a public meeting, where the heads and leaders of the religious world were present, "If I were asked what was the first qualification for a Missionary, I would say, prudence; and what the second? Prudence; and what the third? still I would answer, Prudence." I trembled while I heard, not with indignation but with horror and apprehension, what the end would be of a spirit which I have since found to be the presiding genius of our activity, the ruler of the ascendant. Now, if I read the eleventh chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, I find that from the time of Abel to the time of Christ, it was by faith that the cloud of witnesses witnessed their good confession and so mightily prevailed; which faith is there defined the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen; whereas prudence or expediency is the substance of things present, the evidence of things seen. So that faith and prudence are opposite poles in the soul, the one attracting to it all things spiritual and divine, the other all things sensual and earthy. This expediency hath banished the soul of patriotic eloquence from our senate, the spirit of high equity from our legislation, self-denying wisdom from our philosophy, and of our poetry it hath clipt the angel wing and forced 22. 2да HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY 1865, Minil 30. Hon. John Gorham Palfrey, DEDICATION. то SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Esq. MY DEAR AND HONOURED FRIEND, UNKNOWN as you are, in the true character either of your mind or of your heart, to the greater part of your countrymen, and misrepresented as your works have been, by those who have the ear of the vulgar, it will seem wonderful to many that I should make choice of you, from the circle of my friends, to dedicate to you these beginnings of my thoughts upon the most important subject of these or times. And when I state the reason to be, that you have been more profitable to my faith in orthodox doctrine, to my spiritual understanding of the Word of God, and to my right conception of the Christian Church, than any or all of the men with whom I have entertained any it to creep along the earth. And if we look not to it, it will strangle faith and make void the reality of the things which are not seen, which are the only things that are real and cannot be removed. Money, money, money, is the universal cry. Mammon hath gotten the victory, and may say triumphantly (nay, he may keep silence and the servants of Christ will say it for him), "Without me ye can do nothing." This evil bent of prudence to become the death of all ideal and invisible things, whether poetry, sentiment, heroism, disinterestedness, or faith, it is the great prerogative of religious faith to withstand, because religious faith is the only form of the ideal which hath the assurance from heaven of a present blessing and an everlasting reward. Poetry is a tender delicate plant, which seeketh solitary culture, and ill endureth the rough handling of utility. And sentiment is a flower which vanisheth into beautiful colours and sweet odours, that moment it is placed by the side of politics and economics and chrestomathics, and such other thistle-like productions of the mind, (if indeed they belong not rather to the sense). And heroism and patriotism and virtue and other forms of disinterestedness, having no exchang able value in the market-place, must keep at home in books or be shown only in family 'circles, like the antiquated dresses of our grandfathers and grandmothers, with whom the things so named were in fashion. But faith is born to brave contempt, to defy power, to bear persecution, and endure the loss of all things. And in doing so, faith will overthrow the idol of expediency, and recover those heavenly and angelic forms of the natural man,-poetry, sentiment, honour, patriotism, and virtue,which the worshippers of the idol have offered at the idol's shrine. And truth will not retaliate upon prudence the evil aim which she hath bent against her and all her daughters: but, upon the other hand, will bestow even upon prudence a heavenly form. For faith is the substance of things hoped for, and therefore is ever looking onward; it is the evidence of things unseen, and is therefore ever looking beyond the present. Futurity is its dwelling-place. And, therefore, as it grows in the soul, it makes it full of forecast and consideration. And forecast and consideration being in the soul, it must be prudent, provident and prudent, with a true wisdom, which, making its calculations for eternity, applies Cem also to time. Hence it is written, that b 1 |