THE

METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW.

OCTOBER, 1842.

EDITED BY GEORGE PECK, D. D.

ART. I.-Literature of the Bible.

"HAEC STUDIA adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium præbent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur."-CICERO.

"All the HISTORIALL partes of the Bible, be ryght necessary for to be redde of a noble man, after that he is mature in yeres."-SIR T. ELYOT.

"Quid est enim, per Deos, optabilius sapientia? quid præstantius? quid homini melius? quid homine dignius? Hanc igitur qui expetant, philosophi nominantur: nec quidquam aliud est PHILOSOPHIA, si interpretari velis, præter studium sapientiæ.” -CICERO.

"Rien n'est BEAU que LE VRAI."-FR. MAXIM.

THE age in which we live is remarkable for its intellectual, its moral, and its political activity. It is thought that society is making rapid advancement toward the achievement of its destiny. Science is said to be spreading her light into the most distant and uncultivated wilds. Philosophers congratulate us on the progress of wisdom, of truth, and perhaps of virtue; and philanthropists of every name and country have rejoiced over the fancied elevation of the species. There are some, also, of the church, who would descry, from their superior position or faith, the dawning of a better day; and by others, these hopes are magnified into an expectation of an immediate revelation of the Lord from heaven.

It is far from our intention to diminish or discourage the hopes of humanity with her brightest dreams she has woes enough to suffer, without the additional and unnecessary infliction of despondency. But it is equally a duty and a mercy to guard her against disappointment. Perhaps it may be sufficient for our purpose to remark, that there is some truth mingled with this fiction. The picture is only too bright. The intellect is undoubtedly advancing to its goal, society to its climax; but all history condemns the confidence in sudden or fitful improvement. The world progresses in VOL. II.-31

its career, as the earth rolls in its orbit; though it may occasionally accelerate, it is by a gradual and imperceptible increase of its motion.

Personal observation and experience detract from the brightness of this vision. The annals of every period might be deduced to prove, that the progress of society, in its individual and social capacities, has been parallel with the knowledge and practice of those principles and precepts which constitute the matter and interest of revelation; nor would it be so difficult as painful to demonstrate, how little the social state is characterized by an individual acquaintance with the Bible. The only book in itself sublime, in its use universally applicable, is the only one generally neglected or contemned. Those countries most devoted to literature, to reading, to religion, will scarcely alleviate the darkness of this picture. The translation of the Scriptures by Luther, at a period when the appetite for truth was rendered uncommonly keen by ages of previous scarcity, so deeply impressed the mind and character of his susceptible countrymen, that in their language and manners they are more thoroughly Scriptural, according to general consent, than any modern nation.* And yet, what a spectacle of infidelity does Germany present! France is proverbially the home. of skepticism from the days of the pragmatic sanction to the present moment, she has indicated an irrational tendency to rationalism; to a conceited independence of revelation; which, it must be confessed, has never taken deep hold of the intelligence or affections of the people. In England, impiety has been more learned, the populace not less ignorant, than in most Christian. countries. The polished or erudite skepticism of the eighteenth century had nearly obtained the supremacy of the English mind; the finest writers of the language had apparently conspired to silence the voice of inspiration by their eloquent sophistry; it had almost become a maxim of popular criticism, that a free use of Scripture, even in the pulpit, is to be regarded as opposite to good taste the pulpit was consequently losing both its liberty and its power. The American people were at this period emerging from colonial servitude to the dignity and stability of a nation; nor can it be considered unnatural that the youngest daughter of the east should respect the example of a mother, at that time giving laws to the human mind. The antithesis is certainly remarkable, that we are now taught to expect the sudden perfection of prophecy and of man, within the short space of a century from the time when * See Schlegel's Hist. Lit., vol. ii, p. 251, and other writers on the subject.

the celebrated prediction of Voltaire was cherished, and perhaps believed, by a large proportion of the learning and intellect of the age.

The philosopher, perhaps the Christian, of every country, has learned to compute the causes which have disappointed the friends, if not the enemies of this prediction. In England, societies were numerously instituted, literary and religious associations were formed, to quell this mutiny of intoxicated reason, to repel the aggressions of infidelity against the peace of society and the rights of mind. Few persons can have forgotten the noble part which the prescient genius of Robert Hall was constrained to take in the momentous struggle. His sermon against the popular skepticism will perhaps survive as the proudest monument of his talents, and an indestructible obstacle to the progress of the enemy's cause; while the severe castigation which he inflicted on the alienated affection and perverted taste of his countrymen, in his able review of Mr. Foster's Essays, will remain to demonstrate the invincible edge which merited gentleness imparts to the truth.

Though we enjoy the fruit of these labors, we have no occasion to celebrate a triumph. We may not forget, that to the three nations whose deistical features have been briefly delineated we trace the origin of our nation, its language, its manners, its institutions and laws; nor is it a question of easy solution, of which we inherit the larger proportion, the stubborn sense of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, or the light, the airy, the transient, perhaps the skeptical, spirit of the Norman invaders. It is certain, however, that our national character is not formed for spontaneous virtue: we fluctuate between its two extremes-between the excesses or imperfections of reason and fancy. We daily demonstrate our national descent by the literary demands which we make upon the mother countries. We import thoughts from Germany to nourish hereditary skepticism, and its shadows or ornaments from France, to gratify a vitiated imagination. The Bible is comparatively forgotten or unread. To our philosophers, if we have any, Plato is more familiar than Moses; to our poets, Horace, Anacreon, or Goethe, is more congenial than David; to some of our ministry, to many of our age and country, Kant, Straus, and Hegel are more grateful than the apostles.

The extremes of this character are scarcely separated by a minority of sterling minds, who are happy to read truth in their vernacular tongue; to gather its stores from every language and region; and to consolidate the interests of literature and religion by making revelation the test, by which the suggestions of each mind.

and of every age must be tried. They form the continuation of that illustrious line of sanctified intellects, which have illustrated our capacity for enlightened virtue, and adorned the connection of science and revelation in every period of the world. In the age of Erasmus and Luther, of Milton and Bentley, of Johnson and Burke, literature was the faithful and respected ally of Christianity. The fame of Addison more securely rests upon his classic appeals 'for the morality and other excellences of the Bible; his genius and virtues are propagated, if they are not rivaled, by the most worthy of our contemporaries. But, generally, the condition of this reading republic is in itself most lamentable, in its influence upon evangelical religion peculiarly hostile. With the slight but laudable exception above made, we are divided between an exotic philosophism and a greedy indigenous love of fantastic fiction. The neophytes of the one class, and the veteran fanatics of the other, include three-fourths of the book-loving public. The morbid and factitious sensibility created by the former served to introduce and diffuse the crazy, pantheistic sophistry, and delusive phantoms of the latter; and the league, which seems to be at length concluded between them, threatens to sweep the fairest fruits of past industry, and the brightest promises of the future, into one common vortex of popular infidelity. Books are now saleable in inverse proportion to their value, or in the direct ratio of their moral and literary distance from the Bible. The Bible itself has lost a moiety of its practical effect, by the manner in which we permit the taste and judgment of the young to be educated. At home and abroad, in the social or polished circle, in the pales of academical instruction, to some extent, in the pulpit itself, our children are taught to tremble at the commands of the divine code; while their budding and generous fancy is transported by the charming associations which are thrown around the classics of other ages. To them the symbol of revelation is Mount Sinai, flashing and pealing with the terrific ensigns of indignation and wrath; but their eyes rest with placid composure and delight on the streams and groves of Parnassus, the vale of Tempe, and the garden of the Hesperides. The primary effect of a finished education, except it is opposed by previous associations, or strenuous personal efforts, is to form a comparative disrelish for revelation, and to corrupt the imagination with pictures which gratify, but disturb the mind.

These evils the friends of Christianity have long since contemplated and regretted. Books of eloquence and argument have been written; the pulpit has occasionally taken a correct view of the subject; but our efforts have hitherto been languid because un