THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW.

JANUARY, 1830.

No. C.

ART. I.—1. Lectures on the Philosophy of Modern History, delivered in the University of Dublin. By GEORGE Miller, D.D., M.R.I.A. 8 vols. 8vo. Dublin, 1816-28.

2. Mahomedanism Unveiled: an Inquiry, in which that ArchHeresy, its Diffusion and Continuance, are Examined on a New Principle, tending to confirm the Evidences, and aid the Propagation, of the Christian Faith. By the Rev. CHARLES FORSTER, B.D. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1829.

THERE is

HERE is a considerable portion of our species who have been long and creditably distinguished by the title of good sort of people.' There is also a corresponding branch of literature composed for the most part under their auspices, and known by the name of 'good books.' Now, both of these classes are proverbially secure against criticism. They are sacred not only by the purity of their intentions, but by the important office that they respectively perform. As concerns good sort of people, let any country town only consider the state to which it would be reduced, were it discovered some fine morning that this rather unappreciated part of its population had suddenly disappeared. As concerns their books, with some little variety in the substance, and with considerable distinction of letter-press and type, they furnish an appropriate, plain, and healthy food of easy intellectual digestion for the numerous members in whose service they are so assiduously prepared. The craving void of an unoccupied existence gets respectably filled up. The poor reader is preserved from the public-house, and the more wealthy student, male or female, kept awake till an hour of reasonable bedtime. A habit of something approaching to reflection is thus, in some measure, cultivated; and useful subjects are kept before the mind, on which

this habit, as it is forming, may exercise its unpractised powers. These books represent the Ballast of Literature. Though the ballast is not exactly that portion of a ship and of its equipments which most excites the impatient curiosity of a visitor, it is nevertheless a department just as necessary to the prosperity of the voyage, as the directing rudder or the towering mainsail.

Under cover of the Letters of Safe Conduct, so deservedly granted to writings of this description, a very different kind of book and person-of much greater pretension, but of much more doubtful character-has often been expected, and usually allowed to pass. Several people (in some cases individual students, in others almost a School) seem to have persuaded themselves that they have discovered a private key to God's government of the world. If excellence of intention were sufficient title to the above privilege of inviolable impunity, their claim may perhaps equally be made out. At least, we would not dispute it, notwithstanding some apparent pride of high imaginations,' belonging naturally enough to more aspiring talents, and more abundant learning-notwithstanding, also, the reckless confidence with which their theories dispose of the wholesale happiness of mankind, whether the question be of happiness temporal or eternal. But good intention is not all that is required in an instructor, especially when he undertakes to strike out new lights in most obscure, yet most important, investigations. Religious subjects, or secular subjects religiously discussed, cannot be safely left to the elaborate travesty of a learned masquerade, however perfect the good faith with which it may be put on. Were the spare talent accumulated in this country at present so excessive, that we could afford to risk a portion of it on hopeless speculations-the bubbles and South-Sea schemes of literary or religious zeal-still any striking waste of pains and ingenuity, is always matter of charitable regret, for the sake of the immediate parties implicated in an unprofitable adventure. But ingenuity in such cases is generally worse than wasted. The authors, it is true, themselves seem, on this occasion, to have little idea of the difficulty, and none of the danger, of their task. Many who might dress the Ark of Israel with gracious garlands, and serve to dance before it, may yet be very unfit champions to lead it into gratuitous battles of their own provoking, or to defend it by the prowess of their single arm. Good men are really very ill advised, who, in the present age, will keep straggling from the camp on guerilla expeditions, into mountain-passes where the enemy will assuredly cut them off. The first thing in reconnoitering the ground on which a good reasoner proposes to offer battle, is to ascertain its weak points, and at once abandon them. There is no end of substantial causes that have been sacrificed

through the opposite injudiciousness of partisans, both in attempting to include within their limits a wider space than their forces could defend, and by taking up positions which they could never rightly have been called upon to defend at all. Meantime, unsound arguments excite suspicion as much almost as unfair ones. What Paley says of pious frauds and the detection of them, is true, in the next degree, of pious fallacies: Christianity has suffered more injury from this cause, than from all other causes put together.' We have almost always found it to be the case with persons whom we have talked with, that they have been much less embarrassed by the logic of its enemies, than by the illogicalness and unreasonableness of its friends.

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Our thoughts have lately been driven forcibly into this channel. A few words will explain the circumstances under which we happened to select the particular case that is the subject of the present article, as an exemplification of our general remarks. Like every one else, we have been endeavouring to connect together the various causes that have conspired to bring about the actual condition of the Turkish government, and of the people who are unfortunate enough to live under it. Whilst we were proceeding to examine the probable future of the countries themselves, and the political consequences that might be gathering over other nations from this quarter, we observed that sundry of our countrymen had fallen upon a much shorter method. From whatever point a diplomatist may wish to contemplate the destinies of the Ottoman empire, the sons of the Prophets will have anticipated him. They are gone up the mountain to look into the east, and call down the cloud, which, however, in the present instance, was there before them, already bigger than their hand. Enthusiasts, who six centuries ago would have been seen taking up the cross against the Saracens, and following the lion-hearted Richard to the Holy-Land, have contented themselves to-day with the more prudent course of an apocalyptic divination, and mere polemical crusade. If it were the nature of fanaticism to take lessons from experience, the passion of abusing a solemn evidence of the Christian faith, into the prurient gratification of a disputatious and fanciful curiosity, would have been long ago shamed to silence. One of the most characteristic features of our religion-its Prophecies has been debased and distorted, till it has become almost a mask and a reproach. The trumpet which Angels would tremble to take up, is made a bauble and a newsman's horn in every hand. The Apostles were not cold in their graves before an intemperate misapplication of the prophetical language of our Saviour discredited, scandalized, and disturbed their infant church. Scarce a century has passed, from that time to the

present, but what has been disgraced by some similar appeal to the fears and credulity of mankind. The circle of error in each case has enclosed a greater or less space, in proportion as the public mind was liable to be acted on at the time by the panic of such alarms. The shock has varied, too, according as whether it was some Polypheme who threw a rock into the waters, or only an unlucky stripling amusing himself in making what are called ducks and drakes' of texts of Scripture on the surface. Sir Isaac Newton paid the penalty to human weakness on the subject of prophetical interpretations, to a degree that seems almost allied with the unfortunate eclipse of mind under which he suffered for a period. Yet nobody has more deprecated the unwarrantable presumption of the new sort of witchcraft which thus tampers with the dark sayings of God's word, and the secrets of futurity, as if God designed to make them prophets.' The ludicrous ill fortune that, wherever a mistake was possible, has attended these anticipations, is in itself their condemnation. Grave scholars, telling in this way the fortune of a kingdom, have made as little out of their materials as astrologers of the conjunction of the planets, or gipsies from the lines of the Sultan's hand. Charles the First is said to have consulted Lilly. He certainly did not get much by it. Our greatest speculators in prophecies were among our latest dabblers in astrology. If Mr Irving and Mr Varley were to be taken into the pay of government at present, and a Prophecy Department established at the Foreign Office, the success of the experiment would not long preserve them against the sceptical economy of Mr Hume. However, if there is any foundation for a tenth-part of the positiveness of their predictions, the experiment ought certainly to be made, both that the stars may not be found fighting against Sisera, nor Sisera fighting against the stars. An astrologer was formerly as necessary to a Court, as a piper to a Highland chieftain. The University of Oxford seems to have employed its soothsayer up to enlightened days. Walton, treating of the Wottons, as of a family that seemed to be beloved of God, who did speak to many of them in dreams,' mentions, among sundry instances, one short particular of Thomas Wotton, whose dreams did ' usually prove true, both in foretelling things to come, and in 'discovering things past.' His son, the celebrated Sir Henry Wotton, being at Oxford, when the University treasury was 'robbed by some townsmen and poor scholars, his father wrote him a letter out of Kent, dated three days before it happened, which threw such a light into this work of darkness, that the 'five guilty persons were presently discovered and apprehended, 'without putting the University to so much trouble as the casting of a figure.'