His ideas are large and ample; thoughts thronged through his pages. Admirable as his prose is, he writes still like a poet, and he speaks of the value of poetry as not a mere amusement or the embroidery of the mind, he says how it “brightens the fancy with a thousand beautiful images, how it enriches the soul with great and sublime sentiments and refined ideas, and fills the memory with a noble variety of language, it teaches the art of describing well, of painting everything to the life, and presenting the pleasing and frightful scenes of nature and providence, vice and virtue, in their proper charms and horrors; it assists the art of persuasion, leads to a pathetic mode of speech and writing, and adds life and beauty to conversation.”
And hence his style is so attractive; it has often been an enjoyment to us to turn over the pages of his prose writings. What a variety of topics is presented to us in his interesting inquiry “Concerning Space,” and how interesting his treatment makes the discussion, however abstract the topic. It is the same with his philosophic essays on “Innate Ideas,” and on the “Nature of Substance,” and in that on the “Strength and Weakness of Human Reason.” His sermons, we have before said, have not the pomp and glow of Jeremy Taylor, but they resemble, and certainly do not fall inferior to, those of John Donne, in a quiet metaphysical subtlety and a happy use of images supplied by fancy; but let us select a few:
THE SOUL AND GOD.
“My soul is touched with such a Divine influence that it cannot rest, while God withdraws, as the needle trembles, and hunts after the living loadstone.”
A SENSITIVE HEART.
“Nothing could displease Phronissa (so this good mother is called) more than to hear a jest thrown upon natural infirmities. She thought there was something sacred in misery, and it was not to be touched with a rude hand.”
IMPULSIVE CHRISTIANS.
“Such Christians as these (such who are weak and too much under the influence of their passions) live very much by sudden fits and starts of devotion, without that uniform and steady spring of faith and holiness which would render their religion more even and uniform, more honourable to God and more comfortable to themselves. They are always high on the wing, or else lying moveless on the ground. They are ever in the heights or in the depths, travelling on the bright mountains with the songs of heaven on their lips, or groaning and labouring through the dark valleys, and never walking onward as on an even plain towards heaven.”
THE FULFILMENT OF DIVINE PREDICTIONS.