There is, perhaps, no divine of the Church of England whose name is more prominent in ecclesiastical annals, or more widely known throughout the Christian world, than that of William Paley. He was born in Peterborough, England, in July, 1743. His father, who was curate of a parish, carefully instructed him in childhood, and, when his son was sixteen years of age, entered him at Christ College, in Cambridge. The superior intellect even then developed by the young man is evidenced by the remark of his father, “He has by far the clearest head I ever met with.”
At the university he applied himself very diligently to his studies, and rapidly attained distinction. After graduating in 1763, he spent three years as a teacher, and then returned to his college as a tutor. In 1775 he was presented to the rectory of Musgrove, in Westmoreland; and, marrying, he retired from the university to his living.
The life of Paley was in many respects quite the reverse of that of Wesley. He was by no means an ardent Christian. His piety, and his appreciation of Christianity, were intellectual far more than spiritual or emotional. He was not a popular preacher: his appropriate field of labor was the silence and solitude of the study. From this retreat he issued works upon God, Christian Morals, and the Evidences of Christianity, which greatly baffled infidelity, and silenced its cavils.
Being promoted from one living to another as he gained reputation, in 1782 he was advanced to the Archdeanery of Carlyle. Three years after this he published his first important work, entitled “The Principles of Moral and Political Economy.” Though some of its principles were violently assailed, it commanded the respectful attention of all thoughtful men. The work became exceedingly popular even with the masses, as Paley had the power of making the most abstruse truths clear and entertaining to the popular mind.
Five years after this, in 1790, Paley published another work, entitled “Horæ Paulinæ,” which is generally deemed the most original and ingenious of all his writings. In this work, which obtained renown through all Christendom, he maintained with irresistible force of logic the genuineness of St. Paul’s Epistles and of the Acts of the Apostles, from the reciprocal supports they received, from the undesigned coincidences between them. This work added greatly to the celebrity of the already distinguished writer, and secured for him still more lucrative offices in the English Church.
Four years later, in 1794, he issued another volume, entitled “View of the Evidences of Christianity.” It may be safely said that the arguments here brought forward in attestation of the divine origin of the religion of Jesus of Nazareth neverhave been, and never can be, refuted. In clearness of diction, beauty of illustration, and force of logic, the work has never been surpassed. It has been adopted as a text-book in many of the most distinguished universities, and is considered one of the most cogent arguments to be found in any language in favor of the divine authority of Christianity.
Thus does God raise up different instruments to accomplish his great purposes of benevolence. While Wesley and his coadjutors were traversing thousands of miles, and, by their impassioned eloquence, were rousing the humble and unlettered masses to an acceptance of the glad tidings of the gospel, Paley, in the lonely hours of entire seclusion in his study, was framing those arguments which intellectually enthroned Christianity in the minds of the thoughtful and the philosophic.
At the close of a studious life of sixty-two years, spent in his study and his garden, with but few companions and few exciting incidents, this illustrious servant of the Church of Christ fell asleep on the 25th of May, 1805.
For nearly nineteen centuries, Christianity has struggled against almost every conceivable form of human corruption. All the energies of the powers of darkness have been combined against it. In this unholy alliance, kings have contributed imperial power; so-called philosophers, like Voltaire, have consecrated to the foul enterprise the most brilliant endowments of wit and learning; while all “the lewd fellows of the baser sort” have swelled the ranks of infidelity with their legions of debauchees, inebriates, and blasphemers; but all in vain: generation after generation of these despisers have passed away, and perished.
Christianity has been steadily triumphing over all opposition, and was never before such a power in the world as at this day. Could you, upon some pleasant sabbath morning, look down from a balloon, as with an angel’s eye, over the wide expanse of Europe, witnessing the movement of its myriad population, and, as with an angel’s ear, listen to the sounds which sweep over its mountains, its valleys, and its plains, how wonderful the spectacle which would meet the eye, and thevibrations which, like the fabled music of the spheres, would fill the air! Suppose it to be such a sabbath morning as Herbert describes,—