Part 22 (2/2)

He first by fear uncharmed the drowsed soul, Till of its n.o.bler nature it 'gan feel Dim recollections; and thence soared to hope, Strong to believe whate'er of mystic good The Eternal dooms for His immortal sons; From hope and firmer faith to perfect love Attracted and absorbed; and centred there, G.o.d only to behold, and know, and feel, Till by exclusive consciousness of G.o.d, All self annihilated, it shall make G.o.d its ident.i.ty--G.o.d all in all!

We and our Father one!

And blest are they Who in this fleshy world, the elect of heaven, Their strong eye darting through the deeds of men, Adore with steadfast, unpresuming gaze Him, nature's essence, mind, and energy; And gazing, trembling, patiently ascend, Treading beneath their feet all visible things As steps, that upward to their Father's throne Lead gradual.[647]

If we would further understand how far removed must have been Coleridge's tone of thought from that which for so long a time had regarded enthusiasm in all its forms as the greatest enemy of sober reason and sound religion, we should only have to consider what a new world of thought and sentiment was that in which Coleridge was living from any of which the generation before him had experience. The band of poets and essayists represented by Coleridge and Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, De Quincey, and we may add Blake, were in many respects separated by a wider gulf, except only in time, from the authors of twenty years before, than they were from the writers of the Elizabethan age. New hopes and aspirations as to the capabilities of human life, new and more spiritual aspects of nature, of art, of poetry, of history, made it impossible for those who felt these influences in all the freshness of their new life to look with the same eyes as their fathers on those questions above all others which related to the intellectual and spiritual faculties of the soul. It was a worthy aim for a poet-philosopher such as Coleridge was--a mystic and enthusiast in one aspect of his mind, a devoted 'friend of reason' in another--to a.n.a.lyse reason and unite its sublimer powers with conscience as a divinely given 'inner light,' to combine in one the highest exercise of the intellectual and the moral faculties. Emotional religion had exhibited on a large scale alike its powers and deficiencies. Thoughtful and religious men could scarcely do better than set themselves to restore the balance where it was unequal. They had to teach that faith must be based, not only upon feeling and undefined impulse, but on solid intellectual apprehension. They had to urge with no less earnestness that religious truth has to be not only outwardly apprehended, but inwardly appropriated before it can become possessed of true spiritual efficacy. It is most true that vague ideas of some inward illumination are but a miserable subst.i.tute for a sound historical faith, but it is no less true that a so-called historical faith has not become faith at all until the soul has received it into itself, and made of it an inward light. In the eighteenth century, as in every other, mystics and enthusiasts have insisted only on inward illuminations and spiritual experiences, while of men of a very different cast of mind some have perpetually harped upon authority and some upon reason and reasonableness. It may be hoped that our own century may be more successful in the difficult but not discouraging task of investigating and harmonising their respective claims.

C.J.A.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 468: Or to a painter's imagination. The _Idler_, not however without some fear of 'its wild extravagances' even in this sphere, allows that 'one may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm to the modern painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the present age.'--No. 79.]

[Footnote 469: Henry More, _Enthus. Triumphatus_, -- 4.]

[Footnote 470: _Quarterly Review_, xxviii 37.]

[Footnote 471: H. More, _On the Immortality of the Soul_, b. iii. ch.

12; and the whole treatise, especially the third and fourth books.]

[Footnote 472: H. More, _Phil. Works_, General Preface, -- 6; and _Enthusiasmus Triumphatus_, -- 52.]

[Footnote 473: -- 62.]

[Footnote 474: 'Address to the Clergy.'--Wesley's _Works_, 492.]

[Footnote 475: Coleridge seems to have read H. More with much enjoyment.--_Aids to Reflection_, i. 106-10. 'Occasional draughts,'

Channing writes, of More and other Platonists, 'have been refres.h.i.+ng to me.' ... Their mysticism was n.o.ble in its kind, 'and perhaps a necessary reaction against the general earthliness of men's minds. I pardon the man who loses himself in the clouds, if he will help me upwards.'--W.E.

Channing's _Correspondence_ 338.]

[Footnote 476: Quoted by Bishop Berkeley, _Theory of Vision_, pt. i. -- 116.]

[Footnote 477: Schlosser, _History of the Eighteenth Century_, chap. 1.

i. Horsley's _Charges_, 86. _Quarterly Review_, July 1864, 70-9.]

[Footnote 478: Warburton's _Works_, iv. 568.]

[Footnote 479: 'Letter to the Bishop of Gloucester.'--Wesley's _Works_, ix. 151.]

[Footnote 480: Dedication to his _Three Sermons_, quoted by H.S. Skeats, _History of the free Churches_, 333.]

[Footnote 481: W. Roberts, _Memoirs of Hannah More_, i. 500, ii. 61, 70, 110.]

[Footnote 482: R.A. Vaughan's _Hours with the Mystics_, ii. 391.]

[Footnote 483: C. Leslie, 'Snake in the Gra.s.s.'--_Works_, iv. 21.]

[Footnote 484: Dr. Sherlock, _On Public Wors.h.i.+p_, chap. iii. -- 1, 4.]

[Footnote 485: Warburton's 'Alliance.'--_Works_, 1788, iv. 53.]

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