greater numbers than can attend public meetings. The orator has thus a fellow-laborer, it may be a supporter or an opponent, but certainly a rival in the author, who no longer, as of old, addresses a select few, at a different time, perhaps long after the occasion of the discussion, but addresses the same persons who form the orator's audience, and vast numbers besides, nearly at the same time and in the same circumstances. It is needless to observe how incalculably this increases the importance of the literary class of the community, and this never can be too deeply impressed upon the student. All the heavy responsibility which rests on this class, should be unceasingly dwelt upon; nor can there be a more fit thing than to cite the words of Mirabeau, who held the literary character in the highest estimation, glorying in the name of author, proud, and not ashamed of receiving the wages of his labor necessary for his support, albeit of a house more under the dominion of family pride than any in France-to the excess of denying their relationship with the great engineer who belonged to their race (Riqueti), and conferred more real glory upon them than all its other members. Mirabeau thus apostrophizes literary men: stract, never stooped to regard as worthy of consideration the rights, the comforts, and the improvement of the community at large. The people were appealed to when advantage could be taken of their prejudices, or their feelings could be excited for a particular purpose; their advancement in knowledge and refinement was little regarded; and he who devoted himself to rendering them real service, was viewed as going out of the ordinary path, and seeking glory in a singular and fantastic way;. "Vide quæso" says Cicero, addressing Julius Cæsar, "ne tua divina virtus admirationis plus sit habitura quam gloria, si quidem gloria est illustris et pervagata multorum et magnorum, vel in suos, vel in patriam, vel in omne genus hominum fama meritorum" (pro MARCELLO, viii). The space was supposed impassable which separates the vulgar from the philosopher and the statesman. They were not even regarded as much above the brutes which perish; "Simul sapientibus placet" says Tacitus, "non cum corpore extinguunter MAGNE ANIMÆ." A sounder philosophy and a purer religion have in modern times entirely abolished all such distinctions; and to consult the interests and promote the improvement in every way of the great body of the people is not only the object of all rational men's "Ah! s'ils se dévoueraient légalement au noefforts, but the best title to public respect, ble métier d'être utiles! Si leur indomptable and the direct road to fame. The instruc- amour propre pouvait composer avec luimême, tors of youth have thus devolved upon them et sacrifier la gloriole à la dignité! Si au lieu the duty of directing the minds of their pupils de s'avilir, de s'entre declarer réciproquement towards the most important purposes which leur influence, ils reunissaient leurs efforts et their acquirements can serve to promote- leurs travaux pour terrasser l'ambition qui usurpe the diffusion of knowledge among the peo-méprisant le vil métier de gladiateurs litteraires, l'imposteur qui égare, le lâche qui se vend; si ple, and their general improvement, incul- ils se croissaint en véritables frères d'armes concating the grand lesson of morals as well as tre les préjugés; le mensonge, le charlatainsme, of wisdom, that whatever they learn, of what- la tyrannie, de quelque genre qu'elle soit, en ever accomplishments they become possessed moins d'un siècle la face de la terre serait -in a word, all their acquired talents as changée." much as their natural gifts, are a trust held for the benefit not more of themselves than of their fellow-creatures, and of the use whereof they shall one day have to render a strict account. The impressions left on the mind in early years are so lively that they last through life; and when partially effaced by other studies, or by the cares of the world, they still exert some influence, and may often be found far more than is supposed to modify the counteracting or neutralizing influences which they cannot resist. This undoubted truth is not the less important for being often admitted, though there is reason to fear oftener admitted than acted upon in practice. The difference between ancient times and modern in one great particular cannot be too constantly kept before the eyes of youth, the difference arising from the art of printing, and its important effects, the discussion of all questions by written addresses to much "Ah! would they but devote themselves honestly to the noble art of being useful! if their indomitable vanity would compound with itself, and sacrifice fame to dignity! if, instead of vilifying one another, and tearing one another in they would combine their exertions and their pieces, and mutually destroying their influence, labors to overthrow the ambitious who usurps, the impostor who deceives, the base who sells himself; if, scorning the vile vocation of literary gladiators, they banded themselves like true brethren in arms against prejudice, falsehood, quackery, tyranny, of whatever description, in less than a century the whole face of the earth would be changed!" It is pleasing, it is also useful, to reflect upon the tendency of academical studies to pierce beyond our walls, and by means of popular assemblies, and the press, to spread over the people the knowledge here acquired. Not only have the lectures occasionally delivered by our professors beyond the pre cincts had the happiest effects upon the middle classes, but they have extended to the working men. It was indeed a pupil of this university (Dr. Birkbeck), afterwards transferred to a quasi collegiate chair at Glasgow, who, sixty years ago, made the great step of lecturing upon scientific subjects to the working classes. In the town where Watt, in his workshop, applied, in philosophical principle, the knowledge he had learned from Black, to the construction of the great engine which has almost changed the face of the world, the attempt was most appropriately made and with complete success, to demonstrate that the highest intellectual cultivation, and a keen relish for the sublime truths of science, is compatible with the daily toil and cares of our humbler brethren. A further encouragement to the spread of such studies has been recently given by the English universities in bestowing honors of a class subordinate to academical, after due examination. There can be no doubt that we shall follow so admirable an example. what was termed a Titus' account, from the Roman emperor who deemed every day lost in which some deed of mercy or favor had not been done. But such indulgences are confined by our circumstances, or our necessary avocations. Then let us compound by acts which have a beneficial tendency on a larger scale, and give whole classes of our fellow-creatures cause to bless our name. Such is the duty, and such ought to be the pleasure, of all men, each in his station; and at every age, from the entrance into active life down to its close, even of those whose years make it necessary to relax, though by no means to give up their labors. From an entire discontinuance of work they would vainly seek repose,— "The want of occupation is not rest; whose lives had been passed in camps or "The deep solitudes and awful cells." where they fancied that The instructors of youth have no more important duty than to inculcate the great truth ever through life worthy of a large share in the guidance of our conduct, that it 'Heavenly pensive meditation dwells;" is beneficence rather than benevolence-at least benevolence shown in beneficence- and fondly hoped, by superstitious obserwhich can be regarded as a virtue, and en- vances, to efface their own memory of evil titled to confidence and respect. Mere good deeds, or to propitiate Heaven by mortificadispositions, unless guided by good judg- tions which tormented themselves, and benement, may be admired as amiable, but must fited no one. Even many whose course had be barren of good fruit, and may even probeen blameless, and who had only to lament duce evil. Charity, ill bestowed, may prove the advance of age unfitting them for active more hurtful than selfishness; and they who life, sought the cloistered shade with the have impoverished themselves, or their heirs, same design of enjoying rest and seeking may find others yet more injured by their the divine favor by unprofitable service. In ignorance or errors, as gifts bestowed with our day a wiser and more virtuous course is the best intentions have been found to pro- taken by those who are no longer able to mote the immorality and propagate the dis- perform all the duties which had exhausted eases which they were designed to prevent. the strength of their youth. They still feel Foundling and small-pox hospitals, both in able to contribute their share, though far less England and Ireland, and on the continent, than they could wish, to the service of manare the proofs. But where the will to serve They trust that their solacing themmankind unites with the knowledge how to selves with classical reminiscences may be serve them-where the will is followed by pardoned to their period of life, as well as the the deed, and the desire to do good is grati-prolixity of spirits which attends it; and at fied at a personal sacrifice-there can be no any rate, they can abstain from hurtful and greater merit in the eyes of men, nor any, degrading indulgences, and from the indullet us humbly affirm, more fitted to obtain gence of inaction and indolence as degrading, the approval of Heaven. It is bountifully if less hurtful. ordered that such conduct shall even in this life be rewarded both by an approving conscience and by the delight which the reflection affords. But generous acts are limited by our means, and we can only, in a few instances, have this enjoyment. I have known a small circle of persons who made a point of doing some act of kindness to individuals daily-that is daily on an average-keeping kind. "Pieriis pollent studiis, multoque redundant If in action good intentions avail nothing without deeds, and even deeds are of no merit, 79 from that of St. Louis and of the Inquisition down to the milder form of attaching civil disqualifications to religious opinions, and even to political when they have at some periods been connected with religious belief. The prejudices and gross errors in which such persecution in all its forms originates, cannot be too carefully guarded against in practice, or too fully exposed in teaching. however well meant, unless wisely done, so Louis might have found the same doctrine opinions as opinions, and without reference in the fathers of his church, in St. Ambrose, to actions, are of no value except for their and also in St. Gregory, who expressly detruth, their soundness; and this is alone to clares that no man is to be hated for his be regarded in their adoption. Their favor error any more than error is to be loved for with man, their subserviency to a particular the sake of those who hold it. [Note 11.] purpose, their accordance with a prevailing All intolerance of every kind proceeds from prejudice, their striking novelty and original- the same confusion of ideas, the more misity or repugnance to commonly received doc-chievous because oftentimes perfectly honest; trines are all wholly extraneous to that which alone must be considered in our inquiries, and especially in our teaching. Their truth or falsehood is ever to be regarded, and nothing else. But in the same degree in which the pursuit of truth must be the sole object, so is the bearing entirely with those who dissent from us a paramount duty; indeed the one position is involved in the other. We cannot be in search of truth alone, but in pursuit of something else, if we do not allow others to hold their opinions, however different from ours. ference can only be the ground of our disapThe difproving or pitying, but on no account of blaming. If they have honestly formed their opinions upon whatever subject, moral, political, or religious, they may be blamed for the misconduct of the understanding, but not for the opinions, however erroneous, to which it has led them. To God they are responsible, not to man, and in proportion to the importance of the subject is the responsibility heavy; on the subject of religion, therefore, heaviest of all, because then even carelessness, oversight, is criminal; deeply to be blamed by men, though not to be punished, and in the sight of God one of the gravest offences. It is strange how great in all ages has been the confusion of ideas on this subject, and greatest upon matters where it was most hurtful-religious opinion. Men justly regarded these, as of all others, the most important, and error the most to be deplored; and that every temporal consideration was comparatively insignificant. But they also supposed that belief was under the absolute and immediate control of the will, and therefore, having the power, they drew the inference that they had not only a right, but a duty to exercise their power in compelling the unbeliever or destroying him, as Louis IX. (St. Louis) the mildest and most conscientious of princes (but whose fanaticism cost the lives of thousands as well as his own) held it the duty of a true knight when he met unbelievers not to reason with them, but put them to death. So little could he have opened his mind to comprehend, much less to embrace the doctrine of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, delivered by him as that of all rational men-"No man can change his opinion when he will, and using force may make a hypocrite but never a right believer." moral, political, and theological science at The sound doctrines on all subjects of all times taught within these walls, have esa solid foundation. tablished the character of the University upon gotten that injury to the cause of truth has But it is not to be forbeen done by a very eminent person in whose great capacity and celebrity this city takes a just pride, how much soever his talents may have been misapplied; and it well becomes the instructors of youth strenuously to counteract the influence of David Hume, both on account of the incalculable importance of the subjects on which he was misled, and also in respect of a far less material circumstance, the disposition of ignorant persons in other countries to represent him as having promoted an infidel school or sect in Scotland. It is fit on this point that the truth should be plainly spoken,-Mr. Hume was not a sceptic either in his political or his religious errors. when they could be held upon positive or His opinions were perfectly decided affirmative positions; and as decided as any that could be held upon mere negations. He was the adversary of popular rights, and the ally of the English High Church party against these rights, widely as he differed from all churches upon the grounds of their belief and upon the foundations of their power. He was upon all religion, both natural and revealed, a disbeliever rather than an unbeliever, rejecting the evidence of the former and declaring it to be wholly insufficient to prove the existence of a Deity or the immortality of the soul, and holding the statements upon which the latter rests to be not only false but impossible. This is not scepticism, but dogmatism. It is the assertion that of a miracle there can be no proof; that of a God and future state there is no proof, no reason whatever for believing it. This then is atheism, as much as any person of sound mind can hold the opinion; and this ought constantly to be exposed as such and refuted. Fortunately there are the force of this temptation to a young author means of triumphant refutation; for the may be naturally enough suspected. But whole argument of Mr. Hume rests upon an that his political prejudices biassed his mind entire misconception of the nature of induc- can hardly be doubted. He had formed the tive reasoning; and it is not too much to worst opinion of the Commonwealth-men in affirm that if he had ever attended to any the seventeenth century and of their sucbranch of natural philosophy, he could not cessors, the Whigs in his own day; and the have fallen into so manifest an error. There fanaticism of the former gave him a prejuis no one part of the argument which would dice against their religious principles, like not destroy all inductive science. All gen- that of the Tories and Freethinkers in Queen eralization would be put an end to; experi- Anne's time. His inaccuracy as an historian, mental inquiries must stand still; no step from his Tory prejudices and his habitual could be made, no conclusion drawn beyond carelessness, is now universally admitted; the mere facts observed; and the science indeed even where he had no bias of opinion must be turned from the process of general and feeling to mislead him, that inaccuracy reasoning upon particular facts, into the appears manifest, as in the suppression of bare record of those particular facts them- all mention of the Limoges massacre, when selves. The late discoveries in fossil osteol- describing the Black Prince's whole conduct ogy afford additional proof of Mr. Hume's through life as without a stain. Of the like hasty assumption both on the question of a carelessness in some instances, and prejudice Providence and on that of miracles. It is in others, his writings on religious subjects now proved by evidence which he must have give constant proofs. The entire misappliadmitted to be sufficient, that at one remote cation [Note 12] of Archbishop Tillotson's period in the history of our globe there was argument on the real presence is one inan exertion of creative power to form the stance; and the perversion or ignorance of human and certain other races not before inductive science is another; to which may existing; so that he must have believed in be added his failing to observe that the arguthe miracle of creation, that is, the interpo- ment against miracles would apply to cases sition of a being powerful enough to suspend of testimony which may be put as quite dethe established order of things, and make a cisive, and which he himself must admit. new one. The argument rests on the same The admirable style of this great author, and grounds as to a future state, in so far as he his acuteness and ingenuity have, in his redenies the proof of a power to continue the ligious and historical works, only served for soul apart from the body. But there is this the propagation of error; and the contrast is material difference in the evidence that our very remarkable which they present to his induction is conclusive as to the existence writings on subjects of which he had made of the Deity and the independent and sep- himself master, and on which he had no bias arate nature of the soul, but only proves the to mislead him. In his political discourses, probability of its continued existence. Its when he was only in search of truth, and entirely different nature from matter as uninfluenced by the authority of great names, shown in the quickness of its operations; or the dominion of popular prejudice, or the its independence of the body proved by the clamors of particular interests, he first unfaculties sometimes becoming stronger as folded and enfored the sound principles the body decays; above all, its surviving the which guide the commercial policy of modcomplete change of the body, so that hardly ern times. It would be impossible too highly a particle of the corporeal frame remains, to commend these discourses, or too steadily while the mind continues unchanged, unless to keep in view the cause of their superiority perhaps by gaining strength-all demon- to his other works. strate its different constitution and its inde- Greatly as this celebrated writer is to be pendent existence; and as there is no one example of annihilation in the universe, what is termed destruction being only dissolution and new combination-and the soul, from the singleness of its nature, without parts, being incapable of such destruction, we are left to infer, from the prevalence of benevolent design in all the Creator's works that he will continue what he has formed, and so largely endowed and bountifully cherished. It is not perhaps just to consider Mr. Hume's unfortunate views as adopted from the desire to take a line different from the commonly received opinions, though the blamed for the rashness of his speculations, and his yielding to the bias which appears to have influenced him in these and other inquiries, he is almost entirely free from the charge justly made against Voltaire and his contemporaries, some of them, as Voltaire himself, mere Deists, of treating these matters with ridicule, or ribaldry, or with a levity wholly unsuited to the sacred subject; and fitted only to inflict pain upon conscientious believers. With the exception of a sentence or two in the essay on miracles, his writings preserve the most unbroken gravity, indeed all the seriousness which is so becom LORD BROUGHAM'S INSTALLATION ADDRESS. ing. The same praise belongs to Rousseau, who indeed was a reluctant unbeliever, but he had none of the reasoning power which Hume possessed, so that his unbelief is less to be censured. It has been deemed necessary to state these things respecting Mr. Hume, in order that his authority may be reduced to its just dimensions, and especially with young men led away by his great name and his incontestably great merits in some important particulars. But besides counteracting that influence, the studies themselves in which he has been the promoter of error, are of such vast importance, one of them the most momentous of all, that no pains can be deemed too great, no care too unremitting, to exclude false doctrine, and inculcate sound opinions. may be safely rested upon its own proofs; but should the weight of authority be required in its favor, we may assuredly ask if any one can pretend to be a better judge of physical and mathematical evidence than Sir Isaac Newton; of moral evidence than Mr. Locke; of legal evidence than Lord Hale, all of whom, and after full inquiry, were firm believers of the Gospel truths. But not only is the habit to be deplored, of drawing a line learning; it is equally necessary that no line between theology and the other branches of should be drawn between these and natural religion. There is hardly any head of philosophy which is not connected with it; and these sciences, as well as natural religion, must gain, by keeping this connection constantly in view, and not considering that to treat of the one subject we must go out of Nor is it only in teaching divinity, techni- the other. The wonders of the natural world cally so called, in unfolding the truths of re- have in all ages been dwelt upon, as showvealed religion that this duty can be dis- ing the hand of the Creator and Preserver charged. The great doctrines of natural at every step of our inquiries; and each theology demand the closest attention, and new discovery has added to the devout conafford the most valuable support to the teach-fidence of the student; for instance, the ers of the revealed word. Nothing can be late discovery of the law of the stability more groundless than the jealousy some- [Note 12] of the universe, so little suspected times felt, but oftener professed, of natural religion by the advocates of revealed. Bacon, who had his prejudices on the subject of final causes occasioned by the abuse of that doctrine, describes natural religion as "the key of revealed, which," as he says, "opens our understanding to the genuine spirit of the Scriptures, unlocking our belief so that we may enter upon the serious contemplation of the Divine power, the characters of which are so deeply engraven in the works of the creation." (De Dig. et Ang. Lib. I.) Newton has said, "De Deo de quo utique ex phenomenis disserere ad philosophiam naturalem pertinet." (Principia, Schol. gen.) Locke declares that he who would take away reason to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both, as if we should persuade a man to put out his eyes the better to receive "the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope" (Hum. Underst. iv. 19-4); and Tillotson, in his great sermon preached before the king and queen upon the occasion of the naval victory in 1672, affirms that "the principles of natural religion are the foundation of that which is revealed." It is therefore most desirable that a line of demarcation should not be drawn by the teachers of revealed religion, so as to exclude from their province the great truths of natural religion, as the subject of deep and continual attention, and the teachers of the latter, and of moral philosophy generally, ought to be less shy than, unlike Paley, they too often are, of a reference to the truths of the Gospel dispensation. That dispensation THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. 509 before our day, that men argued on the ne- وو “ ποθεν το Thus, then, natural theology stands at the head of all sciences for the sublime and elevating nature of its objects. It tells of the creation of all things, of the mighty power that fashioned and sustains the universe, of the exquisite skill that contrived the wings and beaks and feet of insects invisible to the naked eye, and that lighted the lamp of day, and launched into space comets myriads of times larger than the earth, whirling_ten thousand times swifter than a cannon ball, and two thousand times hotter than red-hot iron. It passes the bounds of material existence, and raises us from the creation to the Author of nature. Its office is not only to mark what things are, but for what purpose they were made by the infinite wisdom of an attributes its high prerogative is to bring us all-powerful Being, with whose existence and acquainted. If we prize, and justly, the delightful contemplations of the other sciences; if we hold it a marvellous gratification to have ascertained exactly the swiftness of the remotest planets, the number of grains that a piece of lead would weigh at their surface, and the degree in which each has become flattened in shape by revolving on its axis; it is surely a yet more noble employment of our faculties, and a still higher privilege of |