generality. It becomes a general law, because it acts in so large a number of individual cases as to be entitled to that appellation. If it did not act on individual things, it would be acting on nothing, for all nature is composed of specific individualities. There are no general things. In no part of the world shall we find a general man or a general tree. No general laws have therefore actual generalities to act upon. The laws that concern a rose, act on and in every individual bush and flower of that vegetable. The laws that relate to man, are ever operating on you, me, and every living human being, high or low, rich or poor. Hence a general providence always means a providence that acts on and towards every existing individual. It cannot be otherwise than specific and particular to each individual. If it does not so act, it cannot be universal; and if general does not mean universal, it must signify at least that it individually embraces the far largest number. Divest it of its particularity, and you reduce it to a nonentity. There may be differences in the amount. It may be diminished or increased in its individual application, and the times of these modifications may vary. But it must never cease to be individual; in so far as it does so, its generality is withdrawn, and its actuality disappears. Thus a general providence and a particular providence differ in their meaning only in the one being the collective amount, the united number of the other. The general providence never can exist without the particular providence, for, divested of this, it is a phrase without any signification at all. Let this, then, be our ever comforting recollection, that we are all individually partaking of that care, notice, superintendence, and government, which only become general, because applied and extended to every one. We may be as sure that we are personal participators of the benefit of the providential administration of human affairs, as we are of the light and atmosphere, and of the daily food which the earth has been appointed to produce to us in its yearly revolutions. But if we are so now, so have been our predecessors. They equally have been under the same supreme guidance and government; and this certainty gives us an interest to consider what were the system and the laws under which, in its successive course, and in all their important movements and concerns, fortunes and changes, it was from time to time applied to these, and, through them, to the individuals who were affected by them. All nations are more or less impressed with the belief of an observing and particular providence.* Let us, then, assume it, as habitual principles of our intelligent thought, that we are living in a designed creation, and under the providential administration of that Almighty wisdom and benevolence, whose works and the character displayed in them, we surveyed in our former Letters. All the generations which have been before us on this earth, have been similarly circumstanced; and their history, contemplated in this view, and with reference to the divine plan from which it has originated, and according to which it has been conducted, becomes so far sacred history; for it will always present two impressive subjects to our consideration, the ideas and purposes of our Maker, in his creation and providential government of our race; and the results which have been evolved in the execution and development of his intentions and appointment. For the more we reflect, the more we shall be persuaded, that specific designs, specific ends, and specific formations, are the characters of our terrestrial abode and of its successive populations, and were the guiding principles of its construction. There could have been no compelling necessity that these should be such as we find them to be. As eternal Omnipotence can have no controlling superior, he could as easily have formed any other plan, and have established any other course of things, as that under which the generation of mankind have been ordained to rise and pass away. This possibility indicates, that both ourselves and our material system * Sir Walter Raleigh has quoted the fine expression anciently attributed to Orpheus: "God is an infinite eye."-Hist. World, p. 16. This is the same thought which is so impressively expanded by the Jewish king: "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? "If I ascend up into heaven, THOU art there. If I make my bed in Hades, behold! thyself is in it. "If I take the wings of the morning to dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me. "If I say, surely the darkness will cover me; the darkness and the light are both alike to THEE."--Psalm cxxxix. v 7-12, have been the choice, as well as the fabrication of his intelligence. Of all other conceivable schemes and productions, he has devised and selected those forms and laws of material nature, and those modes and characters of intellectual being, to be peculiar to our race and residence, which appear about us. What he preferred thus originally to make, he has also chosen still to uphold. He has continued this stream and order of things down to ourselves; and this conservation announces that his creations are yet in accordance with his designs, and are operating to accomplish his premeditated results. If they were not, the fiat for their termination would have been issued, because nothing can exist against his will, or in defiance of his power. He permits the existence of whatever he does not annihilate, for his own reasons and purposes, however unperceivable they may be by our imperfect knowledge. All prayer and praise suppose that every thing is regulated by his will.* On these ideas the sacred history of nature, and more especially the sacred history of man, must be founded. This must consist of what has been providentially designed and directed for his benefit. From his creation a system and a process have been in constant development and operation for his wellbeing, always tending to promote the moral and intellectual formation and advancement of human nature, generally and individually. These Letters will attempt to delineate such outlines of the plan which has been pursued, as my limited ability can discern; but what I shall fail to accomplish, others will more successfully elucidate; for there is no reason to doubt, that the intelligence which is distinguishing our age above any that has preceded, will not let this, the loftiest theme on which it can meditate, remain quite neglected by its inquisitive industry. We have been, * The Lacedæmonian supplications to their deities were as laconic as their ordinary speech. Socrates in Plato informs us, that both in their public and private devotions they always uttered the same prayer, and this was, to give them what was becoming, as well as what was good. He says, "No one ever heard them ask for more."--Plat. Alcib. ii. c. 8. Plato has also preserved the prayer of an ancient, but unknown poet, which Socrates recommended to Alcibiades: "O king Jupiter! grant to us whatever is best for us, whether we ask for it or omit to do so; but keep from us what will be mischievous, though we should earnestly solicit it."-Plato, ib. c. 4. perhaps, occupied rather too exclusively in observing and describing the details and minutenesses of material nature. It is right that these should be carefully studied, because we cannot have exact knowledge of things in any other way; and they furnish the facts and grounds of the grander speculations. But still, with the earthly and the palpable, the heavenly and the intellectual should be associated. For the contemplation of the plans and principles of their magnificent Author, and of the means he has employed, and of the results which they have produced, will always be among the sublimest subjects of our thought, and a constant fountain of intellectual enjoyment; and though we, who can rarely justly estimate the intentions of each other, whom we daily see, must always be very imperfectly qualified to criticise or appreciate the unrevealed purposes of the Almighty, yet we cannot err, if we always believe that the universal reason why any or every part and substance are what they are, will always be, because he has deliberately chosen, planned, and formed them to be so. Let this be the fixed deduction of our reason, and then it will be gratifying to the intellect to endeavour to comprehend the manner in which he causes what we admire or are studying, and to explore the reasons which appear to have actuated him in his ways as well as his works. The satisfaction will always increase with the success; but there will be pleasure in the effort even where it is unavailing, because it is one of the laws assigned to our intellectual nature, that the true knowledge of him shall be attended with sweet and ennobling feelings; and that every endeavour to attain it, reverentially pursued, shall be one of the most agreeable exercises of our thinking faculty.* * Napoleon, at least, felt that religion was a pleasurable reality. He said one day to Las Casas, "Perhaps I shall again believe implicitly. God grant I may. I shall certainly make no resistance; and I do not ask a greater blessing. It must, in my mind, be a great and real happiness."-Las Casas, v. iii. p. 201. He seems to have retained his belief in the Deity; for he also mentioned, "I never doubted the existence of God; for if my reason was inadequate to comprehend it, my mind was not less disposed to adopt it. My nerves were in sympathy with the sentiment." Again, "We very properly believe in God, because every thing around us proclaims him, and the most enlightened minds have believed in him."-Ib. We like to know how kings and emperors feel on these great subjects, in which we all have a common interest; but I own myself to be more LETTER V. Our Sacred History a part of that of the Universe, yet peculiar to our selves-Other Worlds besides our own-Ancient Errors on this subject-Man a peculiar order of Being, only known to be on this Earth -His double Nature, and double state of Existence. MY DEAR SON, THAT the sacred history of our world must be a part of the greater sacred history of the universe, is as obvious as it also must be, that it cannot be supposed to be identical with it ; for our earth is visibly not the whole of all things, nor can every other sphere be supposed to be a mere copy, or facsimile of it. We are only a portion of a multifarious creation, each orb in which has its own peculiar structure, with substances and living forms appropriated to that, and therefore as unlike those of every other, as their several natures and constructions may vary. But still, however numerous the existing orders of being may really be, we are all the subjects of one wondrous monarchy. We must, indeed, have that distinction from each other, which arises from every one possessing a state and system of things ap gratified with reading the following estimation of religion from a Northamptonshire peasant, born 1793, son of a labourer, like himself, written while he was a young man, working for others at seven shillings a week in winter and nine in summer, at Helpstone, near Stamford,-I mean JOHN CLARE. 66 SONNET TO RELIGION. "THOU sacred light, that right from wrong discerns! Thou disregarder of its joys and mirth! Thou only home the houseless wanderers have! Thou prop by which the pilgrim's woes are borne ! Thou only hope to sorrow's bosom given! Thou faith extending to thy home in heaven! Thou peace! Thou rest! Thou comfort! all in all! VOL. II.-G Poems by John Clare, published in 1829, p. 204. |