Isaac Taylor

“ The people to whom these comparatively diminutive, and yet faultless structures belonged, manifestly, were not masters of boundless national wealth; but their intelligence so much exceeded their resources that they at once reached the highest point of art, which is to induce upon its materials a new value—a value so great, that the mere cost of the work is forgotten. In surveying the Egyptian temples we wonder at the wealth that could suffice to pay for them; in viewing those of Greece we only admire the genius of the architect who imagined them, and the taste of the people who admired them. ”

“ The exaggerations of self-love not quelled, but rather inflated by an enthusiastic piety, inspire feelings of personal importance so enormous, that even the infinitude of the divine attributes is made to shrink down to the measure of comparison with man. When illusions such as these are rent and scattered, how pitiable is the conscious destitution and meanness of the denuded spirit! with how cruel a shock does it fall back upon its true place in the vast system of providence! ”

“ Every city of the ancient world, where civilization had made any progress, was crowded with columns, statues, busts, monuments, inscriptions, by which every memorable event, and every illustrious personage, was perpetually presented to the regards of the people, and was retained in their recollection. It is certain that this monumental and sculptural mode of embodying a people’s history obtained to a far greater extent in ancient cities than it does in those of our times. And so it was that to visit a city—to pace its public ways—to enter its temples and its halls, was to peruse its history. ”

“ The reality of woe is the very circumstance that paralyses sympathy; and the eye that can pour forth its flood of commiseration for the sorrows of the romance or the drama, grudges a tear to the substantial wretchedness of the unhappy. Much more often than not, this kind of luxurious sensitiveness to fiction is conjoined with a callousness that enables the subject of it to pass through the affecting occasions of domestic life in immovable apathy:—the heart has become, like that of leviathan, "firm as a stone, yea, hard as a piece of the nether millstone." ”

“ The thread of every life is entangled with other threads beyond all reach of calculation, the weal and woe of each depends, by innumerable correspondences, upon the will, and caprices, and fortune, not merely of the individuals of his immediate circle, but upon those of myriads of whom he knows nothing. Or, strictly speaking, the tie of mutual influence passes, without a break, from hand to hand, throughout the human family: there is no independence, no insulation, in the lot of man; and therefore there can be no absolute calculation of future fortunes ”

“ Though the knowledge of books is more widely diffused in modern, than it was in ancient times, yet among those who addict themselves to literature, there is not now more of erudition, of intelligence, of discrimination, than were displayed in the three or four centuries of which the Augustan age formed the centre. To issue a voluminous history, and to persuade the world that it had been known during the last two hundred years, is an attempt not more impracticable in the present day, than it would have been in the times of Dionysius, of Cicero, of Quintilian, or of Plutarch. ”

“ If, as every one would profess, we desire to live, not for selfish pleasure, but to promote the happiness of others, if we would become, not idle well-wishers to our species, not closet philanthropists, dreaming of impracticable reforms, and grudging the cost of any effective relief, but real benefactors to mankind, we must take up the lessons of New Testament philanthropy, just as they lie on the page before us, and without imagining simpler methods, follow humbly in the track of experience. ”

“ If we look back along the eighteen centuries past, we watch the progress of an influence, sometimes indeed marking its presence in streams of blood—sometimes in fires, sometimes by the fall of idol temples, sometimes by the rearing of edifices decked with new symbols; nor can the distant and mighty movement be explained otherwise than by knowing that the books we now hold and venerate were then achieving the overthrow of the old and obstinate evils of idolatry. ”

“ If the eye, when it fixes its gaze upon the vault of heaven, could see, in fancy, a causeway arched across the void, and bordered in long series with the hills and plains of an earthly journey—repeated ten thousand and ten thousand times, until ages were spent in the pilgrimage, then would he who possessed such a power of vision hide himself in caverns rather than venture to look up to the terrible magnitude of the starry skies, thus set out in parts before him. ”

“ If then there were room to entertain a doubt of the authenticity of the body of ancient history—taken in the mass; or if the credibility of a single author comes to be questioned; or if a particular fact be opened to controversy, it is far from being the case that we are left to rely, alone, upon the validity of general arguments in proof of the apparent competency, veracity, and impartiality of the ancient historians; on the contrary, we may, in almost all cases, appeal to unquestioned facts, supporting the affirmative side of such questions. ”

“ And how immensely is this folly and immorality aggravated, when it is found that the voluntary suffering, instead of being simply useless, becomes, in its consequences, highly pernicious; and when, by abundant evidence, it is proved to generate the very worst corruptions and perversions to which human nature is liable! Such, clearly, are the inflictions of the monastic life—the solitude, the abstinence, the celibacy, the poverty!
The rule of Christian martyrdom is precise and unequivocal, and is such as absolutely to exclude every sort of spontaneous heroism. ”

“ Now, during those times, the people of Palestine were passing from the lower to the upper culminating point of their national existence. Where, then, in this great assemblage of the nations of antiquity—where is Palestine? Are there none here to represent her, and to challenge a place for a people whose literature has pervaded the civilised [Pg 402] world? The books of the people of Palestine are in every home—in every sacred edifice—they are found in palaces, and in cottages, and they are treasured near to the hearts of the good—high and low, and are extant in the memories of all. ”

“ But if there were room to imagine that the first spread of Christianity was owing rather to an accidental conjuncture of favoring circumstances than to its real power over the human mind, or if it might be thought that any such peculiar virtue was all spent and exhausted in its first expansive effort, then it is natural to look to the next occasion on which the opinions of mankind were put in fermentation, and to watch in what manner the system of the Bible then rode over the high billows of political, religious, and intellectual commotion. ”

“ Cicero’s great man is, of course, a warrior; Aristotle’s is a statesman: the Roman obtains glory; the Greek, honour, dignity. The one, if destitute of probity, becomes the factious destroyer of his country, and is regardless of dangers and toils: the other—merely vain. The Greeks addicted themselves to war to defend their liberties, and to determine their intestine quarrels; but the Romans did so from the innate love of combat, and the insatiable desire of conquest. Both moralists make true virtue essential to true magnanimity ”

“ Whenever excitements of any kind are regarded distinctly as a source of luxurious pleasure, then, instead of expanding the bosom with beneficent energy, instead of dispelling the sinister purposes of selfishness, instead of shedding the softness and warmth of generous love through the moral system, they become a freezing centre of solitary and unsocial indulgence; and at length displace every emotion that deserves to be called virtuous. No cloak of selfishness is, in fact, more impenetrable than that which usually envelops a pampered imagination. ”

“ The Grecian sculptures give proof that the superstition to which they belonged, however false or absurd it might be, was open to all the ameliorations and embellishments of a highly refined literature. In contrast with these are the sacred sculptures of India, which disgust us as undisguised and significant representatives of the horrid vices enjoined and practised by the priests. But the lettered taste of the Greeks taught their artists to invest each attribute of evil with some form of beauty. The hideousness of the vindictive passions must be hid beneath the character of tranquil power ”

“ Were it indeed permitted to man to gaze upward from step to step, and from range to range of the vast edifice of rational existences, and could his eye attain its summit, and then perceive, at an infinite height beyond that highest platform of created beings, the lowest beams of the eternal throne, what liberty of heart would afterwards be left to him in drawing near to the Father of spirits? How, after such a revelation of the upper world, could the affectionate cheerfulness of earthly worship again take place? ”