“There is certainly a most pernicious set of opinions mixed up both with the Bible and Missionary
* Concerning Lord Byron. |
| 202 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 50. |
“Bishop Law (the present bishop’s father) advances an opinion that the true nature of revealed religion is gradually disclosed as men become capable of receiving it, generations as they advance in knowledge and civilisation outgrowing the errors of their forefathers; so that in fulness of time there will remain neither doubt nor difficulties. He was a great speculator; whether, like one of his sons, he speculated too far, I do not know, but in this opinion I think he is borne out by history. Providence condescends to the slowness of Christian understandings, as it did to the hardness of Jewish hearts. All these societies proceed upon a full belief in the damnation of the heathen: what their future state may be is known as little as we do concerning our own, but this we know in both cases, that it must be consistent with the goodness of our Father who is in heaven. . . . . Yet you could get no missionaries to go abroad unless they held this tenet. The Socinians, you see, send none, neither do the Quakers.
“The Quarterly
Review has been overlaid with statistics, as it was once with Greek
criticism. It is the disease of the age—the way in which verbose
| Ætat. 50. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 203 |
“Do not over-work yourself, nor sit up too late, and never continue at any one mental employment after you are tired of it. Take this advice from one who has attained to great self-management in this respect.
“God bless you!
“Smedley’s poems are very clever; but he seems quite insensible to the good which is connected with and resulting from this mixture of weakness, enthusiasm, and sectarian zeal. It does nothing but good abroad, and that good would not be done without it. The Bible Society has quadrupled the subscribers to the Bartletts Buildings’ one, and given it a new impulse. I hate cant and hypocrisy, and am apt to suspect them wherever there is much profession of godliness; but, on the other hand, I do not like men to be callous to the best interests of their fellow-creatures.”
