A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies Part 2

Do our theologians go with him here? I think not: yet, as a theologian, Coleridge is constantly appealed to by Churchmen.

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14.

"We find (in the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians), every where instilled as the essence of all well-being and well-doing, (without which the wisest public and political const.i.tution is but a lifeless formula, and the highest powers of individual endowment profitless or pernicious,) the spirit of a divine sympathy with the happiness and rights,-with the peculiarities, gifts, graces, and endowments of other minds, which alone, whether in the family or in the Church, can impart unity and effectual working together for good in the communities of men."

"The Christian religion was, in fact, a charter of freedom to the whole human race."-_Thom's Discourses on St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians._

And this is the true Catholic spirit,-the spirit and the teaching of Paul,-in contradistinction to the Roman Catholic spirit,-the spirit and tendency of Peter, which stands upon forms, which has no respect for individuality except in so far as it can imprison this individuality within a creed, or use it to a purpose.

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15.

Dr. Baillie once said that "all his observation of death-beds inclined him to believe that nature intended that we should go out of the world as unconscious as we came into it." "In all my experience," he added, "I have not seen one instance in fifty to the contrary."

Yet even in such a large experience the occurrence of "one instance in fifty to the contrary" would invalidate the a.s.sumption that such was the law of nature (or "nature's intention," which, if it means any thing, means the same).

The moment in which the spirit meets death is perhaps like the moment in which it is embraced by sleep. It never, I suppose, happened to any one to be conscious of the immediate transition from the waking to the sleeping state.

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16.

_Thoughts on a Sermon._

He is really sublime, this man! with his faith in "the religion of pain," and "the deification of sorrow!" But is he therefore right? What has he preached to us to-day with all the force of eloquence, all the earnestness of conviction? that "pain is the life of G.o.d as shown forth in Christ;"-"that we are to be crucified to the world and the world to us." This perpetual presence of a crucified G.o.d between us and a pitying redeeming Christ, leads many a mourner to the belief that this world is all a Golgotha of pain, and that we are here to crucify each other. Is this the law under which we are to live and strive? The missionary Bridaine accused himself of sin in that he had preached fasting, penance, and the chastis.e.m.e.nts of G.o.d to wretches steeped in poverty and dying of hunger; and is there not a similar cruelty and misuse of power in the servants of Him who came to bind up the broken-hearted, when they preach the necessity, or at least the theory, of moral pain to those whose hearts are aching from moral evil?

Surely there is a great difference between the resignation or the endurance of a truthful, faithful, loving, hopeful spirit, and this dreadful theology of suffering as the necessary and appointed state of things! I, for one, will not accept it. Even while most miserable, I will believe in happiness; even while I do or suffer evil, I will believe in goodness; even while my eyes see not through tears, I will believe in the existence of what I do not see-that G.o.d is benign, that nature is fair, that the world is not made as a prison or a penance.

While I stand lost in utter darkness, I will yet wait for the return of the unfailing dawn,-even though my soul be amazed into such a blind perplexity that I know not on which side to look for it, and ask "where is the East? and whence the dayspring?" For the East holds its wonted place, and the light is withheld only till its appointed time.

G.o.d so strengthen me that I may think of pain and sin only as accidental apparent discords in his great harmonious scheme of good! Then I am ready-I will take up the cross, and hear it bravely, while I _must_; but I will lay it down when I can, and in any case I will never lay it on another.

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17.

If I fear G.o.d it is because I love him, and believe in his love; I cannot conceive myself as standing in fear of any spiritual or human being in whose love I do not entirely believe. Of that Impersonation of Evil, who goes about seeking whom he may devour, the image brings to me no fear, only intense disgust and aversion. Yes, it is because of his love for me that I fear to offend against G.o.d; it is because of his love that his displeasure must be terrible. And with regard to human beings, only the being I love has the power to give me pain or inspire me with fear; only those in whose love I believe, have the power to injure me.

Take away my love, and you take away my fear: take away _their_ love, and you take away the power to do me any harm which can reach me in the sources of life and feeling.

18.

Social opinion is like a sharp knife. There are foolish people who regard it only with terror, and dare not touch or meddle with it. There are more foolish people, who, in rashness or defiance, seize it by the blade, and get cut and mangled for their pains. And there are wise people, who grasp it discreetly and boldly by the handle, and use it to carve out their own purposes.

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19.

While we were discussing Balzac's celebrity as a romance writer, she (O.

G.) said, with a shudder: "His laurels are steeped in the tears of women,-every truth he tells has been wrung in tortures from some woman's heart."

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20.

Sir Walter Scott, writing in 1831, seems to regard it as a terrible misfortune that the whole burgher cla.s.s in Scotland should be gradually preparing for representative reform. "I mean," he says, "the middle and respectable cla.s.ses: when a borough reform comes, which, perhaps, cannot long be delayed, ministers will no longer return a member for Scotland from the towns." "The gentry," he adds, "will abide longer by _sound_ principles, for they are needy, and desire advancement for themselves, and appointments for their sons and so on. But this is a very hollow dependence, and those who sincerely hold ancient opinions are waxing old," &c. &c.

With a great deal more, showing the strange moral confusion which his political bias had caused in his otherwise clear head and honest mind.

The sound principles, then, by which educated people are to abide,-over the decay of which he laments,-are such as can only be upheld by the most vulgar self-interest! If a man should utter openly such sentiments in these days, what should we think of him?

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In the order of absolutism lurk the elements of change and destruction.

In the unrest of freedom the spirit of change and progress.

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21.

"A single life," said Bacon, "doth well with churchmen, for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool."

Certainly there are men whose charities are limited, if not dried up, by their concentrated domestic anxieties and relations. But there are others whose charities are more diffused, as well as healthier and warmer, through the strength of their domestic affections.

Wordsworth speaks strongly of the evils of ordaining men as clergymen in places where they had been born or brought up, or in the midst of their own relatives: "Their habits, their manners, their talk, their acquaintances.h.i.+ps, their friends.h.i.+ps, and let me say, even their domestic affections, naturally draw them one way, while their professional obligations point out another." If this were true universally, or even generally, it would be a strong argument in favour of the celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy, which certainly is one element, and not the least, of their power.

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22.

Landor says truly: "Love is a secondary pa.s.sion in those who love most, a primary in those who love least: he who is inspired by it in the strongest degree is inspired by honour in a greater."

"Whatever is worthy of being loved for any thing is worthy to be preserved."

Again:-"Those are the worst of suicides who voluntarily and prepensely stab or suffocate their own fame, when G.o.d hath commanded them to stand on high for an example."

"Weak motives," he says, "are sufficient for weak minds; whenever we see a mind which we believed a stronger than our own moved habitually by what appears inadequate, we may be certain that there is-to bring a metaphor from the forest-_more top than root_."