Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

THE CHARACTER OF INFIDELITY.

ledge, and that theologians are not the only disputants; and that, after a lapse of six thousand years, philosophers are at war upon the most fundamental articles a fact surely holding out little prospect that he or his disciples should, by the discovery of truth, terminate all controversy. Again: "I found that the moral philosophy transmitted to us by antiquity, laboured under the same inconvenience that has been found in their natural philosophy-of being entirely hypothetical, and depending more upon invention than experience; every one consulted his fancy in erecting schemes of virtue and of happiness, without regarding human nature, upon which every moral conclusion must depend." Here is another confession of Hume to the utter insufficiency of philosophy to guide, regenerate, or bless the great mass of mankind; and yet the ancient classical writers were the gods of his idolatry, to the neglect of the one book of Heaven! What is the natural inference from such acknowledgments, but the absolute need of divine revelation? How unlikely is it that the philosophers of the future, on questions of mind or of morals, shall prove wiser and more useful than their predecessors in the past? The first step to usefulness is, that the philosophy be stable and sure; but where the signs or even the chances of certainty? "The observation of human blindness and weakness," says Hume himself, "is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or to avoid it." Let young men who would be philosophers by becoming infidels ponder this saying, and consider whether, such being the state of human nature when left to itself, they are likely to be able to do successfully without a revelation from heaven.

579

me from every side. I have exposed myself to the enmity of all metaphysicians, logicians, mathematicians, and even theologians; and can I wonder at the insults I must suffer? I have declared my disapprobation of their systems, and can I be surprised if they should express a hatred of mine, and of my person? When I look abroad, I foresee on every side dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny, and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and contradict me, though such is my weakness, that I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the approbation of others. Every step I take is with hesitation, and every new reflection makes me dread an error and absurdity in my reasoning. For with what confidence can I venture upon such bold enterprises, when, besides those numberless infirmities peculiar to myself, I find so many which are common to human nature? Can I be sure that, in leaving all established opinions, I am following truth? and by what criterion shall I distinguish her, even if fortune should at last guide me on her footsteps? After the most accurate and exact examination of my reasonings, I can give no reason why I should assent to it, and feel nothing but a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that view under which they appear to me. . . .

"The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason, has so wrought upon me and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court? and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty."

After reading this gloomy passage, we may well ask, was Hume happy? He may have forgotten his specu

But let us pass from general confessions to Hume's own personal experience. He wrote his Treatise on Human Nature while yet a young man. Afterwards he regretted the boldness of its tone, but he never retracted its leading principles or views. And what is the account of it given by his biographer? "He exposes," says he, "to poor human nature her own weakness and nakedness, and supplies her with no extrinsic support or protection." And this came from a man, not when seared with age and disappoint-lations, and other influences may have come in and ment, but at a period of life "when our sympathies with the world are strongest and our anticipations brightest." We ask, then, was this kind or cruel? Was this a great improvement on the old philosophy which had gone before, or was it of the same character; as uncertain, and therefore weak and helpless, though more unmerciful? What is Hume's own account of its tendency?

"I am lost and confounded with that forlorn solitude in which I am placed in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who, not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly abandoned and disconsolate. Fain would I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth, but cannot prevail with myself to mix with such deformity. I call upon others to join me, in order to make a company apart, but no one will hearken to me. Every one keeps at a distance, and dreads that storm which beats upon

given him the ordinary share of human enjoyment, but did his philosophy make him happy? Would the belief of it, or the pursuit of kindred theories, make others happy? Shortly before he wrote his work, he lets us into the state of his mind he tells us of his mental depression, and of the means to which he resorted for relief. The confession is contained in the letter from which we have already quoted, and few can be more melancholy. "There was another particular," says he, "which contributed more than anything to waste my spirits, and bring on me this distemper, which was, that having read many books of morality, such as Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, and being smit with their beautiful representations of virtue and philosophy, I undertook the improvement of my temper and will, along with my reason and understanding. I was continually fortifying myself with reflections against death, and poverty, and shame, and pain, and all the other calamities of life."

What was Hume's experience of life as a philosopher, and the philosoper of Infidelity? We have seen that vanity was his ruling passion, and that for the gratification of vanity he sacrificed everything like truth and steady principle. Was his course then easy and prosperous? He may have expected this. He may, like many young aspirants, have imagined that his talents would carry the world before him. Instead of this, he was deeply mortified, and so punished through his very vanity. The first twenty years of his authorship might be said to be a failure; one effort after another was unsuccessful. His works either provoked no notice or keen opposition. Early in his history, he was so hurt and wounded that he resolved to abandon his native country-reside in France-change his name, and never return. When, from the progress of Infidelity in Britain and other causes, his works excited notice, and he became, comparatively speaking, a successful author, vanity still pursued him, and the same desire of celebrity which was wounded by failure at first, was wounded now because the success was not so great as vain glory, ever greedy, would have desired. At a more advanced period of life, he became connected as se

He then goes on to say, that however useful such reflections may be in health, in solitude they serve to little other purpose than to waste the spirits; that this he learned by experience, not however till his health was ruined. Poor man! he found the morality of Paganism too much for him, beyond his self-righteous reach; and rejecting, meanwhile, the only Book which points out the remedy, as well as the disease, which unfolds the source of strength to fallen creatures, as well as their weakness and depravity, he was miserable. This is no matter of wonder. His mind, powerful as it was, could not open a new way of relief. Farther on in the record of his experience, he says, "To keep myself from living melancholy on so dismal a prospect (as not recovering his health), my only security was in peevish reflections on the vanity of the world and of all human glory, which, however just sentiments they may be esteemed, I have found can never be sincere, except in those who are possessed of them. Being sensible that all my philosophy would never make me contented in my present situation, I began to rouse up myself," &c. He then proceeds to say, that he turned to business as his remedy: "I am just now hastening to Bristol, with a resolution to forget my-cretary with public men, and passed two years in his self and everything that is past, to engage myself as far as is possible in mercantile life, and to toss about the world, from the one pole to the other, till I leave this distemper behind me."

favourite France, recommended by its Infidelity and patronage of letters. Surely he would be happy now. He seems to have reached the height of his ambition. He is idolized as a demi-god. Flattery, so grateful to vanity, is offered to him as incense. Now he has a compensation for his years of unrepaid labour, but is he happy? Let the reader judge. "During the two last years in particular," says he, "that I have been at Fountainebleau, I have suffered (the expression is not improper) as much flattery as almost any man has ever done in the same time, but there are few days in my life that I would not rather

It appears, then, that for mental disquietude, and depression so severe as to affect the bodily health, Hume's cure was not philosophy, whether his own or that of other men, not "the reading of the most celebrated books in Latin, French, and English, and acquiring Italian." All these failed him. His resort was the coarse, and, in his view, vulgar one of engaging with a Bristol trader; and even this lasted but a few months. What a procla-pass over again." Again: "I am convinced that Louis mation is here of the vanity and helplessness of philosophy-its insufficiency to deliver from evil, or to rejoice with happiness! Well may the youthful aspirant after fame pause before committing himself to the course of Hume. How blessed a thing would it have been for our author, had he, when weary and depressed in spirit, instead of betaking himself to Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, betaken himself to the Word of God, and exchanged the uncertainties and miseries of ancient Paganism for the certain and the glorious verities of Evangelical Christianity! He would not, in that case, have been left to make such melancholy, but withal most important confessions, on which we have been commenting.

But we must not limit ourselves to the inherently 'unhappy character of Hume's philosophy-to its proved inability, from his own case, to sustain in time of need-and to his testimony to the unsatisfactory nature of all the philosophy which preceded, and we may now add which has followed, except so far as, in mind and morals, it has been connected with the revelation of God. We must appeal to evidence still more practical-to evidence which many will still better appreciate; and which we trust, therefore, will operate as the stronger warning to the young and the sanguine.

XIV. never in any three weeks of his life suffered so much flattery; I say suffered, for it really confounds and embarrasses me, and makes me look sheepish." And then he tells us of a masquerade, where both sexes in masques saluted him with the warmest compliments; in short, he was almost as cordially hailed with popular incense as Voltaire, when for twenty minutes consecutively the theatre rang with his worship. Yet with all this was he happy? Hear his answer to the inquiry in a letter to Dr. Blair. "You ask me if they (such instances of attention) were not very agreeable? I answer No-neither in expectation, possession, nor recollection. I left that fire-side where you probably sit at present with the greatest reluctance. After I came to London, my uneasiness, as I heard inore of the prepossessions of the French nation in my favour, increased, and nothing would have given me greater joy than any accident that would have broke off my engagement." Such is the vanity of human glory, even when fully attained. It cannot satisfy.

Nor is this all-it does not last. Were Hume now to rise from the dead, what would he find? would he find his writings in universal honour? would he find posterity, as he imagined, doing justice to his high claims? Far from it. He would

[ocr errors]

THE CHARACTER OF INFIDELITY.

find that his day was already over-that his moral philosophy was disowned-that a most searching and withering exposure of his Historical Works was going forward from day to day-that the divine Revelation which he set at nought had vastly risen in its power-that it numbered in its ranks some of the most influential minds of the day-that new and Christian historians, like M'Crie and D'Aubigné, had arisen, and triumphantly vindicated the Reformers and Refermation from the calumnies which he had propagated, and even that the very doctrine of cause and effect, which he had taught with Atheistic views and leanings, had been turned by the friends of revelation into an argument for the being and providence of God.

581

impossible. The letters of more than one of the party-such as a Madame Du Deffand, Mdlle. Le Espinasse, Baron de Grimm-have been published, and what is the revelation which they make of themselves and of others? One of the most fearful which can well be imagined. They discover throughout in connection with talent and wit, and taste, unspeakable selfishness, jealousy of others, heartlessness, ennui, bitter and implacable factions; and there is not a trace of domestic comfort. The Edinburgh Review (Feb. 1811), speaking of Mad. de Deffand, whose house was for fifty years the resort of all that was most brilliant in Paris, states that she was consumed with that ennui which she regarded as the greatest of curses, and which her life Striking as the picture which Hume may furnish was one unbroken effort to prevent-that she was of the vanity of infidel philosophy and literature, ever complaining of life as an irremediable evil, he does not stand alone. The school with which he and yet acknowledging her repugnance to quit was associated in France, and in which he rejoiced, it. She confessed, that being born was the greatsupply, if possible, a still more impressive illustra- est misfortune, and yet could procure no sympation. We do not refer to Rousseau, at one time his thy under the distress of her ennui. The great moral much-admired friend, at another his hated enemy— lesson which the writer draws from the whole is a just at once the slave and victim of vanity. Few cases one that the applause of friends, the flattery of can better describe the folly of literary and infidel wits, and the homage of the world, are unavailing to France. The whole kingdom rung with his praises. the real comfort and happiness of life; and that' His writings exercised an immense impression on all all talent, accomplishment, and glory, when disconranks; but ere long, though he settled, says Hume, nected from feelings of kindness, are utterly worthwithin a league of Paris, " nobody inquired after him less. It may be added, as a remarkable illustration' -nobody visits him-nobody talks of him. Every of the heartlessness of infidelity, that this poor lady one has agreed to neglect and disregard him-a more died in the midst of a game of cards, and as the sudden revolution of fortune than almost ever hap- game was interesting, the party of friends continued pened to any man, at least to any man of letters." it, and settled their accounts by the dead body beWho does not see in this the vanity of literary glory? fore leaving the room! -the mortifying but righteous punishment which awaits upon infidel vanity. Let the young, tempted to scepticism, consider this.

But we take in a wider range. The literary society of France was never more brilliant, and at the sametime, more ungodly, infidel, and atheistic, than in the days of Hume. Philosophy was the order of the day. "In the circle of toys," says Hume, "seized and discarded by a giddy fashionable crowd, philosophy will have its turn, as well as poodles, parrots, tulips, cafès, and black pages. It had been so a century earlier, when the most abstruse works of Des Cartes had been the ornament of every fashionable lady's toilette; and now the wheel had revolved, and philosophy was again in vogue." What this philosophy involved may be gathered from the following sentence of a letter to Dr. Blair:-" You seem to wish that I should give you some general accounts of this country. Shall I begin with the points in which it most differs from England, viz., the general regard paid to genius and learning; the universal and professed, though decent gallantry to the fair sex; or the almost universal contempt of all religion among both sexes and among all ranks of men?" The biographer states, that even Hume disliked the scornful infidelity -the almost intolerance of earnest belief-so often exhibited both in speech and conduct. None need to be informed what these statements imply the union of literature and talent with universal licentiousness and shocking infidelity.

And were the parties then happy? It is utterly

Such was infidelity in its most brilliant forms" such the French companions of Hume. Can anything more impressively teach the vanity and wretchedness of unbelief? Here are talent, wit, accomplishment, philosophy, literature, bearing a complete triumph over British prejudices the most unfettered freedom of inquiry; and yet what do these all secure for their possessors? in what do they all issue? No wonder that Hume was the advocate of suicide. It was essential to the' toleration and completeness of his infidel system. Professedly believing in no futurity, and exposed to such misery, how could he hesitate about self-murder? It is the only, the easy, and appropriate remedy. But what sort of philosophy must that be, how unsatisfying and full of woe, which needs the weapons of suicide? which is only tolerable when men are informed that it is a lawful and proper thing-always within their reach, as soon as they weary of life, to put an end to it with their own hand!

The reader might be reminded that the misery of infidel philosophy was not confined to the brilliant literary circle; that soon it spread to general society, and involved all France, and many other nations, in its horrors. The philosophers sowed the wind, their countrymen through all ranks reaped the whirlwind; but it is unnecessary to enter on the proof of what is so familiar. Surely there is one general lesson deducible from our present contemplation, and that is, that no one need grudge infidel philosophers their

philosophy, nor long for their fame. How uncertain, how unsatisfying and vain, yea, how miserable, personally and socially, has experience proved it to be? What did Infidelity accomplish for Hume or his French associates, with all their acknowledged talent and acquirement!-what is it likely to do for others less eminent? What has it done for France or Europe? Has it not, so far as its influence reached, only tended to restore ancient Paganism, with its weariness, licentiousness, suicide, and thousand kindred miseries and crimes?

BAPTISM OF AN INFANT AT ITS
MOTHER'S FUNERAL.

BY MRS. L. II. SIGOURNEY.

WHENCE is that trembling of a father's hand,
Who to the man of God doth bring his babe,
Asking the seal of Christ? Why doth the voice
That uttereth o'er its brow the triune name
Falter with sympathy? And most of all,
Why is yon coffin-lid a pedestal

For the baptismal font?

Again I asked

But all the answer was those gushing tears
Which stricken hearts do weep.

For there she lay

The fair young mother in that coffin bed,

and amid foul exhalations and noxious vapours, dig out for others the treasures of the earth. With their exception, the sailor's life is shorter than that of any operative. And why? Because the treacherous element upon which he sails, and the capricious winds to which he trusts, oblige him to take his rest by snatches. Because he wanders through all climes, from the equator to the poles-now scorching with heat, then freezing with cold. Because he works in all weathers, and because the worse the weather the harder he must work. In the rain storm, when it descends in torrents, and continues so long as not to leave him a change of clothing in his chest—in the sleet, in the snow, in the frost, when the rig ging becomes like jagging steel, and the sails like sheets of iron-in the tempest, when the winds rage and the seas roar, and the good ship struggles as it were for life-now plunging, as though in despair, into the depths below, and then rising, as if with exultation, on the towering wave. Then must the sailor work; and it is these hardships, this severe toil, this constant exposure, that shortens his life.

But, alas! it may be fearfully shortened by other causes than the wear and tear of his calling. How often, in the discharge of some perilous duty aloft, is he precipitated into the deep, and swallowed up by the devouring waters! How often cast away! How often the victim

Mourned by the funeral train. The heart that beat, of the malignant diseases of foreign climes!

With trembling tenderness at every touch
Of love or pity, flushed the cheek no more.
Tears were thy baptism, thou unconscious one,
And sorrow took thee at the gate of life
Into her cradle. Thou may'st never know
The welcome of a nursing mother's kiss,
When, in her wondering ecstasy, she marks
A thrilling growth of new affections spread
Fresh greenness o'er the soul.

Thou may'st not share

Her hallowed teachings, nor suffuse her eye
With joy, as the first gems of infant thought
Unfold, in lisping sound.

Yet may'st thou walk

Even as she walked, breathing on all around
The warmth of high affections, purified
And sublimated, by that Spirit's power
Which makes the soul fit temple for its God.
So shalt thou, in a brighter world, behold
That countenance, which the cold grave did veil
Thus early from thy sight, and the first tone
That bears a mother's greeting to thine ear
Be wafted from this minstrelsy of heaven.

THE DEATH OF THE SAILOR. THERE is only one class of men whose lives are more shortened by the nature of their occupation than the sailor's, and those men do not work above ground. They labour in mines,

How many sailors have met with an untimely death from the club of the savage, the sword of the foe, or the desperate. charge of the wounded whale! But there would be no end of particularizing in this way the perils and hardships of a seaman's life. We must appeal to the hurricane and the battle, to the ocean with its dark caverns, and to the foreign shores with their unburied dead. We must call upon the thousands who have gone down with the waves for their winding sheet, and who await in their deep sepulchres the resurrection of the dead, to bear witness what toils, what dangers, and what sufferings are the sailor's lot.

We may observe, however, that sailors commonly die at sea. Death, bitter at any time, must have its bitterness exceedingly increased under such circumstances. A ship is no hospital. None but able-bodied men are rated on her books; and if sickness befal them, they must take their chance. The medicine chest perhaps is the only proof on board that such a calamity was ever thought of.

Where does the sailor die? In a cheerful room? On a couch of feathers and a pillow of down? Waited on by an attentive nurse! Watched over by an anxious friend? Surrounded by sobbing and weeping relatives! Far different. In that wretched hole, where a suspended lantern just gives light enough to show the seamen's chests by which it is encumbered. In that rude hammock swing.

STORMY SABBATHS.

ing from the beam. There is no minister of Christ there to listen to his wailings over an illspent life, or to awaken him to a sense of his sin and danger. There is no messenger of love there, to speak of Jesus, and point him to that anchor of the soul, sure and stedfast. No herald of that salvation which, like the ocean itself, rises above high-water mark, overtops the mountains of sin, and washes away the guilt of every penitent transgressor. He dies without comfort in this world, and too often without hope in another.

But suppose the dying sailor to have enjoyed in former years the fostering care of a Bethel Flag Society, how different might be his end! Then he would have in his possession the Word of God; then he might call to mind, as he lay in his loneliness, many a solemn truth-many an earnest prayer-many a kind exhortationmany an encouraging promise which he had heard from the mouth of its missionary. Then perhaps his danger would strike him like a thunderbolt-his heart might be smitten, he might shed the tear of penitence, and cry out with believing earnestness, "Lord, save me, or I perish."

Too little is done for the poor sailor. Seated in our comfortable quiet dwellings, and enjoying all the blessings and privileges of a home on shore, we reck not of his privations and trials. How few ever subscribe to the funds of a Sailor's Evangelistic Society-how few even remember in prayer those who are on the waters! How much might not be done in supplying vessels with Bibles and religious libraries, and of circulating tracts, and establishing Bethel Flag prayer-meetings! Nay, how much might be done in the way of attending to the families of the sailors when they are far away! A Christian wife, a converted child, might send the heavenly arrow into a husband's or a parent's heart with tenfold and resistless power, at a time when that heart bounds with affection to its object, after a long and weary separation. And how might not converted sailors, in their turn, become as missionaries at every port at which they touched, and more extensively than all the missionaries of our many societies, "teach all nations!"

STORMY SABBATHS.

AN American minister, Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford, Connecticut, recently preached a sermon to his people on the "Uses and Duties of Stormy Sabbaths," from the text, "Fire and hail; snow and vapours; stormy wind fulfilling his word." From this text he lectured them very plainly on the evil habit of staying away from worship on stormy Sabbaths. After alluding to the fact that every created thing, pleasant and terrible, including "the flying artillery of the weather," were invoked to praise the Lord, he turned to

563

his "fair weather hearers," for whose special benefit he had prepared the discourse, and chosen a fair and genial day on which to deliver it, and told them in the outset that he meant them, by introducing his subject after the following strain:—

"There is a class among you who visibly enough cannot sympathize with all the sentiments of this glowing and lofty psalm. The principal significance of the weather, or at least of all foul weather, appears in their estimation to be, that it excuses them from worship. The snows, and vapours, and stormy wind, do not so much fulfil the word of Jehovah, as call them away from his word and the worship of his house. Their seat is sure to be vacant every stormy Sabbath, and too often when there is only a slight promise of rain, or of any other kind of unpleasant weather. If the wind blows, or the walks are wet, or covered with a little snow; if the cold is uncomfortable, or the heat a little too intense; if a fog damps the air, or an east wind chills it, they take out an indulgence from the weather, and consider the worship of God as relieved by a dispensation."

The preacher then went on to prove that stormy Sabbaths are not only very harmless to all persons but invalids, but that they really have a high religious purpose. It is very desirable, according to his doctrine, to have stormy Sabbaths, and we ought to improve them as opportunities of special blessing in attending on the public worship of God. Toward the close he applied his subject in this strain:

"I hope that all my fair weather hearers are present, and, being present, that they will receive the salutary lesson I give them. I have not said, and did not mean to say, all that could relate to a subject so unpleasant. I have not rebuked your self-indulgence as I might have done. I have not spoken of the chill our worship often suffers by the thinness of the assembly, and the many empty seats displayed; for I was not willing to ask your attention here as patrons of the place. I have not dwelt on your excuses, and removed them; the plea that you had better sometimes spend the day of God by yourselves-for you know that you spend it in no such exercise as worship, or preparation for a better world; the plea often present to the giddy heart of vanity, that a stormy day is no fit occasion for the display of your person--a plea that you cannot yourselves utter, because of its conscious want of dignity, but which, nevertheless, has power with many; the plea that it will injure your health to encounter the rough weather-for you all expect me to be here in every storm that blows, and you can as well be here as I; and if in thirteen years' attendance on my duties here, without any consideration of the weather, in its wildest storms and fiercest cold, I have never suffered the least injury, there is not much reason to fear for you-certainly not for any who are in equally sound

« VorigeDoorgaan »