Chapter XVI · Summary and Estimate of Prose Writings.

In attempting any estimate of the prose writings of Watts we give the first place to his educational works. And without descending to adulation it may be fairly questioned whether any one individual in English literature has effected so much and such various work for the cause of education as Isaac Watts. As we have seen, he gave a system of logic to the universities, a very simple system, but it broke up the old trammels and chains of mere verbal logic, and taught students to look after, and how to look at things. Johnson says: “Of his philosophical pieces his ‘Logic’ has been received into the universities, and therefore wants no private recommendation. If he owes part of it to Le Clerc, it must be considered that no man who undertakes merely to methodize or illustrate a system pretends to be its author. Few books,” continues Johnson, “have been perused by me with greater pleasure than his ‘Improvement of the Mind,’ of which the radical principles may indeed be found in Locke’s ‘Conduct of the Understanding,’ but they are so expanded and magnified by Watts as to confer upon him the merit of a work in the highest degree useful and pleasing. Whoever has the care of instructing others may be charged with deficiency in his duty if this book is not recommended.” And in another paragraph of his memoir Johnson says: “For children he condescended to lay aside the scholar, the philosopher, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion and systems of instruction adapted to their wants and capacities from the dawn of reason through its gradations of advance in the morning of life. Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action will look with veneration on the writer who is at one time combating Locke, and in another making a catechism for children in their fourth year; a voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest lesson that humility can teach.”

There is, indeed, scarcely a department of knowledge, however simple, to which he did not descend; there is scarcely a region of thought, however subtle, through which he did not familiarly move. We have a volume on the “Art of Reading, Writing, and Pronouncing English,” this is for the very youngest students; and for the same age we have his First and Second Catechisms, and his “Divine and Moral Songs;” we have his work on “Astronomy, Geography, and the Use of the Globes,” and the “Compendium of the Assembly’s Catechism, with Proofs,” and his most charming and rememberable “Catechism of Scripture History,” a large and yet most compendious volume: and thus we reach the period of life when he prepares the mind for its graver studies and more serious exploits.

The “Logic” is easy and delightful reading, and yet sets in order, disciplines, marshals, and reviews mental materials so admirably that it may be read with great profit as well as pleasure. When Lord Barrington told Watts that he had a purpose to read it through once every year, he said no extravagant thing. It brings the mind back to its simplicity; it is not, and does not profess to be, a science of mind or analysis of method, or the laws of thought, but it is a treatise on logic, understanding by that term not so much the pushing inquiry into unexplored domains and fields, as the setting forth the grammar of thought, the principles of numeration, by which a knowledge of the contents of the mind may be obtained, which is surely the true idea of logic. The affluence of illustrations and references is very great, these occur easily and rapidly, they are gathered up as a reaper gathers up a sheaf. In its method it reminds us somewhat of Bacon’s “Novum Organum,” for in every chapter, and every discrimination, illustration, and distinction, occur instances unfolding the intention of the author, and we venture to think that no logic has appeared since so well calculated to make a clear and honest mind. The characteristics of the “Logic” of Watts are very admirably summed up by Tissot, of Dijon, in his preface to a translation published in Paris, 1848: “II y a aussi plus de méthode et de clarté peut-être dans la logique de Watts que dans celle d’Arnaud. Le bon sens Anglais, le sens des affaires, celui de la vie pratique, s’y révèle à un très haut degré, tandis que le sens spéculatif d’un théologien passablement scolastique encore est plus sensible dans l’Art de Penser. Dr. Watts a su être complet; sans être excessif, il a touché très convenablement tout ce qui devait l’être, et s’est toujours arrêté au point précis où plus de profondeur nuit a la clarté.”[47]

As the “Logic” is a methodical and orderly arrangement of those principles which give conduct to the understanding, as we have called it a grammar rather than an etymology of the laws of thought, a setting forth of their necessary conditions of thinking, rather than an inquiry into their first principles, so his “Improvement of the Mind” is an advance in the education of the character. The “Logic” is a code of principles, the “Improvement of the Mind” the illustration of those principles in their practice and action. No book can be better fitted to strengthen and direct the mind in the first years of mind-life. Is it ever read now? Is there an edition of it in circulation now? Are there many youths who would have patience to read it now? And yet no work has taken its place. It also, like the “Logic,” is fertile in illustrations of all that the author desires to convey; every means by which the mind can be enlarged or strengthened is dwelt upon; here there seems to be no unnecessary diffuseness, but a compact presentation. The style is apothegmatical, and rather colloquial than rhetorical, and it leaves upon the mind of the reader the impression of a large world of wealth in the mind of the author of which its pages are the mere fragments and indications. There is a wisdom which rules men’s lives and acts in their minds unconsciously, and ages and times vary in the method pursued for the attainment of knowledge. Perhaps, in the times in which we live the method is very much out of sight, and men become wise in spite of themselves, the faculties of character are sharpened and made intense by friction. It may also be said that character is not so much the result of certain rules laid down for practice, as the inevitable pressure of certain conditions from which it cannot well escape; life educates men more than books, and the sharp collision of society and its rough usages more than rules derived from writers. All this is true; but still some men continue to preach, and others continue to hear, it is to be supposed under the impression that the preaching and the hearing are not altogether in vain; and it is a very desirable thing frequently to draw out into the light certain principles, to give to minds, so to speak, a pictorial resemblance of the idea.

It is so in the “Improvement of the Mind,” the very subjects are suggestive: general rules to obtain knowledge,—the five methods of improvement compared—rules relating to observation—books and reading—judgment of books—living instruction by teachers—learning a language—of knowing the sense of writers and speakers—conversation—of disputes in general—the Socratical way of disputation—forensic disputes—academic or scholastic disputes—study or meditation—of fixing the attention—of enlarging the capacity of the mind—of improving the memory—of determining questions—of inquiring into causes and effects—of the sciences and their use. Then follows the second part, which was posthumous; hitherto the mind has been supposed to be attaining, now it is itself communicating, and here are discussions on methods of teaching and reading lectures—of an instructive style—of convincing of truth or delivering from error—of the use and abuse of authority—of managing the prejudices of men—of instruction by preaching—of writing books for the public, etc. etc. And beneath all these subjects is spread out a mass of wise and useful observations, the result, the reader thinks, of a life of earnest and careful study. A wise and candid judgment pervades every page. A confidence in the writer as in one who is not writing merely, but who is giving to the reader a portion of himself, grows in the mind. Watts was himself an exceedingly careful student. We have seen how his practice was to condense or to amplify the volumes or the pages he himself read. He recommended this plan to be followed with the nobler pieces of composition, and such as it seemed desirable to make the heirlooms of the mind.

We have now lying before us the “Ecclesiastics” of John Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester. The volume bears every internal evidence of being the property of Dr. Watts: it is interleaved, and in addition to the varied and singular learning of the book itself, in the handwriting of the Doctor there is a perfect storehouse of references, exhibiting the amazing world of knowledge over which his mind travelled; and not merely references, but frequently some condensed expression of sentiment and opinion. We ought to refer to this very valuable little manuscript volume again. It often seems surprising that volumes such as these have fallen into such neglect; but they only share the fate of multitudes of others in various departments equally worthy. The number of those who gaze upon the true regalia of literature is very small; our times delight in startling contrasts, antitheses and paradoxes, and illustrations frequently rather remarkable for their brilliancy than for their solid and abiding persuasiveness. The literature of every time has its vices and its virtues; writers even exercising a far stronger fascination and spell over their day than Watts are very seldom referred to now, they are names and little more. They are like extinct creations of other times, a kind of dodo, a being very near to our own day, but yet only known by a specimen preserved in a museum. Thus probably the two works to which we have referred will have few more readers. Yet safer and wiser charts for travelling the seas of knowledge were never prepared, and while they breathe a fine mental independence, a freshness wafted from undiscovered realms, they are eminently free from all that rashness and audacity of speculation which some have chosen to regard as a pursuit of knowledge, or as adding to the spoils of the understanding. He kept his students within the bounds of the knowable and provable, and if he trampled upon the ridiculous logic which had for years held the mind of Europe in chains, by the fetters of words which had no kind of sense either in the heavens or the earth, and resolutely determining that words could only be valuable when they were the real signs of things, and things of which something could be known; on the other hand, he gave no encouragement to licentiousness of thought, which is as dangerous to the well-being of the intelligence as the servility of opinion. So that, on the whole, whatever advances and attainments we have made since, we may believe that for the discipline and tutelage of the young, a better finger-post could scarcely be set up upon the highways of knowledge than Watts’ “Logic;” a better and more living guide a young man can scarcely have through the cities of instruction than his “Improvement of the Mind.”

Among the pieces of our author which are least known are the essays variously published under the title of “Reliquiæ Juveniles; Miscellaneous Thoughts in Prose and Verse, on Natural, Moral, and Divine Subjects, written chiefly in younger years.” These were published in 1734, and dedicated to the Countess of Hertford. A similar volume is the “Remnants of Time Employed in Prose and Verse; or, Short Essays and Composures on Various Subjects.” All of these are very pleasing essays, in which the writer gives a more than ordinary rein to his fancy: the pieces are in prose and verse, and they display a considerable amount of humour; the subjects are very various, and display the purely literary excursions of the author’s mind. The reader will be so far interested as to enjoy some few selections. To dwell at length upon the characteristics of the essays, or to indulge in any lengthy citation, would be like writing a dissertation upon Johnson’s “Rambler,” or Addison’s “Spectator;” indeed, there is very much of the Christian Rambler and the Christian Spectator in these papers: brief essays on manners, on certain vices or defects of character, conveyed after the usage of the time beneath names sheltered under a Greek or Latin etymology; sometimes a graceful meditation upon a text of Scripture, and sometimes a poem. We have ourselves found these essays always fresh and interesting, possessing much of the spirit and vivacity and philosophical meditativeness of Cowley, with a perpetual suffusion of Christian sentiment and doctrine, and the whole exhibiting the vigilance of the author’s eye, and the active usefulness of his mind.

THE SKELETON.

“Young Tramarinus was just returned from his travels abroad, when he invited his uncle to his lodgings on a Saturday noon. His uncle was a substantial trader in the City, a man of sincere goodness, and of no contemptible understanding; Crato was his name. The nephew first entertained him with learned talk of his travels. The conversation happening to fall upon anatomy, and speaking of the hand, he mentioned the carpus and the metacarpus, the joining of the bones by many hard names, and the periosteum which covered them, together with other Greek words, which Crato had never heard of. Then he showed him a few curiosities he had collected; but anatomy being the subject of their chief discourse, he dwelt much upon the skeletons of a hare and a partridge. ‘Observe, sir,’ said he, ‘how firm the joints! how nicely the parts are fitted to each other! how proper this limb for flight, and that for running; and how wonderful the whole composition!’ Crato took due notice of the most considerable parts of those animals, and observed the chief remarks his nephew made; but being detained there two hours without a dinner, assuming a pleasant air, he said, ‘I wish these rarities had flesh upon them, for I begin to be hungry, nephew, and you entertain me with nothing but bones.’ Then he carried home his nephew to dinner with him, and dismissed the jest.

“The next morning his kinsman Tramarinus desired him to hear a sermon at such a church, ‘For I am informed,’ said he, ‘the preacher will be my old schoolmaster.’ It was Agrotes, a country minister, who was to fulfil the service of the day; an honest, a pious, and a useful man, who fed his own people weekly with Divine food, composed his sermons with a mixture of the instructive and the pathetic, and delivered them with no improper elocution. Where any difficulty appeared in the text or the subject, he usually explained it in a very natural and easy manner, to the understanding of all his parishioners. He paraphrased on the most affecting parts largely, that he might strike the conscience of every hearer, and had been the happy means of the salvation of many; but he thought thus with himself, ‘When I preach at London I have hearers of a wiser rank, I must feed them with learning and substantial sense, and must have my discourse set thick with distinct sentences and new matter.’ He contrived, therefore, to abridge his composures, and to throw four of his country sermons together to make up one for the City, and yet he could not forbear to add a little Greek in the beginning. He told the auditors how the text was to be explained; he set forth the analysis of the words in order, showed the hoti and the dioti—that is, that it was so, and why it was so—with much learned criticism—all of which he wisely left out in the country; then he pronounced the doctrine distinctly, and filled up the rest of the hour with the mere rehearsal of the general and special heads; but he omitted all the amplification which made his performances in the country so clear and so intelligible, so warm and affecting. In short, it was the mere joints and carcase of a long composure, and contained above forty branches in it. The hearers had no time to consider or reflect on the good things which were spoken, or apply them to their own consciences; the preacher hurried their attention so fast onward to new matters that they could make no use of anything he said while he spoke it, nor had they a moment for reflection, in order to fix it in their memories and improve by it at home.

“The young gentleman was somewhat out of countenance when the sermon was done, for he missed all that life and spirit, that pathetic amplification, which impressed his conscience when he was but a school-boy. However, he put the best face upon it, and began to commend the performance. ‘Was it not,’ said he, ‘sir, a substantial discourse? How well connected all the reasons! How strong all the inferences, and what a variety and number of them!’ ‘It is true,’ said the uncle, ‘but yet methinks I want food here, and I find nothing but bones again. I could not have thought, nephew, you would have treated me two days together just alike; yesterday at home, and to-day at church, the first course was Greek, and all the rest mere skeleton.’”

GOD IN VEGETATION.

“Let us first consider this as it relates to the vegetable part of the creation. What a profusion of beauty and fragrancy, of shapes and colours, of smells and tastes, is scattered among the herbs and flowers of the ground, among the shrubs, the trees, and the fruits of the field! Colouring in its original glory and perfection triumphs here; red, yellow, green, blue, purple, with vastly more diversities than the rainbow ever knew, or the prism can represent, are distributed among the flowers and the blossoms. And what variety of tastes, both original and compounded, of sweet, bitter, sharp, with a thousand nameless flavours, are found among the herbs of the garden! What an amazing difference of shapes and sizes appears among the trees of the field and forest in their branches and their leaves! and what a luxurious and elegant distinction in their several fruits! How very numerous are their distinct properties in their uses in human life! And yet these two common elements, earth and water, are the only materials out of which they are all composed, from the beginning to the end of nature and time. Let the gardener dress for himself one field of fresh earth, and make it as uniform as he can; then let him plant therein all the varieties of the vegetable world, in their roots or in their seeds, as he shall think most proper; yet out of this common earth, under the droppings of common water from heaven, every one of these plants shall be nourished, and grow up in their proper forms; all the infinity, diversity of shapes and sizes, colours, tastes, and smells, which constitute and adorn the vegetable world, would the climate permit, might be produced out of the same clods. What rich and surprising wisdom appears in that Almighty Operator, who out of the same matter shall perfume the bosom of the rose, and give the garlic its offensive and nauseous powers; who from the same spot of ground shall raise the liquorice and the wormwood, and dress the cheek of the tulip in all its glowing beauties! What a surprise, to see the same field furnish the pomegranate and the orange tree, with their juicy fruit, and the stacks of corn with their dry and husky grains; to observe the oak raised from a little acorn into its stately growth and solid timber; and that pillars for the support of future temples and palaces should spring out of the same bed of earth that sent up the vine with such soft and feeble limbs as are unable to support themselves! What a natural kind of prodigy it is, that chilling and burning vegetables should arise out of the same spot; that the fever and frenzy should start up from the same bed where the palsy and the lethargy lie dormant in their seeds! Is it not exceeding strange that healthful and poisonous juices should rise up, in their proper plants, out of the same common glebe, and that life and death should grow and thrive within an inch of each other? What wondrous and inimitable skill must be attributed to that Supreme Power, that First Cause, who can so infinitely diversify effects, where the servile second cause is so uniform and always the same! It is not for me in this place to enter into a long detail of philosophy, and show how the minute fibres and tubes of the different seeds and roots of vegetables take hold of, attract, and receive the little particles of earth and water proper for their own growth; how they form them at first into their own shapes, sending them up aspiring above ground by degrees, and mould them so as frame the stalks, the branches, the leaves, and the buds of every flower, herb, and tree. But I presume the world is too weary of substantial forms, and plastic powers, and names without ideas, to be persuaded that these mere creatures of fancy should ever be the operators in this wondrous work. It is much more honourable to attribute all to the design and long forethought of God the Creator, who formed the first vegetables in such a manner, and appointed their little parts to ferment under the warm sunbeams, according to such established laws of motion as to mould the atoms of earth and water which were near them in their own figure, to make them grow up into trunk and branches, which every night should harden into firmness and stability; and, again, to mould new atoms of the same element into leaves and bloom, fruit and seed, which last, being dropped into the earth, should produce new plants of the same likeness to the end of the world.”

FOOD.

“If the food of which one single animal partakes be never so various and different, yet the same laws of motion which God has ordained in the animal world, convert them all to the same purposes of nourishment for that creature. Behold the little bee gathering its honey from a thousand flowers, and laying up the precious store for its winter food. Mark how the crow preys upon a carcase, anon it crops a cherry from the tree; and both are changed into the flesh and feathers of a crow. Observe the kine in the meadows feeding on a hundred varieties of herbs and flowers, yet all the different parts of their bodies are nourished thereby in a proper manner: every flower in the field is made use of to increase the flesh of the heifer, and to make beef for men; and out of all these varieties there is a noble milky juice flowing to the udder, which provides nourishment for young children. So near akin is man, the lord of the creation, in respect of his body, to the brutes that are his slaves, that the very same food will compose the flesh of both of them, and make them grow up to their appointed stature. This is evident beyond doubt in daily and everlasting experiments. The same bread-corn which we eat at our tables will give rich support to sparrows and pigeons, to the turkey and the duck, and all the fowls of the yard: the mouse steals it and feeds on it in its dark retirement; while the hog in the sty, and the horse in the manger, would be glad to partake. When the poor cottager has nursed up a couple of geese, the fox seizes one of them for the support of her cubs, and perhaps the table of the landlord is furnished with the other to regale his friends. Nor is it an uncommon thing to see the favourite lap-dog fed out of the same bowl of milk which is prepared for the heir of a wealthy family, but which nature had originally designed to nourish a calf. The same milky material will make calves, lap-dogs, and human bodies.”

CHRIST AS A SUN.

“I cannot deny myself, in this place, the pleasure of publishing to the world a very beautiful resemblance, the first hints and notices whereof I received formerly in conversation from my reverend and worthy friend Mr. Robert Bragge, whereby the person of Christ as God-man in His exalted state may be happily represented. The sun in the heavens is the most glorious of all visible beings: his sovereign influence has a most astonishing extent through all the planetary globes, and bestows light and heat upon all of them. It is the sun that gives life and motion to all the infinite varieties of the animal world in the earth, air, and water. It draws out the vegetable juices from the earth, and covers the surface of it with trees, herbs, and flowers. It is the sun that gives beauty and colour to all the millions of bodies round the globe; by its pervading power perhaps it forms minerals and metals under the earth. Its happy effects are innumerable; they reach certainly to everything that has life and motion, or that gives life, support, or pleasure to mankind. Now suppose God should create a most illustrious spirit, and unite it to the body of the sun, as a human soul is united to a human body: suppose this spirit had a perceptive power capacious enough to become conscious of every sunbeam, and all the influences and effects of this vast shining globe, both in its light, heat, and motion, even to the remotest region; and suppose at the same time it was able, by an act of its will, to send out or withhold every sunbeam as it pleased, and thereby to give light and darkness, life and death, in a sovereign manner, to all the animal inhabitants of this our earth, or even of all the planetary worlds. Such may be the ‘glorified human soul of our blessed Redeemer united to His glorified body;’ and perhaps His knowledge and His power may be as extensive as this similitude represents, especially when we consider this soul and body as personally united to the Divine nature, and as one with God. Now this noble thought may be supported by such considerations as these. As our souls are conscious of the light, shape, motions, etc., of such distant bodies as the planet Saturn or the fixed stars, because our eyes receive rays from thence; so may not a human soul united to a body as easily be supposed to have a consciousness of anything, wheresoever it can send out rays or emit either fluids or atoms from its own body? May not the sun, for instance, if a soul were united to it, become thereby so glorious a complex being, as to send out every ray with knowledge, and have a consciousness of everything wheresoever it sends its direct or reflected rays? And may not the human soul of our Lord Jesus Christ have a consciousness of everything wheresoever it can send direct or reflected rays from His own shining and glorified body? To add yet to the wonder, we may suppose that these rays may be subtle as magnetic beams, which penetrate brass and stone as easily as light doth glass; and at the same time they may be as swift as light, which reaches the most amazing distance of several millions of miles in a minute. By this means, since the light of the sun pervades all secret chambers in our hemisphere at once, and fills all places with direct and reflected beams, if consciousness belonged to all those beams, what a sort of omniscient being would the sun be! I mean omniscient in its own sphere. And why may not the human soul and body of our glorified Saviour be thus furnished with such an amazing extent of knowledge and power, and yet not be truly infinite? Let us dwell a little longer upon these delightful contemplations. If a soul had but a full knowledge and command of all the atoms of one solid foot of matter, which according to modern philosophy is infinitely divisible, what strange and astonishing influences would it have over this world of ours? What confusions might it raise in distant nations, sending pestilential streams into a thousand bodies, and destroying armies at once? And it might scatter benign or healing and vital influences to as large a circumference. If our blessed Lord, in the days of His humiliation, could send virtue out of Him to heal a poor diseased woman, who touched the hem of His garment with a finger, who knows what healing atoms, or what killing influences, He may send from His dwelling in glory to the remotest distances of our world, to execute His Father’s counsels of judgment or mercy? It is not impossible, so far as I can judge, that the soul of Christ in its glorified state may have as much command over our heavens and our earth, and all things contained in them, as our souls in the present state have over our own limbs and muscles to move them at pleasure. Let us remember that it is now found out, and agreed in the new philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton, that the distances are prodigious to which the powerful influence of the sun reaches in the centre of our planetary system. It is the sun who holds and restrains all the planets in their several orbits, and keeps in those vast bodies of Jupiter and Saturn in their constant revolutions—one at the distance of 424 millions, and the other at the distance of 777 millions of miles—besides all the other influences it has upon everything that may live and grow in those planetary worlds. It is the sun who reduces the long wanderings of the comets back again near to himself from distances more immensely great than those of Saturn and Jupiter. And why may not the human nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, both in soul and body, have a dominion given Him by the Father larger than the sun in the firmament? Why may not the Son of God be endued with an immediate consciousness and agency to a far greater distance? Thus if we conceive of the human soul of Christ, either in the amazing extent of its own native powers or in the additional acquirements of a glorified state, we see reason to believe that its capacities are far above our old usual conceptions, and may be raised and exalted to a degree of knowledge, power, and glory suitable and equal to His operations and offices, so far as they are attributed to His human nature in the word of God.”

APPARENT FOLLY REAL WISDOM.

“This very man, this Gelotes, a few days ago, was carried by his neighbour Typiger, to see a gentleman of his acquaintance; they found him standing at the window of his chamber, moving and turning round a glass prism, near a round hole which he had made in the window-shutter, and casting all the colours of the rainbow upon the wall of the room. They were unwilling to disturb him, though he amused himself at this rate for half an hour together, merely to please and entertain his eyesight, as Gelotes imagined, with the brightness and the strength of the reds and the blues, the greens and the purples, in many shifting forms of situation, while several little implements lay about him, of white paper and shreds of coloured silk, pieces of tin with holes in them, spectacles and burning-glasses. When the gentleman at last spied his company, he came down and entertained them agreeably enough upon other subjects, and dismissed them. At another time, Gelotes beheld the same gentleman blowing up large bubbles with a tobacco-pipe out of a bowl of water well impregnated with soap, which is a common diversion of boys. As the bubbles rose, he marked the little changeable colours on the surface of them with great attention, till they broke and vanished into air and water. He seemed to be very grave and solemn in this sort of recreation, and now and then smiled to see the little appearances and disappearances of colours, as the bubbles grew thinner towards the top, while the watery particles of it ran down along the side to the bottom, and the surface grew too thin and feeble to include the air, then it burst to pieces and was lost. ‘Well,’ says Gelotes to his friend, ‘I did not think you would have carried me into the acquaintance of a madman; surely he can never be right in his senses who wastes his hours in such fooleries as these. Whatsoever good opinion I had conceived of a gentleman of your intimacy, I am amazed now that you should keep up any degree of acquaintance with him, when his reason is gone and he is become a mere child. What are all these little scenes of sport and amusement, but proofs of the absence of his understanding? Poor gentleman! I pity him in his unhappy circumstances; but I hope he has friends to take care of him under this degree of distraction.’ Typiger was not a little pleased to see that his project, with regard to his neighbour Gelotes, had succeeded so well; and when he had suffered him to run on at this rate for some minutes, he interrupted him with a surprising word: ‘This very gentleman,’ says he, ‘is the great Sir Isaac Newton, the first of philosophers, the glory of Great Britain, and renowned among the nations. You have beheld him now making these experiments over again by which he first found out the nature of light and colours, and penetrated deeper into the mysteries of them than all mankind ever knew before him. This is the man, and these his contrivances, upon which you so freely cast your contempt, and pronounce him distracted. You know not the depth of his designs, and therefore you censured them all as fooleries, whereas the learned world has esteemed them the utmost reach of human sagacity.’

“Gelotes was all confusion and silence; whereupon Typiger proceeded thus: ‘Go now and ridicule the law-giver of Israel, and the ceremonies of the Jewish Church, which Moses taught them; go, repeat your folly and your slanders, and laugh at these Divine ceremonies, merely because you know not the meaning of them, go, and affront the God of Israel, and reproach Him for sending Moses to teach such forms of worship to the Jews. There is not the least of them but was appointed by the Greatest of Beings, and has some special design and purpose in the eye of Divine Wisdom. Many of them were explained by the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews, as types and emblems of the glories and blessings of the New Testament; and the rest of them, whose reason has not been discovered to us, remain, perhaps, to be made known at the conversion of the Jews, when Divine light shall be spread over all the ancient dispensations, and a brighter glory diffused over all the rites and forms of religion which God ever instituted among the race of Adam.’”

A PLEA FOR CHRISTIANIZING HORACE.

“It is a piece of ancient and sacred history which Moses informs us of, that when the tribes of Israel departed from the land of Egypt, they borrowed of their neighbours gold and jewels by the appointment of God, for the decoration of their sacrifices and solemn worship when they should arrive at the appointed place in the wilderness. God Himself taught His people how the richest of metals which had ever been abused to the worship of idols might be purified by the fire, and being melted up into a new form, might be consecrated to the service of the living God, and add to the magnificence and grandeur of His tabernacle and temple. Such are some of the poetical writings of the ancient heathens; they have a great deal of native beauty and lustre in them, and through some happy turn given them by the pen of a Christian poet may be transformed into Divine meditations, and may assist the devout and pious soul in several parts of the Christian life and worship. Amongst all the rest of the Pagan writers, I know none so fit for this service as the odes of Horace, as vile a sinner as he was. Their manner of composure comes nearer the spirit and force of the Psalms of David than any other; and as we take the devotions of the Jewish king, and bring them into our Christian churches, by changing the scene and the chronology, and superadding some of the glories of the Gospel so may the representation of some of the heathen virtues, by a little more labour, be changed into Christian graces, or, at least, into the image of them, so far as human power can reach. One day, musing on this subject, I made an experiment on the two last stanzas of Ode xxix, Book iii.

A work like this would be incomplete if it did not attempt some general estimate, however feeble, of our author’s works, which are, however, so various that it is difficult to bring their relation to their author’s mind beneath one classification. The remark Dr. Jennings made in his funeral sermon is simply just, when he says he “questions whether any author before Dr. Watts ever appeared with a reputation on such a variety of subjects as he has, both as a prose writer and a poet. However,” he adds, “this I may venture to say, there is no man now living of whose works so many have been diffused at home and abroad, which are in such constant use, and translated into such a variety of languages, many of which I doubt not will remain more durable monuments of his great talents than any representation I can make of them, though it were to be graven on pillars of brass. Thus did he shine as an ingenious man and a scholar.”

This circumstance of the variety of his writings constitutes them an element of his character: he was more various than intense, acute rather than profound. There are some of his works upon which we need not permit ourselves to be detained, they illustrate his readiness in turning to every kind of labour which seemed to give the promise of usefulness, for usefulness was evidently in everything the object he set before himself. Regarded by the immense apparatus now at hand for every kind of mental exercise Watts’ labours do some of them seem needless; but regarded from his own age, it appears as if he created, originated, and gave effect to almost every department of religious or improving knowledge. If the reader looks round the literary horizon of that day, he will learn rightly to estimate the benefits conferred by this writer; and these works, the smallest, the most inferior of his mental exercises, were not one of them a mere compilation, they were all the emanations of that perpetually active mind, which, whether the body were well or ill, must be employed for some useful object and end. None of his books were made out of other books, excepting, indeed, so far as almost every volume must imply the knowledge of a subject and the mind of an author; and at the same time it must be said that some of his books for the young have been dropped but not surpassed; they might still furnish the best hints and the best arrangements for obtaining and imparting knowledge.

Being a literary man, Watts falls beneath a class of observations which are not either necessary or applicable in forming an estimate of almost any of his brethren, such as Howe, or Jacomb, or Bradbury, or, indeed, any of the writers of his order or day. The wisdom of his mind was remarkable; it was “a city, built four square.” In this useful purpose, which he ever kept before him, whatever charges may be preferred against him on the score of the indulgence of fancy (and many of his writings reveal how capable he was of such excursions), he kept his mind singularly free from the literary vanities of his times, and his times as singularly illustrate at once the vanity and the glory of literature. If anybody would know what vanities there were, let him take down the volumes of the Athenian Oracle,[48] and he will find few other volumes which will give so lively an impression of the literary folly of those times. Old Samuel Wesley, John Wesley’s father, did not disdain to contribute largely to those pages; they are affluent in absurdities, while they have a show of learned ignorance. Select a few; most of the essays are in the way of question and answer. “Balaam being a Moabite, how could he understand the ass speaking to him in Hebrew? How came the two disciples to know Moses and Elias on the mount? I am resolved to go round the earth on foot; I desire to know whether my head or my feet will travel the most, and how much the one more than the other? Whether or no there is a vacuum? Whether it is more proper to say the soul contains the body, or the body the soul? Whether the quadrature of the circle be possible? Pray, why does a n d not spell t u m? t h e, m e d? etc. etc. Whether Adam was a giant? How a silkworm lives when it has left off eating and is enclosed in its web? Whether it is prudent to live in a room haunted by spirits? Whether, since mermen and mermaids have more of the human shape than other fishes, they may be thought to have more reason? Where extinguished fire goes to? Where was the land of Nod? How is it the spaniel knows its master’s horse? Whether a finite creature is capable of enduring infinite loss?” etc. etc.

These volumes, perhaps, constitute the most amazing collection of nonsense in our own or any other language; nor are they without a certain value as illustrating, not only the time, then in possession of men, but the ridiculous way in which they used it. Of course there are questions, and many of them, of a more grave and serious character, but for the most part they are the very soap-bubbles of the most foppish and foolish imaginations, the most undisciplined and frequently prurient and indecent fancies. The indulgence in these was quite a phase of the intellectual life of the time. A singular chapter in the curiosities of literature and science a reader may find in such volumes as the “Philosophical Conferences of France;”[49] and the vanities of theology were quite equal to the vanities of literature, as may be seen in the innumerable productions of the time.

With a mind so disposed to imaginative excursions, it is quite worthy of notice that Watts preserved a wise balance of all his powers and faculties; he lived on the confines of the age of the wildest mysticism our literature has known. From some words in his works he appears to have been well acquainted with the writings of Henry More, and also to have entertained for them that reverence and respect which assuredly many of them command; but from their singular and erratic fancies he kept himself quite free. Very strange are the matters with which we find these old men entertained themselves, affirming “that God of Himself is a dale of darkness, were it not for the light of the Son;” “that the star-powers are Nature, and the star-circle the mother of all things, from which all is, subsists, and moves;” “that the waters of the world are mad, which makes them rave and run up and down, so as they do in the channels of the earth;” “that they, at last, shall be calcined into crystal;” “that the pure blood in man answers to the element of fire in the great world, his heart to the earth, his mouth to the Arctic pole; and”—but we will not finish this sublime stretch of metaphysical imagination—“that there be two kinds of fires, the one a cold fire and the other hot, and that death is a cold fire;” “that everything has sense, imagination, and a fiducial knowledge of God in it—metals, meteors, and plants not excepted.” Also the like pleasant excursions of fancy are found in “Paracelsus,” as “that the stars are, as it were, the phials, or cucurbits, in which meteorical sal, sulphur, and mercury are contained, and that the winds are made out of these by the ethereal vulcans, are blown forth out of these emunctories, as when a man blows or breathes out of his mouth;” “that the stars are, as it were, the pots in which the archeus, or heavenly vulcan, prepares pluvious matter, which, exhaled from thence, first appears in the form of clouds, and after condenses to rain;” “that hail and snow are the fruits of the stars, proceeding from them as flowers and blossoms from trees;” “that the lightning and thunder are, as it were, the deciduous fruits of the ethereal stars;” “that the stars eat and are nourished,” etc. etc.

All this, and a good deal more to the like purpose. Since the beginning of the world, men have asked of themselves and others strange questions, like those Southey discovered in Luys de Escobar: “When God made dresses for Adam and Eve, how did He get the skins of which those dresses were made, seeing that beasts were not yet killed?” “Perhaps,” says the respondent, “He made skins on purpose.” “Why are there three persons in the Trinity rather than four or five?” “St. Cosmas and St. Damian cut off a black man’s leg and fastened it on a white man; which will have the leg at the resurrection?” “How did Adam learn Hebrew?” Queer curiosities these, all of which will remind the reader of the madness of Elinora Melorina, a lady of Mantua, who, being fully persuaded she was married to a king, would kneel down and talk with him, as if he had then been present with his retinue. Nay, if she by any chance found a piece of glass upon a dunghill, or if she came upon a piece of oyster-shell or tin, or any such thing that would glisten in the sunshine, she would say it was a jewel sent from her lord and husband, and upon this account she would fill her cabinet full of this kind of rubbish. The cabinets of the mystics, amidst some worthier matter, are full of the kind of rubbish we have quoted above, which, when instanced as solutions of things psychical or physical, seem to be as satisfactory as the old story of the foolish person who, riding an ass to the pond to drink by the light of the moon, and some clouds intervening, and hiding the moon while the ass was drinking, arrived at the grave conclusion that the ass had swallowed up the moon, and took it clean out of being. When such grave problems and questions are the result of so much of fasting and devotion, they only remind us of the question preferred by a monk on one occasion to a higher Church dignitary: “How many keys did Christ give to Peter?” which brought the satisfactory reply, that “he ought to prepare himself by a course of physic for such grave, sweet, and savoury questions!” Illustrative as they are of the literary vanities and follies of the time, follies to which even scholarly clergymen and eminent writers lent themselves, and as illustrating also not only the freedom of Watts from such epidemical foolishness, but the work he did in calling the mind to healthful methods of thought, the writer trusts their quotation here may be forgiven.

He appears to have preserved his mind in great stillness. It is the quiet and still mind which is wise and prudent; and, like Henry More, to whom we have referred, his life would repeat what that great man was wont to say, “In the more peaceful spirit, when it is also a quick and perceptive one, will always reside those faculties which are to the soul vision and power. In the deep and calm mind alone, in a temper clear and serene, such as is purged from the dregs, and devoid of the more disorderly tumults of the body, doth true wisdom or genuine philosophy, as in its own proper tower, securely reside.” Hence the first great attribute of Watts’ mind is clearness.

He ever kept before him a purpose of usefulness, alike in teaching men what to think about, and how to think about it; indeed, it is simply true, as Gibbons has remarked, that perspicuity was eminently a feature of his intellect; and it must be admitted that upon whatever he speaks or writes, he is always clearly to be understood—as we have seen, it was by no means a great virtue of his age, or of his contemporaries; and if he discoursed upon the more lofty and difficult subjects of thought or philosophy, they seem to acquire clearness in their passage through his mind. He did not crowd words upon each other, and images of every order were used by him, not to add to the splendour of a paragraph, or to set off a division, but for the purpose of reflecting light on the reader’s mind. He has dwelt himself upon the prime importance of perspicuity. In his “Improvement of the Mind,” he says: “He that would gain a happy talent for the instruction of others must know how to disentangle and divide his thoughts, if too many are ready to crowd into one paragraph; and let him rather speak three sentences distinctly and clearly, which the hearer receives at once with his ears and his soul, than crowd all the thoughts into one sentence, which the hearer has forgotten before he can understand it.” It is a prime virtue in Watts’ style that it is clear; it ought to be a chief virtue in every writer. In him it illustrated the character of his mind. He seemed even to be impatient of the dark and obscure, and he never would permit himself to repose near the absolutely incomprehensible without attempting in some way to understand it; so, also, as he attempts to express his mind upon any subject, his sentences instantly appear to be the very windows of the intellect. And this accounts for that other noticeable characteristic of his style—its perfect ease. There was smoothness and grace, the entire absence of the turgid and the bombastic; his sentences flowed along in happy harmony. Very frequently such a style conveys the impression that a man has nothing to say, when, perhaps, it is by immense labour, and by the study of the finest writers, and by conversation, that he has attained to that grace and natural ease of manner in which all who listen or who read are instantly able to apprehend the meaning. Thus he himself translates his favourite Horace:

Another attribute, to which Gibbons alludes, in Watts’ style is his dignity, especially in the use of his metaphors and in the restraint he puts upon himself in his most ardent and animated passages. A wise use of the passions is a marked characteristic of his writings, as he says, “Did the Great God ever appoint statues for His ambassadors to invite sinners to His mercy; words of grace written upon brass or marble would do the work almost as well; where the preachers are stone no wonder if the hearers are motionless.” And in a fine passage in which he reprobates the philosophy of the Earl of Shaftesbury, under the name of Rhapsodus, who affirms that neither the fear of future punishment, nor the hope of future reward, can possibly be called good affections, Watts exclaims:

“Go, dress up all the virtues of human nature in all the beauties of your oratory, and declaim aloud on the praise of social virtue and the amiable qualities of goodness, till your hearts or lungs ache, among the looser herds of mankind, and you will ever find, as your heathen fathers have done before you, that the wild appetites and passions of men are too violent to be restrained by such mild and silken language. You may as well build up a fence of straw and feathers to resist a cannon-ball, or try to quench a flaming granado with a shell of fair water, as hope to succeed in these attempts. But an eternal heaven and an eternal hell carry a Divine force and power with them. This doctrine, from the mouth of Christian preachers, has begun the reformation of multitudes. This Gospel has recovered thousands among the nations from iniquity and death. They have been awakened by these awful scenes to begin religion, and afterwards their virtue has improved itself into superior and more refined principles and habits by Divine grace, and risen to high and eminent degrees, though not to consummate state. The blessed God knows human nature better than Rhapsodus doth, and has throughout His Word appointed a more proper and more effectual method of address to it by the passions of hope and fear, by punishments and rewards.”

His ideas are large and ample; thoughts thronged through his pages. Admirable as his prose is, he writes still like a poet, and he speaks of the value of poetry as not a mere amusement or the embroidery of the mind, he says how it “brightens the fancy with a thousand beautiful images, how it enriches the soul with great and sublime sentiments and refined ideas, and fills the memory with a noble variety of language, it teaches the art of describing well, of painting everything to the life, and presenting the pleasing and frightful scenes of nature and providence, vice and virtue, in their proper charms and horrors; it assists the art of persuasion, leads to a pathetic mode of speech and writing, and adds life and beauty to conversation.”

And hence his style is so attractive; it has often been an enjoyment to us to turn over the pages of his prose writings. What a variety of topics is presented to us in his interesting inquiry “Concerning Space,” and how interesting his treatment makes the discussion, however abstract the topic. It is the same with his philosophic essays on “Innate Ideas,” and on the “Nature of Substance,” and in that on the “Strength and Weakness of Human Reason.” His sermons, we have before said, have not the pomp and glow of Jeremy Taylor, but they resemble, and certainly do not fall inferior to, those of John Donne, in a quiet metaphysical subtlety and a happy use of images supplied by fancy; but let us select a few:

THE SOUL AND GOD.

“My soul is touched with such a Divine influence that it cannot rest, while God withdraws, as the needle trembles, and hunts after the living loadstone.”

A SENSITIVE HEART.

“Nothing could displease Phronissa (so this good mother is called) more than to hear a jest thrown upon natural infirmities. She thought there was something sacred in misery, and it was not to be touched with a rude hand.”

IMPULSIVE CHRISTIANS.

“Such Christians as these (such who are weak and too much under the influence of their passions) live very much by sudden fits and starts of devotion, without that uniform and steady spring of faith and holiness which would render their religion more even and uniform, more honourable to God and more comfortable to themselves. They are always high on the wing, or else lying moveless on the ground. They are ever in the heights or in the depths, travelling on the bright mountains with the songs of heaven on their lips, or groaning and labouring through the dark valleys, and never walking onward as on an even plain towards heaven.”

THE FULFILMENT OF DIVINE PREDICTIONS.

“How easy it will be for our blessed Lord to make a full accomplishment of all His predictions concerning His kingdom; salvation shall spread through all the tribes and ranks of mankind, as the lightning from heaven in a few moments would communicate a living flame through ten thousand lamps or torches placed in a proper situation and neighbourhood.”

He had an eminent power in description; the following meditation is a rich illustration of this. The whole meditation is far too long to quote—his descriptions of the awakening life of leaves, and birds, and insects—but he closes:

THE FIRST OF MAY.

“’Tis a sublime and constant triumph over all the intellectual powers of man, which the great God maintains every moment in these inimitable works of nature, in these impenetrable recesses and all mysteries of Divine art; and the month of May is the most shining season of this triumph. The flags and banners of Almighty wisdom are now displayed round half the globe, and the other half waits the return of the sun to spread the same triumph over the southern world. The very sun in the firmament is God’s prime minister in this wondrous world of beings, and he works with sovereign vigour on the surface of the earth, and spreads his influence deep under the clods to the very root and fibre, moulding them in their proper forms by Divine direction. There is not a plant, nor a leaf, nor one little branching thread above or beneath the ground, which escapes the eye or influence of this beneficent star. An illustrious emblem of the omnipresence and universal activity of the Creator.”

The following strikes us as very pleasing:

ON DISTANT THUNDER.

“When we hear the thunder rumbling in some distant quarter of the heavens, we sit calm and serene amidst our business or diversions; we feel no terrors about us, and apprehend no danger. When we see the slender streaks of lightning play afar off in the horizon of an evening sky, we look on and amuse ourselves as with an agreeable spectacle, without the least fear or concern. But lo! the dark cloud rises by degrees; it grows black as night, and big with tempests; it spreads as it rises to the mid-heaven, and now hangs directly over us; the flashes of lightning grow broad and strong, and, like sheets of ruddy fire, they blaze terribly all round the hemisphere. We bar the doors and windows, and every avenue of light, but we bar them all in vain. The flames break in at every cranny, and threaten swift destruction; the thunder follows, bursting from the cloud with sudden and tremendous crashes; the voice of the Lord is redoubled with violence, and overwhelms us with terror; it rattles over our heads as though the whole house was broken down at once with a stroke from heaven, and was tumbling on us amain to bury us in the ruins. Happy the man whose hope in his God composes all his passions amid these storms of nature, and renders his whole deportment peaceful and serene amidst the frights and hurries of weak spirits and unfortified minds.”

Many pages might be filled with such passages in which the compactness of the proverb, or the pleasantry of the fancy, or the richness of the description, is remarkable. It comes out of such characteristics as we have noticed, that he reformed the preaching of his day, especially as to the structure of sermons; it was the age of, what he calls very felicitously, “branching sermons;” and even John Howe, as both Robert Hall and Henry Rogers[50] have remarked, “far outwent many of his most extravagant contemporaries in minute and frivolous subdivision; we have sometimes heads arranged rank and file, half a score deep.” Henry Rogers continues, “If any would wish to see the full extent to which Howe carried this fault, they may look into the ‘scheme’ (a very accurate one), which his publishers prefixed to the first edition of the ‘Delighting in God,’ and by the time the student has thoroughly digested and mastered that, he will find little difficulty I apprehend in any of the first books of Euclid.” It was the characteristic of nearly all the great Puritan preachers before Watts. He speaks of some who would draw out a long rank of particulars in the same sermon under one general, and run up the number to eighteenthly! or seven and twentiethly! until they cut all their sense into shreds, so that everything they say of anything is a new particular; and he says, he has sat under this preaching until he has thought of Ezekiel’s vision in the valley full of bones, “behold they were very many and very dry.” He adds, “A single rose bush, or a dwarf pear, with all their leaves, flowers, and fruit about them, have more beauty and spirit in themselves, and yield more food and pleasure to mankind, than the innumerable branches, boughs, and twigs of a long hedge of thorns.” In the same manner he satirizes another kind of preaching, in which there are no breaks and pauses. “Is there no medium,” he says, “between a sermon made up of sixty dry particulars, and a long loose declamation without any distinction of the parts of it? Must a preacher divide his works by the breaks of a minute watch, or let it run on incessantly like the flowing stream of sand in the hour-glass?” And thus he inquires, “Can a long purling sound awaken a sleepy conscience? Can you make the arrow wound where it will not stick? Where all the discourse vanishes from the remembrance, can you imagine the soul to be profited or enriched? When you brush over the closed eyelid with a feather, did you ever find it give light to the blind? have any of your soft harangues, your continued threads of silken eloquence, ever raised the dead?” Very happily he says, “Preachers talk reason and religion to their auditories in vain, if they do not make the argument so short as to come within their grasps, and give a frequent rest to their thoughts; they must break the Bread of Life into pieces to feed children with it, and part their discourse into distinct propositions, to give the ignorant a plain scheme of any one doctrine, and enable them to comprehend or retain it. The auditors of the first kind of preacher have some confusion in their knowledge, the hearers of the last have scarce any knowledge at all.”

The reader will not fail to notice, in this nervous passage, the happy imagery by which the writer gives point to his ideas.

But that which we have said hitherto refers rather to the style, the vehicular frame-work in which Watts set forth his thoughts; it is more important to enter into the mind and spirit of the man; and, first, no attribute seems more remarkable than the seraphic reverence of his nature. It is not easy to mention a writer who more distinctly realises to the mind one of those six-winged seraphs Isaiah saw, who with twain covered his face, with twain his feet, and with twain stood ready to fly; Watts appeared ready for any flight; but reverence, an awful sense of the mysterious and inscrutable, governed every movement of his soul. The Unitarians have, with singular audacity, sought to drag him through the Serbonian bog of creedless Christianity.[51] It is a fine remark, quoted by Southey, that “such doubts as troubled him he subdued, not in a martial posture, but upon his knees.” It is very certain that he had a large speculative disposition; he approached very near to the veil which hides from man the incommunicable light; there is not a line in his writings which displays a tendency towards Arianism. Towards the doctrine of Socinianism he does not condescend to give a single glance. His complaint was, and we apprehend it to be a more common one than even those who are troubled with it are aware, not that he could not believe all that is revealed, but that revelation had not conferred more light upon the subjects of even incomprehensible knowledge. But his prayer, his “solemn address to the great and ever-blessed God, upon what he had written concerning the great and ever-blessed Trinity,” is certainly an extraordinary, a passionate and most humble utterance of an ardently devout mind. It is too lengthy for entire quotation, but some of the closing paragraphs will convey the spirit of the entire piece, and the whole may be read, if read in the spirit in which it was written, with profit to every one: “Blessed and faithful God, hast Thou not promised that ‘the meek Thou wilt guide in judgment, the meek Thou wilt teach Thy way?’ Hast Thou not taught us by Isaiah, Thy prophet, that Thou wilt ‘bring the blind by a way they know not, and wilt lead them in paths which they have not known?’ Hast Thou not informed us by the prophet Hosea, that ‘if we follow on to know the Lord, then we shall know Him?’ Hath not Thy Son, our Saviour, assured us, that our Heavenly Father will give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? And is He not appointed ‘to guide us into all truth?’ Have I not sought the gracious guidance of thy Good Spirit continually? Am I not truly sensible of my own darkness and weakness, my dangerous prejudices on every side, and my utter insufficiency for my own conduct? Wilt Thou leave such a poor creature bewildered among a thousand perplexities, which are raised by the various opinions and contrivances of men, to explain Thy Divine Truth? Help me, Heavenly Father, for I am quite tired and weary of these human explainings, so various and uncertain. When wilt Thou explain it to me Thyself, O my God, by the secret and certain dictates of Thy Spirit, according to the intimation of Thy Word? Nor let any pride of reason, nor any affectation of novelty, nor any criminal bias whatever, turn my heart aside from hearkening to these Divine dictates of Thy Word and Thy Spirit. Suffer not any of my native corruptions, nor the vanity of my imagination, to cast a mist over my eyes while I am searching after the knowledge of Thy mind and will, for my eternal salvation.

“I entreat, O most merciful Father, that Thou wilt not suffer the remnant of my short life to be wasted in such endless wanderings in quest of Thee and Thy Son Jesus, as a great part of my past days have been; but let my sincere endeavours to know Thee, in all the ways whereby Thou hast discovered Thyself in Thy Word, be crowned with such success that my soul, being established in every needful truth by Thy Holy Spirit, I may spend my remaining life according to the rules of Thy Gospel, and may, with all the holy and happy creation, ascribe glory and honour, wisdom and power, to Thee who sittest upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever.”

We have stated the matter fairly as in relation to Watts’ entireness of faith, but justice has not been done to Watts in relation to that dilemma and agitation of public opinion and sentiment which forced him into controversy. It was not that he himself doubted, neither was it that he for himself approached the confines of a discussion of which it might be said—

Arianism was vexing the church in general in England in that age.[52] Many of the churches, especially those to which Watts stood related, indicated a close proclivity to Arian sentiment. The peculiar spirit of the times had created this degeneracy of sentiment; there was little of what we are now accustomed to denominate practical Christianity—the activities created by Methodism were quite unknown. All over the country were Nonconformist churches (nooks of retreat), where some learned, scholarly, and philosophical minister was at the head of a class of thoughtful minds. Numbers of them seemed to have little to do but to think; the heart did not minister much to the head in many instances. The Unitarianism of our day was unknown. It thus represented very much the high Arian sentiment of reverence to Christ without the acknowledgment of His Godhead. The hymns of Watts abound in expressions of praise to Christ and to the Holy Spirit. He was called upon to vindicate that which he himself had done; he was called upon to defend that whole scheme of doctrine which accepted the Three Persons in the Divine Godhead. Perhaps the defect in all such efforts is, that the very attempt to embody some doctrines within the forms of the understanding naturally and essentially depraves them. If we say, as we often do, a God understood is no God at all—and this remark applies to mere natural religion—the same holds true of those higher doctrines of revelation which are the adumbrations of “the light which no man hath seen or can see.” There are doctrines in Theology, even as there are doctrines in Science, the demonstration of which is rather negative than positive. Chemists tell us of an element essential to our life—we breathe it every moment; it contributes to the balance of all the powers of the atmosphere; it tames the subtle, fiery-tempered oxygen, the wild and vehement hydrogen; it represses, allays, and composes, but itself has no colour no odour; it has no active properties, no chemical affections; it is one of the greatest mysteries in nature. It is invisible, and yet it proclaims its presence; the chemist cannot touch it, but he is sure of its existence. It may well fill our minds with awe that we are ever in the presence of such an agent, that before it the lamp of science is darkened, like a man with a dim light in a room in which he sees phantoms he cannot touch, and hears voices the causes of which he cannot detect, and as he holds up his lamp he is aware of a presence that disturbs him, that will not enter into his knowledge, and for which he cannot account. Only he knows that it is. Such is nitrogen. It is thus we apprehend the doctrine of the Trinity.

All efforts must fail to apprehend the doctrines involved in the idea of the Trinity, which insist upon either the idea of personality or numeration, as they are understood by us. Watts, with the Bible in his hand, stood on the defensive against the aggressions of Arianism, and having attempted to unfold the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, he published his further dissertation, “The Arian Invited to the Orthodox Faith; a plain and easy method to lead such as deny the Proper Deity of Christ into the belief of that Article.” Those who charge Arianism upon Watts can only do so, because throughout the argument he has conducted it in a strain of eminent courtesy and charity. He approached the matter in no spirit of disputation, but with a cordial desire to promote, if possible, healing and unity; nor do we think that there are any indications, in the course of any of his discussions, that his own mind or faith was unhinged; but the discussions around him compelled him to direct his attention to questions certainly not uncongenial to his speculative and analytic order of mind. Probably the reader feels that there is a sufficient correspondence between the sense of our own spiritual wants and the revelation given to us in the Divine Word to make us feel that the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead is a necessity of our moral nature, and that it is a doctrine, as we have already intimated, best held, as most satisfactory to the mind and conscience, when held implicitly rather than explicitly.

The claim which the Unitarians put forth to find in Watts one of themselves is not less than audacious and dishonest. It is, however, founded—very ridiculously, we venture to think—upon some expressions reported after his death, which implied that he would have been willing, had he been able, to have altered some expressions in his hymns. Truly it is amazing that the author could survive the publication of his first volume forty years, and not alter many barbarisms of metre and expression. It may, perhaps, be partly accounted for from the fact that the copyright of the hymns had passed at once from his hands. We can very well believe there were certain expressions in his hymns he would have been not indisposed to alter, without touching at all upon matters of doctrine. It will be time enough for Unitarians to claim Watts when they are able to set aside his last published words, and to reconcile them with that faith which they call theirs, or to account, upon such principles as they would make him hold, for the sentiments which fell from his lips when dying.

But as a study of Watts’ mind, these pieces of his are like all that emanated from his pen, characterized by exceeding reverence for the subject he attempted to elucidate, and by charity, respect, and courtesy towards his opponents. Johnson says: “I am only enough acquainted with his theological works to admire his meekness of opposition, and his mildness of censure. It was not only in his books, but in his mind, that orthodoxy was united with charity.” Some will, perhaps, almost think that this width of charity in Watts degenerated into a vice; we hope this book has made it evident that he both had strong convictions and knew how to act upon them steadily. But his heart was very inclusive in its love. It was not merely that he lived within the shadows of persecution, and belonged to an order whose opinions were only tolerated; he represented the mildest type of Nonconformity. Perhaps we shall surprise some readers not very well acquainted with his writings, by informing them that one of the latest efforts of his mind and pen was upon the inquiry, “Whether an Establishment is altogether an Impossibility.” This was in his Essay, published in the year 1739, on “Civil Power in Things Sacred.” It is a singular scheme, and the question is discussed with great moderation and candour; but it is rather a plea for a system of national education than the establishment of a national religion. He inquires, indeed, whether there might not be established a religion consistent with the just liberties of mankind, and practicable with every form of civil government. He thinks that officers should be appointed by the State to explain and enforce the great duties and sanctions of morality, and that the citizens should be compelled to receive such lessons as are unquestionably at the foundation of a national well-being, the welfare, strength, and support of the State, and that such teachers, as public benefactors, should be sustained at the charge of the State.

Watts’ philosophical works exhibit him in the same light as his theological. They are marked by a vivid disposition to analysis and speculation, and by that elevated reverence of thought which appertains to all his writings. Instance his “Inquiry Concerning Space; whether it be Something or Nothing, God or a Creature.” Most minds are quite unequal to such discussions, and many regard them as unwise, irreverent, and dangerous. They are a kind of intellectual Matterhorn which certain daring spirits assault from age to age—the origin of evil, liberty, and necessity—the nature of substance, and time, and space. It would surely be a dangerous and a doubtful doctrine to teach that such questions are only the territories or hunting-grounds of the bold masters of sceptical negations. It does not derogate from the greatness of Isaac Watts to admit that he was neither a Joseph Butler, a William de Leibnitz, nor a Jonathan Edwards; but in his mind such studies became means of usefulness. He fashioned Alpenstocks for climbers among those higher mountain ranges, through which he had himself travelled. In such studies a reverent mind may at once enlarge the understanding while learning the limitation of its powers. A wise guide will here, too, guard against the dangerous crevasse, while he hath himself

Johnson quotes a passage from Mr. Dyer, charging Watts with confounding the idea of space with empty space, and that he did not consider that though space might be without matter, yet matter, being extended, could not be without space. But in reply to this, it may be remarked that this is the whole question, and extended matter falls rather beneath the denomination of substance. It appears certainly the case that Watts, in his discussion, deals with infinite space, or say, certainly, indefinite space—that is, extension abstracted from phenomena. Such space Sir Isaac Newton reverently regarded as the sensorium of God. Newton was so essentially reverent even in thought that it was not possible for him to indulge an idea which was capable of depraving religious conceptions; but all minds, even religious minds, have not been equally reverent. Hence some have gone on to regard space as the immensity of God, as a property of God. But it would follow from this that as space is extended, so God, too, must be extended; and whatever tends to conform God with nature, or to place Him in contact with it, in any other way than as in relation to His wisdom and His will, is essentially unscriptural, and it is a dangerous proclivity below which yawn the fearful gulfs of Pantheism and Atheism. In these discussions our writer anticipated many of those shadows which in the course of a few years were to project themselves over the whole domain of philosophy and theology; and, indeed, only a few years before, in the great work of Spinosa, ominous indications had been given; and the second part of the “Living Temple” of John Howe bore immediately upon the coming questions. Watts’ essay penetrates into the stronghold of Pantheism. Newton and Pascal, both looking up into the infinite spaces, felt their nature called on to reply to the questions suggested. The silence terrified Pascal; Newton’s calmer nature gathered up even infinite space into the great idea, that it was but a mode, or attribute, of God. Some such doctrines govern the Essays of Watts: Space, he argues, cannot be God; we cannot indeed conceive that infinite space ever began to be, we have an idea of it as eternal and unchangeable; according to Watts it seems to contain what existence it has in the very idea, nature, or essence of it, which is one attribute of God, and whereby we prove His existence. It appears to be a necessary being and has a sort of self-existence, for we cannot tell how to conceive it not to he. It seems to be an impassible, indivisible, immutable essence, and therefore according to the ghastly pantheistic philosophy it is argued that space is God. This idea Watts concisely set aside, because it involves the absurdity of making the blessed God a Being of infinite length, breadth, and depth, and ascribing to Him parts of this nature measurable by inches, yards, and miles. Perhaps this is not so clear to all readers as it was to the writer himself; but the close seems more satisfactory when he says, “Strongest arguments seem to evince this, that it must be God, or it must be nothing.” Watts, then, was an Idealist, and the remark of Johnson arises from a misapprehension of the drift of the essay. He argues that space is only the shadow cast by substance—we are sure that shadow or darkness is a mere nothing, and space is nothing but the absence of body, as shade is the absence of light, and both are explicable without supposing either to be real beings: it is therefore merely an abstract idea, or, as we should say, a “thought-form;” it will follow from this that such an idea of space dissolves one of the charming illusions of Pantheism, and that there rises from the midst of this universe of unidentical being the personality of man.

Some critics have entertained a grim joke at the expense of Watts, that having annihilated space, he proceeded in the next place to annihilate substance, anticipating at once Berkeley and Hume. Let it then be remembered that he engaged in none of these excursions in a vain or Pyrrhonistic spirit: his essays were written not to unhinge, but to rest and settle and give repose to the mind; indeed he says, “There are mysteries wherein we bewilder and lose ourselves by attempting to make something out of nothing;” substance is one of these. He goes for some distance on the way with Locke, especially in refuting the idea that substance is something real in nature; with Locke he argues that “all the ideas we have of particular, distinct sort of substances, are nothing but several combinations of simple ideas coexistent in such, the cause of their union, which makes the whole subsist of itself.” Only then comes in the important question, “what is it that supports the accidents and qualities of being?” At this point Watts parts company with Locke. His ideas of substance seem to be antagonistic to Locke, and dangerously sustaining Spinosa, who taught, as our readers know, that the whole universe, God and this world, may be the same individual substance—“How can I be sure that God and the material world have not one common substance?” But, very singularly, Watts himself in tracing the mistakes upon this matter to their origin, seems to fall into the very error he seeks to explode, the idea of a real, invisible abstract or concrete, seems to stand behind all things; he says, the mistakes which men make arise from the occult quality in the termination of names, ity in solidity, sion in extension, which imply a quality without including the substance; as whiteness, without including the substance or the thing that is white; the word white is concrete, and denotes the thing or substance together with the quality, and he says, “We ought to remember that things are made by God, or Nature, words are made by man, and sometimes applied in a way not exactly agreeable to what things and ideas require.” The object of Watts in his discussion of the idea of substance, was the same as that in his discussion in the idea of space, to disarm Spinozism of its gross and crude ideas of God. But we do not feel that the same success closes the discussion. Perhaps it will be sufficient to admit at once that space and substance are both modes of Divine operation. Push the inquiry to any extent, and the most absolute Spinozist is compelled to halt in some such conclusion. That God is extended, that He is a mere infinite extension, is an absurdity; but it seems that no injustice is done to the most reverent and infinite thought of God by regarding Him as the essential sub-stans, the substance as of all souls, so of all being.

That about the philosophic essays which interests us is their freshness, and the clear, easily lucid, and charmingly illustrated style in which the doctrines are conveyed. They assuredly are a very happy commentary upon Locke, from whom he often separates, as in the essay on “Innate Ideas;” he agrees with Locke in the main, and then proceeds to discourse upon many simple ideas which are innate in some sense. His essay to prove that the “Soul never Sleeps,” and “On the Place and Motion of Spirits, and the Power of a Spirit to move Matter,” are interesting; that on the “Departing and Separate Soul” is a sublime piece of writing, and on the “Resurrection of the same Body,” and on the “Production and Nourishment of Plants and Animals.” Few persons now, it may be supposed, even know of the existence of these essays; they seem to us pieces of truly delightful reading, most instructive, suggestive, and entertaining, singularly free from hard and unpleasant lines of dogmatism, full of delightful and suggestive pictures; take the following:

SUNBEAMS AND STARBEAMS.

“What a surprising work of God is vision, that notwithstanding all these infinite meetings and crossings of starbeams and sunbeams night and day, through all our solar world, there should be such a regular conveyance of light to every eye as to discern each star so distinctly by night, as well as all other objects on earth by day! And this difficulty and wonder will be greatly increased by considering the innumerable double, triple, and tenfold reflections and refractions of sunbeams, or daylight, near our earth, and among the various bodies on the surface of it. Let ten thousand men stand round a large elevated amphitheatre; in the middle of it, on a black plain, let ten thousand white round plates be placed, of two inches diameter, and at two inches distance; every eye must receive many rays of light reflected from every plate, in order to perceive its shape and colour; now, if there were but one ray of light came from each plate, here would be ten thousand rays falling on every single eye, which would make twenty thousand times ten thousand, that is, two hundred millions of rays crossing each other in direct lines in order to make every plate visible to every man. But if we suppose that each plate reflected one hundred rays, which is no unreasonable supposition, this would rise to twenty thousand millions. What an amazing thing is the distinct vision of the shape and colour of each plate by every eye, notwithstanding these confused crossings and rays! What an astonishing composition is the eye in all the coats and all the humours of it, to convey those ten thousand white images, or those millions of rays so distinct to the retina, and to impress and paint them all there! And what further amazement attends us if we follow the image on the retina, conveying itself by the optic nerves into the common sensory without confusion? Can a rational being survey this scene and say there is no God? Can a mind think on this stupendous bodily organ, the eye, and not adore the Wisdom that contrived it?”

And the following is not only most interesting, but anticipates, with much strength, a line of argument important to the sceptical philosophy of our own day. The German Buchner binds up his atheistic philosophy between the two covers of Force and Matter; and many in our own country follow in the same train of singularly forgetful thought: forgetful because force and matter are really not sufficient to constitute a universe; the regulative and directive power which controls force and manipulates matter to its will is assuredly as essential a factor as either force or matter.[54] Thus Dr. Watts argues in his remarks:

THE DIRECTION OF MOTION A PROOF OF DEITY.

“Yet, after all, I know it may be replied again, that gravitation is a power which is not limited in its agency by any conceivable distances whatsoever; and therefore, when these starbeams are run out never so far into the infinite void by the force of their emission from the star, yet their gravitation towards the star, or some of the planetary worlds, which sometimes, perhaps, may be nearer to it, has perpetual influence to retard their motion by degrees, even as the motion of a comet is retarded by its gravitation towards the sun, though it flies to such a prodigious distance from the sun, and in time it is stopped and drawn back again and made to return towards its centre. And just so, may we suppose, all the sunbeams and starbeams that ever were emitted, even to the borders of the creation, to have been restrained by degrees by this principle of gravitation till, moving slower and slower, at last they are stopped in their progress and made to return toward their own or some other planetary system. And if so, then there is a perpetual return of the beams of light towards some or other of their bright originals, an everlasting circulation of these lucid atoms, which will hinder this eternal dilation of the bounds of the universe, and at the same time will equally prevent the wasting of the substance of the lucid bodies, the sun or stars. Well, but if this power of restraining and reducing the flight of starbeams be ascribed to this principle of gravitation, let us inquire what is this gravitation, which prevents the universe from such a perpetual waste of light? It cannot be supposed to be any real property or natural power inhering in matter or body, which exerts its influence at so prodigious a distance. I think, therefore, it is generally agreed, and with great reason, that it is properly the influence of a Divine power upon every atom of matter which, in a most exact proportion to its bulk and distance, causes it to gravitate towards all other material beings, and which makes all the bulky beings in the universe, viz., the sun, planets, and stars, attract the bodies that are near them towards themselves. Now this law of nature being settled at first by God the Creator, and being constantly maintained in the course of His providence, it is esteemed as an effect of nature, and has a property of matter, though in truth it is owing to the almighty and all-pervading power of God exerting its incessant dominion and influence through the whole material creation, producing an infinite variety of changes which Ave observe among bodies, confining the universe to its appointed limits, restraining the swift motion of the beams of light, and preserving this vast system of beings from waste and ruin, from desolation and darkness. If there be a world, there is a God; if there be a sun and stars, every ray points to their Creator; not a beam of light from all the lucid globes, but acknowledges its mission from the wisdom and will of God, and feels the restraint of His laws, that it may not be an eternal wanderer. But I call my thoughts to retire from these extravagant rovings beyond the limits of creation. What do these amusements teach us but the inconceivable grandeur, extent, and magnificence of the works and the power of God, the astonishing contrivances of His wisdom, and the poverty, the weakness, and narrowness of our own understandings, all which are lessons well becoming a creature?”

In the same manner, also, he replies to the modern doctrine of traducianism in his remarks on

CREATION OR CONSERVATION.

“It has been a very famous question in the schools, whether conservation be a continual creation, i.e., whether that action, whereby God preserves all creatures in their several ranks and orders of being, is not one continued act of His creating power or influence, as it were, giving being to them every moment? Whether creatures, being formed out of nothing, would relapse again into their first estate of nonentity if they were not, as it were, perpetually reproduced by a creating act of God? How there is one plain and easy argument whereby, perhaps, this controversy may be determined, and it may be proposed in this manner. In whatsoever moment God creates a substance, He must create with it all the properties, modes, and accidents which belong to it in that moment; for in the very moment of creation the creature is all passive, and cannot give itself those modes. Now if God every moment create wicked men and devils, and cause them to exist such as they are, by a continued act of creation, must He not, at the same time, create or give being to all their sinful thoughts and inclinations, and even their most criminal and abominable actions? Must He not create devils, together with the rage and pride, the malice, envy, and blasphemy of their thoughts? Must He not create sinful men in the very acts of lying, perjury, stealing, and adultery, rapine, cruelty, and murder? Must He not form one man with malice in his heart? Another with a false oath on the tongue? A third with a sword in his hand, plunging it into his neighbour’s bosom? Would not these formidable consequences follow from the supposition of God’s conserving providence being a continual act of creation? But surely these ideas seem to be shocking absurdities, whereas, if conservation be really a continued creation, the modes must be created together with their substances every moment, since it is not possible that creatures, who every moment are supposed to be nothing but the immediate products of the Divine will, should be capable in every one of those very moments in which they are produced or created to form their own modes in simultaneous co-existence with their subjects. I own there are difficulties on the other side of the question; but the fear of making God the author of sin has bent my opinion this way. We must always inviolably maintain it for the honour of the blessed God, that all spirits, as they come out of His hand, are created pure and innocent; every sinful act proceeds from themselves, by an abuse of their own freedom of will, or by a voluntary compliance with the corrupt appetites and inclinations of flesh and blood. We must find some better way, therefore, to explain God’s providential conservation of things than by representing it as an act of proper and continual creation, lest we impute all the iniquities of all men and devils, in all ages, to the pure and holy God, who is blessed for evermore.”