy. We subjoin an eloquent
extract descriptive of the pleasures attendant on scientific
investigation :
" Thus, if it is pleasing to final that the properties of two
curves so exceedingly unlike as the ellipse and the hyperbola
closely resemble each other, or that appearances so dissimilar
as the motion of the moon and the fall of an apple from the
tree are different forms of the same fact, it affords a pleasure
of the same kind to discover that the light of the glow-worm
and the song of the nightingale are both provisions of nature
for the same end of attracting the animal's mate, and continuing
its kind—that the peculiar law of attraction pervading all
matter, the magnitude of the heavenly bodies, the planes
they move in, and the directions of their courses, are all so
contrived as to make their mutual actions, and the count-
less disturbances thence arising, all secure a perpetual
stability to the system which no other arrangement could
attain. It is a highly pleasing contemplation of the self-
same kind with those of the other sciences to perceive
everywhere design and adaptation—to discover uses even
in things apparently the most accidental—to trace this so
constantly, that where peradventure we cannot find the
purpose of nature, we never for a moment suppose there
was none, but only that we have hitherto failed in find-
ing it out—and to arrive at the intimate persuasion that
all seeming disorder is harmony—all chance, design—and that
nothing is made in vain ; nay, things which in our ignorance
we have overlooked as unimportant, or even complained of as
evils, fill us afterwards with contentment and delight, when we
find that they are subservient to the most important and bene-
ficial uses. Thus inflammation and the generation of matter
in a wound we find to be the effort which nature makes to
produce new flesh, and effect the cure ; the opposite hinges
of the valves in the veins and arteries are the means of ena-
bling the blood to circulate ; and so of innumerable other
arrangements of the animal economy. So, too, there is the
highest gratification derived from observing that there is a
perfect unity, or, as it has been called, a personality, in the
kind of the contrivances in which the universe abounds ; and
truly this peculiarity of character, or of manner, as other wri-
ters have termed it, affords the same species of pleasure which
we derive from contemplating general resemblances in the other
sciences."

THE DOOM OF GIALLO ; or the VISION OF
JUDGMENT.
Br JAMES BeADMIN, ESQ.
In 3 Vols. London. Macrone. 183 b.

In perusing these volumes we have discharged a
duty, and in the consciousness of this consists the sum
total of the pleasure which we have derived from them.
We had expected a far different entertainment ; hence
our disappointment is felt so much the more severely.
We cannot approve of the subject of this tale, much
less of the political under-current which runs through
it. The characters are imperfectly drawn ; the connec-
tion of the principal personages with each other highly
improbable ; and the main incidents are, taken altoge-
ther, a libel on the dreams of a heated imagination.
The hero of the fiction, Giovanni Di Giallo, is a gross
caricature of Dr. Moore's " Zelucco," with all the
vices, but without any of that exquisite discernment of
the secret workings of the human heart—or that admi-
rable knowledge of the world which distinguished his
far-famed prototype. With two such models before
him as Moore's " Zelucco," and Fielding's " Jonathan
Wilde," we are surprised that the author should have
wandered A wide of nature's landmarks in his charac-
ter of Di Giallo the younger. He is what no man, so
educated, ever was under such circumstances :—wicked
without an aim, cruel without an object, and hypocri-
tical without a necessity, or a power of con-
cealing his actions or intentions. The gross vul-
garity and licentiousness of Wilde is consistent with a
want of principle—which is equally well sustained in
Zelucco by a refined and exquisite selfishness ; but the