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Aug. 10, 1850.] ©!? * &*»&**? 471
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ERRONEOUS NOTIONS ON THE SABBATH. Regent...
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Astonishkd Maternity.—He told us also, t...
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Kiutatnxt
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Critics are not the legislators, but tne...
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RAPHAEL'S APOLLO ANT) MARSYAS. We have m...
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Thackeray, in Pendennis, has given despe...
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mackay' s progress of the intellect. The...
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.
Universal Suffrage. July 24, 1850. Sir,—...
nobler men , it is not by clinging to the past or the present , b it by holding by what is good , and keeping ourselves i repared to advance with , our fellows , or by leading them if we have anywhere to lead them to ; by listening reverentially to the warning voice of our great poe . s : — " Not clinging to some ancient saw ; Not mastered by some modern term ; Not swift nor slow to change , but firm , And in its season bring the law . " Ev ' n now we hear with iuward strife A motion toiling in the gloom—The Spirit of the Years to come , Yearning to mix himself with life . " A slow-developed strength awaits Completion in a painful school ; Phantoms of other forms of rule , New majesties of mighty states . " C . F . N .
Aug. 10, 1850.] ©!? * &*»&**? 471
Aug . 10 , 1850 . ] ©!? * &*»&**? 471
Erroneous Notions On The Sabbath. Regent...
ERRONEOUS NOTIONS ON THE SABBATH . Regent-street , Derby , Aug . 4 , 1850 . Sir , —I beg to offer a few observations on what I conceive to be the antichristian and demoralizing character of the prevalent orthodox notions of the peculiar holiness of the first day of the week . Among all the virtues enjoined , and the vices denounced , in the New Testament , we look in vain for sabbathkeeping or sabbath-breaking . Christ himself was accused as a sabbath-breaker , and , instead of repelling the charge , he justified himself by informing his accusers that the sabbath was made for man , and not man for the sabbath . A usual mode of enforcing
Sabbatarian practice is to represent God as having given us six days to ourselves , and only reserving one to himself ; and that , considering the moderation of the requirement , we are bound by gratitude and piety to scrupulously observe it . But can we be under any less than the highest obligations to devote every day to the service of God ? Is the service of that ' Being , who has made us , something to be escaped from during six-sevenths of our time ? Was it thus that Christ served his Father in heaven ? His life was not a divided service between self and God . To him all days were holy who had but one business , and that to do the will of Him that sent him . He
went about doing good . The most rigid sticklers for a holy day will admit that works of piety , necessity , and mercy are proper to be done on a Sunday . Pray what other works are proper to be done at any time ? Are we ever at liberty to be otherwise employed ? Ought not our -whole lives to be a sacrifice—our every action a work of piety ? Holy Sunday is a device of the predecessors and successors of Tetzel—a day of penan . ce as the price of licence to live in sin . Christ ' s mission , and the burden of New-Testament teaching were to lead men to keep themselves holy , leaving days to
take care of themselves . The mission of counterfeit Christianity is to substitute a ceremonial obseivance of days and places , for holiness of heart and life . It is not to secure the holiness of Sunday even , but to curse it with preeminent desecration . Priestcraft seeks to monopolize it as a market-day for the sale of indulgences ; their customers are superstitious devotees , whose idolatry bears the same relation to spiritual worship that idolatry in any other form has always borne . Sabbatarians have the adroitness to represent themselves as the guardians of morality bmadewhether
to common sense let the appeal e , the implied licence of a Sunday holiness can be otherwise than disastrous to the interests of morals ? There is a general secrec conviction that the spirit of trade is unholy , and that many of the avocations of life are the same . The light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world continually protests against this mammon worship and our lives of selfishness ; but , instead of following these convictions , and abandoning our evil ways , we attempt to cheat God and appease our consciences , by resorting to the
mockery of the observance of a day , and the kindred contrivances of priests , for reconciling the service of Christ and Belial—of God and mammon . How apposite to modern times is the ancient reproof : — ' * When ye come to appear before me , who hath required this at your hand , to tread rny courts ? Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination unto me ; the new moons and sabbaths , the calling of assemblies , I cannot away with ; it is iniquity , even the solemn meeting . When ye spread forth your hands , I will hide mine eyes from you : yea , when yc make many prayers , I will not hear : your hands are full of blood . " Yours respectfully , George Sunteb , Jun .
Astonishkd Maternity.—He Told Us Also, T...
Astonishkd Maternity . —He told us also , that a young woman , on the occasion of her first confinement , in the Hospital , was bo astonished by her sufferings , that she bawled out " Murder ! " " murder ! " as loud as she could roar ; and continued so urgently to utter that cry that at length the guard forced their way into the ward , and demanded who was killing the woman ? The students explained the circumstances to them ; when one of the soldiers took out his snuff-box , gave the patient a pinch , and addressing her at the same time , said , " Courage , Madame , un peu de courage ! " and then retired . —From the Life of Andrew Combe .
Kiutatnxt
KiUtatntt .
Critics Are Not The Legislators, But Tne...
Critics are not the legislators , but tne judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
Raphael's Apollo Ant) Marsyas. We Have M...
RAPHAEL'S APOLLO ANT ) MARSYAS . We have much pleasure in informing our Subscribers that the Leader of Saturday , August Zlst , will contain a finely-executed engraving of this exquisite picture , recently discovered by Mr . Morris Moore , whose kind permission enables us to publish it . The engraving will be ^ very nearly the size of the original , and a full account of the picture and its discovery uill be given .
Thackeray, In Pendennis, Has Given Despe...
Thackeray , in Pendennis , has given desperate offence , it appears , to some of the gensd ' armes of the Press ( whom Balzac proposes to call Les gens-de-lettres ) , by his satirical sketches of the literary profession . " Let the galled jade wince "; those whose withers are unwrung will admit the truth of many pages , and laugh at the caricature in the rest . Apropos ! Let us direct attention to an article on the literary profession in the last number
of the North British Review . It is a subject full of pitfalls for foolishness . It has been often treated" something too much of it ' *—and rarely treated with any discrimination . The article we speak of is a noble exception : written with excellent temper , calm insight , sound sense , and real love of justice . All that is said in defence of publishers is generous and true . They have been ridiculed and declaimed against as " tyrants " and " tradesmen , "—made to bear the onus of " poetical ' * improvidence , and to bear the weight of a crime which no author can pardon , viz ., the rejection of manuscripts . The authors have painted the portraits of publishers ; but ancient fable suggests that , if the lion had painted a certain picture , it would not have been a lion we should see biting the dust ! We have little else to record . Wordsworth ' s Prelude meets with a chorus of praise from terrified critics , who outvie each other in discovering philosophic depth and imaginative grandeur in this poem , lest they should be suspected of belonging to that " superficial * ' order to whom "Wordsworth ' s genius was only a subject of merriment . Jeffrey ' s unhappy phrase , " This will never do , " has been so lampooned , and his criticism—onesided , but often correct as far as it went—so sneered at as the incompetence of a mind unfit for poetical appreciation , that the critics will rush into any absurdities on the laudatory side , to escape from a suspicion of not perceiving the ineffable beauties of this philosophic poet . Of the Prelude we shall speak in a future number with that openness which our readers expect . We are glad to find that Mackay ' s Progress of the Intellect is slowly making way with thinking minds ; even those at war with its conclusions appreciate its eloquence , philosophic spirit , and amazing erudition ; while those prepared to accept its conclusions will welcome it as a work to make an epoch in their studies . The Progress of the Intellect ! what " high argument" there is in the very title , setting forth how we are not vagrant wanderers on this earth , but soldiers marching onwards to steady conquest of the fair domains of truth ; each resting-place , meanwhile , being loudly and triumphantly declared the goal , beyond which lies nothing but the infinite swamps of error !
" 'Tis with our judgments as our watches , none Goes right , yet each believes his own . " Our poor watches ! yet with what fierce faith we trust in them ! This man sets his watch by the village church clock , that man by the cathedral ; here one by the Exchange , here another by the Horse Guards ; the gin palace gives the time to a fifth ; the baker to a sixth—and none are exact The world sweeps through its orbit regulated by laws of its own , quite heedless of our watches , and vainly do we point to the " respectability " of our htthe
watchmaker to prove lhat we must be rig ; rolling hours cast their shadows on the great dial , and we , if we really wish to know the time , must put more faith in absolute fact than in respectability , even when " diamond turned . " Mr . Mackay shows us how in ancient times they set their watches . But the reader will find this subject treated a little further on ; what we here notice is the fact that this important book has already excited enough attention to prevent its being lost amidst the rubbish of the season .
We hear of nothing on the Continent except that George Sand is not to publish her Memoires at once , but has—imprudently we think—permitted
them to appear in the feuilleton of Le Crtdit . There is a political novel by Otto Mulleb , of Manheim , announced , under the title Georg Volker : ein Freiheits Roman , which is said to give a faithful picture of the Baden revolution , and to open with the rise of the peasantry in the Ottenwald .
Mackay' S Progress Of The Intellect. The...
mackay ' s progress of the intellect . The Progress of the Intellect , as Exemplified in the Religion Development of the Greeks and Hebrews . By Robert William Mackay . 3 vote . John Chapman . There is so much , of what , for want of a better word , we may call electrotyping in the writings of the present day , that a sterling book cannot often be so easily recognized for what it is as this . A glance at the foot of a single page will detect in the array of references a range of learning
to which we are little accustomed in this country * while very little reading into bis text is enoug h , to show the mastery with which he wields it . If Macaulay surprises us with the easy handling of bis multitudes of facts , what shall we say of Mr . Mackay , who in these two long-laboured volumes pursues through its subtle and intricate evolution the intensely difficult history of ancient opinion , verifying every line , even his most familiar statements , as he goes , with the most extraordinary variety of authorities ? The mere reading which he displays has been the hard labour of a life ; while the memory which
could retain and employ such vast information , keeping each thread distinct in a tissue so complicated as that which he has woven , is so entirely beyond modern experience as to seem almost miraculous . We may congratulate ourselves that we have before us conclusive evidence of power and industry which together might have commanded any honour which the country had to bestow , if they had been employed in such service as the country is pleased to honourexpended in silent unrecognized labour under the surface , to produce indeed at last a noble work , but one which only a very noble person indeed would have made so large a sacrifice to achieve .
Reward of the sort that the world can give , Mr . Mackay will probably not receive . The universities will not offer him a civil gown ; committees of reading libraries will vote his book dangerous ; it will not serve for fashionable talk , or be met with on the tables of drawing-rooms . Yet the reward which he will care to receive he will in no case fail in obtaining ; and his work will make its way at last , not perhaps into unnumbered editions , but slowly and silently into the heart and life of mankind .
The mere survey of its table of contents promises a rare feast , embracing as it does dissertations on Intellectual Religion , Ancient Cosmogony , the Metaphysical Idea of God , the Moral Notion of God , the Theory of Mediation , Hebrew Theory of Retribution and Immortality , the Messianic Theory prevailing in the days of Jesus , Christian Forms and Reforms , and Speculative Christianity . And these dissertations are written with an eloquence and power quite unexampled in a work of so much solid and minute learning : dip where you will some passage meets your eye , the sensibility and philosophic largeness of which arrests
attention . As in this : — " The whole amount of the conceptions of our age are but glimpses of relative truth bent and refracted in a thousand deviations , which properly belong only to one transitory moment in the continuous development of ages ; yet we make our own ideas , whether of religion or philosophy , the invariable measure of those of other people , and of other times ; and thus complacently cherishing the conceit of stability where in reality all is in motion , and of completeness where all is imperfect , we obstinately defend under the name of' Divine Truth ' th * idols of imagination which are already escaping f rom our grasp , and rapidly passing from the real into the formal , and thence to the ridiculous and obsolete . "
Or this nobly expressed and profoundly thought identification of religion and science , which readers of Auguste Cotnte will mark with triple pencil rows of assent : — " Religion and science are inseparable . No object in nature , no subject of contemplation , is destitute of a religious tendency and meaning . If religion be made to consist only in traditional and legendary forms , it iB of course as distinguishable from science as the Mosaic
cosmogony from geology ; but if it be the ascensio mentis % n Ueum per scalas creatarum rerum , the evolving the grounds of hope , faith , and duty from the known laws of our being and the constitution of the universe , religion may be said to include science as its minister , and antiquity , which beheld a divinity in all things , erred onlv in mistuking its intelligible character , and in making it a mere matter of mystic speculation . In a more limited sense religion may be contrasted with science , as some * thing beyond and above it ; as beginning where science ends , and as a guide through the realms of the unknown
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 10, 1850, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_10081850/page/15/
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