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Jt/itB% 18^2.] tH »;>¦ %E ABE m. ' ' ' ;...
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/Wi>s are not the legislators, but the j...
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Wh at Pliny's witty friend was wont to s...
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THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH. TheEclipse of Fait...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
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/Wi>S Are Not The Legislators, But The J...
/ Wi > s are not the legislators , but the judges and police , of literature . They do not ° - makelaws—they interpret and tryto enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
Wh At Pliny's Witty Friend Was Wont To S...
Wh at Pliny ' s witty friend was wont to say of Life is very applicable to literature : " It is better to be idle than to do n 6 thihg- ^ -S diius est otiosum esse quarri nihil agereJ' * We are all apt to waste our energies in restless inactivity * instead of enjoying ihe serene repose of godlike far niente , and similarly we squander the thoughts which might nave brooded in silent meditation over great or happy themes , in a certain restless quest of novelty , naively believed to lie within new covers . How is it we all pounce upon the last numbers of Magazines , and are as indifferent to the preceding numbers as if they were the fashions of last year ? They rarely tell us anything that is new , yet , though incessantly disappointed , we am incessantly lured . Here is June , 1852 , and the Magazines , like butterflies in the June sun > entice us .
Blachadod propounds its ponderous defence of dead Protection , bristling with " facts ? and tables , and sesquipedalian splendour of phrase , alarming to weak nerves ; and side by side with this there is scholarship and flashing hum , like echoes of the old days , in Carmina Lnsoria ( Verse Playthings ) , and in Thoughts upon Dinners , to bring water into the mouth of gustatory readers . Skip Protection and trust yourself to these articles ; then turn , back and read the curious historical fragment , Ferguson the Plotter , interesting as a biographical sketch and as a figure observed in history .
In Frdser you may read a clear and satisfactory history of the whole Bookselling Question recently agitated 5 or , if your taste lies in Natural History , turn to the amusing paper on eels , sturgeons , narkes , and ranse , in continuation of a former One on sharks and their cousins . Hypatia and Captain Digby Grand are continued , and the History of the Hungarian War is concluded . Tait has some sixteen articles j among them one really gay and humorous , called An Ode to a Female Mummy , the opening stanzas of which we will lighten our columns with :. —¦ " Poor dingy , dismal sistermine , "What lawless hosts of thoughts combine To fluster me the while Tphy long-unrolling shrbud I scan , That old original suggestive Pan-Orama of the STile . " As the indomitable Layard , In kingdoms old with names to say hard . O ' er ruined towns might ponder , I view that breast no more that pants , And of its old inhabitants I wonder and I wonder . . " The loves and hates , the joys and cares , . The whirl of human hopes and fears In human hearts e ' er seething—Those matron fears that , made thee sad When little Tsoph the measles had Or baby was a-teething" Or when , at noon or close of day , Thy cherubs hungry como from play . Dirt-pies and gutter grubbles , To weep alone you fled upstairs , Bmit with eternal flesh-pot cares And bread-and-butter troubles" Where be they now ? I can't suppose These human and theso household woes Extinguished with thy life ; Haply , to us como down , they bore Poor Mrs . Jones , our neighbour , or Obstreperato my wife . " Howe ' or that be , 'tis very clear No more they'll porsecuto thoo here ; Thoso limbs , that trembled all At loving glance or stem roply , Supremely passive still would Ho Wore sun and nrioon to fall . " Woi- 't otherwise , I could disclose That tuneful Momnon ' s lost his nose ; And as to thy boliei ; Wo ' ve no respect for beetles now , A"d only worship ox and cow As sausages or beef . " The People's Illustrated Journal is what the correct stylo calls a " ca ndidate for public favour . " The first part contains an astonishing amount of excellent wood engraving , and of useful information on Arts , Manufactures , Practical' Science , Antiquities , & c . Although a cheap— a very cheap—work , this has none of the inferiority or carelessness which its cheapness might imply . The wood engravings arc all executed with extreme care , many pf them of great beauty j and the literature is solid Plain , direct—only inferior when it swerves occasionally from its broad P ath into such b / e-loues aa that on the drama , or into personalities ,
The Eclipse Of Faith. Theeclipse Of Fait...
THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH . TheEclipse of Faith ; or , A Visit to a Religious Sceptic . Longman and Go . We believe that no " constant reader" can have any doubt of ourundeviating recognition of whatever is strong , generous , or notable in the writings of our religious antagonists . It has been with us a matter of system no less than of temper . If—as in the recent instance of the IPatagonian Missions—we may seem to have been in contradiction with our avowed antagonism to all theological systems , it can only have seemed so ~ to those who have misapprehended the animating spirit of this Journal . Our own convictions are top deeply rooted , and too plainly expressed , for us to share the vulgar fear which dictates so much , of party misrepresentation . This , by way of preface , to the notice of a book we cannot in any way japprove ; a book which , because it is directed against modern scepticism , we must not pass by in silence , lest that be misconstrued ; a book which , will be a source of much chuckling and rejoicing to alarmed orthodoxy , uthough to all persons in the least competent to appreciate it , presenting a most insignificant figure ,. Not that it is deficient m power ; the writer is not a common theologian in thought nor in style . He is sarcastic , but not virulent . His misrepresentation is probably unconscious , though abiding ; it never rises above the tone of legitimate controversy . But with all its sarcasm , its eloquence , its ingenuity , and its logic , the book is profoundly false , and wholly useless if it be meant to touch sceptics . Profoundly false , we say , because the writer has entirely failed to place
himself for one moment at the sceptic ' s real point of view . He has read Parker ; he has read Newman ; he has read Foxton , and has heard of Strauss " and the Germans . " But as a vindication of Christianity against these writers , his book is perhaps one of the most incompetent we can name . No man whose faith has been shaken by Newman and Parker can have it steadied by such writing as this ; for ridicule and constant quotation of phrases and detached sentences will not penetrate the question . The writer must permit us to tell him that he does not in the slightest degree understand the Sceptic ; and he shows this by falling into the vulgarest of ignorant commonplaces—viz ., that scepticism proceeds from moral disease .
¦ " It is too often the result of thoughtlessness , " he says ; " of a wish to get rid of truths unwelcome to the heart ; of a vain love of paradox , or perhaps in manycases ( as a friend of mine said ) of an amiable wish to frighten ' mammasand maiden aunts /" That he did not feel his cheek burn with shame as he wrote that unworthy sentence is owing to the common prejudice , that sceptics are essentially mournful , miserable , unsettled beings , who try to _ stun conscience With arguments . When Socrates parted from the beliefs of his forefathers , he did so from a love of vain paradox—a desire to get rid of truths unwelcome to his heart ; when Spinoza passed out of the synagogue he did so from an amiable wish to frighten the old ladies of Amsterdam ;
when Newman struggled through , the Christian labyrinth , he did so because he was frivolous and thoughtless . Does any one seriously believe this ^ The author of the Eclipse of Faith regards scepticism as diseasea more profound psychology would have taught him that denial of Christianity is mostly the form in which another belief expresses itself . A . believes the Bible to be the word of God ; B . disbelieves it— -i . e ., believes that the word of God is written in broader and moro unmistakable characters : " in the heavens above , the earth beneath , and the waters under the earth . " To call B . a sceptic would be as correct as to call a Newtonian a sceptic because he disbelieved in Hipparchus . Yet listen to this author : —
" Of all the paradoxes humanity exhibits , surely thore are none more wonderful than the complacency with which scepticism often utters its doubts , and the tranquillity which it boasts as the perfection of its system ¦!" If ho is no bettor versod in the paradoxes of humanity than that , ho is not far advanced . To dissipate the paradox wo have only to substituto the word " beliefs" for " doubts . " The Christian is complacent ; no one calls that a paradox : ho believes in his belief . The Sceptic ( i . e ., the Anti-Christian , ) is complacent from the samo cause : ho bolioves in his belief . . This writer throughout argues solely from his own point ot view ; ho never quits it to pass over to that of his adversary , and naively
says" What may be expected in a genuine sceptic is a modest hope tlnit ho may bo mistaken ; a desire to ho confuted ; a retention of his convictions as if they were a guilty secret ; or tho promulgation of them only as the utterance of an agonised heart , unable to suppress tho langungo of its misery . " Yes , that is what you , the orthedox alarmod at doubts , would desire ; but TruthP .... ,,..,. j . i For cxamplo , Christianity , with much both m its history and its doctrines that wo all reverence and accept , is presented as a Theory of tho Universe which tho Intellect is called upon to accept with all its consequences . But tho Intellect , using its frocdom in this as in other questions , appreciating this Theory as it approciatos that of Newton , discovors that tho Systom is based upon two propositions , which stripped of all that uiiwa vji kjka i
maV CllflgUlSO Ilium , ttbUMU BWHUniu » u . jl » u , . muuu " . » u ) «« - < niaclo him liablo to err , and as tho strength of an iron bar is according to ita weakest part , this liability to fall soon manifested itself in tho Fall . Go 4 condemned tho race to eternal pordition for acting according to tho natural tondencios ho hud created . 2 nd . In an hour of " moruy" God undertook to give fatten man a clianco of " salvation . " Ho did not pardon ; hogavo an . opportunity to tho race to . purchase its pardon for a orimo committed by its progenitors . For this purpose ho adopted a strango plan ' viz ., that of assuming manhood , and dying on a oi-ohh in Judoju—boliof in which would pure-huso forgivenoss ; although , the very fact itiust necessarily have remained unknown to millions ( damnod for thoir , ignorance ) , and questionable to millions ( damnod for their want of faith ) . Thcso two propositions tho Intellect is called upon to acoopt . Thoso wo rofuso to accept . Wo rofiiRc , because they aro repugnant to our belioi in God ; wo rofuso , becauso they do not Jianapnizo with nil our othor
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 5, 1852, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05061852/page/17/
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