that revival of poetry, which the last generation has witnessed, there have been phenomena somewhat similar to those perceptible in the religion of the day. Some of the famous poets of the century, though reverting from unsound principles to sound ones, have marred in a greater or less degree an operation legitimate in the main and needful, by some imputed exaggeration of theory or practice. The great restorers of the art have themselves been more or less at variance upon its principles. The doctrine of Mr. Wordsworth respecting the dependence of poetry on actual nature, vividly and wonderfully as it is illustrated in his works, has appeared to Mr. Coleridge to require qualification; and has, whether justly or unjustly, retarded the extension of the wholesome and elevating influences of his poetry, and the acknowledgment of that debt of gratitude which he has laid upon his country and the world. But I quote from another source words full of genius and of wisdom, which bear on this point. "With the close of the last century came an era of reaction, an era of painful struggle, to bring our overcivilised condition of thought into union with the fresh productive spirit that brightened the morning of our literature. But repentance is unlike innocence: the laborious endeavour to restore has more complicated methods of action than the freedom of untainted nature.' 19. As however the religious change by which this * Review of Tennyson's Poems in the Englishman's Magazine. country has of late years been visited, has been gradual and mitigated in its progress, and softened by the characters and steady exertions of many impartial men, now propelling and now resisting, as either the accelerating or the inert force might appear to be in excess -so the evils with which it has been attended have been probably in a much greater degree negative than positive: if we are blind to certain wants in our condition, we are not exasperated against those who feel and expose them, nor so obstinately attached to those precise forms of religious teaching which may have been recently most popular, as obstinately to close the ear against the suggestion of any correction which may tend to bring them more into harmony with the full scope and spirit of the Gospel. 20. As Lazarus at his resurrection came forth bound in his grave clothes, so we may expect that at all periods of religious revival, upon the universal principles of human nature, those who are the providential instruments of the change will go forth to their work bearing with them some sign or relic of the state from which they have escaped; whether it be an adhesive remnant of former prejudices, or an exaggerated revulsion from them. They will mix with the work of God the frailties of man. They will naturally and laudably direct a special anxiety to those portions of Divine truth which they conceive to have most lain in neglect and desuetude; and this tendency will often run into excess, so that they will give to those, as it were, exhumed verities, a degree of weight and prominence beyond that, which they possess in the scripturally adjusted system of Christian doctrine. Upon the other hand, they will be apt to entertain a feeling which partakes, though unconsciously, of resentment against those portions of truth which have been enjoying an undue and exclusive attention; upon them will be visited the fault of those who have handled them amiss; as if an article monopolised were like a moral agent and responsible for the actions of the monopolist. There will be then a disposition, more or less controlled, to depreciate the received truths, or to confound them with errors to which at first sight they may have a resemblance: first to misapprehend them, and then to condemn them in virtue and through the effects of that misapprehension. 21. With these difficulties and detriments in respect of the things themselves, there will be others, perhaps more serious, in respect of the agents. For those engaged in the movement will have their besetting sins of precipitancy and inconsiderateness, perhaps of violence and vanity. And those who dread the movement from timidity, or from indifference to the vitality of religion, or from interest and selfishness, will bring all these vices to the work of resistance; while at the same time there will be engaged in that work allies of a very different character, particularly honesty and prudence, which must always feel a presumptive jealousy of sudden and extensive change. From the collision of these antagonist qualities will be raised a cloud, as from the tramp of charging cavalry, which involves in obscurity the objects of dispute; and the very uncertainties and misunderstandings, which teach temperate men the necessity of delay and investigation, do but the more keenly urge intemperate men to strike at haphazard, too often careless whom they may wound or what they may deface. Such has been in great measure the kind of controversy which has been in former years carried on, with national obstinacy, between parties in our Church. Notwithstanding the recognition of a common foundation, firstly in Scripture, and secondly, in the creeds and formularies which we all acknowledge as a basis for the interpretation of Scripture, we have seen writers discussing questions such as that of baptism, with apparently no view paramount to that of widening to the uttermost, by every unfavourable interpretation and under cover too often of great theological ignorance, the distance by which they were apparently separated. It is often under the guise of a regard for truth that this disposition insinuates itself into the heart. We persuade ourselves that we are only dragging error from its lair, when in fact we are creating it in order to condemn it; a process, that might indeed seem innocent if it were purely abstract, but here with the doctrine imputed, we involve in the charge a brother of like frailty with ourselves, capable of becoming by gentle usage a co-operating instrument, capable also of being exasperated into real and effective hostility. 22. Further, it is difficult for those who have been ardently employed in restoring parts of religion, to acquire, after long exercise in that function, the opposite mental habit of regarding it as a whole; of considering how particular portions are shaded and softened by the juxta-position of others. There is in religion something analogous to that which is termed effect in a picture: where so much of the final tone of colouring must be reserved until the completion of the parts, and then adjusted for each individual figure by a calculation of the complex result about to arise out of the entire combination. Now in Christianity, doctrine, and ordinance, and precept are most exactly blended; but it is easy for human inadvertence or prejudice to untie the threefold cord, and to behold them as incapable of just assortment, because they are seen apart, and not in that position of contiguity and intermixture which the Divine will assigned to them. How difficult is it for those, who would bring forward into light that one of the three which may have been overlooked or inadequately appreciated, to fix its position with a due and constant reference to the complexity of its relations, both to the being on whom it is intended to operate, and to the other portions of the scheme of which it is to form a part. 23. While, in these periods of religious transition, we must anticipate that controversies will arise; we have also to apprehend that they will be more and more embroiled by the flippant and inauspicious intervention of those, who animadvert upon the bitterness too often attending theological discussion, apparently with no other view than to dispose of the evil |