The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-03-08 00:00:00

pets that is intended to signalise his advent to the shore.
" All that you need to do is to make it men's interest to
act aright, and they will act aright." And this, although
the whole history of crime and all the annals of society
prove that in 99 cases out of 100 passion and appetite are
paramount to a sense of self-interest. But there is a
profound causation at work in respect to human conduct,
which, above every other thing, the wise man of the
world is indisposed to admit. I shall convey the
thought I whould submit to you a little indirectly.
We read, (Psalm xii. 8,) " The wicked walk on every
side, when the vilest of men is exalted." But the words
" vilest of men," may, with the context, be translated,
" When the vileness of men is exalted." Our version
conveys a most important verity, but the version which I
propose is at least a different one, and this is its sense :
" When the vileness of men is exalted as a thing that is
honourable, then the wicked will walk on every side,"
that is, Divine grace will be withdrawn, grace will abound,
and society become infested with criminal perpetrators of
wrong. In a word, the wicked will walk on every side
when the vileness of men,—that is, when evil principle:
are enthroned, when falsehood is made a principle of action,
when truth is not held as paramount and supreme.
I venture, then, to contend, having convinced, myself
of the truth of my conclusion, by reason, reflection, and
experience, the voice of Scripture and the voice of the
Church, that the modern theory of being guided by facts,
or presumed facts, in moral or social or national matters,
is exceedingly fallacious. Men collect a vast quantity of
supposed facts, they spend millions in printing the
books which contain them,—they exhaust their strength,
and they contract their souls in studying them themselves;
or they rely on the alleged study that others have bestowed
on them ; and having seen how prosperity has originated
in one set of facts, or poverty in another, they suppose
themselves capable of securing one or of avoiding the
other. They set to work to do so and lo ! for sweet they
find bitter, for smooth rough, for straight crooked,—all
their conclusions turn out to be vanity, and all their results
vexation of spirit.
Our principle is totally different. We would legislate
for luck," as the world denominates it. We should
not trouble ourselves with the printing of blue books or
their study, we should find out in the one portable volume,
which all may secure for themselves for sixpence or a shilling,
(thank God,)—that true wade mecum of wisdom ; we
should find out there how to secure the favour of the
author,—there, the giver, the contriver of human prospe-
rity, and this we should sternly act on ; and we feel con-
vinced that then, without knowing how ourselves perhaps,
we should practically find that all things were working
together for our good. "It is vain for you to rise early
and so late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness, for
so he giveth his beloved sleep,"—or, as the versio❑ of
Luther has it, " So he gives to his beloved sleeping."
Blue books and Scotch philosophy say, reduce the ex-
penditure for your poor to a minimum; let the cos: of
their maintenance per head be, if possible, three pence,
two pence, a penny a day. All this saving of capital is
clear gain, and, as a natural and necessary result of strict
philosophy, your savings will accumulate, and you will get
very rich as a people. Now this is philosophy—
perhaps we should say " feelosophee "—this is " the
reason of the thing." If we lived in a machine
world, nothing could be wiser than this. Nor would
anything be more successful. But we do not live in a
machine world ; quite the contrary. We live in a non-
machine world, and are strictly charged against reasoning
about men on the machine principle. We are told that
this Scotch economical saving in the case of the
poor is the very worst extravagance that we could
possibly be guilty of. We are told that if we would have
" luck," (1 take this word, for, strange to say, bad and
vulgar as it is, the world accepts it more readily, and ap-
preciates it more thoroughly, than the legitimate expres-
sion,) we must act in a manner the very opposite; that
not saving in this case, but a large, a liberal, a generous
expenditure is the true wisdom, and, in effect, the
" cheapest system" in the end.
" If there be among you a poor man of one of thy
brethren within any of thy gates, in thy land which the
Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine
heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother. But
thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt
surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he
wanteth. Beware that there be not a thought in thy
wicked heart, saying, the seventh year, the year of release,
is at hand ; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother,
and thou givest him not, and it be sin unto thee. Thou
shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved
when thou givest unto him, because that for this thing
the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and
in all that thou puttest thine hand unto. For the poor
shall never cease out of the land. Therefore I command
thee, saying, thou shalt open thine hand wide unto
thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy
land." (Dent. xv. 7.) Now here is a passage which
sheds a strange light upon the wisdom of niggard calcula-
tions about the poor, and of printing blue books to dis-
cover the minimum expense at which the breath may be
kept in them ; for as to generosity towards them, or such
as they, that is an exploded " absurdity." Mark the tone
of this passage :—" Shut not thine hard from thy poor
brother—open thine hand wide unto him ; beware lest
there be a thought in thy wicked heart against him ;
beware lest thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and
thou givest him naught, and he cry unto me against thee,
and it be sin unto thee. Thou shalt surely give him, thou
shalt not be grieved when thou givest to him—thou shalt
open thine hand wide unto thy poor and thy needy in thy
land—because that for this the Lord shall bless thee in all
thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto."
Here, then, we see that there are two systems, two
ideas, and the one directly contrary to the other.
" Save your bawbees," says Scotch philosophy; "close
your band, tighten your hold—pinch, screw, squeeze,
grind, a penny saved is a penny gained, and this is the
way to be rich." And we must grant that, if this were a
machine world, it would be so.
" Open your hand wide," says the preacher ; " don't
spare ; be generous, be kind, be loving ; don't think of
your pence ; don't calculate your loss ; there is no loss
in the case, it is but lent unto the Lord, and he will repay
you seven fold. Considered in the sordid light of true
interest, this is your wisdom. And experience has proved
that this is so."
The latter was the wisdom of Queen Elizabeth. She
did not trouble herself about blue books. The passage
which I have read to you was the rule of her statesmen.
They legislated not to bring about results themselves,
but to get the Almighty to work for them. And they
succeeded. The population multiplied ; the nation be-
came mighty ; surrounding nations trembled to see a
people whose God was the Lord. Colonies grew and
prospered ; every man sat under his own vine and under
his own fig tree. And then a mighty despot was raised
up to tread the world beneath his feet ; England alone
stood against him and the world in arms, and subdued
them all. Was it by her own strength ? No ; her arms
were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of
Jacob. Such was the policy of England ere she took to
book making—to the making of blue books, and went by
the one book.
She had then thriving, powerful, and loving colonies—
colonies in which each square foot of building ground was
a treasure and an inheritance, in which every inhabitant
was a devoted subject of the crown, and which were all
strong outworks of our national greatness. However, the
blue book system and our own calculations have beggared
our colonists, made the land valueless, the buildings on
them empty and useless ; and now the theory is, that, as
we have not strength to retain, it would be wisdom to
relinquish possessions which were once the glory and the
security of the British empire.
England acted on the policy of Elizabeth, and she had
no ragged schools, certainty ; but the reason was, she had
no rags. I distinctly reco',lect that when I first came to
England there were no such tsings as ragged persons, and
that it was a constant topic wish us then in Ireland, as
a point of contrast, that, in ties favoured country were
neither rags nor beggars. We then legislated for a blessing,
for luck, for fortune, for the favours of heaven, and heaven
blessed us. We have, however, acandoned that course,
and taken the construction of our owa prosperity into our
own hands ; and lo ! disaster, rags, wretchedness, expa-
triation, the foreigner waiting to devou- us, and the inter-
nal foe waiting to betray. Yet, still blite books say all is
well, and we are bound to believe so, and to disbelieve
eyes, ears, and all our own sources of intelligence.
Now, all that I have said is calculated to show the vast
importance of a more excellent way than we have for some
time been walking in. I consider any speculative disser-
tation of small importance. 'What we want is happiness,
prosperity, national power, individual success, general
progress. Well, the secret, the source of all these bles-
sings is at hand ; the path is so straight that the wayfaring
man, though a fool, need not err therein. Ilence
the one thing needful is faith in the Bible, in its heavenly
author ; respect for its truths, and a diligentstudyof them.
Be this accomplished, and all will go right. To make
some little advance towards this end, is the object of my
present lecture. I consider a just view of the character
imparted by scripture a heart-converting, soul-enlighten-
ing thing, calculated in sundry ways to quicken faith and
render it operative, to lead to the repudiation of the false
philosophy which has been so destructive, and to encou-
rage the adoption of a better; hence it is that my lecture is
on the subject of the heroism of the sacred character, as
contradistinguished from the profane—illustrated by the
life and history, acts and monuments of the patriarch
Jacob.
I here speak of two types of character, " the sacred"
and " the profane." I might call them the scriptural and
the secular ; you will understand me not to mean the
wicked and the righteous—the moral and the immoral.
I mean the excellent and honourable man of the world as
contrasted with the perhaps not more excellent and
honourable man of God. My object is not in the leastto dis-
parage the worth that is purely secular—but to contrast it
with and set before you what I regard as the difference
between the two cases.
There are heroes of both sorts. Brutus and Cato,
Regulus and Julius Caesar, were great characters, and
have fixed upon them the attention of mankind. Ido not
want to extenuate their glory, but I want to put into con-
trast with such heroism as theirs the heroism of the man
of God ; to call your attention to the relative merits of
these contrasted heroisms as elements and springs of con-
sequences affecting society and mankind, that you may
be brought to see more clearly the relation that true re-
ligion bears to society and its welfare, and be encouraged
to act more decidedly in the way of duty, and perhaps to
see more distinctly what that way is.
We have the contrast frequently enough before us in
Scripture. Nimrod was a secular hero—a mighty hunter
before the Lord,—that is, a man-hunter, a conqueror ;
Abraham, a few generations later, was a sacred hero. The
two brothers, Ishmael and Isaac, were similarly related.
Ishmael, a wild man—a warrior—his hand against every
man's, and every man's hand against him—a hero of the
sword. Isaac, a quiet, thoughtful man of God—going
out to meditate in his field in the even time, chiefly occu-
pied with thoughts of immortality, but still a hero. But,
perhaps, the most striking contrast between these two
types of character is presented in the case of the two bro-
thers, Jacob and Esau. Esau, the cunning hunter, the
man of the field—the man of dash and show, and glitter ;
Jacob, the plain man, dwelling in tents, the man of busi-
ness, of quietude, of piety, of peace.
See them through their life, you will find no superior
honour or virtue perhaps about Jacob—viewed as to prac-
tical conduct. But the distinction lies in the fact of a
generally abiding sense of the importance of the spiritual
world of God, of heaven, of death, of glory—of duty as
owing to Him, on the part of Jacob ; whereas in Esau
these things were slightly considered. Not, perhaps,
neglected, but certainly regarded as of secondary
im-
portance.