Page images
PDF
EPUB

but the picturesque appearance of the river running through the lake without being lost in it, is omitted by Mr. Montgomery, who simply says,

"Where Jordan mingled his melodious wave

With the blue waters of that famous sea."

In conclusion we would say, that while religion continues to be the most important subject that can engage the human mind, it must be more suited to poetry than subjects which do not reach the feelings. The Christian graces, the joys, the hopes, and the sorrows of the pious the attributes of the Deity, so humbling to human pride; the deeds of the Messiah, so consolatory to the dejected; the past and future fulfilment of prophecy, so confounding to the infidel; the punishment of the wicked and the rewards of the righteous;

these are surely worthy of the highest powers of the human mind. Brilliant talents have been too often devoted to the task of rendering vice attractive, and representing virtue and religion as mean and contemptible, and divine worship as a mockery. But let us hope that such perversions of the best powers of the mind will no longer be seen, and that many will arise, who, by the charms of verse, will arouse the indifferent and the careless, and persuade them to forego the pleasures of sense, for the purer joys resulting from a devout and pious disposition, and from a well grounded hope of a residence hereafter with the glorified spirits of the pure and just!

"Alas! that man should e'er with guilty stain
Blur the fair form of heaven-born poesy,
Debasing God's pure gift with dross profane
Of passion vile, and mad impiety i

Fair is her form, when, from pollution free,
On virtue's ear her kindred strain she pours:

But then most fair, when, sanctified by Thee,
FOUNTAIN OF GOOD, on seraph wing she soars,

And seeks her native home, and meekly there adores !"

One word as to that sort of divine poetry which is a professed imitation of the Canticles. That production of the wisest of kings has been greatly misunderstood and misapplied. Dr. Jonathan Scott, the translator of the Arabian Nights, in his preliminary dissertation on the manners and morals of Asiatics, remarks that their language, gross as it often is to Europeans, and, as we may add, not less so to Americans, is not to be considered as indicative of loose morality, or even of want of refinement. Those, VOL. I.

84

therefore, who judge of the Canticles by the standard of the Occidental nations, form an improper estimate of its tendency, since by those for whose edification it was originally intended, it would have been understood in its spiritual signification, without any of the lower associations which it awakens in our minds. Hence, those poets who adopt a similar strain in addressing a people whose mental associations are entirely different, act with as little judgment as the French painter, who depicted Adam and Eve in court suits! Let any one read the spiritual hymns of Madame Guyon, whose ardent piety forbids the supposition that she was playing a double part; or the specimens of hymns from sundry authors, inserted in the appendix and notes to Southey's Life of Wesley; and it will be evident that our caution is not superfluous. Love and devotion to the Saviour, may be expressed without the adoption of language which conveys a sensual idea; and that this is advisable will be evident on reflecting, that, though "to the pure all things are pure," yet to the majority of mankind they are not so. We are glad to appeal, in corroboration of our views, to such an authority as Dr. Watts, who, in editing Mrs. Rowe's Devout Exercises, acknowledged his earlier mistake in reference to this kind of poetry, and gave his mature judgment against it. Had some of the compilers of hymn-books acted in conformity with his views, it might have saved the cause of vital religion from many reproaches. For "it is not going too far to assert," says Bishop Heber, "that the brutalities of a common swearer can hardly bring religion into more sure contempt, or more scandalously profane the name which is above every name in heaven and earth, than certain epithets applied to Christ in our popular collections of religious poetry."

ART. IX.-CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY.

BY THE EDITOR.

NUMBER II.

Modern Philosophy divided into the ideal, sensual, and eclectic schools, each of which is opposed to Revelation.

ABOUT the time usually styled the Revival of Letters,— near the commencement of the fifteenth century,- -the spirit of philosophy underwent an important change. That was a time when all the monuments of the Middle Ages began to crumble, and the institutions of modern civilization to rise in their place. It was not to be expected, that the philosophy of the Middle Ages should escape that change to which all their other systems and institutions were subjected.

But what was the revolution which then took place in philosophy? Up to this momeut, from the commencement of the Christian era, philosophy had recognized the authority of Revelation, and had employed itself in exploring, defending, and systematizing the doctrines of Christianity From the fifteenth century to the present time, it has rejected the authority of Revelation, made reason the sole arbiter of truth, and employed itself exclusively about the various objects of worldly knowledge. Exceptions there doubtless are to this statement; still we think it expresses the nature of the revolution which has taken place in the philosophy of Christendom.

Were it asked, then, by what characteristics Modern Philosophy is most essentially distinguished from that of the former period, it must be answered, in being independent of revelation, irreligious, and worldly.

If this statement is true, it is not, like the thousand alternations of philosophical opinion, a matter of merely speculative interest; but on the contrary, one of deep concernment to every friend of mankind, and especially to every believer in Christianity. It follows of course that Philosophy must become shallow and partial, when it averts itself from so important a source of knowledge as divine Revelation. But this is the least of the evils to be apprehended from its apostacy from religion. The rejection of Revela

tion, is owing, for the most part, to moral causes, and must therefore bring moral consequences in its train. It is scarcely possible, that the dispositions involved in philosophical unbelief, should be confined in their influence to the sphere of speculative opinion. The same feelings which urge the reason to reject the divine testimony, must incline the will to reject the divine law, and at last array the whole man against whatever is holy and heavenly. This work of corruption in theoretic principle and moral character, being accomplished in the minds of more thinking men, must soon pass from them, by a thousand avenues, into the body of the people, subverting their religious faith, infecting their morals, and invading the most sacred and venerated institutions of Christian society. Such appear to be the natural consequences of an Infidelity, beginning in a merely theoretic skepticism about religion. When, therefore, such effects are seen actually occurring, why should they not be ascribed to so natural a cause?

The inquiry, then, whether the philosophy of this period admits or rejects the authority of Revelation, is eminently practical, and should receive the serious attention not only of those who would promote sound learning, but of those also who have at heart the interests of religion and of society. This question, in the view of every Christian, must be the great question relating to philosophy, in comparison with which, all other inquiries regarding it, sink down into utter insignificance. There is, no doubt, some choice to be exercised among the various theories which prevail among philosophers about the nature of the soul, the laws of mind, the origin of ideas, and other speculations of this kind; since some of these theories are more elevated, congenial with religion, and benign in their influence than others. But there is nothing in the worst of these theories, as it seems to us, which indicates so great previous perversion, or which is productive of such pernicious effects, as that single principle of Infidelity, with which the whole body of modern philosophy is so deeply infected.

In taking up, therefore, the subject of modern philosophy in this view, and making it, as we propose to do, the theme of several successive articles, we do not feel that we are wasting time on empty abstractions, remote from the good of man and the cause of God; but are rather confident, that we are hereby doing something to subserve these great ends.

The objects at which the writer principally aims, are to prove, what many hesitate to acknowledge, that Philosophy since the fifteenth century from various causes has been, with few exceptions, infidel in respect to the Bible,-that it has hence been itself impoverished and bewildered, has misguided and darkened the minds of the learned classes, destroyed the religious faith, and so undermined the virtue of great masses of Christian society, and been the secret soul of those movements of anarchy and infidelity combined, by which the modern world has been, and still is, so dreadfully and ominously convulsed.

The distempered state of the entire body politic in modern Christendom, indicated in the French Revolution, and other irreligious and anarchical tendencies and outbreakings, has been generally traced back to the doctrines of the Material Philosophy, so extensively diffused from France through Europe and America. But who does not see, that whatever influence these doctrines may have had, they hold the place only of subordinate causes, and were themselves brought along by that boasted movement of Independence, which began in the fifteenth century, and having broken over the restraints of both human and divine authority, has proceeded through these latter ages, gathering to itself the congenial elements of intellectual and moral perversion, and directing them against all that Heaven had ordained, or man devised, for the temporal peace and the eternal welfare of our race? This independent movement of mind in modern times, consists principally in its declining to submit to the authority of Revelation to which it had before yielded. When it had thus absolved itself of its allegiance to the divine Word, it seems to have been judicially left of God to run through all the mazes of theoretical delusion, and into all the horrours of practical impiety. The merely worldly theorist may plausibly account for the existing state of things, from the operation of various worldly causes; but the religious observer, taught to discern the deeper principles of action, and to recognize a superintending and often avenging Power, in the history of the world, will not hesitate to derive the great evils with which Christendom has been afflicted, under which it now labours, and with which it is threatened, to the loss of that reverence for the divine authority, by which alone the selfish and lawless principles of human nature can be held in check. And as he derives the

« PreviousContinue »