UTILE DULCI. | ||
The New-York Weekly Magazine;OR, MISCELLANEOUS REPOSITORY. | ||
| Vol. II.] | WEDNESDAY, August 17, 1796. | [No. 59. |
For the New-York Weekly Magazine.
REASON.
Q. Cannot we, by the light of Reason, discover enough of futurity and the attributes of God, to secure our peace of mind here, and our happiness hereafter, without the aid of a revelation?
A. As well might you ask, cannot a merchant freight his vessel for a voyage to a country of which he is entirely ignorant, and the description of which he refuses to examine and believe;---who puts to sea without his charts because they may be false, and would rather trust to his uninformed mind for a safe conduct through shoals and breakers to the desired port.
What is reason, or the exercise of the reasoning faculty, but the comparison of ideas and the exercise of the judgment thereon? And from whence can we acquire ideas, where can we acquire information relating to a subject so important as our future existence? The works of nature are open to our view;---these indeed are a copious source, but their insufficiency for promoting the love of God and of our fellow-creature, is obvious to any one who will observe man in a state of nature.---If, then, a fund of information is delivered to us, which carries with it all the evidence of a divine revelation, which explains and assists the language of nature, what should deter us from seizing with avidity the precious deposit, and accumulating facts on which we may employ our reasoning faculty to our eternal benefit.
ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING.
The poets, of all ages and all languages, have dwelt with particular delight upon the morning scenery, and the epithets of the dappled, the rosy fingered, the saffron, and the blushing morn, have been not less often quoted, than they have been imitated and read; and to these verbal descriptions have followed those of the pencil; and in these graphic truths no man has succeeded in any degree of comparison with Claude Lorraine. The reason appears to be pretty obvious; he studied nature with so much enthusiasm and perseverance, that he may be almost said to have exhausted her varieties; and we hardly behold a composition from his hand in which the rising or the setting sun does not irradiate or warm his scenes; but the sober impressions of the dawn, those chaste and reserved tints that particularly express the break of day, just awakening from repose; when the curtain of the night seems to be insensibly withdrawn, and the landscape appears to open by degrees, when the colours of the sky are yet doubtful, and the landscape imperfect to the view; in short, when darkness is not entirely fled, nor light distinctly seen; this period of the day I do not recollect to have seen expressed by the fidelity of his magical pencil.