Current:

Leader (1850-1860), 20th November 1852, Edition Country of 2, Page 17

Page 17
Page 17
17 of 24

On this page

  • Text (3)
  • Transcript

    • 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.

      Tjierc Has Been Much Discussion, And Hom...

      f his position . As Chancellor , he has to receive and distribute the money liberally paid by a nation « ' whose duties are pleasures , " ( to use Jer-? ° > g witticism ;) as Man of Letters and Orator does he not betray the B < me capacity ? Words which are «« the counters of wise men and the Sa of fools , " he gathers whence he can , and makes an oration as he ^ kes a budget , from the " contributions" of Jones , Jenkinson , and Tukes . The quick adroit Mosaic Arab that he is , how deftly he makes a mosaic Work which- shall glitter like gold before admiring eyes ! What loauence , what adroitness , what fluency , what comprehension ! If you ad the Budget he will shortly lay before you , and , in reading it , see how he deals with thousands , no thought of the stupid Jo ^ Kes , the respectable Jenkinson , or the obese Jukes , and their fellows who contributed the thousands , will occur to your mind ; all attention will be fixed on the great administrator . So with his orations ; you never think of whence they

      come . A troublesome critic in the Globe has , unfortunately , a tenacious memory ; and he has proved , by citation of the passages , that the peroration of D'Israem ' s speech on the Duke of Wellington is almost a literal reproduction of what Thiers had written of Gouvion de St . Cyr . It has an ugly look one must confess . It implies such scanty wealth to borrow small sums from a poor man ; and to borrow them not on an accidental occasion , but on an occasion duly prepared ! Moliere with gay audacity might say Je reprends mon bien ou je le trouve j but he made good

      his claim to it , and the thing was worth appropriating ; but D'Israeli does not make good his claim , and appropriates nothing but commonplaces after all . Old OEschylus disdained not to borrow scraps from the great Homeric banquet—TSfxa- ^ rj tcjv ' Ofiripov fieyaKwv Senrvtjv—as he himself confesses . Raphael did not disdain to transplant whole figures from Masaccio and Fra Bartolommeo . Mozart boldly pillaged from Gluck ; and Rossini gaily appropriated his opening air of the Barber of Seville , from an opera of the same name then being performed , and gaily answered the remonstrant composer , " Very well , take one of mine . "

      Therefore it is not the fact of plagiarism or appropriation D'Israeli need be ashamed of ; it is the thing stolen , and the source , and the manner , and the occasion ; the thing was not worth stealing ; the source , a Frenchman not of any considerable worth , and singularly antagonistic to England ; the manner was shabby , secret , unlike the openness of the plagiarism we have just alluded to ; and the occasion one of those solemn moments that give Oratory a dignity and an inspiration , a stimulus and an opportunity- —moments when , if ever , the heart should throb in the accents , and the intellect be merely an interpreter of national emotion . Hitherto we believed Alexandre Dumas to be the most shameless plagiarist of modern Literature ; but on due consideration of the gravity of the present offence , we think he must concede the palm to D'Israeli . Palmam qui meruit ferat !

      Novemb Er 20, 1852.] The Leader. 1117

      Novemb er 20 , 1852 . ] THE LEADER . 1117

      It May Interest Our Readers, As It Assur...

      It may interest our readers , as it assuredly must interest all concerned m the London University , to learn that David Masson has been elected Professor of En glish Literature , in place of Professor Clough . Among the young men in this age standing " in the foremost files of time , " acting as beneficent yeast in the fermentation of great questions , there are few , if any , one could name as bearing a nobler burden of grave thoughts and high aspirations than David Masson ; working , as he has done , for some years anonymously , his name is little known beyond literary circles j but now that he has some professional distinction which may lead him into more avowed publicity , it will not be long before so much and varied talent , moved by a profoundly serious nature , will gather round his name the homage of all competent to estimate him .

      Butler's Analogy V. Modern Tjnbelie1. 2v...

      BUTLER'S ANALOGY v . MODERN TJNBELIE 1 . 2 Vio Analogy of lleliqion . Natural and Movealcd . By Bishop Buflor . ( Bolin ' s Standard ' Library . ) H - Q - Bo ] m - [ thiki > article . ] Thk peculiar sophistry- which runs through Butler ' s line of argument lias weiirt y l ) oon amply illustrated in our previous notices ; tho reader ,

      there'ore , will not , be astonished to find Butler quietly assuming ( Chap . VII . ) ' ¦ hat as the analogy of Nature " gives a strong credibility to tho general doctrine of Religion , and to several particular things contained in it eon" 1 ( lorod a , H so many matters of fact , " although the assumption is analogous 10 'hat of tho existence of tho hippogrif , because winged creatures exint . I | 1 ( I ( ' < ' < 1 , it is extremely difficult to handle Butler , lie is ho slippery , and ° P « "h ho many issues through which to enr-apo ; thus lie makes a great aptfi"n < m ! , out of the "incomprehensibility" of the world ' s scheme .

      "Upon supposition that God exercises a moral ( roverinnent over the world , the ' ^ 'ilogy of Ins nut ,,,,.,, ! government suggests and nHikes it credible that bin moral Kovoninuuif ; muHt bo a Ndiomo quite boyond our comprehension ; ami this affords n K ' - ' ) i ( Tal answer io ai ) oi ) jt ! l . tionH Hgainst * the justice and goodnew . s of it . " n ' 1 ? 1 ' 8 iH » "i old theological artifice . After . dogmatically doctoring that y } <( itt this , intended that , and will do tho other , if you make any . lotion , you , . impressively informed that " God's ways are 111-' ¦ ''iita blo . " \ y « beliovo so- but because they uro inscrutable wo resist j v <) 1 " ; protmmioii of surutinijiiiig them . Thai , the Finite cunnot eomnro-( L 1 " . 11 "' Infinite is the very basis of our antagonism . Wo < lo not admit p [! KMtof Ignorunoe to dictate tons anything beyond a Hcnseol humble ni " . lll ( MJ - Hul . lor , however , thinks that ho makes a Btrong bulwark j MuiinL objections l > y pleading " the incomprehensible . " Wo do not , " «' . ho HU yH , but that what appears evil to us may not m reality be I i ,. . f ltt | J which i » tjuito true ; wo do not know ; neither do wo know lfit H m beneficial !

      He will hear of no objection against " the scheme . " After these observations it may be proper to add , in order to obviate an absurd and wicked conclusion from any of them , that though the constitution of our nature from whence we are capable of vice and misery may , as it undoubtedly does , contribute to the perfection and happiness of the world ; and though the actual permission of evil may be beneficial to it ( i . e ., it would have been more mischievous , not that a wicked person had himself abstained from his own wickedness , but thai any one had forcibly prevented it , than that it was permitted ) : yet , notwithstanding , it might have " been much better for the world if this very evil had never been done . Nay , it is most clearly conceivable , that the very commission of wickedness may be beneficial to the world , and yet , that it would be infinitely more beneficial for men to refrain from it . For thus , in the wise and good constitution of the

      natural world , there are d isorders which bring their own cures ; diseases which are themselves remedies . Many a man would have died , had it not been for the goufc or a fever ; yet it would be thought madness to assert that sickness is a better or more perfect state than health ; though the like , with regard to the moral world , has been asserted . " Now , waiving for a moment the question as to Who made the wicked ? ness , let us simply ask whether the terror of hell is not in the nature of a forcible prevention of evil ? God is said to permit wickedness , and this permission is more benqficial than any " forcible prevention" would have been ; if so , why the coercion of denunciatory threats ? When you hang a murderer , " as an example , ' do you not mean thereby to " prevent ^ others by the terror of the gallows ? Let us grant , however , tlie " incomprehensibility" as a fair ground of argument : —

      " So that we are placed , as one may speak , in the middle of a scheme , not a fixed but a . progressive one , every way incomprehensible ; incomprehensible in a manner equally with respect to what has been , what now is , and what shall be hereafter . And this scheme cannot but contain in it somewhat as wonderful , and as much beyond our thought and conception as anything in that of Religion . " Let us grant this general statement , and we shall still have to ask where lies the particular proof ? For it is obvious that a Mahometan might use that argument with equal effect . In the Koran there are difficulties , and things quite as much beyond our conception as in the scheme of Nature ; is the Koran therefore true ? Wherever we turn , we see Butler's arguments so deplorably weak that were we not familiar with , theological polemics , we should wonder at the celebrity of the book ; here , however , is a passage of such adroit application that it alone would suffice to endear it to all true sons of the church . ( The italics are the author ' s ) : —

      " As Christianity served these ends and purposes when it was first published by the miraculous publication itself : so it was intended to serve the same purposes in fu ture ages by means of the settlement of a visible church : of a society distinguished from cormnpn ones , and from the rest of the world , by peculiar religious institutions ; by an instituted method of instruction , and an instituted form of external Religion . Miraculous powers were g iven to the first preachers of Christianity , in order to their introducing it into the world : a visible church was established , in order to continue it and carry it on successively throughout all ages . Had Moses and the Prophets , Christ and his Apostles , only taught , and by miracles

      proved Religion to their contemporaries , the benefits of their instructions would have reached but to a small part of mankind . Christianity must have been in a great degree sunk and forgot in a very few ages . To prevent this appears to havo been one reason why a visible church was instituted ; to be like a city upon a hill , a standing memorial to the world of the duty which we owe our Maker ; to call men continually both by examp le and instruction to attend to it , and by the form of Religion ever before their eyes remind them of the reality ; to be the repository of the oracles of God ; to hold up the light of revelation in aid to that of nature , and propagate it throughout all generations to the end of the world—the light of revelation , considered here i n no other view , than as designed to enforce natural

      Religion . The question which incessantly recurs is not whether , if Revealed 'Religion bo true , we can " i-econcilo" what it teaches with what Nature teaches ; because it is quite clear that Nature as God ' s Book will not contradict the Bible , it' that be also Cod ' s Book ; no , the question specifically is , Can we accept the Bible as God ' s Book P and , if so , why so P Therefore , in the second part of liis work , Butler undertakes to treat specifically of Revealed Religion , but lie does so in the same shifty way we have before condemned . Thus he lias two arguments in favour of Christianity : —

      " First . There is no presumption , from analogy , against tho truth of it , upon account ; of its not being discoverable by reason or experience . For Buppo . se one who never heard of revelation , of the most ' unproved understanding , and acquainted with our whole system of natural philosophy and natural religion ; huc . 1 i a one could not hut he sensible that it wa « hut a very small part of tho natural and moral system of the universe which he wan acquainted with . He could not but bo sensible that there must be innumerable LliiugH in the dispensation * of l ' rovidonco punt , in tho invisible government over tho world at present carryin g on , and in what , is to come , of which he was wholly ignorant , and which eould not he discovered without revelation . Whether this scheme of nature be , in tho strictest sense , infinite or not , it

      is evidently vast , even beyond all possible imagination . And doubtless that part of it which is opened to our view is but an a point , in comparison of tho wliolo plan of Providence , reaching throughout , etornity past and future ; in comparison of what is even now going on in the remote parts of the boundless universe ; nny , in comparison of the whole scheme of this world . And , therefore , that things lio beyond the natural reach of our faculties , iH no sort of presumption agaiiiHl . the truth and reality of them ; bemuse it , is certain there are innumerable tilings , in ( bo constitution and government of the universe , which arc thus bwyond tho natural reach of our faculties . Secondly . Analogy raises no presumption against any of the things contained in this general doctrine of Scripture now mentioned , upon account of their being unliko the known course of nature . For thoro ia no proHUinption ait all from analogy , that the whole course of tiling , or divino government , naturally unknown to " uh , and nn-ryf-luny in it , is like to anything in that which is known , and therefore no peculiar presumption agaiimt anything in tho former , upon account of its bring unlike ( , < > anything in tho latter . And in tho constitution and natural government of tho world , as well um in the moral govern-

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 20, 1852, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_20111852/page/17/