Certainly this is not one of the hymns fitted to convey the devotion of the united Church; but I suppose we must take it for granted, that there existed people, at the time when it was written, who could sing it with gravity. It is impossible to mark absolutely the point of separation between what demands some respect, if it do not inspire reverence, from that which excites ridicule, and even contempt. So much depends upon education, association, and habit, in religious matters, that we may here truly apply the adage of one man’s meat being another man’s poison. People who laugh at Keach’s metaphors and hymns perhaps indulge in forms of worship which appear excessively ludicrous to religionists of his order. The devoutness of some people may feed on aliment which would produce only revulsion in others; and let us hope that the good folks who were taught to conduct services of song after this very peculiar fashion could nevertheless make melody in their hearts unto the Lord. At all events, Keach’s Saints the Salt of the Earth is a specimen of one kind of hymnology which the seventeenth century produced.
CHAPTER XXII.
We have completed the circle of theological schools. Many illustrations of religious character and experience growing out of the principles now explained, or rather, in some cases, producing sympathy with them, have been already exhibited. To give completeness to the task I have undertaken, it is desirable that there should be added some other biographical illustrations, and that they should be brought together in immediate connection with the forms of opinion to which they belong.
I may again begin with the Anglicans, and as the examples of the class hitherto have been clerical, I shall now select examples from the laity.
ISAAK WALTON.
Isaak Walton deserves to be taken first. Disliking “the active Romanists,” averse, perhaps still more, to the “restless Nonconformists,” he would rank himself as “one of the passive and peaceable Protestants;” but the Anglican tincture of his Protestantism is visible in the whole of his writings. Without giving to the world any theological treatise, or entering into any ecclesiastical controversy, he has diffused his religious sentiments with singular sweetness and purity over his works, so as to leave no doubt respecting their distinctive colour. How far the influence of his parentage and education might contribute to the formation of his character we do not know; but no doubt the natural bent of his mind, his taste for quiet contemplation, his reverence for antiquity, his disposition to submit to authority, his faculty of imagination, and his taste for music, had prepared him for those paths of faith and worship in which, through a long life, he loved to walk. In addition to this, we should remember his early, as well as his later friendships, with certain distinguished members of the Anglican communion.
In his Elegy on Dr. Donne, he exclaims—
“Oh do not call
Grief back by thinking on his funeral,
Forget he loved me—