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ity, secure them at first a patient attention; but as the more offensive tenets are developed, the most fierce and violent passions are awakened. Scorn and hatred are seen working in the clouded brows and agitated countenances of the leaders if here and there one is pricked to the heart, it requires considerable moral courage to acknowledge his conviction; and the new teachers are either cast forth from the indignant assembly of their own people, liable to all the punishments which they are permitted to inflict, scourged and beaten; or, if they succeed in forming a party, they give rise to furious schism; and thus appear before the heathen with the dangerous notoriety of having caused a violent tumult, and broken the public peace by their turbulent and contentious harangues at all events, disclaimed by that very people on whose traditions they profess to build their doctrines, and to whose Scriptures they appeal in justification of their pretensions. They endure, they persevere, they continue to sustain the contest against Judaism and Paganism. It is still their deliberate, ostensible, and avowed object to overthrow all this vast system of idolatry; to tear up by the roots all ancient prejudices; to silence shrines, sanctified by the veneration of ages as oracular; to consign all those gorgeous temples to decay, and all those images to contempt; to wean the people from every barbarous and dissolute amusement." "But in one respect it is impossible now to conceive the extent, to which the apostles of the crucified Jesus shocked all the feelings of mankind. The public establishment of Christianity, the adoration of ages, the reverence of nations, has thrown around the cross of Christ an indelible and inalienable sanctity. No effort of the imagination can dissipate the illusion of dignity which has gathered round it; it has been so long dissevered from all its coarse and humiliating associations, that it cannot be cast back and desecrated into its state of opprobrium and contempt. To the most daring unbeliever among ourselves, it is the symbol, the absurd, and irrational, he may conceive, but still the ancient and venerable symbol, of a powerful and influential religion: what was it to the Jew and to the heathen? the basest, the most degrading punishment of the lowest criminal! the proverbial terror of the wretched slave! it was to them, what the most despicable and revolting instrument of public execution is to us. Yet to the cross of Christ, men turned from deities in which were embodied every attitude of strength, power, and dignity; in an incredibly short space of time multitudes gave up the splendour, the pride, and the power of paganism, to adore a Being who was thus humiliated beneath the meanest of mankind, who had become, according to the literal interpretation of the prophecy, a very scorn of men, and an outcast of the people."-MILMAN'S Bampton Lectures, Lect. vi p. 279.

[K] Part II. Chap. ii. § 4. p. 143.

me

"Such is our yoke and our burden! Let him, who has thought it too hard and too heavy to bear, be prepared to state it boldly when he shall appear side by side with the poor and mistaken Indian before the throne of God at the day of judgment. The poor heathen may come forward with his wounded limbs and weltering body, saying. I thought thee an austere master, delighting in the miseries of thy creatures, and I have accordingly brought thee the torn remnants of a body which I have tortured in thy service.' And the Christian will come forward and say, 'I knew that thou didst die to save from such sufferings and torments, and that thou only commandedst me to keep my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity, and I thought it too hard for me; and I have accordingly brought thee the refuse and sweepings of a body that has been corrupted and brutalized in the service of profligacy and drunkenness.— -even the body which thou didst declare should be the temple of thy Holy Spirit.' The poor Indian will, perhaps, show his hands, reeking with the blood of his children, saying. I thought this was the sacrifice with which God was well-pleased:' and you, the Christian, will come forward with blood upon thy hands also, I knew that thou gavest thy Son for my sacrifice, and commandedst me to lead my offspring in the way of everlasting life; but the command was too hard for me, to teach them thy statutes, and to set them my humble example: I have let them go the broad way to destruction, and their blood is upon my hand-and my heart-and my head.' The Indian will come forward, and say, Behold, I am come from the wood, the desert, and the wilderness, where I fled from the cheerful society of my fellowmortals, because I thought it was pleasing to thy sight.' And the Christian will come forward and say, 'Behold, I am come from my comfortable home and the communion of my brethren, which thou hast graciously permitted me to enjoy; but I thought it too hard to give them a share of those blessings which thou hast bestowed upon me; I thought it too hard to give them a portion of my time, my trouble, my fortune, or my interest; I thought it too hard to keep my tongue from cursing and reviling, my heart from hatred, and my hand from violence and revenge.' What will be the answer of the Judge to the poor Indian none can presume to say. That he was sadly mistaken in the means of salvation, and that what he had done could never purchase him everlasting life, is beyond a doubt; but yet the Judge may say, 'Come unto me, thou heavy-laden, and I will give thee the rest which thou couldst not purchase for thyself.' But, to the Christian, Thou, who hadst my easy yoke, and my light bur den; thou, for whom all was already purchased:'Thank God! it is not yet pronounced :-begone! and fly for thy life !"-WOLFE'S Sermons (Remains), Sermon X. pp. 371-373.

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"Suppose it were suddenly revealed to any one among you that

he, and he alone of all that walk upon the face of this earth, was destined to receive the penefit of his Redeemer's atonement, and that all the rest of mankind was lost-and lost to all eternity; it is hard to say what would be the first sensation excited in that man's mind by the intelligence. It is indeed probable it would be joy-to think that all his fears respecting his eternal destiny were now no more; that all the forebodings of the mind and misgivings of the heart-all the solemn stir which we feel rising within us whenever we look forward to a dark futurity,--to feel that all these had now subsided for ever, to know that he shall stand in the everlasting sunshine of the love of God! It is perhaps impossible that all this should not call forth an immediate feeling of delight; but if you wish the sensation to continue, you must go to the wilderness; you must beware how you come within sight of a human being, or within sound of a human voice; you must recollect that you are now alone upon the earth; or, if you want society, you had better look for it among the beasts of the field than among the ruined species to which you belong; unless indeed the Almighty, in pity to your desolation, should send his angels before the appointed time, that you might learn to forget in their society the outcast objects of your former sympathies. But to go abroad into human society,-to walk amongst Beings who are now no longer your fellow-creatures, to feel the charity of your common nature rising in your heart, and to have to crush it within you like a sin, to reach forth your hand to perform one of the common kindnesses of humanity, and to find it withered by the recollection, that however you may mitigate a present pang, the everlasting pang is irreversible; to turn away in despair from these children whom you have now come to bless and to save (we hope and trust both here and for ever!)—perhaps it would be too much for you; at all events, it would be hard to state a degree of exertion within the utmost range of human energy, or a degree of pain within the farthest limit of human endurance, to which you would not submit, that you might have one companion on your lonely way from this world to the mansions of happiness. But suppose, at that moment, that the angel who brought the first intelligence returns to tell you that there are Beings upon this earth who may yet be saved, that he was before mistaken, no matter how, perhaps he was your guardian angel, and darted from the throne of grace with the intelligence of your salvation without waiting to hear the fate of the rest of mankind, no matter how, but he comes to tell you that there are Beings upon the earth who are within the reach of your Redeemer's love, and of your own,-that some of them are now before you, and their everlasting destiny is placed in your hands; then, what would first occur to your mind?-privations,-dangers,-difficulties? you would say, 'Lord, what shall I do? Shall I traverse earth and sea, through misery and torment, that of those whom thou hast given me I may not lose one?'"-Ibid. Sermon XI. pp. 391-393.

but

No;

[L.] Part III. Chap. i. § 6, p. 191.

In Dr. Campbell's ingenious dissertation (Rhetoric, book ii. chap. 6.), "on the causes that nonsense often escapes being detected, both by the writer and the reader," he remarks (sect. 2.), that "there are particularly three sorts of writing, wherein we are liable to be imposed upon by words without meaning."

"The first is, where there is an exuberance of metaphor. Nothing is more certain than that this trope, when temperately and appositely used, serves to add light to the expression, and energy to the sentiment. On the contrary, when vaguely and intemperately used, nothing can serve more effectually to cloud the sense, where there is sense, and by consequence to conceal the defect, where there is no sense to show. And this is the case, not only where there is in the same sentence a mixture of discordant metaphors, but also where the metaphoric style is too long continued, and too far pursued. [Ut modicus autem atque opportunus translationis usus illustrat orationem ; ita frequens et obscurat et tædio complet; continuus vero in allegoriam et ænigmate exit. Quint. lib. viii. c. 6] The reason is obvious. In common speech the words are the immediate signs of the thought. But it is not so here; for when a person, instead of adopting metaphors that come naturally and opportunely in his way, rummages the whole world in quest of them, and piles them one upon another, when he cannot so properly be said to use metaphor, as to talk in metaphor, or rather when from metaphor he runs into allegory, and thence into enigma, his words are not the immediate signs of his thought; they are at best but the signs of the signs of his thought. His writing may then be called, what Spenser not unjustly styled his Fairy Queen, a perpetual allegory or dark conceit. Most readers will account it much to bestow a transient glance on the literal sense, which lies nearest, but will never think of that meaning more remote, which the figures themselves are intended to signify. It is no wonder then that this sense, for the discovery of which it is necessary to see through a double veil, should, where it is, more readily escape our observation, and that where it is wanting, we should not so quickly miss it."

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"There is, in respect of the two meanings, considerable variety to be found in the tropical style. In just allegory and similitude there is always a propriety, or, if you choose to call it, congruity, in the literal sense, as well as a distinct meaning or sentiment suggested, which is called the figurative sense. Examples of this are unnecessary. Again, where the figurative sense is unexceptionable there is sometimes an incongruity in the expression of the literal sense. This is always the case in mixed metaphor, a thing not unfrequent even in good writers. Thus, when Addison remarks that there is not a

single view of human nature, which is not sufficient to extinguish the seeds of pride,' he express a true sentiment somewhat incongruously; for the terms extinguish and seeds here metaphorically used, do not suit each other. In like manner, there is something incongruous in the mixture of tropes employed in the following passage from Lord Bolingbroke: Nothing less than the hearts of his people will content a patriot Prince, nor will he think his throne established, till it is established there. Yet the thought is excellent. But in neither of these examples does the incongruity of the expression hurt the perspicuity of the sentence. Sometimes, indeed, the literal meaning involves a direct absurdity. When this is the case, as in the quotation from The Principles of Painting given in the preceding chapter, it is natural for the reader to suppose that there must be something under it; for it is not easy to say how absurdly even just sentiments will sometimes be expressed. But when no such hidden sense can be discovered, what, in the first view conveyed to our minds a glaring absurdity, is rightly on reflection denominated nonsense. We are satisfied that De Piles neither thought, nor wanted his readers to think, that Rubens was really the original performer, and God the copier. This then was not his meaning. But what he actually thought and wanted them to think it is impossible to elicit from his words. His words then may justly be styled bold in respect of their literal import, but unmeaning in respect of the author's intention.

But

If ono

"It may be proper here to observe, that some are apt to confound the terms absurdity and nonsense as synonymous; which they manifestly are not. An absurdity in the strict acceptation, is a proposition either intuitively or demonstratively false. Of this kind are these Three and two make seven.' : 'All the angles of a triangle are greater than two right angles.' That the former is false we know by intuition; that the latter is so we are able to demonstrate. the term is further extended to denote a notorious falsehood. should affirm, that 'at the vernal equinox the sun rises in the north and sets in the south,' we should not hesitate to say, that he advances an absurdity; but still what he affirms has a meaning; insomuch, that on hearing the sentence we pronounce its falsity. Now nonsense is that whereof we cannot say either that it is true, or that it is false. Thus, when the Teutonic Theospher enounces, that all the voices of the celestial joyfulness, qualify, commix, and harmonize in the fire which was from eternity in the good quality,' I should think it equally impertinent to aver the falsity as the truth of this enunciation. For, though the words grammatically form a sentence, they exhibit to the understanding no judgment, and consequently admit neither assent nor dissent. In the former instances I say the meaning, or what they affirm is absurd; in the last instance I say there is no meaning, and therefore properly nothing is affirmed. In popular language, I own, the terms absurdity and nonsense are not so accurately distinguished. Absurd positions are sometimes called non

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