means into an apparent competence to the greatest ends.... This delusivo calculation apt to be admitted in schemes of benevolence.... Projects for civilizing savage nations.... Extravagant expectations of the efficacy of direct instruction, in the lessons of education, and in preaching....Re- formers apt to overrate the power of means.... The fancy about the omni- potence of truth....Our expectations ought to be limited by what we actually see and know of human nature.... Estimate of that nature.... Prevalence of Christianity the grand appointed mean of reforming the world....But though the religion itself be a communication from heaven, the administration of it by human agents is to be considered as a merely human mean, excepting so far as a special divine energy is made to accompany it.... Its comparatively small success proves in what an extremely limited measure that energy, as yet, accompanies it....Impotence of man to do what it leaves undone.... Irrational to expect from its progressive administration a measure of success indefinitely surpassing the present state of its operations, till we see some signs of a great change in the Divine Government of the world.... Folly of projects to reform mankind which disclaim Religion....Nothing in human nature to meet and give effect to the schemes and expedients of the moral revolutionist....Wretched state of that nature.... Sample of the absurd esti- mates of its condition by the irreligious menders of society............p. 166 Melancholy reflections....No consolation amidst the mysterious economy but in an assurance that an infinitely good Being presides, and will at length open out a new moral world.... Yet many moral projectors are solicitous to keep their schemes for the amendment of the world clear of any reference to the Almighty....Even good men are guilty of placing too much depend- ence on subordinate powers and agents....The representations in this Essay not intended to depreciate to nothing the worth and use of the whole stock of means, but to reduce them, and the effects to be expected from them, to a sober estimate....A humble thing to be a man.... Inculcation of devout submission, and diligence, and prayer....Sublime quality and inde- finite efficacy of this last, as a mean.... Conclusion; briefly marking out a few general characters of sentiment and action to which, though very un- common, the epithet Romantic is unjustly applied...........................p. 175 ON SOME OF THE CAUSES BY WHICH EVANGELICAL RELIGION HAS Nature of the displacency with which some of the most peculiar features of Christianity are regarded by many cultivated men, who do not deny or doubt the divine authority of the religion....Brief notice of the term One of the causes of the displacency is, that Christianity, being the religion done if the men of taste were powerfully pre-occupied and affected by the Another cause, the Peculiarity of Language adopted in religious discourse and writing....Classical standard of language....The theological deviation from it barbarous....Surprise and perplexity of a sensible heathen foreigner who, having learnt our language according to its best standard alone, should be introduced to hear a public evangelical discourse.... Distinctive characters of this Theological Dialect.... Reasons against employing it....Competence of our language to express all religious ideas without the aid of this uncouth peculiarity....Advantages that would attend the use of the language of mere general intelligence, with the addition of an extremely small number of words that may be considered as necessary technical terms in theology ......p. 218 Answer to the plea, in behalf of the dialect in question, that it is formed from the language of the Bible.... Description of the manner in which it is so formed....This way of employing biblical language very different from simple quotation.... Grace and utility with which brief forms of words, whether sentences or single phrases, may be introduced from the Bible, if they are brought in as pure pieces and particles of the sacred composition, set in our own composition as something distinct from it and foreign to it. ...But the biblical phraseology in the Theological Dialect, instead of thus appearing in distinct bright points and gems, is modified and mixed up throughout the whole consistence of the diction, so as at once to lose its own venerable character, and to give a pervading uncouthness, without dignity, to the whole composition....Let the scripture language be quoted often, but not degraded into a barbarous compound phraseology.... Even if it were advisable to construct the language of theological instruction in some kind of resemblance to that of the Bible, it would not follow that it should be constructed in imitation of the phraseology of an antique version....License to very old theologians to retain in a great degree this peculiar dialect.... Young ones recommended to learn to employ in religion the language in which cultivated men talk and write on general subjects....The vast mass of writing in a comprehensive literary sense bad, on the subjects of evan- gelical theology, one great cause of the distaste felt by men of intellectual refinement....Several kinds of this bad writing specified..................p. 239 A grand cause of displacency encountered by evangelical religion among men religion.... Modern literature intended principally to be animadverted on.... Lucan.... Influence of the moral sublimity of his heroes.... Plutarch....The Historians....Antichristian effect of admiring the moral greatness of the eminent heathens....Points of essential difference between excellence ac- cording to Christian principles, and the most elevated excellence of the Heathens....An unqualified complacency in the latter produces an alienation of affection and admiration from the former....................................p. 269 When a communication, declaring the true theory of both religion and morals, was admitted as coming from heaven, it was reasonable to expect that, from the time of this revelation to the end of the world, all by whom it was so admitted would be religiously careful to maintain, in whatever they taught on subjects within its cognizance, a systematic and punctilious conformity to its principles.... Absurdity, impiety, and pernicious effect, of disregarding this sovereign claim to conformity.... The greatest number of our fine writers have incurred this guilt, and done this mischief....They are antichristian, in the first place, by omission; they exclude from their moral sentiments the modifying interference of the Christian principles.... Extended illustration of the fact, and of its consequences...............p. 281 More specific forms of their contrariety to the principles of Revelation.... The estimate of the depraved moral condition of human nature is quite dif ESSAY L ON A MAN'S WRITING MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. MY DEAR FRIEND, LETTER I. EVERY one knows with what interest it is natural to retrace the course of our own lives. The past states and periods of a man's being are retained in a connexion with the present by that principle of self-love, which is unwilling to relinquish its hold on what has once been his. Though he cannot but be sensible of how little consequence his life can have been in the creation, compared with many other trains of events, yet he has felt it more important to himself than all other trains together; and you will very rarely find him tired of narrating again the little history, or at least the favourite parts of the little history, of himself. To turn this partiality to some account, I recollect having proposed to two or three of my friends, that they should write, each principally however for his own use, memoirs of their own lives, endeavouring not so much to enumerate the mere facts and events of life, as to discriminate the successive states of the mind, and so trace the progress of what may be called the character In this progress consists the chief impor B tance of life; but even on an inferior account also to this of what the character has become, and regarded merely as supplying a constant series of interests to the affections and passions, we have all accounted our life an inestimable possession which it deserved incessant cares and labours to retain, and which continues in most cases to be still held with anxious attachment. What has been the object of so much partiality, and has been delighted and pained by so many emotions, . might claim, even if the highest interest were out of the question, that a short memorial should be retained by him who has possessed it, has seen it all to this moment depart, and can never recall it. To write memoirs of many years, as twenty, thirty, or forty, seems, at the first glance, a very onerous task. To reap the products of so many acres of earth indeed might, to one person, be an undertaking of mighty toil. But the materials of any value that all past life can supply to a recording pen, would be reduced by a discerning selection to a very small and modest amount. Would as much as one page of moderate size be deemea by any man's self-importance to be due, on an average, to each of the days that he has lived? No man would judge more than one in ten thousand of all his thoughts, sayings, and actions, worthy to be mentioned, if memory were capable of recalling them.* Necessarily a very large portion of what has occupied the successive years of life was of a kind to be utterly useless for a history of it; being merely for the accommodation of the time. Perhaps in the space of forty or fifty years, millions of sentences are proper to be uttered, and many thousands of affairs requisite to be transacted, or of journeys to • An exception may be admitted for the few individuals whose daily deliberations, discourses and proceedings, affect the interests of mankind on a grand scale. |