1849.] Prudential Considerations. 141 for then nothing new and great would ever be achieved. No new enterprise is prudent. There are enterprises that must originate from courage and high daring, a sagacity that goes before prudence, starts without its approbation, but only taking it along to regulate the details of the movement which it did not recommend. Prudence originates nothing, has no inspiration, never conceived anything great, and, if it had entire control, would have prevented the most important steps in the history of human progress. Prudence is very essential. It comprises the half of wisdom, but not the whole. It is fairly entitled to full one half of the empire of the world. But if it ruled alone, the race would have continued in imbecile infancy. It was not prudence that brought Columbus to the New World, or our fathers to Plymouth, or dictated the Declaration of Independence, or drew Washington from his safe and easy retirement; or, to take instances of a selfish and money-making kind, like that which we are discussing, it was not prudence that projected the first whaling voyage, or the first steamboat, or railroad, or factory. The prosperity of New England is the result of projects which prudent men universally discountenanced and shunned at first. Prudence comes in afterwards, and uses and continues what another spirit first achieved with risk, and made easy by sacrifices, and completed amid difficulty and doubt by energy and bold decision. The leaders in new enterprises are commonly the victims of their zeal and courage; but the world gains, and it is necessary that there should be such men, men in whom other qualities predominate over prudence. We cannot but deplore what seems the foolhardiness of many individuals engaging in this Californian adventure; persons who are not fit to go, who have no need to go, who sunder sacred ties and cast off sacred obligations by going, who have nothing to gain and every thing to lose. But as to the movement, in a general view of it, looking upon it as philosophical spectators, and measuring it on the large scale, we regard it as occurring necessarily, in the order of Providence, and according to important and fixed laws in the human mind; and we acquiesce in it. It is to open and settle the western side of the continent, construct harbours and cities on the Pacific shore, make roads across the wilderness, provide new fields for labor and commerce, and new homes for mankind. We anticipate great good from it. The disasters and failures which we expect to hear of as overtaking individuals and companies will not shake our faith in the legitimateness of the enterprise, as designed under God to carry forward the interests of humanity. We shall watch its progress with intense interest, and hopes not soon nor easily disheartened. California itself, we trust, is destined to become a powerful and well-ordered Christian state or empire. It will survive the bad auspices of its origin. Slavery, whether forbidden or not by law of Congress, will never exist there. The great number of intelligent, industrious, and moral citizens repairing thither from our Northern States, (and others as good, for aught we know, from other quarters,) will create a strong, and, we think, ultimately prevailing influence in favor of order, industry, and morality. As long as the gold lasts, the labors of agriculture and the useful arts, which are so much more healthful to the individual mind and to the body politic, and which are absolutely essential to the true prosperity of any state, will be neglected. But when the gold has been all gathered and dispersed, or, what is nearly the same in effect, when the mining of it has become, as it will, a regular pursuit, with a steady and moderate profit, then California, with the adjacent provinces, American or Mexican, which will share its fortunes, will flourish. There are better elements among these emigrants than is commonly supposed or acknowledged. While many are hurried to the mines by reckless folly, or feverish cupidity, or desperate fortunes, we are sure there must be thousands there of strong and well-principled men, whose labors are hallowed by indwelling thoughts of home-bound ties, and of future usefulness and respectability, by religious memories, moral purposes, and dear affections, such as redeem from the character of brutish drudgery so much of the toil of men in other and ordinary pursuits. The better elements will predominate in the end, and the Pacific side. of the continent, however for a time it may be, to a fearful extent, the scene of suffering, anarchy, and the worst passions of men, we believe, will eventually match and respond to the Atlantic side in all the desirable traits and possessions of a progressive civilization. G. P. with a Memoir of his Life, by JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M. A., Rector of Herstmonceux. London: Parker. 1848. Two vols. 12mo. pp. ccxxxii., 504, 649. Ir is only as a poet and an essayist that Sterling has been known in this country. Very few of his readers here have been aware that he sustained for a short period the office of a curate in the English Church. There is but little of personal interest in his life, apart from his position in that strife and struggle of opinions which has within the last few years quickened the proverbial apathy of the English ecclesiastical establishment. Sterling died in 1844, in his thirty-ninth year. He was always an invalid, and through much of his life a wanderer from friends and wife and children for health. In his early years he was much under the influence of Coleridge, and when at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was a pupil of his biographer, whose intimacy with him then commenced, and ripened in following years into respect and affectionate friendship. To this friendship, hardly qualified by the adoption of opinions on the part of Sterling which were offensive and highly objectionable to Archdeacon Hare, we are to ascribe the assumption by the latter of the office of editor and biographer. Sterling's religious opinions, perhaps, never accorded with those which are required in the standards of the English Church. He had from the beginning strong liberal tendencies, which had amounted almost to skepticism,-yielded to, and apparently, though not actually, surmounted, when Archdeacon Hare, who was not then fully informed of the state of his friend's mind, invited him while in Germany to become his curate at Herstmonceux. He was accordingly ordained Deacon in June, 1834; and as his consumptive tendencies obliged him to resign his ministry after six months, he never received priest's orders. Between roaming for health, and spending intervals of partial restoration in literary composition, his few remaining years were passed in excitements and disappointments, the death of his wife, a year before his own, leaving him with the care of five children. The short period of his ministerial life was happy and useful; the poor and the young were the especial objects of his love. Mr. Hare says, that, when he surrendered the practical duties of his profession, and ceased to apply the doctrines and lessons of the Gospel directly to the hearts of human beings, he again devoted himself to those speculations which had once before embarrassed and clouded his faith. Coleridge, Arnold, Bunsen, Carlyle, Hare, Blanco White, Maurice, and his brother-in-law, Sterling, are the representatives of a state of opinion in England, the results of which are yet to be developed. Strangely diverse in all other points of view as these men have been or may be, there is between them a mental likeness, founded in a similarity of intellectual experience, in a common dissatisfaction with old formulas of inspiration, and in an unsettled state of opinion which looks only to some great religious movement in the future for relief. As to the extent of Sterling's speculative unbelief in historical Christianity, his biographer does not distinctly inform us. It is evident, however, that speculation and philosophy, so called, involved him in that painful and restless struggle between faith and doubt which is the inevitable lot of those who hesitate whether to accord a fuller inspiration to their own intuitions or to the revelation of God by Jesus Christ. The Memoir in these volumes is largely composed of Sterling's own letters, and these are of deep interest, as they disclose a pure and loving heart, and impress us with the evident excellences and virtues and natural talents of the writer. We can well conceive that Sterling's friends must have entertained for him an ardent attachment and a most loving regard. From his dying couch, just before he expired, he wrote and gave to his sister the two following stanzas. "Could we but hear all nature's voice, From glowworm up to sun, 'T would speak with one concordant sound, - "But hark, a sadder, mightier prayer From all men's hearts that live, Thy will be done in earth and heaven, The prose writings of Sterling, gathered principally from the papers and magazines to which he contributed, are printed in these volumes. They have not the charm and vigor of his letters, and often show a straining after conceit, and an exaggerated and unhealthy individualism. As might have been expected, Archdeacon Hare has drawn upon himself severe censure for this labor of friendship. His own heresies and his previously equivocal position in the conflict of opinions, have furnished material for an assault, an occasion for which has been readily seized upon in his editing of these volumes. The twentieth number of "The English Review," last December, attacked him for writing the life 1849.] Notices of Recent Publications. 145 and for editing the writings of "an infidel." He replied with severity, in a pamphlet entitled "Thou shalt not bear False Witness against thy Neighbour," to which the succeeding number of the Review makes a rejoinder. The Soul, her Sorrows and her Aspirations. An Essay towards the Natural History of the Soul, as the true Basis of Theology. By FRANCIS W. NEWMAN, formerly Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. London: John Chapman. 1849. 12mo. pp. 222. In relation to the professed and main design of the writer, we regard this work on the philosophy of religion as a valuable contribution to theology. It is the production of a clear, discriminating, independent mind, expressing itself without the slightest reserve. The author has given his thoughts on six topics, The Sense of the Infinite without us; The Sense of Sin; The Sense of Personal Relation to God; Spiritual Progress; Hopes concerning a Future Life; and Prospects of Christianity. They are thoughts which will be interesting and profitable to every one who is in the habit of speculating upon the subject of religion. The general character of the author's opinions may be briefly included in the phrase, spiritual and experimental deism. He is earnest in opposition to pantheism and pantheistic tendencies. We are sorry to add, that, while his views on most of the subjects on which he treats harmonize with those of Christ, he is strongly opposed to Christianity as a religion of authority. For faith in the future life, resting on the declarations of the Son of God, he would substitute aspirations and hopes, which he acknowledges are all that, on his views of the sources of religious faith, he can attain. He even regards the common view of Christianity as resting on authority, even the authority of Christ, as one of the greatest obstacles to its prevalence and power in the world. Religion, he thinks, can never resume her pristine vigor until she appeals only to the soul. But he has not shown, or attempted to show, that the great lights of the Church, the most spiritual and experimental teachers of Christianity, who, in successive ages, have relied on Christ as imparting authority to their hopes and aspirations, have been less earnest or less successful in appealing to the soul, or in awakening and strengthening the religious feelings of our nature, than those few in modern times who deny any peculiar authority to Christ. We regard the last two parts of the book, in which he speaks of the future life, and of the prospects of Christianity and the causes of infidelity, as unsatisfactory, one-sided, and in many respects erroneous. At the same time, we recommend to every clergyman to read VOL. XLVII.-4TH S. VOL. XII. NO. I. 13 |