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once favourite eastern climes . Lord Byron ' s temperament was one fitted by nature to be eminently devout ; and had it not been so perverted by Calvinism in his childhood , and by scepticism in his youth ; had he possessed the advantage of a ~ judicious and enlightened Christian for a guide— -of one who could separate the chaff of religion from the wheat , and would have formed his pupil ' s creed by evidence , not by injunction , and have nurtured , not
outraged the Poet ' s religious emotions , he would , we are assured , have been as eminent for his piety as he is for his poesy . We are not the apologist , but the judge of Byron , and this is our verdict—a verdict compelled against our prejudgments by the force of the evidence as it appears in the memoir of him , written by his friend Mr . Moore . The opinion we have pronounced falls short of that given by one who may possess some claims to speak on the subject , Sir Walter Scott . " I remember saying to him , ( in an interview they had in London , ) that I really thought , that if he lived a few years he
would alter his sentiments . He answered rather sharply , * I suppose yon are one of those who prophesy I will ( shall ) turn Methodist . ' I replied , ' No ; I dont expect your conversion to be of such an ordinary kind . I would ( should ) rather look to see you retreat upon the Catholic faith and distinguish yonTself by the austerity of your penances . The species of religion to which you must or may one day attach yourself must exercise a strong power on the imagination . ' He smiled gravely and seemed to allow I might be right . ' * The work of Dr . Kennedy supplies abundant materials for the confirmation , if not the expansion , of the views we have now given . The author was situated as an army physician at Cephalonia during the period of Lord Byron ' s stay at that island , prior to his fatal visit to Greece . Four of the author ' s associates , natives , as well as himself , of Scotland , had been driven , as have many others , among whom Byron himself is to be
reckoned , by the revolting absurdities of Calvinism , to the reception of infidelity . Dr . Kennedy having received a liberal education , and having directed especial attention to the subject of religion , undertook to lay before his friends , in a private conference , the evidences in favour of what he thought Christianity . Of this design Byron becoming apprized , expressed a desire to be allowed to join the party . Notwithstanding a report that his Lordship ' s
object was in this overture to gain an opportunity to study " a Methodist , " with a view to his exhibition in Don Juan , there is no good reason for disbelieving his sincerity , and the fact of his desiring to make one in a conference of this nature shews that he was not satisfied with his actual opinions . Some of the objections which Byron made to the truth of Christianity prove his unacquaintedness with the subject , and were , perhaps , solely intended to
draw Dr . Kennedy into explanations . We cannot think that a mind such as Byron ' s could lay much stress on the objection that many fine writers had rejected Christianity , or on the allegation that the apostles did not write good Greek , Other difficulties there were , however , the result of the action of his own powerful mind on prevailing dogmas which Dr . Kennedy was little fitted to remove , and which proved the great barriers in Byron ' s mind
to a conversion to orthodoxy . Dr . Kennedy opens the conference by a long address on the corruptions of Christianity and the necessity of distinguishing between these and the vital parts of the Gospel ; but he ends with retaining nearly all the absurdities which obstruct the entrance of Unbelievers into the pale of Christ ' s fold . At the reading of a summary of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity , to which Byron must be converted ,
* Moore ' s Life of Byron .
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Lord Byron's Theology / Z ( J 09
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1830, page 609, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2588/page/25/
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