plexing kind, start into being and waylay the theist,-spectral problems, fraught with the burden and the mystery of all this unintelligible world -awful ghostly visitants, haunting the soul, and not to be "laid" by any known summary of theistic exorcism-the grim offspring of a system which, according to theism, has no place (as well as no explanation) for them the never-ending still-beginning autochthones, aborigines, of that whole creation which groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. Mr. Parker rejects a revelation which contains difficulties irreconcilable with his ideal of Deity. The difficulties inflexibly confronting him in the analogy of nature, he nor any of his order can clear up. Allow that Butler's argument as Analogy is not valid in favour of a revealed religion -it not the less inflicts a fatal back-handed blow on the heart-region of "benignant" theism. A single catastrophe like the earthquake at Lisbon, which so startled and confounded the moral sense of a child Goethe, defies, as though with A-theistic defiance, the glosses of natural-religionists. The style and the tactics of the author of the "Eclipse of Faith" may be open to objection, but at least he has planted his step firmly on this logical stumbling-block, and made a very corner-stone of this rock of offence. How far those escape the perplexity who, with Mr. Lewes, repudiate the notion of "design" in the structure of the universe, or, with Mr. Carlyle, mockingly scout all such speculations with some bold banter about your pan-theisms and pot-theisms,* is another matter. It has not yet been escaped by the school, in any of its types, represented by Newman and Parker; nor is it easy to believe that if ever their school should succeed in dislodging the popular creed from a biblical foundation, the popular opinion should stop short just at their frontier-line, and should not pass it as a mere half-way house, to be eyed distrustfully as possibly a second house of bondage to the tramping myriads making their exodus from the first. Surely the absolute religion of Mr. Parker has the air of an absolute failure. If it is disengaged from the difficulties of a revealed religion, it is again self-involved in a tangled web of threefold cords, not easily broken. It is allowed by writers of his own order, that in metaphysical questions Mr. Parker is "too ardent to preserve self-consistency throughout the parts of a large abstract scheme;" that he is too impetuous for the "free analysis of intricate and evanescent phenomena;" that the eclectic tendency of his mind, refusing to let go anything that is true and excellent, takes "insufficient pains," in adopting it, to "weave it into the fabric of his previous thought, so that the texture of his faith presents a pattern not easy to reduce to symmetry."+ Certainly, by no means easy: capricious eclecticism is apt to generate a highly heterogeneous ensemble. If we may credit one of Mr. Parker's compatriots, and one by no means hostile to him, His sermons with satire are plenteously verjuiced, Cush, Pitt (not the bottomless, that he's no faith in), * Life of John Sterling. † Prospective Review. A Fable for Critics. It seems "his hearers can't tell you on Sunday beforehand, if in that day's discourse they'll be Bibled or Koraned." The religious sentiment. of Fetichism is not overlooked or underrated. The Kalmuck Tartar's proprietorship in the Absolute Religion is fervently recognised. And indeed everything is proved to be very Christian but common Christianity, and all religions are welcomed in apparent preference to the religion of the New Testament. Not that the preference can for a moment. be thought more than apparent; but to such appearances does a pique against orthodoxy irritate the preacher-his cue being to depreciate the claims of Christianity as much as possible, in order to rase the boundarywall between it and circumjacent "paganism." All the discrimination allowable between Christendom and Heathendom is, au fond, a distinction without a difference: a distinction in degree, not a difference in kind. The diversity is specific, not generic; phenomenal, not noumenal. So far as Christianity is religion, or involves the religious sentiment, it would seem that the very Thugs and Anthropophagi are "best good Christians" although they know it not, and although a suspicion of that cheering fact never dawned on the mind of the unhappy people they kill and eat. It is common to hear the uninitiated "general" (whose ignorance of sceptical literature is bliss), when adventuring an opinion on Mr. Theodore Parker at all, assert the identity of his theological status with that of Strauss. They are enviably unversed in the infinite discrepancies that obtain in the schools of the anti-supernaturalists-and have yet to learn that naturalists can be at daggers'-drawn inter se, or that there are any noticeable differences between the views of (say) Semler, with his theory of "accommodation," and Paulus, with his unflinching "naturalism, and Strauss, with his universal solvent, the Myth. Now, though Mr. Parker is in the advanced guard of neology, and indeed uses a far more trenchant and sweeping mode of hostility to "revealed religion" than do your sturdiest hyper-borean Germans, still, to suppose him a second-hand Strauss, inoculated throughout with the mythopoeic mania, is to misconceive his particular stand-point. On the contrary, he has signalised himself by applying to Strauss's method the reductio ad absurdum process, in a way so ingenious and amusing as to warrant present mention. Affirming that, by the Straussian System, any given historical event may be dissolved in a mythical solution, and the "seminal ideas" precipitated in their primitive form-and that any historical characters may thus be changed into an impersonal symbol of "universal humanity"-he proceeds to show, for example, how the whole history of the United States might be pronounced, by future myth detectors, a tissue of mythical stories, borrowed in part from the Old Testament, in part from the Apocalypse, and in part from fancy. * Such is a common impression on the popular mind, after a perusal of Mr. Parker's homiletics. He seems, it is alleged, to have a spite against Christianity, and against it alone. But it may be answered, that this semblance of antipathy is in reality a necessary resultant from his scope; and that equally he would, if writing as a heterodox Mussulman, seem to hate Islamism with intensest emphasis; or if indoctrinating the Brahmins with Absolute Religion, he would seem to be less tolerant of Brahminism than of any rival system. It is with what lies nearest to him that his polemics are concerned. Valeat quantum. "The British Government oppressing the Britons is the great red dragon' of the Revelation, as it is shown by the national arms and by the British legend of St. George and the Dragon. The splendid career of the new people is borrowed from the persecuted woman's poetical history, her dress-' clothed with the sun.' The stars said to be in the national banner are only the crown of twelve stars on the poetic being's head; the perils of the pilgrims in the Mayflower are only the woman's flight on the wings of a great eagle. The war between the two countries is only the 'practical application' of the flood which the dragon cast out against the woman, &c." So with the story of the Declaration of Independence: The congress was held at a mythical town, whose very name is suspicious -Philadelphia-i. e. brotherly love. "The date is suspicious; it was the fourth day of the fourth month (reckoning from April, as it is probable the Heraclidæ and Scandinavians, possible that the aboriginal Americans, and certain that the Hebrews did). Now four was a sacred number with the Americans; the president was chosen for four years; there were four departments of affairs; four divisions of political power, namely the people, the congress, the executive, and the judiciary, &c. Besides, which is still more incredible, three of the presidents, two of whom, it is alleged, signed the declaration, died on the fourth of July, and the two latter exactly fifty years after they had signed it, and about the same hour of the day. The year also is suspicious; 1776 is but an ingenious combination of the sacred number, four, which is repeated three times, and then multiplied by itself to produce the date; thus, 444×4 1776, Q.E.D. Now dividing the first (444) by the second (4), we have Unity thrice repeated (111). This is a manifest symbol of the national oneness (likewise represented in the motto è pluribus unum), and of the national religion, of which the Triniform Monad, or Trinity in Unity,' and Unity in Trinity,' is the well-known sign... Besides, Hualteperah, the great historian of Mexico, a neighbouring state, never mentions this document; and farther still, if this declaration had been made, and accepted by the whole nation, as it is pretended, then we cannot account for the fact, that the fundamental maxim of that paper, namely, the soul's equality to itself, all men are born free and equal' -was perpetually lost sight of, and a large portion of the people kept in slavery; still later, petitions,-supported by this fundamental article,for the abolition of slavery were rejected by Congress with unexampled contempt, when, if the history is not mythical, slavery never had a legal existence after 1776, &c., &c."* This telling travestie (if that can be travestie which is not caricature) of the Mythists, with the "occasional" side-thrust at the "peculiar institution," affords a favourable illustration of Mr. Parker's quality, when he is in his better moods. His cleverness, his ardour, his power, though distorted and strained, his eloquence, though eccentric and extravagant, and wearisome by its laboured hyperbolisms, -there is no denying. You might detach passages from his rhetorical efforts (such as the "Discourse on Religion," "Atheism, Theism, and the Popular Theology," and his contributions to the Dial and other transcendental prints) so kindling to the heart and fancy, so rightfully conceived and so forcibly expressed, that a Jeremy Taylor might have endorsed *Parker's Critical and Miscellaneous Writings. them, an Andrews reiterated them, a Leighton thanked God for them. But then in the context would be found sentiments of a kind to make either of the three bishops turn in his grave. Of Mr. Parker's characteristic style, which has found so many eager and enraptured admirers, we can only say, that its monotony of glitter, of effort, of contortion and even grimace, is to us unspeakably tedious. An extract may be piquant enough, but perusal is almost impracticable, so ceaseless is the tension of the writer's anxiety to be striking. It is as though every word began, all for emphasis, with a capital letter, and every sentence set up in italics, and every colon or semi-colon merged in a leash of !!! Every few syllables a sort of subauditur seems to be sub-audible, implying, Are you quite awake, reader? wide awake? sure of that? did you fully catch the last point? and are you all vigilant to look out for the next? It is like being run up and down to prevent the catastrophe of sleep, when poison has made you very sleepy, and to sleep is death: no standing still is allowable for a second-quick step, and right about face, and an approximate realisation of the perpetuum mobile, are what you must do or die. The earnestness of Mr. Parker's writings goes far to balance what is plentifully objectionable in them. This earnestness is said to be curiously effective in his "pulpit" performances: There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest, If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least, The same "fabulous" witness describes the preacher's phiz as recalling a comparison confirmed (quâ Socrates) by Miss Bremer's admiring comment on Mr. Parker's "Socratic head"-plus a pair of "large wellformed hands," and ditto of "kind and beautiful eyes." The Swedish lady found him "willing to listen, gentle, earnest, cordial." She adds, "His whole being, expression, gestures, struck me as purely originalthe expression of a determined and powerful nature."* Self-sufficingness may be pronounced, according to the critic's point of view, either his foible or his forte, his weakness or his strength. While, compared with the ever sliding scale of rival neologies, and the vari-coloured phases of faith of contemporary creeds, his own creed may be "lighter or darker," -in one thing at least he admits a fixed duty, an absolute religion, a basis of belief,-c'est lui-même For, in one thing, 'tis clear, he has faith-namely, Parker. * Homes of the New World. May-VOL. CI. NO. CCCCI. THE GULF OF FINLAND. As in addition to active hostile measures to be carried on by the allied fleets in the Baltic, and the nature of which will no doubt be much influenced by circumstances, it is also apparently intended to blockade all Russian ports; the Gulf of Finland, which is now entirely Russianbeing formed by the coasts of Finland, Esthonia, and Ingermanlandwill soon become the scene of many remarkable operations. much natural curiosity exists as to the chief stations in that sea, their position, and their resources, and their natural and artificial means of defence. Hence The first Russian provinces which a fleet sailing up the Baltic comes in contact with, are those of Wilna and Courland, which belonged to Poland until 1795. Neither of these provinces have any ports or naval stations of any consequence. Libau is the principal shipping port, but the harbour, which is a mere salt lagoon, has a bar across the entrance, which opposes the entrance of vessels drawing more than twelve feet of water. Windau, at the mouth of the river of the same name, is a minor port and fortress, which, however, the Tsar once had in view to render the chief maritime station in the Baltic. Livonia lies away from the Baltic, at the bottom of the gulf of the same name, better known to mariners as that of Riga. Livonia is scarcely likely to attract the naval forces of the allies, except as a matter of blockade: Riga being, after St. Petersburg, the second commercial city in the empire. The distance of the town from the sea render the approaches easy of defence; and the city itself, one of the most important bulwarks of the Russian empire, is surrounded with ramparts and bastions, and is further defended by a strong citadel. Some of the warehouses, as in the case of the Katherinenhof, are actually made bomb-proof. Riga was founded about the year 1200 by Albert, Bishop of Livonia, who established a German colony there. At the beginning of the sixteenth century it belonged to the Teutonic knights, but it was afterwards forced to submit, first to Poland and then to Sweden. In 1710, after a vigorous defence, it was taken by Peter the Great, and annexed to the Russian empire. In the siege of 1812, the suburbs and a considerable part of the town were destroyed by the French, The entrance to the Riga river, Duna, or Dwina, is defended by the strong fortress of Dunamünde, also called Dunabourg, which was captured in 1609 and 1618 by the Swedes, and in 1700 by the Saxons, who called it Augustusbourg. There is also the castle of Dahlen, on an island of the Duna. At the upper end of the Gulf of Riga is Pernau, or Pernalin, in Esthonian language-a fortified port with a citadel. It is, however, to the interior of the Gulf of Finland that the great efforts of the naval forces of the allies may be expected to be directed. The entrance of this great gulf is guarded, as it were, by the islands of Esel and Dago, or Dagen, and the ports of Revel and Port Baltic to the south; the island of Aland, and the ports of Abo, Eknas, and Helsingfors, and Sveaborg, in Finland, and the fort of Gustavsvoern at Hango Head, to the north. |