Part 12 (1/2)
Mr. Tyrrel, by his observations, soon enabled us to discover that his religion had altered nothing but his language. He seemed evidently more fond of controversy than of truth, and the whole turn of his conversation indicated that he derived his religious security rather from the adoption of a party, than from the implantation of a new principle. ”His discourse is altered,” said Mr. Stanley to me afterward, ”but I greatly fear his heart and affections remain unchanged.”
Mr. Stanley contrived, for the sake of his two academical guests, particularly young Tyrrel, to divert the conversation to the subject of learning, more especially clerical learning.
In answer to a remark of mine on the satisfaction I had felt in seeing such a happy union of learning and piety in two clergymen who had lately dined at the Grove, Mr. Stanley said, ”Literature is an excellent thing, when it is not the best thing a man has. It can surely be no offense to our Maker to cultivate carefully his highest natural gift, our reason.
In pious men it is peculiarly important, as the neglect of such cultivation, in certain individuals, has led to much error in religion, and given much just offense to the irreligious, who are very sharp-sighted to the faults of pious characters. I therefore truly rejoice to see a higher tone of literature now prevailing, especially in so many of our pious young divines; the deficiency of learning in some of their well-meaning predecessors having served to bring not only themselves, but religion also, into contempt, especially with men who have only learning.”
”I say nothing,” remarked Mr. Tyrrel, ”against the necessity of learning in a lawyer, because it may help him to lead a judge, and to mislead a jury; nor in a physician, because it may advance his credit by enabling him to conceal the deficiencies of his art; nor in a private gentleman, because it may keep him out of worse mischief. But I see no use of learning in the clergy. There is my friend Dr. Barlow. I would willingly give up all his learning, if he would go a little deeper into the doctrines he professes to preach.”
”Indeed,” said Mr. Stanley, ”I should think Dr. Barlow's various knowledge of little value, did he exhibit the smallest deficiency in the great points to which you allude. But when I am persuaded that his learning is so far from detracting from his piety that it enables him to render it more extensively useful, I can not wish him dispossessed of that knowledge which adorns his religion without diminis.h.i.+ng its good effects.”
”You will allow,” said Mr. Tyrrel, ”that those first great publishers of Christianity, the Apostles, had none of this vain learning.”
”I admit,” said Mr. Stanley, ”that it is frequently pleaded by the despisers of learning, that the Apostles were illiterate. The fact is too notorious, and the answer too obvious to require to be dwelt upon.
But it is unfortunately adduced to ill.u.s.trate a position to which it can never apply, the vindication of an unlettered clergy. It is a hackneyed remark, but not the less true for being old, that the wisdom of G.o.d chose to accomplish the first promulgation of the gospel by illiterate men, to prove that the work was his own, and that its success depended not on the instruments employed, but on the divinity of the truth itself. But if the Almighty chose to establish his religion by miracles, he chooses to carry it on by means. And he no more sends an ignorant peasant or fisherman to instruct men in Christianity now, than he appointed a Socrates or a Plato to be its publisher at first. As, however, there is a great difference in the situations, so there may be a proportionate difference allowed in the attainments of the clergy. I do not say it is necessary for every village curate to be a profound scholar, but as he may not always remain in obscurity, there is no necessity for his being a contemptible one.”
Sir John remarked, that what has been said of those who affect to despise birth, has been applied also to those who decry learning; neither is ever undervalued except by men who are dest.i.tute of them; and it is worthy of observation, that as literature and religion both sunk in the dark ages, so both emerged at the same auspicious era.
Mr. Stanley finding that Dr. Barlow was not forward to embark in a subject which he considered as rather personal, said, ”It is presumptuous to observe, that the Apostles were unlettered men, yet those instruments who were to be employed in services singularly difficult, the Almighty condescended partly to fit for their peculiar work by great human attainments. The Apostle of the Gentiles was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel; and Moses, who was destined to the high office of a great legislator, was instructed in all the wisdom of the most learned nation then existing. The Jewish law-giver, though under the guidance of inspiration itself, did not fill his station the worse for this preparatory instruction. To how important a use the Apostle converted _his_ erudition, we may infer from his conduct in the most learned and polished a.s.sembly in the world. He did not unnecessarily exasperate the polite Athenians, by coa.r.s.e upbraiding, or illiterate clamor, but he attacked them on their own ground. With what discriminating wisdom, with what powerful reasoning did he unfold to them that G.o.d whom they ignorantly wors.h.i.+ped! With what temper, with what elegance, did he expose their shallow theology! Had he been as unacquainted with _their_ religion, as they were with _his_, he had wanted the appropriate ground on which to build his instruction. He seized on the inscription of their own pagan altar, as a text from which to preach the doctrine of Christianity. From his knowledge of their errors, he was enabled to advance the cause of truth. He made their poetry, which he quoted, and their mythology which he would not have been able to explode, if he had not understood it, a thesis from which to deduce the doctrine of the Resurrection; thus softening their prejudices, and letting them see the infinite superiority of that Christianity which he enforced, to the mere learning and mental cultivation on which they so highly valued themselves. By the same sober discretion, acute reasoning, and graceful elegance, he afterward obtained a patient hearing, and a favorable judgment from King Agrippa.”
”It has always appeared to me,” returned Dr. Barlow, ”that a strong reason why the younger part of a clergyman's life should be in a good measure devoted to learning is, that he may afterward discover its comparative vanity. It would have been a less difficult sacrifice for St. Paul to profess that he renounced all things for religion, if he had had nothing to renounce; and to count all things as dross in the comparison, if he had had no gold to put in the empty scale. Gregory n.a.z.ianzen, one of the most accomplished masters of Greek literature, declared that the chief value which he set upon it was, that in possessing it, he had something of worth to esteem as nothing in comparison of Christian truth. And it is delightful to hear Selden and Grotius, and Pascal and Salmasius, whom I may be allowed to quote, without being suspected of professional prejudice, as none of them were clergymen, while they warmly recommended to others that learning of which they themselves were the most astonis.h.i.+ng examples, at the same time dedicating their lives to the advancement of religion. It is delightful, I say, to hear them acknowledge that their learning was only valuable as it put it in their power to promote Christianity, and to have something to sacrifice for its sake.”
”I can willingly allow,” said Mr. Tyrrel, ”that a poet, a dramatic poet especially, may study the works of the great critics of antiquity with some profit; but that a Christian writer of sermons can have any just ground for studying a pagan critic, it is to me quite inconceivable.”
”And yet, sir,” replied Mr. Stanley, ”a sermon is a work which demands regularity of plan, as well as a poem. It requires, too, something of the same unity, arrangement, divisions, and lucid order as a tragedy; something of the exordium and the peroration which belong to the composition of the orator. I do not mean that he is constantly to exhibit all this, but he should always understand it. And a discreet clergyman, especially one who is to preach before auditors of the higher rank, and who, in order to obtain respect from them, wishes to excel in the art of composition, will scarcely be less attentive to form his judgment by some acquaintance with Longinus and Quintilian than a dramatic poet. A writer of verse, it is true, may please to a certain degree by the force of mere genius, and a writer of sermons will instruct by the mere power of his piety; but neither the one nor the other will ever write well, if they do not possess the principles of good writing, and form themselves on the models of good writers.”
”Writing,” said Sir John, ”to a certain degree is an art, or, if you please, a trade. And as no man is allowed to set up in an ordinary trade till he has served a long apprentices.h.i.+p to its _mysteries_ (the word, I think, used in indentures), so no man should set up for a writer till he knows somewhat of the mysteries of the art he is about to practice. He may, after all, if he want talents, produce a vapid and inefficient book; but possess what talents he may, he will, without knowledge, produce a crude and indigested one.”
Mr. Tyrrel, however, still insisted upon it, that in a Christian minister the l.u.s.tre of learning is tinsel, and human wisdom folly.
”I am entirely of your opinion,” returned Mr. Stanley, ”if he rest in his learning as an _end_ instead of using it as a _means_; if the fame, or the pleasure, or even the human profit of learning be his ultimate object. Learning in a clergyman without religion is dross, is nothing; not so religion without learning. I am persuaded that much good is done by men who, though deficient in this respect, are abundant in zeal and piety; but the good they do arises from the exertion of their piety, and not from the deficiency of their learning. Their labors are beneficial from the talent they exercise, and not from their want of another talent. The Spirit of G.o.d can work, and often does work, by feeble instruments, and divine truth by its own omnipotent energy can effect its own purposes. But particular instances do not go to prove that the instrument ought not to be fitted, and polished, and sharpened for its allotted work. Every student should be emulously watchful that he do not diminish the stock of professional credit by his idleness; he should be stimulated to individual exertion by bearing in mind that the English clergy have always been allowed by foreigners to be the most learned body in the world.”
Dr. Barlow was of opinion that what Mr. Stanley had said of the value of knowledge, did not at all militate against such fundamental prime truths as--”This is life eternal to _know_ G.o.d and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. I desire to _know_ nothing, save Jesus Christ. The natural man can not _know_ the things of the Spirit of G.o.d. The world by wisdom _knew_ not G.o.d;” and a hundred other such pa.s.sages.
”Ay, Doctor,” said Mr. Tyrrel, ”now you talk a little more like a Christian minister. But from the greater part of what has been a.s.serted, you are all of you such advocates for human reason and human learning as to give an air of paganism to your sentiments.”
”Surely,” said Mr. Stanley, ”it does not diminish the utility, though it abases the pride of learning, that Christianity did not come into the world by human discovery, or the disquisitions of reason, but by immediate revelation. Those who adopt your way of thinking, Mr. Tyrrel, should bear in mind that the work of G.o.d, in changing the heart, is not intended to supply the place of the human faculties. G.o.d expects, in his most highly favored servants, the diligent exercise of their natural powers; and if any human being has a stronger call for the exercise of wisdom and judgment than another, it is a religious clergyman.
Christianity does not supersede the use of natural gifts, but turns them into their proper channel.
”One distinction has often struck me. The enemy of mankind seizes on the soul through the medium of the pa.s.sions and senses: the divine friend of man addresses him through his rational powers--_the eyes of your understanding being enlightened_, says the Apostle.”
Here I ventured to observe, that the highest panegyric bestowed on one of the brightest luminaries of our church is, that his name is seldom mentioned without the epithet _judicious_ being prefixed to it. Yet does Hooker want fervor? Does Hooker want zeal? Does Hooker want courage in declaring the whole counsel of G.o.d?
”I hope,” said Sir John, ”we have now no clergymen to whom we may apply the biting sarcasm of Dr. South on some of the popular but illiterate preachers of the opposite party in his day, 'that there was all the confusion of Babel without the gift of tongues.'”
”And yet,” returned Mr. Stanley, ”that party produced some great scholars, and many eminently pious men. But look back to that day, and especially to the period a little antecedent to it, at those prodigies of erudition, the old bishops and other divines of our church. They were, perhaps, somewhat too profuse of their learning in their discourses, or rather they were so brimful, that they involuntarily overflowed. A juster taste, in our time, avoids that lavish display which then not only crowded the margin, but forced itself into every part of the body of the work. The display of erudition might be wrong, but one thing is clear, it proved they had it; and, as Dryden said, when he accused of having too much wit, 'after all, it is a good crime.'”
”We may justly,” said Dr. Barlow, ”in the refinement of modern taste, censure their prolixity, and ridicule their redundancies; we may smile at their divisions, which are numberless, and at their subdivisions, which are endless; we may allow that this labor for perspicuity sometimes produced perplexity. But let us confess they always went to the bottom of whatever they embarked in. They ransacked the stores of ancient learning, and the treasures of modern science, not to indulge their vanity by obtruding their acquirements, but to prove, to adorn, and to ill.u.s.trate the doctrine they delivered. How incredible must their industry have been, when the bare transcript of their voluminous folios seems alone sufficient to have occupied a long life?”