have been the choice, as well as the fabrication of his intelligence. Of all other conceivable schemes and productions, he has devised and selected those forms and laws of material nature, and those modes and characters of intellectual being, to be peculiar to our race and residence, which appear about us. What he preferred thus originally to make, he has also chosen still to uphold. He has continued this stream and order of things down to ourselves; and this conservation announces that his creations are yet in accordance with his designs, and are operating to accomplish his premeditated results. If they were not, the fiat for their termination would have been issued, because nothing can exist against his will, or in defiance of his power. He permits the existence of whatever he does not annihilate, for his own reasons and purposes, however unperceivable they may be by our imperfect knowledge. All prayer and praise suppose that every thing is regulated by his will.* On these ideas the sacred history of nature, and more especially the sacred history of man, must be founded. This must consist of what has been providentially designed and directed for his benefit. From his creation a system and a process have been in constant development and operation for his wellbeing, always tending to promote the moral and intellectual formation and advancement of human nature, generally and individually. These Letters will attempt to delineate such outlines of the plan which has been pursued, as my limited ability can discern; but what I shall fail to accomplish, others will more successfully elucidate; for there is no reason to doubt, that the intelligence which is distinguishing our age above any that has preceded, will not let this, the loftiest theme on which it can meditate, remain quite neglected by its inquisitive industry. We have been, * The Lacedæmonian supplications to their deities were as laconic as their ordinary speech. Socrates in Plato informs us, that both in their public and private devotions they always uttered the same prayer, and this was, to give them what was becoming, as well as what was good. He says, "No one ever heard them ask for more."--Plat. Alcib. ii. c. 8. Plato has also preserved the prayer of an ancient, but unknown poet, which Socrates recommended to Alcibiades: "O king Jupiter! grant to us whatever is best for us, whether we ask for it or omit to do so; but keep from us what will be mischievous, though we should earnestly solicit it."-Plato, ib. c. 4. perhaps, occupied rather too exclusively in observing and describing the details and minutenesses of material nature. It is right that these should be carefully studied, because we cannot have exact knowledge of things in any other way; and they furnish the facts and grounds of the grander speculations. But still, with the earthly and the palpable, the heavenly and the intellectual should be associated. For the contemplation of the plans and principles of their magnificent Author, and of the means he has employed, and of the results which they have produced, will always be among the sublimest subjects of our thought, and a constant fountain of intellectual enjoyment; and though we, who can rarely justly estimate the intentions of each other, whom we daily see, must always be very imperfectly qualified to criticise or appreciate the unrevealed purposes of the Almighty, yet we cannot err, if we always believe that the universal reason why any or every part and substance are what they are, will always be, because he has deliberately chosen, planned, and formed them to be so. Let this be the fixed deduction of our reason, and then it will be gratifying to the intellect to endeavour to comprehend the manner in which he causes what we admire or are studying, and to explore the reasons which appear to have actuated him in his ways as well as his works. The satisfaction will always increase with the success; but there will be pleasure in the effort even where it is unavailing, because it is one of the laws assigned to our intellectual nature, that the true knowledge of him shall be attended with sweet and ennobling feelings; and that every endeavour to attain it, reverentially pursued, shall be one of the most agreeable exercises of our thinking faculty.* *Napoleon, at least, felt that religion was a pleasurable reality. He said one day to Las Casas, "Perhaps I shall again believe implicitly. God grant I may. I shall certainly make no resistance; and I do not ask a greater blessing. It must, in my mind, be a great and real happiness."-Las Casas, v. iii. p. 201. He seems to have retained his belief in the Deity; for he also mentioned, "1 never doubted the existence of God; for if my reason was madequate to comprehend it, my mind was not less disposed to adopt it. My nerves were in sympathy with the sentiment." Again, “We very properly believe in God, because every thing around us proclaims him, and the most enlightened minds have believed in him."-Ib. We like to know how kings and emperors feel on these great subjects, in which we all have a common interest; but I own myself to be more LETTER V. Our Sacred History a part of that of the Universe, yet peculiar to our. selves-Other Worlds besides our own-Ancient Errors on this subject-Man a peculiar order of Being, only known to be on this Earth -His double Nature, and double state of Existence. MY DEAR SON, THAT the sacred history of our world must be a part of the greater sacred history of the universe, is as obvious as it also must be, that it cannot be supposed to be identical with it; for our earth is visibly not the whole of all things, nor can every other sphere be supposed to be a mere copy, or facsimile of it. We are only a portion of a multifarious creation, each orb in which has its own peculiar structure, with substances and living forms appropriated to that, and therefore as unlike those of every other, as their several natures and constructions may vary. But still, however numerous the existing orders of being may really be, we are all the subjects of one wondrous monarchy. We must, indeed, have that distinction from each other, which arises from every one possessing a state and system of things ap gratified with reading the following estimation of religión from a Northamptonshire peasant, born 1793, son of a labourer, like himself, written while he was a young man, working for others at seven shillings a week in winter and nine in summer, at Helpstone, near Stamford,-I mean JOHN CLARE. "6 SONNET TO RELIGION. "THOU sacred light, that right from wrong discerns! Thou disregarder of its joys and mirth! Thou only home the houseless wanderers have! Thou prop by which the pilgrim's woes are borne ! Thou solace of the lonely hermit's cave! Thou only hope to sorrow's bosom given! Thou peace! Thou rest! Thou comfort! all in all! VOL. II.-G Poems by John Clare, published in 1820, p. 204. pointed to it, and not assigned to others. Each, therefore, subsists with a particular composition, and with a course of laws and agencies appropriated to it. From this circumstance, each must have a sacred history of its own, adapted to these, and proceeding from them, with which only itself is concerned; yet in the great principles of the divine care and government, we may assume that there is no difference between any. Diversities will, however, begin, and will prevail in the modifications, rules, and nature of the events and operations by which these general principles will be severally applied. These will correspond in all with the peculiarities which distinguish them from each other; but as these variations in other orbs are unknown to us, we have no materials on which we can reason about them. They and we as yet have no acquaintance with each other; no mutual intercourse has in any age taken place between us, and therefore we can only perceive, that it is possible that some momentous relations may hereafter occur with them, when death shall remove us from our present home. We cannot prevent the mind from desiring this, nor, as we gaze upon their nightly radiance, from aspiring to it.* There is an attraction in their sparkling lucidity which draws the soul upward to them, and nothing but the impossibility of our traversing the space between us keeps us from them. Could we navigate the atmosphere and super-ascending ether to them as we cross the ocean to Australia or Polynesia, how numerous would be our voyages to these celestial islands! If our future bodies should be less affected * In his interesting "Somnium Scipionis," Cicero represents the second of the great Scipios beholding in a dream his celebrated grandfather Africanus, appearing to him among the stars, and conversing with him such a vision excited his wish to join him: "O pater sanctissime et optime! Why should I tarry on earth? Why may I not hasten to ascend up to you?" "It cannot be so," answered he, "until that God, whose temple is whatever you are beholding, shall liberate you from the confinement of your body; there is no avenue to this region open to you. Mankind are born under the law which keeps them in that central globe which is called the earth; but a soul has been given to them: cultivate, then, integrity and piety. That life is the way to heaven (via est in cœlum); and to the society of those who, having so lived in their body, when they become freed from it, will dwell in this place which you are contemplating."-Som. Scip. Cic. Op. v. ii. p. 151. We cannot, however, but smile at some of the strange fancies by that gravitating force which now binds us to our surface, or should possess energies of motion which should be capable of overcoming it, the transit would be certain, if what we wished were then permitted to us. That we may have connexion and knowledge of their contents or inhabitants hereafter, has been the speculation and the hope of some of the worthiest minds which have shone in human life:* and although it will be always most natural to us all to think chiefly of the earth we are living on, and to cultivate attachments to it, as the scene and storehouse of our present pains and pleasures, yet it is not possible to many, and is as unwise in all as it is unnecessary, to confine our thoughts and wishes, exclusively, to its gratifications and pursuits. We feel capable of something nobler; we seem born for what is superior. Dreams, and whispers, and wishes, and imaginations of greater and better objects and occupations, frequently come uncalled into our consciousness and it is then delightful to have any ground to recollect, that in our Almighty Father's house there are many mansions, and that we have been invited to reside in some of those which, though not cognizable now, are preparing for our hereafter. It is even pleasurable to think that we are in one of them only here, and that therefore there are many more to know. It then becomes a satisfaction to us to perceive, that we are here but as tenants, for a term of no long duration. We have, indeed, only a tenancy at will, and the option is not with ourselves to stay or quit when we think proper. But it is a consolation to remember, that the Lord of one is the which have been indulged on this subject. In the voyage of Domingo Gonsales, the author, a learned bishop, seems rather seriously to intimate that aerial voyages are possible, " because locusts come to us from the moon, and because swallows, cuckoos, nightingales, and other birds that migrate from us, really fly up thither when they leave us, and particularly that a wild swan in the East Indies does so. If, then, a flock of these birds could be harnessed, they might carry up with them the weight of a man!!" If we may invent our facts, we may support any theory. Yet our scientific Bishop Wilkins mentions this flight of his brother prelate, as if he did not quite disapprove of it.-Disc. New World, p. 160. * Our really valuable Bishop Wilkins, whom I wish to mention with every respect for his love and cultivation of natural science, has made it his fourteenth proposition, and elaborately argued in its behalf, "That it is possible for some of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world; and, if there be inhabitants there, to have commerce with them."-Disc. New World, p. 135-160. |