Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

with a reasonable allowance as to technical details, all science was in a most extraordinary degree familiar. Throughout a long-drawn summer's day would this man talk to you in low, equable, but clear and musical tones, concerning things human and divine; marshalling all history, harmonising all experiment, probing the depths of your consciousness, and revealing visions of glory and of terror to the imagination; but pouring withal such floods of light upon the mind, that you might for a season, like Paul, become blind in the very act of conversion. And this he would do without so much as one allusion to himself, without a word of reflection on others, save when any given act fell naturally in the way of his discourse, without one anecdote that was not proof and illustration of a previous position; gratifying no passion, indulging no caprice, but, with a calm mastery over your soul, leading you onward and onward for ever through a thousand windings, yet with no pause, to some magnificent point in which, as in a focus, all the parti-coloured rays of his discourse should converge in light. In all this he was, in truth, your teacher and guide; but in a little while you might forget that he was other than a fellow-student and the companion of your way, so playful was his manner, so simple his language, so affectionate the glance of his pleasant eye!-HENRY COLERIDGE.

PARVER THE QUAKER, AND HIS TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE.-Anthony Parver was a quaker, poorer and less educated than most of his brethren; by trade a shoemaker. Can any one assign a reason why so many shoemakers have become eminent for their genius or their enthusiasmi? The employment is still, often solitary, and allows a man to be meditative. Anthony Parver, as he worked with his awl, was over-mastered with an idea that he was called and commanded to translate the Scriptures. His faith attributed the impulse, whose origin he could not trace in his own will or in the concatenation of his human thoughts, to the Divine Spirit. But, if he was an enthusiast, he was an enthusiast of much sanity; for he sought the accomplishment of his end by the necessary means, and did not begin to translate till he had mastered the original tongues. We know not what assistance be received in this great undertaking, which was commenced when he had long outlived the years of physical docility; but if it be true, as stated, that he began with the Hebrew first, (and it was the natural course to occur to his mind,) he must have had some, for there was then no Hebrew and English lexicon or grammar. However, he did acquire a competent knowledge of the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac. He afterwards learned Greek, and Latin last of all. But still he could not have accomplished his purpose without pecuniary aid; and that aid was liberally afforded by Dr. Fothergill, at whose sole expense Parver's Translation of the Old and New Testaments, with notes critical and explanatory, in two volumes folio, was printed, and appeared in 1765. The cost of the work is stated at not less than 2001. A short account of this extraordinary effort of faith and perseverance may be found in Southey's Omniana. It is said to be remarkable for a close adherence to the Hebrew idiom. It has not apparently attracted as much notice among biblical scholars as the curiosity, to say no more, of its production would seem to challenge. We never saw it but once, and that was in the library of a Friend. We doubt, indeed, whether any new translation, however learned, exact, or truly orthodox, will ever appear to English Christians to be the real Bible. The language of the authorised version is the perfection of English, and it can never be written again, for the language of prose is one of the few things in which the English have really dege nerated. Our tongue has lost its holiness.-HARTLEY COLERIDGE. Borealis, in Life of Dr. John Fothergill.

Biographia

VOLTAIRE AND JOHNSON.-I found tall Sir Thomas Robinson sitting with Johnsen. Sir Thomas said, that the King of Prussia valued himself upon three things-upon being a hero, a musician, and an author. Johnson. "Pretty well, sir, for one man.

As to his being an author, I have not looked at his poetry; but his prose is poor stuff. He writes just as you may suppose Voltaire's footboy to do, who had been his amanuensis. He has such parts as the valet might have, and about as much of the colouring of the style as might be got by transcribing his works." When I was at Fernay I repeated this to Voltaire, in order to reconcile him somewhat to Johnson, whom he, in affecting the English mode of expression, had previously characterised as 66 a superstitious dog;" but after hearing such a criticism on Frederick the Great, with whom he was then on bad terms, he exclaimed, “An honest fellow!"-BOSWELL. Life of Johnson.

101.-CHRISTIAN CHARITY.

J. B. SUMNER, Archbishop of Canterbury. [THE present excellent Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. John Bird Sumner, is the son of the Rev. Robert Sumner, Vicar of Kenilworth and Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire, and grandson of Dr. John Sumner, formerly Canon of Windsor, and Provost of King's College, Cambridge. The two sons of the Vicar of Kenilworth have each had the rare distinction of being promoted to the highest offices of the Church by the force of their own merits. The Bishop of Winchester is the younger brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury. John Bird Sumner in 1815 published his first work, entitled 'Apostolical Preaching.' In 1816 appeared his 'Records of Creation.' To this remarkable work was awarded the second prize of £400, under the will of a Scotch gentleman named Burnett. In 1821 Dr. Sumner published the Sermons from which we extract the passage below. All his works are distinguished by their earnest piety, their depth of thought, and elegance of language. When a Fellow of Eton College he addressed a series of Discourses to the scholars, and the effect of his winning and impressive eloquence was a marked improvement in the moral habits of the whole school. The standard of thought and action was raised by the exhortations of a man of high talent thoroughly in earnest. He was created Bishop of Chester in 1828, and translated to the Primacy of all England in 1848.]

My brethren, we are now, upon earth, masters of our own conduct, and accountable to no one here for the tempers which we cherish, or the dispositions we show. We may hate our enemies, and refuse to forgive an injury; we may pass by on the other side, while our neighbour is in grievous want; we may spend our substance in selfish gratifications, or lay it up for our children, and refuse meanwhile to bestow any portion of it upon the bodies or the souls of our poorer brethren; and, at the same time, none have a right to call us to account, except by a friendly warning: God leaves us to follow our own bent: no fire comes down from heaven to consume the churlish or the malicious; the sun shines alike on the merciful and on the uncharitable; and the rain fertilises alike those fields which spread their bounty upon God's needy creatures, and those which enrich no one but their covetous owner. We are free to use as we like the gifts of Providence; and this freedom affords the opportunity by which our characters are formed and displayed.

But it will not be always so. There will be a time when we must render an account; when all superiority of strength, or talent, or influence, or place, or fortune, will be levelled; when the strongest, and the cleverest, and the greatest, and the richest, must yield up and return their several gifts to Him who lent them; and with their gifts must return an account of the way in which they have used them. The question will be, have you used your strength to injure, your wit to insult, your power to oppress? Have you, like the rich man in the parable, kept to yourself your good things, and taken no care to lay up for yourself a good foundation against the time to come? Have you never thought of spreading around you, as far as your opportunities allowed, temporal comfort and religious knowledge? Have you suffered the fatherless and widows to lie unfriended in their affliction, when you might have supported or consoled them? Has the ignorant man as far as

concerned you, continued in his ignorance, and the wicked died in his sin? Then you have shown yourself wanting in that quality which most certainly distinguishes the followers of Jesus: you have borne the name, but you have not possessed the spirit of a Christian: you have not been merciful in your generation; and now you have no claim to mercy, when nothing else can snatch you from the wrath to come. No doubt the scrutiny of the great day will extend much further, and relate to other qualities, besides the grace of charity. Those on the right hand, which shall hear the summons, Come, ye blessed children of my Father, must be humble, and penitent, and meek, and pure in heart, as well as merciful. But the very prominent place which our Lord has assigned to charity in this awful description of the tribunal, where he will himself appear in his glory as Judge, and before him shall be gathered all nations, shows thus much, at least, that this virtue is indispensable; is one by which the Christian must often examine himself, and prove his own soul; inasmuch as, without it, his Saviour will not acknowledge him: he shall not obtain mercy. Not that charity, or any other virtue, can redeem us from the punishment of sin, or entitle us to the reward of heaven; eternal life is the gift of God througå Jesus Christ. It would be a miserable error for a man to suppose that by giving an alms he could atone for a crime, or by excusing his debtor here, clear his own account with God. Forgiveness and pity are necessary parts of that character which Christ will save, but cannot alone save us, or be placed in the stead of Christ. But, as I observed, they are necessary features of that character which Christ will save. Without these it will be in vain for a man to cry unto him in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not been called by thy name? He will still answer, you could not have a proper sense of the mercy which I showed, in bearing your sins in my own body on the tree, when you showed no mercy towards your own brethren, who had not offended you by ten thousand times as heavily as you have offended against your Almighty Father. Neither could you value your knowledge of my Gospel, when you have employed no pains to give others that knowledge; neither could you love your brethren, as I commanded you to love them, when you refused to do unto them as ye would they should do unto you: therefore, yours is not the character which shall obtain mercy, nor the character for which my heavenly kingdom is prepared. My brethren, if any of you are conscious that you have not forgiven a neighbour when he trespassed against you; if any of you are conscious that you have taken a malicious pleasure in making a brother's offences known, and injuring his credit; if any have pushed your rights to an extreme, and insisted on a severity of justice when you might rather have shown mercy and pity; if any have no feeling for their fellow-creatures' wants, and are contented to enjoy themselves, without bestowing a thought on those who have in this life evil things; you plainly perceive that the blessing bestowed on the merciful is not addressed to you: you must erpect judgment without mercy, if you have shown no mercy. Pray therefore to the Lord Jesus Christ, that He who first set the most beautiful example of charity, and displayed his almighty power, not by removing mountains or destroying cities, but went about doing good, reforming the sinner, and curing the diseased, and relieving the distressed, and blessing those who persecuted him, may "pour into your that most excellent gift of charity, without which all other qualities are nothing worth." Whenever you are tempted to resent an injury, reflect with yourselves, has God no account against you? When you are inclined to speak, or to think, hardly of your neighbour, who may have fallen into sin, reflect, Am I so without sin that I can venture to cast the first stone against another? When you are unwilling to take some trouble, or to spare some little of your substance, to relieve another's wants, remember the sentence of your Lord and Judge, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye did it not unto me,

hearts

[graphic]

21

E.

162. THE LAST OF THE INCAS.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. [THE author of the Histories of 'Ferdinand and Isabella,' and of the Conquest of Peru,' is a living American writer, who has taken the very highest rank as an historian. Mr. Prescott was born in 1796, the son of an eminent lawyer of Salem. He has won his reputation under physical difficulties; for, having lost one of his eyes by an accident while at Harvard College, the sight of the other has at various periods so failed him that he has been either wholly unable to pursue his studies, or has pursued them under no common disadvantages. The defect of his sight was at last compensated by the strength of his will; and he made himself master of a vast mass of information from Spanish sources for his "History of Ferdinand and Isabella,' by having the works read to him. Johnson said that Milton could not write history with the eyes of others; but Prescott accomplished this task. Of late years his sight has been partially recovered. The following extract from the 'Conquest of Peru,' describing the treacherous capture of the last Inca by the Spanish invaders, may be fitly introduced by another passage from the same work:

"It is not easy at this time to comprehend the impulse given to Europe by the discovery of America. It was not the gradual acquisition of some border territory, a province, or a kingdom that had been gained; but a new world that was now thrown open to the European. The races of animals, the mineral treasures, the vegetable forms, and the varied aspects of nature, man in the different phases of civilisation, filled the mind with entirely new sets of ideas, that changed the habitual current of thought and stimulated it to indefinite conjecture. The eagerness to explore the wonderful secrets of the new hemisphere became so active, that the principal cities of Spain were, in a manner, depopulated, as emigrants thronged one after another to take their chance upon the deep. It was a world of romance that was thrown open; for, whatever might be the luck of the adventurer, his reports on his return were tinged with a colouring of romance that stimulated still higher the sensitive fancies of his countrymen, and nourished the chimerical sentiments of an age of chivalry. They listened with attentive ears to tales of Amazons, which seemed to realise the classic legends of antiquity, to stories of Patagonian giants, to flaming pictures of an El Dorado, where the sands sparkled with gems, and golden pebbles as large as birds' eggs were dragged in nets out of the rivers.

"Yet that the adventurers were no impostors, but dupes, too easy dupes, of their own credulous fancies, is shown by the extravagant character of their enterprises : by expeditions in search of the magical Fountain of Health, of the golden Temple of Doboyba, of the golden sepulchres of Yenu-for gold was ever floating fore their distempered vision, and the name of Castilla del Oro, (Golden Castile,) the most unhealthy and unprofitable region of the Isthmus, held out a bright promise to the unfortunate settler, who too frequently instead of gold found there only his grave.

"In this realm of enchantment all the accessories served to maintain the illusion. The simple natives, with their defenceless bodies and rude weapons, were no match for the European warrior armed to the teeth in mail. The odds were as great as those found in any legend of chivalry, where the lance of the good knight overturned 2NT QUARTER.

M

hundreds at a touch. The perils that lay in the discoverer's path, and the sufferings he had to sustain, were scarcely inferior to those that beset the knight errant. Hunger, and thirst, and fatigue, the deadly effluvia of the morass, with its swarms of venomous insects, the cold of mountain snows, and the scorching sun of the tropics, these were the lot of every cavalier who came to seek his fortunes in the New World. It was the reality of romance. The life of the Spanish adventurer was one chapter more, and not the least remarkable, in the chronicles of knight errantry. "The character of the warrior took somewhat of the exaggerated colouring shed over his exploits. Proud and vain-glorious, swelled with lofty anticipations of his destiny, and an invincible confidence in his own resources, no danger could appe and no toil could tire him. The greater the danger, indeed, the higher the charm ; for his soul revelled in excitement, and the enterprise without peril wanted that spur of romance which was necessary to rouse his energies into action. Yet in the motives of action meaner influences were strangely mingled with the loftier, the temporal with the spiritual. Gold was the incentive and the recompense, and in the pursuit of it his inflexible nature rarely hesitated as to the means. His courage was sullied with cruelty, the cruelty that flowed equally, strange as it may seem, from his avarice and his religion; religion as it was understood in that age-the religion of the Crusader. It was the convenient cloak for a multitude of sins, which covered them even from himself. The Castilian, too proud for hypocrisy, committed more cruelties in the name of religion than were ever practised by the pagan idolater or the fanatical Moslem. The burning of the infidel was a sacrifice acceptable to Heaven, and the conversion of those who survived amply atoned for the foulest offences. It is a melancholy and mortifying consideration that the most uncompromising spirit of intolerance-the spirit of the Inquisitor at home, and of the Crusader abroad-should have emanated from a religion which preached peace upon earth and good-will towards man!

"What a contrast did these children of Southern Europe present to the AngloSaxon races, who scattered themselves along the great northern division of the western hemisphere! For the principle of action with these latter was not avarice, nor the more specious pretext of proselytism; but independence-independence, religious and political. To secure this, they were content to earn a bare subsistence by a life of frugality and toil. They asked nothing from the soil but the reasonable returns of their own labour. No golden visions threw a deceitful halo around their path, and beckoned them onwards through seas of blood to the subversion of an unoffending dynasty. They were content with the slow but steady progress of their social polity. They patiently endured the privations of the wilderness, watering the tree of liberty with their tears and with the sweat of their brow, till it took deep root in the land and sent up its branches high towards the heavens, while the communities of the neighbouring continent, shooting up into the sudden splendours of a tropical vegetation, exhibited, even in their prime, the sure symptoms of decay. "It would seem to have been especially ordered by Providence that the discovery of the two great divisions of the American hemisphere should fall to the two races best fitted to conquer and colonise them. Thus the northern section was consigned to the Anglo-Saxon race, whose orderly industrious habits found an ample field for development under its colder skies and on its more rugged soil; while the southern portion, with its rich tropical products and treasures of mineral wealth, held out the most attractive bait to invite the enterprise of the Spaniard. How different might have been the result, if the bark of Columbus had taken a more northerly direction, as he at one time meditated, and landed its band of adventurers on the shores of what is now Protestant America!

« AnteriorContinuar »