tion than ever. He seems to hold that point which I have never yet been able to find in any of our English Divines, and the want of which so mars my pleasure in reading them. His mind is at once rich and vigorous, and comprehensive and critical; while the eos is so pure and so lively all the while. He seems to me to love Truth really, and therefore Truth presented herself to him not negatively, as she does to many minds, who can see that the objections against her are unfounded, and therefore that she is to be received; but she filled him, as it were, heart and mind, imbuing him with her very self, so that all his being comprehended her fully and loved her ardently; and that seems to me to be true wisdom. It was just at the foot of the old Col di Tenda that I got hold of an English newspaper containing a charge of yours, in which the Chartists were noticed. I was glad to find that your mind had been working in that direction; and that you spoke strongly as to the vast importance of the subject. I would give anything to be able to organize a Society "for drawing public attention to the state of the laboring classes throughout the kingdom." Men do not think of the fearful state in which we are living; if they could once be brought to notice and to appreciate the evil, I should not even yet despair that the remedy may be found and applied; even though it is the solution of the most difficult problem ever yet proposed to man's wisdom, and the greatest triumph over selfishness ever yet required of his virtue. A society might give the alarm, and present the facts to the notice of the public. It was thus that Clarkson overthrew the Slave-Trade; and it is thus, I hope, that the system of Transportation has received its death-blow. I have desired Fellowes to send you one of the copies of a Lecture which I once showed you, about the Divisions of Knowledge, and which I have just printed, in the hope of getting it circulated among the various Mechanics' Institutes, where something of the kind is, I think, much wanted. Let me hear from you when you can. CCV. TO SIR T. S. PASLEY. Rugby, September 9, 1839. Our tour was most delightful, and put me into such a perfect state of health as I never can gain from anything but travelling abroad, where one can neither read nor write, nor receive letters; and therefore the mind is perfectly at rest, while the body is constantly enjoying air and exercise, light food, and early hours. ..... I never before saw so much of the Mediterranean, and the weather was so perfect that it never could have been more enjoyable. I thought of you, particularly when we were out in a boat in the midst of Toulon Harbor, and rowing under the stern of the Montebello, which seemed to me a very fine looking three-decker. We went over the Arsenal, which I thought very inferior to Portsmouth, but the magnificence of the harbor exceeds anything that I had ever seen,- how it would stand in your more experienced, as well as better judging eyes, I know not. Provence far surpassed my expectations; the Roman remains at Arles are magnificent; and the prisons in the Pope's Palace, at Avignon, were one of the most striking things I ever saw in my life. In the selfsame dungeon the roof was still black with the smoke of the Inquisition fires, in which men were tortured or burnt; and, as you looked down a trap-door into an apartment below, the walls were still marked with the blood of the victims whom Jourdan Coupe Tête threw down there into the Icehouse below in the famous massacre of 1791. It was very awful to see such traces of the two great opposite forms of all human wickedness, which I know not how to describe better than by calling them Priestcraft and Benthamism, or if you like, White and Red Jacobinism. I am still in want of a master, and I shall want another at Christmas, but I cannot hear of a man to suit me. We are also in almost equal distress for a pony for my wife ; and there, too, we want a rare union of qualities; that he should be very small, very quiet, very surefooted, and able to walk more than four miles an hour. If you hear of any such marvel of a pony in your neighborhood, I would thankfully be at the expense of its transit from the Isle of Man to Rugby; for to be without a pony for my wife interferes with our daily comfort more than almost any other external inconvenience could do. I was over at Birmingham twice during the meeting of the British Association, and James Marshall was there the whole week. Murchison convinced Greenough and De la Beche, on the spot, that they must recolor all their geological maps; for what were called the Gray Wackes of North Devon, he maintains to be equivalent to the coal-formation; and the limestones on which they rest are equivalent to the old Red Sandstone, which now is to be sandstone no more, seeing that it is often limestone, but is to be called the Devonian System. Lord Northampton, as Chairman, wound up the business on the last day in the Town Hall by a few Christian sentences, simply and feelingly put, to my very great satisfaction. * (In answer to a question on the Preface to the third volume of Sermons.) Rugby, September 22, 1839. It is always a real pleasure to me to keep up my intercourse with my old pupils, and to be made acquainted not only with what is happening to them outwardly, but much more with what is going on in their own minds; and in your case I Owe you especially any assistance which it may be in my power to render, as I appear to have unconsciously contributed to your present difficulty. If you were going into the Law, or to study Medicine, there would be a clear distinction between your professional reading and your general reading; between that reading which was designed to make you a good lawyer or physician, and that which was to make you a good and wise man. But it is the peculiar excellence of the Christian ministry, that there a man's professional reading and general reading coincide, and the very studies which would most tend to make him a good and wise man, do therefore of necessity tend to make him a good clergyman. Our merely professional reading appears to me to consist in little more than an acquaintance with such laws, or church regulations, as concern the discharge of our ministerial duties, in matters external and formal. But the great mass of our professional reading is not merely professional, but general; that is to say, if I had time at my command, and wished to follow the studies which would be most useful to me as a Christian, without reference to any one particular trade or calling, I should select, as nearly as might be, that very same course of study which to my mind would also be the best preparation for the work of the Christian ministry. That the knowledge of the Scriptures is the most essential point in our studies as men and Christians, is as clear to my mind as that it is also the most essential point in our studies as clergymen. The only question is, in what manner is this knowledge to be best obtained. Now, omitting to speak of the moral and spiritual means of obtaining it, such as prayer and a watchful life, about the paramount necessity of which there is no doubt whatever, our present question only regards the intellectual means of obtaining it, that is, the knowledge and the cultivation of our mental faculties, which may best serve to the end desired. Knowledge of the Scriptures seems to consist in two things, so essentially united, however, that I scarcely like to separate them even in thought; the one I will call the knowledge of the contents of the Scriptures in themselves; the other the knowledge of their application to us, and our own times and circumstances. Really and truly I believe that the one of these cannot exist in any perfection without the other. Of course we cannot apply the Scriptures properly without knowing them; and to know them merely as an ancient book without understanding how to apply them, appears to me to be ignorance rather than knowledge. But still in thought we can separate the two, and each also requires in some measure a different line of study. The intellectual means of acquiring a knowledge of the Scriptures in themselves are, I suppose, Philology, Antiquities, and Ancient History; but the means of acquiring the knowledge of their right application are far more complex in their character; and it is precisely here, as I think, that the common course of theological study is so exceedingly narrow, and therefore the mistakes committed in the application of the Scriptures, are, as it seems to me, so frequent and so mischievous. As one great example of what I mean, I will instance the questions, which are now so much agitated, of Church authority and Church government. It is just as impossible for a man to understand these questions without a knowledge of the great questions of law and government generally, as it is to understand any matter that is avowedly political; and therefore the Politics of Aristotle and similar works are to me of a very great and direct use every day of my life, wherever these questions are brought before me; and you know how often these questions are mooted, and with what vehemence men engage in them. Historical reading it appears that you are actually engaged in, but so much of History is written so ill, that it appears to me to be desirable to be well acquainted with the greatest historians, in order to learn what the defects of common History are, and how we should be able to supply them. It is a rare quality in any man to be able really to represent to himself the picture of another age and country; and much of History is so vague and poor that no lively images can be gathered from it. There is actually, so far as I know, no great ecclesiastical historian in any language. But the flatnesses and meagreness and unfairness of most of those who have written on this subject may not strike us, if we do not know what good History should be. And any one very great historian, such as Thucydides, or Tacitus, or Niebuhr, throws a light backward and forward upon all History; for any one age or country well brought before our minds teaches us what historical knowledge really is, and saves us from thinking that we have it when we have it not. I will not cross my writing, so I must continue my say in another sheet. The accidental division of my paper suits well with the real division of my subject. I have stated what appears to me to be the best means of acquiring a knowledge of the Scriptures, both in themselves, and in their application to ourselves. And it is this second part which calls for such a variety of miscellaneous knowledge; inasmuch as, in order to apply a rule properly, we must understand the nature and circumstances of the case to which it is to be applied, and how they differ from those of the case to which it was applied originally. Thus there are two states of the human race which we want to understand thoroughly; the state when the New Testament was written, and our own state. And our own state is so connected with, and dependent on the past, that in order to understand it thoroughly we must go backwards into past ages, and thus, in fact, we are obliged to go back till we connect our own time with the first century, and in many points with centuries yet more remote. You will say then, in another sense from what St. Paul said it, "Who is sufficient for these things?" and I answer, "No man; " but, notwithstanding, it is well to have a good model before us, although our imitation of it will fall far short of it. But you say, how does all this edify? And this is a matter which I think it is very desirable to understand clearly. If death were immediately before us, Cholera was in a man's parish, and numbers were dying daily, it is manifest that our duties, say that the our preparation for another life by conforming ourselves to God's will respecting |