LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 76.-25 OCTOBER, 1845. CORRESPONDENCE We have great pleasure in making known to our readers that Messrs. WAITE, PEIRCE & Co. have become the Publishers of the Living Age. By the arrangements we have made with this vigorous house, the very great increase of the work in circulation, and consequent influence, may be confidently anticipated. Our responsibility to the public is greatly increased, but the accession of strength, which has come to the work, will make our labors cheerful and hopeful. We "thank God and take courage." Messrs. Waite, Peirce & Co. will make it an important part of their business to supply yearly subscribers with punctuality. And there is much in the direct intercourse between the Readers and the Editor and Publishers which is very gratifying. THE Author's Daughter will be immediately issued in a separate form by Waite, Peirce & Co. THERE are several phrases in the article on Mr. Blanco White, so coarse in the language used by the reviewer towards religious opinions differing from his own, that we should probably have still longer hesitated to publish it, had it not been recommended to us by a gentleman holding the opinions thus attacked. With this exception, we are glad to publish the article, as the subject is of great interest everywhere, and especially to many persons in this neighborhood who were well acquainted with Mr. White. The Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy has been completed by Messrs. Harper. This work is full of practical matters, and is worthy of a place in every family. No. 26 of Wiley and Putnam's Library, is Selections from Taylor, Barrow, South, Fuller, &c., by Basil Montague. These specimens LXXVI. Quarterly Review, Christian Observer Athenæum, Punch, Chambers' Journal, Mary Howitt, Boston Atlas, 154-The Prairie Shadow, 199-Forest will make thousands desirous of a better acquaintance with great minds. No 27, The Twins and Heart by Martin Farquhar Tupper. Of this we do not know anything; but the sound judgment which is evinced in the whole series, is our sufficient warrant for recommending each of the volumes. PAINE & BURGESS have sent us the fifth number of the series of Italian Prose, which Mr. Lester has translated from his consular residence at Genoa. It is The Autobiography of Alfieri, and will probably be still more successful than the volumes which preceded it. THE American Review for October looks very well. We must pay more attention to this and the rival" Democratic Review" than we have yet done. Upham on the Principles of the Interior or Hidden Life, was strongly recommended to us by a Congregational clergyman, as an eminently practical work he did not agree in all the doctrines taught in it, but thought the influence of what he supposed incorrect, was as nothing compared with the good to be derived from the eminently devout spirit which breathed through the whole of it. We do not know whether we may not like the work the better for the faults which to our friend's eye were apparent, but we have so much confidence in his praise, that we give it without waiting till we are able to add our own. A lot of books for young people has been sent to us by the same publishers, Waite, Peirce & Co. The titles and handsome bindings are all that we could copy before they were carried away: Mary Wilson; The Rosette; Trials of the Heart; The Parsonage; Shawmut, (this is all about Boston. The frontispiece is a picture of an Indian, probably the mayor at that time ;) The Royal Oak; Pastor's: Stories; Home made Happy. Also, The Stranger in Lowell, by J. G. Whittier: (we must now further delay our visit to Lowell till we read this.) A Personal Narrative of Residence as a Missionary in Ceylon and Southern Hindoostan, by James Read Eckard,‚—we think we shall like very much. This, and a little book called Kindness to Animals, have been sent to us by the American Sunday School Union. ONE of the most attractive and valuable books which we have lately seen, has been published by Messrs. Sorin & Ball, Philadelphia: Sketches of Residence and Travels in Brazil; embracing historical and geographical notices of the Empire and its several provinces. By Daniel P. Kidder. In two volumes, with many illustrations. Brazil is becoming a great nation, and it is necessary for every man, who wishes to be well informed, to make himself acquainted with its present and probable condition. It has formed one of the most important subjects of debate in the British Parliament, and the necessity of making a commercial treaty with that empire has driven, or probably will drive, Great Britain from some favorite points of her policy in relation to slavery-or will cause her to say to Brazil, as she did to China in the spirit of the French Revolution-Let us either trade or fight: "Soyons Freres ou je t àssomme." This book is by an American missionary-and has attracted great : attention in England. Next week we shall have an : article from the Spectator, and shall follow it with others, considering both the subject and the book to be worthy of much room. One of the faults which have been found with the writer, is somewhat an unusual complaint against a traveller ;it is that he has not given so many of his personal opinions as was desirable,―he being eminently qualified, from his intimate knowledge and evident ability, to guide the opinions of his readers. OUR LITTLE CHURCH. FROM THE GERMAN OF KRUMACHER. O, ONLY see how sweetly there `The golden evening sunshine fair On tower and roof is streaming. Through the green foliage white and clear And down through all the valley. Not always does it fare so well, Yet even then the little bell Speaks out: ""T will soon be quiet! Though clouds look black, and pour down rain, O, see in evening's golden fire With flowers and jewels beaming. Within our little church shows quite- All empty, look so sweetly! On Sunday none is empty found- See where against the pillared wall But he stands up a hero, there, And leads them on to Heaven- The flock his God has given. But see the sun already sinks, And all the vale is darkling, With day's last golden sparkling. THE BAPTISM. SHE stood up in the meekness of a heart The prayer went up devoutly, and the lips In leading its young spirit up to God. Boston Recorder. From the Quarterly Review. The Life of the Rev. Joseph Blanco White, written by himself; with portions of his Correspondence. Edited by JOHN HAMILTON THOM. În 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1845. and torn." The works of the Benedictine Feyjoo, which had come into his hands, imparted to him the true view of these physical questions. Being rebuked by his teacher, for inattention, in the lecture-room and before the whole class, he THIS is a book which rivets the attention, and started up and denounced the falsity of the docmakes the heart bleed. We state so much, with- trine which was inculcated there. At this time out taking into account the additional power and he began to question, except upon matter of reliinterest which it must acquire in the minds ofgion, all the settled notions of his relatives; and many who still live, from personal associations his mother, to whom he gives credit for great with its author and subject. It has, indeed, with penetration," thanked Heaven that Spain was his regard to himself, in its substance though not in native country; else he would soon quit the pale its arrangement, an almost dramatic character; so of the church."2 clearly and strongly is the living, thinking, acting man projected from the face of the records which he has left. The references to others, accordingly, with which the book abounds, are, by comparison, thrown into the shade; and yet our readers may apprehend that even these are sufficiently signifi-private society for the cultivation of poetry and cant, when we add, that among the many persons to whom Mr. Blanco White alludes as beloved and intimate friends, perhaps none are more prominently named than Mr. Newman, and, even to a much later period, Archbishop Whately. He was, however, transferred to the university of Seville, where he received more congenial the Jesuits as lingered there after the suppression instruction from such members of the Society of of the order. With his friends he organized a literature. But he also attached himself to the oratory of St. Philip Neri, at which the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius were practised. He has supplied us with a very remarkable, and apparently an impartial, description of them. They But, further, the interest of the work is not had a sufficient effect upon him to prevent his merely concentrated upon the writer: it is also abandoning the intention to receive holy orders; very much compressed within the limits of his men- yet he went through them with a consciousness, The fear of tal history; and it embraces his external fortunes, never subdued, of strong dislike." chiefly as they were dependent upon that. His giving pain to his mother, whose domestic influliterary tastes and his political labors might justly ence was supreme, was likewise a principal supdeserve some detailed notice; but all the space port to that intention. She was powerfully secthat we can spare must be devoted to matters of onded by her confessor, Arjona, then a devout deeper import. For his spirit was a battle-field, person, but of whom it is afterwards recorded that upon which, with fluctuating fortune and a singu- he became perhaps an infidel, and certainly a liblar intensity, the powers of belief and skepticism Although young Blanco White's father waged, from first to last, their unceasing war; secretly reminded him that he was under no comand within the compass of his experience are pre-pulsion, yet, up to the latest moment, he would sented to our view most of the great moral and spiritual problems that attach to the condition of our race. ertine.6 not, perhaps we should say he dared not, recede. He had, however, at one time proposed to his mother that he should enter the Spanish navy, which had the attraction of a scientific training. The answer was devised with a revolting skill: it was, that he might give up the clerical profession, but that if he did he must return to the countinghouse. Thus the priesthood was forced upon him life. He became virtually committed to it by as the indispensable condition of an intellectual taking sub-deacon's orders at twenty-one, which rendered him incapable of marriage. 8 A rapid sketch of his history will enable our readers to judge of the delicacy and difficulty of the task we undertake. He was born in 1775, at Seville. A Spaniard, of Irish extraction by the father's side, he was intended in early years, though he was of gentle blood, for the calling of a merchant. His apprenticeship commenced at the age of eight. But he "hated the counting-house and loved his books ;" and naturally enough, we preFrom that time his intercourse with the world sume, in his position, "learning and the church were to him inseparable ideas. "3 was less closely watched. He gives a strong opinIt is material to apprehend clearly this the first change in the direc-ion that the demoralizing effect of the law of comtion of his course: and we remark, that in relating pulsory celibacy, which, according to him, proit in 1830, he says, "his mind hit instinctively duced the utmost vigilance in guarding youth upon the only expedient that could release him from his mercantile bondage."4 Divines declared that he had a true call to the ecclesiastical career. He readily advanced in the theoretical part of his education, but he regarded the devotional practices with horror. At fourteen, he was sent to study philosophy with the Dominicans of the college of Seville, whose lectures were founded on Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Here occurred his second act of mental rebellion. The system of instruction was odious to him: and "a great love of knowledge, and an equally great hatred of established errors, were suddenly developed in his mind." His instructors denied the possibility of a vacuum; and attributed the ascent of liquids by suction to the horror of nature at being wounded against lawful attachments, and a comparative He was ordained priest in 1799; and for some 6 Life, I., pp. 120, 124. Catholicism, pp. 131-7. 10 Ibid., I., p. 117 and 132. 7 Ibid., p. 52. p. 107; Evidence against 9 Life, III., p. 342. 11 Doblado, pp. 120-2. 12 Life, I., p. 109; and Evidence against Catholicism p. 6. short time after this' he seems to have lived under the power of strong devotional influences. He had already become a fellow of the Colegio Mayor of Seville. In 1801 he competed for a canonry at Cadiz ; and shortly after this he was elected a chaplain of the Chapel Royal of St. Ferdinand, attached to the cathedral of Seville. He does not date with precision his transition to positive and total unbelief; but it seems, from his Life, to have occurred either in or soon after 1802.4 He resolved, however, to continue his external conformity, and to discharge his practical duties in the capacity of confessor, as he best could. Through the force of sympathy he took part with the nation against the Bonapartes; but his own opinion was that more improvement would have resulted from the French rule than could be otherwise obtained. He despaired, however, in his own sense, of Spain; and, on the approach of the French to Seville in 1810, he abandoned his country and his prospects for the hope of mental freedom and a residence in England. it was disputed, could not be essential.' Up to May, 1834, he disapproved of definite denials of the Trinitarian doctrines. In December of the same year he recorded himself a deliberate Unitarian. He determined, with great delicacy of feeling, to remove himself from the house of the Archbishop of Dublin, in which he had been residing for some time, before he should separate from the church. In January, 1835, he effected this removal, and placed himself at Liverpool, where he joined the Unitarian Society. In that town and in its neighborhood he lived until his death, in May, 1841. Here we bring this outline to a close, proposing to take more particular notice of some of the passages of his chequered and disastrous career. We may regard Mr. Blanco White in several characters; first as a witness to facts, and next as the expositor, and still more as the victim of opinions. With regard to the first of these capacities, he had abundant talent, remarkable honesty and singleness of purpose, and large and varied means of information and of comparison from the the several positions which he occupied at different times; and we think that the dispassionate reader of his works will be disposed to place almost implicit reliance upon his accounts of all such matters as are the proper subjects of testimony. ish clergy I have never met with any one possessed of bold talents who has not, sooner or later, changed from the most sincere piety to a state of unbelief." On arriving here, he had, of course, difficulties and discouragements to contend with, but he also had friends; and the activity of his mind soon provided him with occupation. He was attracted towards religion by the mildness which he found combined with sincerity in some of its professors. The perusal of Paley's" Natural Theology" be- Regarding him then in this capacity, we naturgan to reanimate his feelings towards God. A ally look in the first instance to the representations service at St. James' church affected him power- which he has given us of the state of things in fully. He resumed the habit of prayer. After Spain, and of this the most prominent characteristhree years of growth he found himself convinced tic certainly is the unbelief which he declares to of the truth of Christianity, and he joined the have prevailed among the clergy. We have seen Church of England as the "renovated home of his view of the operation of the law of celibacy; his youth." When eighteen months more had but he is much more definite and explicit upon the elapsed, in 1814, he subscribed the articles of the other subject. In Doblado's Letters he says, Church of England, and claimed the recognition" Among my numerous acquaintance in the Spanof his character as a priest. But after this slow and gradual restoration he had but a very short period of rest. The detail of the records at this period of his life is somewhat scanty, but it appears clearly that, in 1817, he was assailed with constant doubts on the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement.10 In November, 1818, he records his distinct abandonment of the divinity of our Lord." In 1825 he returned to the orthodox belief upon that subject. In 1826 he administered the Eucharist and preached; and by an internal act he dedicated himself anew to the sacred office, reviving, as he says, many of the feelings of his ordination. It appears to have been in or after 1829 that he addressed a letter to Neander, 12 in which he returned thanks to God for (as he supposed) the final settlement of his religious views. But from or even at this time he was gradually sinking. He thought, in February, 1829,13 the church of England retained too much of the spirit of popery. By March, 1833, he had reduced the Gospel once more to "sublime simplicity;" to the reception of Christ as our "moral king," as our "saviour from moral evils or spiritual fears;" and had determined that the doctrine of His divinity, as Such a circumstance suggests very serious questions with regard to the actual system of the church of Rome, under which it had come to pass; and to us it goes far to explain the phenomenon, when we recollect (for instance) that the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin passed in Spain for an article of the Christian faith, practically no less sacred and certain than the mystery of the incarnation. As to the accuracy of the statement, we believe it may be corroborated by the testimony of Roman Catholic witnesses, particularly with reference to the capitular and dignified clergy of Spain as they then were. But the passage also establishes the fact that the state from which the transition took place was usually one of earnest devotion, and that the life of the young priest opened at least in piety. It would seem, therefore, that there was at least a wellmeant endeavor to impart a religious education, and to impress the mind of the young candidate for orders with an adequate sense of his voca tion. He has, however, again and again repeated his assertion with regard to unbelief, in his "Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism :". "I do attest, from the most certain knowledge, that the history of my own mind is, with little 8 Ib., P. 18. 11 Ib., p. 349. variation, that of a great portion of the Spanish | vations on Heresy and Orthodoxy," published in clergy. The fact is certain." 1835, he says, with regard to his friends of that order In another passage he writes still more broadly, but rather to a matter of opinion than one of fact: "I have been able to make an estimate of the moral and intellectual state of Spain, which few who know me and that country will, I trust, be inclined to discredit. Upon the strength of this knowledge, I declare, again and again, that very few among my own class (I comprehend clergy and laity) think otherwise than I did before my removal to England." And, once more, in contrast with a different state of things among the English clergy : "Without exception, all and every one of them are, to my knowledge, conscientious believers in the divinity of Christ." He writes, indeed, in year 18292— "In England unbelief has made a rapid progress, both among the higher and the lower classes." In 1835 he states that "the days of orthodoxy are certainly gone by,' 3 and "artificial belief" is "easier and more powerful in complete popery than in mixed," by which he means Athanasian, "Protestantism." And again "I cannot dismiss this subject without most solemnly attesting, that the strongest impressions "What is called the Protestant religion is which enliven and support my Christian faith are nothing but a mutilated system of popery; groundderived from my friendly intercourse with mem-less, incongruous, and full of contradictions. I am bers of that insulted clergy; while, on the con- not at all surprised when I hear that the number trary, I know but very few Spanish priests, of Roman Catholics is increasing." whose talents or acquirements were above contempt, who had not secretly renounced their religion."3 In his Autobiography he particularizes these statements by reference to individuals; but nothing more. It is but just also to record that, while his evidence bears hard upon the morals of the friars1 in Spain, he declares unequivocally in favor of the Jesuits, both as to their purity of character and the practical effects of their influence: and with regard to nunneries, although he states that he never knew "souls more polluted than those of some of the professed vestals of the Church of Rome," yet he represents the opposite case to be the rule : "The greater part of the nuns whom I have known were beings of a much higher description -females whose purity owed nothing to the strong gates and high walls of the cloister."" When we return to Mr. Blanco White's evidence upon the state of religion and of the clergy in England, we must of course make liberal allowance with regard to so much as he said at a time when his mind was, as he subsequently considered, carried away by the returning tide of religious sympathies. Indeed, for some time he had no eye for our faults and shortcomings and in the very unqualified praises that were bestowed upon his works by some persons of authority, we cannot but trace the reciprocal operation of a principle analogous to that of the proverb that forbids us "to look a gift horse in the mouth." The members of all Christian communities must be conscious of the temptation not to scrutinize over-rigidly the pretensions of a convert from a rival persuasion. Otherwise, we cannot but think that, in the works which Mr. White published while he was ostensibly of the Church of England, there were ominous indications, and a vagueness which now in retrospect tends to warrant the impression that he never at any period recovered an intelligent and firm hold even of the great Catholic dogmas concerning the nature of God. It is consolatory, however, to find that his final lapse could not have been owing to any of his associates among our clergy. For in his " Obser In short, he repeatedly indicates the opinion that, if there is to be fixed dogmatic faith, it will be most naturally sought in the system of the Church of Rome. Such is his theory but he bears very important testimony to the fact that dogmatic faith is most extensively and most tenaciously held in England, and that too among classes who seem to have surrendered many of its supports. Of course it would be expected that he would regard with horror any assertion of the authority of the church or of the spiritual gifts of the sacred ministry: yet he recognizes the power even of these principles with alarm. He writes, in 1836, to Professor Norton, in America "We are, unfortunately, retrograde in this country. The grossest spirit of mysticism and popery has revived at Oxford; not without persecution against those who, though feebly, venture to oppose it."7 So he had written to Mr. Armstrong, in 18359— แ Orthodoxy poisons every man more or less (in this country perhaps more than where it is merely a name) from the cradle." And to another person," "I deeply lament that England, a land I love and admire, my second country, should be the spot in Europe most deeply sunk into that refined intolerance which attributes opinions to moral depravity." And to Mr. Mill— 66 "I am convinced that no country in the world suffers more from false notions of religion than England. Spain and Italy are indeed ruined by an established superstition of the grossest kind; but they have the advantage that the subject is treated as a mere concession to be made to ignorance till some more favorable moment may arrive for dislodging the abettors of the nuisance from their ruinous strongholds. But in England the most mischievous, because the most intolerant, superstition has succeeded in disguising itself into something like knowledge and system. It exists in the garb of philosophy, meddling with everything, not as a mere matter of fact, but as reason and right."'10 We could fill whole pages with extracts ex |