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which S. S., in common with many others, from the knowledge they have of what they were years ago, and through ignorance of what they are now, are too apt to attach to them.

We have also endeavoured to state our reasons fairly and candidly, and to show in all good part the weakness of those which S. S. advances. For error abounds in the world, and the best and quickest way of removing it seems to us to consist in fair and candid arguments, expressed in a manner free from all animosity and dogmatism. It is to be hoped that our endeavour has not altogether failed of its end. ELPISTICOS.

NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-II.

"While others fish with craft for great opinion,

I with great truth catch mere simplicity.

While some with cunning GILD their copper crowns,

With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare."-Shakspere.

WE may possibly be accused of a morbid desire for singularity, or of clap-trap eccentricity to obtain publicity, if not to attain popularity. Accusations of this kind would possibly weigh well with strangers, but to our friends of the British Controversialist there will be wanting reason for assertion and deliberation instead of precipitation having held intercourse with them for so many years, they will be reluctant to express hasty judgment, and will demand for us a fair field and no favour, feeling full confidence we can well hold our own against our opponents in this as on previous occasions. On our part, we are assured they will adopt the words of Herbert, and thus express their feelings,—

:

"If truth be with thy friend, be with them both;
Share in the conquest, and confess a troth."

The question before us primarily suggests two topics for our consideration-members of Christian churches, and the character of Shakspere's works. It will be useful, therefore, for us to inquire what Christians are, their duties, and their position in social lifewhat Shakspere's writings, and their consistency with the character and duty of the Christian? These preliminary investigations being carefully made, we shall then be enabled to form a correct judg ment respecting the tercentenary movement, and its association with christian activity.

The Christian is one who has voluntarily adopted Christ as his lawgiver, and his first question should be, If Christ were now on earth and in England, teaching, as formerly He lived and taught in Judea, would He take part Himself in this movement, and urge His disciples to join in it also? If not, then the Christian is not justified in doing so, however fashionable it may be among those who do not profess to be members of Christ's church. Here we would observe that we do not include all persons living in Christendom in the church of Christ, although they may in infancy have been subjected to a meaningless ceremony, wherein they are officially desig

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nated "the children of God, and joint-heirs with Christ of eternal life-inheritors of the kingdom of heaven;" we believe those only to be Christians-members of Christ's church-who, having felt themselves to be sinners, have repented of their sins, and voluntarily accepted Christ as their Saviour-have publicly confessed themselves before the church of Christ as His disciples, with free will "renouncing the devil and all his works," with the " pomps and vanities of this wicked world;" resolving, with God's help, to live in "newness of life" to His honour and glory. It is not our purpose to argue upon the spiritual dogmas of the Christian religion to show the inconsistency of this movement with the Christian's duty, although the most immovable arguments may be deduced therefrom, but to confine ourselves entirely to the moral and social duty of the Christian in the present crisis. We believe the Christian is required to be perfect in his moral character, and to require the same of all things and persons demanding his approval; for his Lawgiver has said, "Be ye perfect, even as I am perfect." This is a precept so plain, so simple, as to be without fear of misapprehension-so universal, as to include every Christian. Hence, lewdness, obscenity, unchastity, voluptuousness, debauchery, treachery, and murder cannot be for one moment tolerated by him, nor even be used as a foil to set off the virtues most opposite to these great vices, since he is commanded "not to do evil that good may come.' Shakspere was, without doubt, a man of powerful mind, with great knowledge of the human heart, and having intimate acquaintance with the working of the human passions, united with unequalled command of language to depict the workings of the human soul Divine, and the human soul Satanic also; but he has presented so much of the worst side of human nature to his readers, that the great praise his works have received has given to the worst follies and vices of life a commendatory acceptance and publicity which finds constant reproduction of them in some form or other, daily and hourly, in the experience of his votaries, suited, it may be, to the fashionable etiquette and morals of each succeeding age. It is of no use for our opponents to say that Shakspere, the child of Nature, carried our language to greater flights of truth and fancy than any other author of any age or nation: the sugared pill is bitter at the core; its nature is not altered by the sweetness of its coating; the sweet was necessary to make the bitter acceptable; and the seeming virtue of the gilding imposed upon the reader to make the vice tolerable. What father would place in the hands of his youthful family, untarnished by contact with this sorry world of ours, the "Sonnets" of Shakspere, his "Passionate Pilgrim," his Rape of Lucrece," his "Measure for Measure," his "Antony and Cleopatra," his "Troilus and Cressida," or his "Titus Andronicus"? What Christian man would either read these portions of his works for his own edification (!), or for the edification of his friends, either in private or in public? Do not let it be said, with a sneer, This is mawkish sentimentalism; we have no patience with the man who would pooh

pooh a thing because it runs contrary to the generally received opinion of fashionable society. We rather like the man who carefully takes up his opinions, and stoutly adheres to them through good and through ill report, until he is shown that he is wrong. It may be said that Shakspere wrote to suit the moral taste of his day; then we say this admission makes other admissions to follow as plainly as day follows night; for instance,-Shakspere's moral taste was bad, and so was that of his day, for which he wrote, and he is not " the poet of all time," as his votaries so freely and so loudly trumpet him forth. This arguing of theirs in a circle is sure to get them into a dilemma-certain of detection by the British Controversialists. Again, it may be objected, family editions of Shakspere may be had; and those who are candid, and at the same time anxious for their own moral character, will say the "Family Shakspere" is the only edition which should be allowed for publication. This is a dilemma equally destructive of the high praises accorded by them to their hero, for it admits the viciousness of Shakspere's works, and robs his improvers and the purifiers of his text of all their merit. Let not the bigoted votary of hero-worship, who sacrifices at Shakspere's shrine, suppose we are cynical, and have no friendly feeling for poets, nor appreciation of their poetry: we enthusiastically exclaim, with Wordsworth,

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'Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,

The poets, who on earth have made us heirs

Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays."

We thus see that the Christian can have no part nor lot in Shakspere's works as a whole; that they are utterly inconsistent incongruities, contraries of the most opposite and irreconcilable character. If, then, that for which Shakspere is to be celebrated is utterly inconsistent with christian character and life, how can the Christian consistently join in the celebration? The supposition is an absurdity.

Men may stick Shakspere on a column, and Shaksperize most furiously for a time; and when the blaze of their fête-day glory has gone out, the world will settle down to its accustomed quiet, and laugh heartily at its folly, while the actors in this great farce will hide their diminished heads among the moles and the bats, away from the gaze of all sensible, wise, and good men.

Christian, look to the covenant thy Lawgiver has made with thee, and compare it with the works of this nation's idol; compare thy Bible with thy Shakspere; then decide how thou canst join the tercentenary movement. Au revoir. L'OUVRIER.

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Philosophy.

DOES CIVILIZATION NECESSITATE

DEMORALIZATION?

AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-II.

WHATELY and Trench, the late and present Archbishops of Dublin, have laid the world of letters under obligation: the former by his teaching of the mode or method of thought; and the latter, of the tools or instruments; for so we would define words, by which thought is educed. Probably, although the little works sent out by Dean Trench are by no means so pretentious as Whately's "Logic" and Rhetoric," they may be more useful, because more immediately applicable to ordinary purposes and uses; and because, without a proper or accurate knowledge of words, the meaning they ought or were intended to convey,-any mere system of thinking, however admirable, is useless, just as much as the architect's theory is to the builder who has no knowledge of the tools by which the building is to be erected. The necessity of a definition, and the needful agreement of the terms used in the discussion, must be apparent to every reader of the two opening papers in this debate. Without definition and agreement of terms, one writer may write on subjects quite foreign to those which may occupy the thought of another writer. But not only is definition needed in this special instance, it is the most essential element of all discussion and conversation. Much of the wearisome wrangling of theological schoolmen would have been avoided had they at the outset agreed upon terms and the meaning of the words used. Even now, as we write, the newspapers contain, or we are much mistaken, in the letter of the Rev. F.D. Maurice, on 'Eternal Punishments," the commencement of a controversy which will lose its value from the lack of this definition of terms. Dictionaries are aids, but not complete supports, because words are at times made to serve purposes, in consequence of local association and connection, which are foreign to the lexicographers' definition of their meaning; and then, in the course of time, as Dean Trench has shown, words come round to represent the opposite of their original meaning, No great loss is sustained, provided that the meaning of any word is accepted; but without general agreement it is impossible to secure exact thinking, or to avoid confusion and chaotic thought.

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Now, in the matter under immediate discussion, it must be apparent that if the term "civilization" means progress, there is no matter or subject to discuss; because progress indicates coming

from the lower, while "demoralization" is the lower.

Used in this sense, civilization may come from demoralization, but demoralization cannot come from civilization.

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That, then, is not the meaning to be attached to the term. But even if it were, and for argument assuming that civilization is another word for progress, according to one authority-the writer of a book of 470 pages, entitled, " England the Civilizer,"-demoralization is a consequence of civilization. 'England!" says the writer, "it is not I who will raise hymns to thy glory. Thy cross is bloodstained. The serpent's tooth is in the jaws of thy lion, and thy robe shows the spots of the leopard. The chariot wheels of thy triumph have passed o'er the neck of nations; and thy wealth is swelled with the amassed store of the plundered treasure of empires, and the tortured industry of peoples! But appointed wert thou by destiny to storm the old fortress of popular ignorance and inertia ; to quell the barbarian, disarm the right-divine despot, supplant antiquated religions, quicken, even while thou demoralizedst, popu lations, and prepare for the future by bouleversing the present." The same writer still more forcibly says, Civilization being a conquest, all its earlier and more difficult progress is a course of violence, deception, and demoralization. And this intelligence will see and admit, since conquest is the result of war, and since war is the fullest expression-in the word and in the thing-of violence, deception, and demoralization."

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But, as "Philomath" clearly maintains, the true meaning of civilization is not progress; although progress may result from, and be a result of, civilization. It is well defined 66 as the massing together of men in civil communities." That idea attached to the word we can understand, but the sense which writers on civilization usually attach to it is so vague and unmeaning as really to convey no clear thought or idea. Civilization, or progress, using either word now for illustration, is according to the thought or special idiosyncrasy of the thinker. It is quite certain that the notions of progress are somewhat different in the minds of Presidents Lincoln and Davis, Kossuth and the Emperor of Austria, Mazzini and the Pope. This being so, it must be admitted, that if progress is only another word for civilization, then it would be needful to define what is and what is not progress. For instance, it would be questionable if the progress made in the manufacture of war instruments is an improvement upon the ruder implements of a ruder age, because, by the improvements, war has been rendered more destructive, and a greater number of men in any modern war, within a given time, are slain. War is the great demoralizer. War, in its greatest horrors and most concentrated fury, is the result of modern improvements,-of civilization. Hence demoralization is the result of civilization. How are we to escape from that conclusion?

Understanding, then, the meaning of the word civilization to be" the massing together of men in civil communities," the way will be cleared for the discussion of the subject. With that expla

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