300 A HIGHER GRADE OF INIQUITY. not at all of a literary character, if, indeed, you except forgery -profligacy kills many more by horrid diseases—and multitudes run away to America, or are sent to Sydney Cove, or the "still vexed Bermoothes." Sae I howp the breed's on the decline by consumption, and will afore lang rin clean out, dregs an' a'. North. I agree with Mr Southey, however, in believing that in London, and all large towns, the number of such ruffians is very great. Let the police do its duty. Shepherd. But, sir, ye maun ascend a few grauds up the scale o' Iniquity. North. I do and find some men of good education and small talent, and more men of bad or no education and considerable talent-Demagogues-that is to say, wretches who, from love of mischief, would instigate the ignorant to their own ruin, in the ruin of the state. They write and they speak with fluency and glibness, and the filthy and fetid stream flows widely over poor men's dwellings, especially those who are given to reading, and deposits in workshop, kitchen, parlour, and bedroom, a slime whose exhalation is poison and death. They have publications of their own, and they gloat over and steal and spread everything that is bad and suited to their ends in the publications of some other people, who, while they would scorn their alliance, do nevertheless often purposely contribute aid to their evil designs and machinations. To such charge too large a portion of what is called the Liberal Press must plead guilty, or perhaps they would glory in the charge. This pollution of the Press can only be cleansed by the pure waters of Truth, showered over it by such men as Mr Southey himself; or swept away, if you prefer the image, by besoms in the hands of the righteous, who, for sake of those who suffer, shun not the nauseous office even of fuilzie-men to keep clean and sweet the highways and by-ways, the streets and alleys, of social life. Shepherd. Such a righteous besom-brandisher is Christopher North, the terror of traitors and the North. And thus, James, are we "led another graud up the scale of Iniquity," and reach the Liberal Press. It works much evil, and, I fear not to say, much good. Shepherd. Say rather some good, sir. Lay the emphasis on some. THE LIBERAL PRESS. 301 North. "Much good." For it is not to be denied that men may be bigotedly and blindly attached to the right cause. Old institutions seem sacred to their imaginations, beyond the sanctity inherent in their frame. Time-hallowed, they are improvement-proof. But the new may be, and often is, holier than the old-the work of a single day better than that of a thousand years. The soul of "The fond adorer of departed fame" sometimes falls asleep on the tomb of the good and great of other times, to the oblivion of far higher living worth; or dozes over the inscription graven there by the gratitude of a former age, instead of more wisely recording the triumphs of contemporary genius or virtue. Reason must be awakened from her slumbers or her dreams in the arms of imagination that loves to haunt old places, and to walk in reveries among the shades of antiquity. The Liberal Press-I take the word as I find it in general use—often breaks these delusions; for they often are delusions, and it oftener shows us to distinguish shadow from substance-fiction from truth-superstition from devotion. It thus does good at times when perhaps it is intending evil; but at times it intends good-does good —and therefore is strictly entitled to unqualified and fervent praise. Such praise I give it now, James-and if Gurney be not asleep, it will ring in the ears of the public, who will ratify the award. Shepherd. But are you sure that the evil doesna greatly preponderate in the scale? North. I am sure it does preponderate-but let us, the Illiberals, fling in good into the good, and we restore the balance. Shepherd. That's incorreck. The evil, light in comparison, kicks the beam-and the good in the other bucket o' the balance remains, for the use o' man, steady on a rock. North. And here it is that Southey's self authorises me to contradict Southey. While he, and others like to him-a few, perhaps his equals, at least in power, such as Sir Walter, S. T. Coleridge, and William Wordsworth-and not a few, his inferiors indeed in power, but nevertheless his equals in zeal and sincerity-and the many who, without any very surpassing talents, do yet acquire force from faith, and have reliance on religion,-I say, James, while that Sacred Band moves on in firm united phalanx, in discipline meet to their valour-nor in bright array wanting their music-bands, vocal and instrumental, to hymn them on in the march to victorywho will fear the issue of the battle, or doubt that beneath the Champions of the Cross the Host of the Misbelievers will sustain a signal and fatal overthrow? Shepherd. You've been speakin, sir, I perceive, by implication, o' infidels, that's deists and atheists, a' the time you were discussin demagogues; but hae ye onything mair particularly to say o' infidels by themsels, as being sometimes a separate gang? Let's hear 't. North. I believe, James, that there are many, too many, conscientious deists-deists on conviction-on conviction consequent on candid and extensive, but not philosophical and profound inquiry into the evidences, internal and external, of Christianity. Shepherd. Ah! sir. That's scarcely possible. North. It is true. But such men do not often-they very rarely seek to disturb the faith of others-and few of them carry their creed on with them to old age, for the Lamp of Revelation burns more brightly before eyes that feel the dimness of years shrouding all mortal things. In meridian manhood, it seems to them that the Sun of Natural Theology irradiates all being, and in that blaze the Star of Revelation seems to fade away and be hidden. But as they approach the close of life, they come to know that the Sun of Natural Theology-and it is a Sun-had shone upon them with a borrowed light, and that the Book of Nature had never been so read by them but for the Book of God. They lived Deists, and they die Christians. Shepherd. In good truth, sir, I hae kent some affecting cases o' that kind. North. Now observe the inconsistent conduct of such men; an inconsistency that, I believe, must attach to the character of every virtuous deist in a country where Christianity prevails in its Protestant purity, and is the faith of an enlightened national intellect. Rarely indeed, if ever, do they teach their children their own creed. Their disbelief, therefore, cannot be an utter disbelief. For if it were, a good and conscientious man-and I am supposing the deist to be DIFFERENT KINDS OF DEISTS. 303 such could not make a sacrifice of the truth for the sake of them he dearly loved; such sacrifice, indeed, would be the height of folly and wickedness. For if he knows Christianity to be an imposture, beautiful though the imposture be-and no human heart ever yet denied its beauty conscience, God's vicegerent here below, would command him to begin with exposing the imposture to the wife of his bosom, and the children of their common blood. But all unknown perhaps to himself, or but faintly known, the day-spring from on high has with gracious glimpses of light visited his conscience, and that conscience, heaven-touched, trembles to disown the source from which comes that gentle visiting, and, with its still small voice, more divine than he is aware of, whispers him not to initiate in another faith the hearts of the guileless and the innocent, by nature open to receive the words of eternal life. And thus, "While Virtue's self and Genius did adorn Hath smiled forgiving on her sceptic son !" Shepherd. They are muckle to be pitied, my dear sir; and it's neither for you nor me, nor onybody else, to be hard upon them; and I'll answer for Mr Soothey, that were ony such to visit him in his ain house at Keswick, he wad be as kind to him as he was in the autumn o' aughteen hunder and fourteen to mysel, show him his beautifu' and maist astonishing leebrary, toast bread for him at breakfast wi' his ain hauns, wi' that lang-shanked fork, and tak an oar wi' him in a boat round the Isles, and into the bays o' Derwentwater loch, amusin him wi' his wut, and instructing him wi' his wisdom. North. I know he would, James. From such deists, then, though their existence is to be deplored, little or no danger need be feared to revealed religion. But there are many more deists of a different stamp,-the shallow, superficial, insensible, and conceited,-the profligate, the brutal, and the wicked. I hardly know which are in the most hopeless condition. Argument is thrown away on both-for the eyes of the one are too weak to bear the light; and those of the other love only darkness. "They hate the light, because their deeds are dark." The former fade like insects; the latter 304 INSECT-INFIDELS.—BEAST-INFIDELS. perish like beasts. But the insects flutter away their lives among weeds and flowers, and are of a sort that sting nobody, though they may tease in the twilight; while the beasts bellow, and gore, and toss, and therefore must be hoodwinked with boards—the tips of their horns must be sawed off, a chain passed through their noses-they must be driven from the green pastures by the living waters, on to the bare brown common; and, unfit for the shambles, must be knocked on the head, and sold to the hounds-" down to the ground at once, as butcher felleth ox." Shepherd. There are ower mony o' the insecks in Scotland; but, thank God! but few o' the beasts. North. Because in Scotland, James, the Church, as Wordsworth well says, holds over us "the strong hand of its purity;" and thus infidelity has been chiefly confined to philosophers who would not suffer the Church to catch hold; while, as the beasts I speak of are most likely to arise among the lower orders, the church being omnipotent there, the bulls of Bashan are but a scant breed. In England, from many causes, some of them inevitable in a land so rich, and populous, and manycitied, and some of them existing in neglect of duties secular and religious, the beasts are seen of a larger size, and in larger droves; but providentially, by a law of Nature, the bulls calved have always been in the proportion of a hundred to one to the cows; and as that proportion is always increasing, we may even hope that in half a century the last quey will expire, and then the male monsters will soon become utterly extinct. Shepherd. Od, man, I never heard you sae feegurative as you are the nicht; yet I maun alloo that maist part o' them's capital, and but few very muckle amiss. North. Now, James, with such infidels as these, how are we to deal? First of all, they are doomed, living and dying, to universal loathing, ignominy, scorn, and execration. All that is good. It curses them into hatred of their species—and that curse is intensified by the conviction that their hatred is of little or no avail to hurt the hair of any one Christian's head. Further, their books-for they sometimes write books-are smashed, pounded into pulp, and flung into their faces till they are blind. Groping in their darkness, they pick the pulp up-spread it out again, and dry it in the sun, whose |