Ever your friend,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
There are some passages in an unpublished sermon, preached by my father at Church Green, in 1858, which I will quote presently, as illustrative of the same tone of thought shown in these letters. His clinging to the miraculous element in the life of Jesus, while refusing to base any positive authority upon it, is equally characteristic of him, arising from the caution, at once reverent and intellectual, which made him extremely slow to remove any belief, consecrated by time and affection, till it was proved false and dangerous, and from his thorough conviction that every man stands or falls by so much of the Infinite Light and Love as he is able to receive directly into his being. He was conservative by [297] feeling, and radical by thought, and the two wrought in him a grand charity of judgment, far above what is ordinarily called toleration.
These are the extracts referred to:
"Society as truly as nature, nay, as truly as the holy church, is a grand organism for human culture. I say emphatically,—as truly as the holy church; for we are prone to take a narrow view of man's spiritual growth, and to imagine that there is nothing to help it, out of the pale of Christianity. We make a sectarism of our Christian system, even as the Jews did of the Hebrew, though ours was designed to break down all such narrow bounds; so that I should not wonder if some one said to me,—Are you preaching the Christian religion when you thus speak of nature and society?' And I answer, 'No; I am speaking of a religion elder than the Christian.' . . .
"There was a righteousness, then, before and beside the Christian. Am I to be told that Socrates and Plato, and Marcus Antoninus and Boethius, had no right culture, no religion, no rectitude? and they were cast upon the bosom of nature and of society for their instruction, and of that light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'"
To his Daughter Mary.
ST. DAVID'S, Sept. 20, 1867.
. . . THINK of my having read the whole of Voltaire's "Henriade" last week! But think especially of eminent French critics, and Marmontel among them (in the preface), praising it to the stars, saying that some of the [298] passages are superior to Homer and Virgil! However, it is really better than I expected, and I read on, partly from curiosity and partly for the history. The French would have been very glad to find it an epic worthy of the name, for they have n't one. Voltaire frankly confesses that the French have not a genius for great poetry,—too much in love, he says, with exactness and elegance.
I have—read—through—"Very Hard Cash;" and very hard it is to read. Reade has some pretty remarkable powers,—powers of description and of characterization; but the moment he touches the social relations, and should be dramatic, he is struck with total incapacity. Indeed, what one novelist has been perfect in dialogue, making each person say just what he should and nothing else, but glorious Sir Walter?