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he was compelled to show the practical effects of his doctrines. He had no time for verbal subtleties. He was used to speak of Aristotle and the schoolmen with the utmost contempt. He translated the Bible into the vernacular speech, and composed hymns and catechisms for the common people and for children. He would have made no indifferent writer of tracts, or a lyceum lecturer of the present day. He discussed those subjects which took the deepest hold of the common mind. In order to give character and permanency to the Reformation, every thing was 'to be done, and that immediately.

To the same result, the labors of Bacon, Newton, Locke and Paley, and their numerous disciples in Great Britain and France have powerfully contributed. The great aim of Bacon's philosophy was practical. It was the multiplying of human enjoyments, and the mitigating of human sufferings. It was "dotare vitam humanam novis inventis et copiis." It was utility. He laments the propensity of mankind to employ, on mere matters of curiosity, powers, the whole exertion of which is required for purposes of solid advantage.* The practical influence of Locke's doctrines is known by all who speak the English tongue. Unlike Bacon's in some important particulars, yet in their practical tendency, they fell in with the great Chancellor's teachings and with the fundamental movement of the Reformation. Locke," says Dr. Warton," affected to depreciate the ancients." "This disrespect for the wisdom of antiquity," observes Dugald Stewart, "is a prejudice which has frequently given a wrong bias to his judgment." He seems, also, to have had little power of imagination or discrimination in taste, esteeming Sir Richard Blackmore as one of the first of English poets. The homely, hearty, practical sense, which pervades all Dr. Paley's works is universally acknowledged. Perhaps no writer in the language has exerted a wider influence in the actual business and over the practical judgments of men than Dr. Paley.†

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* See the article on Lord Bacon, in the Edinburgh Review, No. 132.

+ "The practical bent of his nature is visible in the language of his writings, which, on practical matters, is as precise as the nature of the subject requires, but, in his rare and reluc

SECOND SERIES, VOL. III. NO. II.

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Intimately connected with these facts is the remarkable arrangement of Providence, that the great interests of civi lization and of Christianity, should be committed, in so high a degree, to the countrymen of Bacon and of Locke. The men, who are imbued with their spirit, and who are familiar with their writings, have carried their influence into every region of the globe.

An additional and a powerfully coöperative cause is the modern revival of Christianity. The grace of God which was granted to the United Brethren, about one hundred years since, may be regarded as having set in motion these labors of love, unless our own Eliot and the Mayhews may be regarded as having the prior claim. Countless hosts, the noble and the good, the wise and the lowly, have trode in their footsteps, till beneficence, not good wishes, practical benefit, and not theoretical excellence, have become the glory of our age. Who can but rejoice that it is so? Who would bring back, if he could, the 10th century, or even the 17th? Who does not exult that the wretchedness of man has at last touched the heart of man? Who will not bless God that the disciples of Christ are willing to follow his sublime example, and go about doing good? The grand employment of Christendom is not hoarding, it is diffusion. Like the sunlight and the atmosphere, they are dispensing blessings over every region.

Do we ever repine that this is a practical age? Do we sigh because we were not born in the meditative days of Plato, when men speculated nobly, when the human mind received its last finish of elegance, but when deformed children were thrown out to the wolves of the mountains, when Athens, the eye of Greece, the intellectual metropolis of the world, contained twelve times as many slaves as freemen, when there was not a hospital in the known world? Do we sometimes fondly linger over the age of Queen Elizabeth, illuminated with a constellation of great men, the like of which the world had never seen? But what was the condition of the vast prostrate multitude? Under the auspices of that learned queen, with all her orators, scholars, statesmen, geniuses, it was not possible to find persons to supply

tant efforts to rise to first principles, becomes indeterminate and unsatisfactory." Mackintosh.

the churches generally, who could go through the service decently a service made ready in every part to their hands--and when to be able to read was the very marked peculiarity of here and there an individual!* No! we give thanks to God that this is a practical age. For its monuments we do not point to the temple of Minerva or Sunium, to the Egyptian obelisk, nor to St. Peter's at Rome, piled up to the sky in its glorious proportions and its dazzling brightness by the blood and groans of thousands of wretched men. We hope that the next agc, and that all coming ages will be prac. tical, till the world shall be renovated. Instead of lamenting that we are surrounded with men and women energetic in doing good, we have every reason to rejoice. He, who would change the character of the age, must arrest the progress of invention and discovery in the arts and sciences, must destroy the thousand agencies which are at work on land and sea, annihilating space and time; he must stop the influence of the Reformation; he must burn up the Novum Organum; he must obliterate from the minds of men the deeds of the greatest benefactors of the race, and disband our philanthropic efforts, and turn back those great wheels, which, at every revolution, are bringing happiness to man and glory to God.

Obvious evils, however, accompany this general tendency of the age. Men will rush from one absurdity to its opposite. It is contemplation so exclusive as to become morbid; or action so bustling as to be superficial and unproductive. We are not endued with muscular powers only. We have other organs besides that of the brain.

An exclusive practical habit promotes an unsettled, restless state of mind, unfits for calm meditation on truth, and tends to identify virtue with feeling, not with the feeling which is the natural product of reflection, but with that which is momentary, fitful, and occasioned by unworthy or insufficient causes, It teaches to keep the conduct with all diligence, because from the actions proceed the issues of life. It thus insensibly sets up a new standard of morality, instead of requiring a watch over the motives, in order that the fountain of moral influence may be kept pure. It teaches us to look at the outward conduct, and if that be

* See John Foster's Essay on Popular Ignorance.

salutary, we may conclude that we are on the high road to virtue and to heaven.

This exclusive regard for the practical, sometimes leads us to make false estimates of what is really useful. It regards nothing as valuable but what may be turned to instant good account. Unless one immediately produces dollars and cents, or at once clothes the naked, and feeds the hungry, or so preaches the gospel that every man on the spot forsakes his sins, the implication is that no good is done; it is concluded that there is a fatal defect in his labor, and the whole is thrown by as an empty theory, or a useless impertinence. But this practical man has yet to learn another lesson. He has yet to know that utility may be stamped on the most secret meditations of the soul, on those "inner circles of thought and feeling," into which none but itself and its God can enter. Yes, there are thoughts, reminiscences, hopes, aspirations, half-formed conceptions, hidden feelings, which may be as useful to the world as the most notorious and highly lauded works of mercy. They elevate the soul; they sustain it under depressions which no outward appli ances could reach; they reveal its high origin and its glorious destiny. They fit it to bear and to suffer. It is after such visions on the mount that one is fitted to return and mix with the multitude at the foot, and attend to their necessities. He is as much a practical man who prays, as he who contributes; he who thinks, as he who acts; he who demonstrates a proposition, as he who constructs a compass; he who analyzes the atmosphere, as he who makes a wiregauze; the preacher who medidates in his study, as the sacred orator whose words of fire kindle the passions of ten thousand great congregations. Howe's Blessedness of the Righteous, Butler's Analogy, Pascal's Thoughts, may have been as useful as the Rise and Progress. The effects in the former case are not so immediate, palpable, and notorious as they are in the latter. But Pascal, Butler, and Howe, feed the fires which warm and illuminate the world. A minister in his study, or in his solitary walks, may have thoughts upon God, upon eternity, upon the nature of his own soul, which he never presents to his people, which are, possibly, incapable of being fully expressed in language, but which may be as beneficial to his flock as the most claborate sermons to which they ever listened. We have heard of

men who expressed the ardent wish that they had been the authors of some very useful tract, the Dairyman's Laughter, for example, which had been, apparently, the means of the conversion of thousands. Yet these very men, who thus regret their feebler influence, may reach to higher seats in heaven than the authors of this or of the other tract. The principal idea developed in the popular publication, may have been dug up from the deepest mine of truth, by some retired student in his closet, and he, in the sight of God, may have done more than his applauded neighbor to bless the world. We judge according to the outward appearance; God judgeth according to the truth. The brook, which runs under the grass, as if too modest to show its clear waters to the sun, may do as much good as the noisiest

torrent.

Another evil of the tendency in question is seen in its effects on education. This is truly a simplifying, if it be not a simple age. The demand is, that every thing which is presented to the minds of children, should be excessively easy, so that, in effect, no application of mind is required, no vigorous attention, nothing which admits of doubt, leads to inquiry, suggests difficulties. It is asserted that children ought never to listen to that which they do not understand. A dialect must be invented for their special benefit. It has been even gravely proposed, that we should have children's meeting-houses, and children's sermons, and children's preachers. But all these fond fancies overlook a fixed law of Providence-self-education, the personal overcoming of difficulties-the iron industry, the unflinching resolution, the unrelaxed perseverance. Books need to be simplified just so far, and teachers supplied to just such an extent, as to induce the child, or the scholar, to make the most strenuous exertions himself. Any further simplification or provision is positively injurious.

The same tendency may be seen in creating a dislike to doctrinal preaching, and to systems of divinity. In this respect, it must be confessed, that there is some degeneracy in our age. In the 17th and 18th centuries the great truths of the gospel were understood and proclaimed, both in England and in this country, with singular earnestness, power, and solemnity. Our fathers were rooted and grounded in the faith. We recollect some venerable men

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