We ask the reader whether he has not marked, within the last few years, the début of another and more formidable 366 antagonist, with which all Christian Churches may be soon called on to grapple?
Our newly-instituted athenæums and philosophical associations form one of the novel features of the time,––institutions in which at least the second-class men of the age––Emersons, and Morells, and Combes––with much that is interesting in science and fascinating in literature, blend sentiments and opinions at direct variance with the great doctrinal truths embodied in our standards. The press, not less formidable now than ever, is an old antagonist; but, with all its appliances and powers, it lacked the charm of the living voice. That peculiar charm, however, the new combatant possesses. The pulpit, met by its own weapons and in its own field, will have to a certainty to measure its strength against it; and the standard of pulpit accomplishment and of theological education, instead of being lowered, must in consequence be greatly elevated. The Church of this country, which in the earlier periods of her history, when Knox was her leader, and Buchanan the moderator of her General Assembly, stood far in advance of the age in popular eloquence, solid learning, and elegant accomplishment, and which, in the person of Chalmers in our own days, was vested in the more advanced views and the more profound policy of a full century hence, must not be suffered to lag behind the age now. Her troops must not be permitted to fall into confusion, and to use as arms the rude, unsightly bludgeons of an untaught and undisciplined mob, when the enemy, glittering in harness, and furnished with weapons keen of temper and sharp of edge, is bearing down upon them in compact phalanx.
We know what it is to have sat for many years under ministers who, possessed of great popular talent and high powers of original thought, gave much time and labour to pulpit preparation. We know how great a privilege it is to have to look forward to the ministrations of the Sabbath,––not 367 as wearinesses, which, simply as a matter of duty, were to be endured; but as exquisite feasts, spiritual and intellectual, which were to be greatly relished and enjoyed. And when hearing it sometimes regretted, with reference to at least one remarkable man, that he did not visit his flock quite so often as was desirable––many of the complainants’ sole idea of a ministerial visit, meanwhile, being simply that it was a long exordium of agreeable gossip, with a short tail-piece of prayer stuck to its hinder end––we have strongly felt how immensely better it was that the assembled congregation should enjoy each year fifty-two Sabbaths of their minister at his best, than that the tone of his pulpit services should be lowered, in order that each individual among them might enjoy a yearly half-hour of him apart. And yet such, very nearly, was the true statement of the case. We fully recognise the importance, in its own subordinate place, of ministerial visitation, especially when conducted––a circumstance, however, which sometimes lowers its popularity––as it ought to be. But it must not be assigned that prominent place denied to it by our standards, and which the word of God utterly fails to sanction.
It is, though an important, still a minor duty; and the Free Church must not be sacrificed to the ungrounded idea that it occupies a level as high, or even nearly as high, as ‘the preaching of the word.’ To that peculiar scheme of visitation advocated by Chalmers as a first process in his work of excavation, we of course do not refer. In those special cases to which he so vigorously directed himself, visitation was an inevitable preliminary, without which the appliances of the pulpit could not be brought to bear. Philip had to open the Scriptures tête-à-tête to the Ethiopian eunuch, for the Ethiopian eunuch never came to church.
But even were his scheme identical with that to which we particularly refer, we would say to the young preacher who sheltered under his authority, ‘Well, prepare for the 368 pulpit as Dr. Chalmers did, even when he had the West Port congregation for his audience, and we shall be quite content to let you visit as much as you may.’ The composition of a sermon was never easy work to him. He devoted to it much time, and the full bent of his powerful mind; and even when letting himself down to the humblest of the people, the philosopher of largest capacity might profitably take his place among the hearers, and listen with an interest never for one moment suffered to flag.
May 3, 1848.
DUGALD STEWART.
It is now more than forty years since it was remarked by Jeffrey, in his Review, that metaphysical science was decidedly on the decline in Scotland. Dugald Stewart, though in a delicate state of health at the time, was in the full vigour of his faculties, and had still eighteen years of life before him; Thomas Brown had just been appointed his assistant and successor in the Moral Philosophy Chair of the University of Edinburgh; and the élite of the Scottish capital were flocking in crowds to his class-room, captivated by the eloquence and ingenuity of his singularly vigorous and original lectures. Even fifteen years subsequent, Dr. Welsh could state, in the Life of his friend, that the reception of his work on the Philosophy of the Human Mind had been ‘favourable to a degree of which, in metaphysical writings, there was no parallel.’ It has been recorded as a very remarkable circumstance, that the Essay of Locke––produced at a period when the mind of Europe first awoke to general activity in the metaphysical province––passed through seven editions in the comparatively brief space of fourteen years. The Lectures of Dr. Brown passed through exactly seven editions in twelve years, and this at a time when, according to Jeffrey, that science of mind of which they treated was in a state of gradual decay. The critic was, however, in the right. The genius of Brown had imparted to his brilliant posthumous work an interest which could scarce be regarded as attaching to the subject of it; and in a few years after––from about the year 1835 till 370 after the disruption of the Scottish Church––metaphysical science had sunk, not in Scotland only, but all over Britain, to its lowest ebb. A few retired scholars continued to prosecute their researches in the province of mind; but scarce any interest attached to their writings, and not a bookseller could be found hardy enough to publish at his own risk a metaphysical work. We are old enough to remember a time, contemporaneous with the latter days of Brown, when young students, in their course of preparation for the learned professions, especially for the Church, used to be ever recurring in conversation to the staple metaphysical questions,––occasionally, no doubt, much in the style of Jack Lizard in the Guardian, who comforted his mother, when the worthy lady was so unlucky as to scald her hand with the boiling tea-kettle, by assuring her there was no such thing as heat, but which at least served to show that this branch of liberal education fully occupied the mind of the individuals ostensibly engaged in mastering it; and we remember a subsequent time, when students––some of them very clever ones––seemed never to have thought on these questions at all, and remained silent in conversation when they chanced to be mooted by the men of an earlier generation. During, however, the last ten years, mainly through the revival of a taste for metaphysical inquiry in France and Germany, which has reacted on this country, abstract questions on the nature and functions of mind are again acquiring their modicum of space and importance in Scotland. Our country no longer takes the place it once did among the nations in this department, and never again may; but it at least begins to remember it once was, and to serve itself heir to the works of the older masters of mind; and we regard it as an evidence of the reaction to which we refer, that a greatly more complete edition of the writings of Dugald Stewart than has yet appeared is at the present time in the course of issuing from 371 the press of one of our most respected Scotch publishers––the inheritor of a name paramount in the annals of the trade––Mr. Thomas Constable.