| 191 |
It will have been observed that in the short poems addressed to Byron abroad, Hodgson more than once evinces anxiety on the score of his friend’s religious difficulties. This anxiety was not likely to be lessened by the avowed infidelity expressed in the opening stanzas of the second canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ which Hodgson was now helping to correct for the press. The deep despondency into which the pilgrim had fallen since the rapid succession of deaths by which his return to Newstead had been saddened, seemed, moreover, to point to the abiding sorrow of one who mourned without hope.
Earnestly desirous of establishing sound religious principles in the mind of
the young and ardent poet whose future was so full of bright promise for his
| 192 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
| UNRECOGNISED INFLUENCE. | 193 |
This frank avowal proves that Hodgson’s remonstrances, which have unfortunately been lost, but to which the following letters are answers, had, in all probability, a far greater effect upon their recipient than he cared, at the time, to admit; and that it was their powerful, though perhaps unrecognised, influence which induced him ever afterwards to speak in a far more reverent tone of those great subjects, which, whether a man believes, denies, or doubts, must be admitted to be the most sacred of any which can engage his thoughts.
In reading even these letters, deeply interesting and instructive as they
are, as throwing light upon the history of such a mind, and as containing the most explicit
record extant of its religious sentiments, if such they may be called, some allowance must
undoubtedly be made for the love of shocking prejudices, the fondness for making
unprecedented statements and startling antitheses, which were so curiously characteristic
of their writer. Nor would it be fair to ignore the distinction, which he himself elsewhere
lays
| 194 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
It will, moreover, be remarked that the observations are sometimes strangely superficial, and that the arguments, though plausible enough, are illogical and inconclusive; and too often proceed upon that unsound system of a priori reasoning, which (as Hodgson frequently observed of scepticism) limits the wisdom of an omnipotent Creator by the ignorance of the imperfect creature.
My dear Hodgson,—I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we
are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon
another. If men are to live, why die at all? and if they die, why disturb the
sweet and sound sleep that ‘knows no waking’? ‘Post
mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors
nihil’—‘quæris quo jaceas post
obitum loco?’ ‘Quo non nata
jacent.’ . . . As to revealed religion, Christ came to save
men; but a BYRON ON REVEALED RELIGION. 195
όν ό Θεός
άγαπάει
άποθνήσκει
νέος.2
|
1 In Hamlet. 2 He whom God loves dies young. |
| 196 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
I shall rejoice to see you. My present intention is to accept Scrope Davies’s invitation; and then, if you accept mine, we shall meet here and there. Did you know poor Matthews? I shall miss him much at Cambridge.
The conclusion of this letter is unfortunately lost. Its first sentence seems to supply a most inadequate reason for rejecting the hope of immortality. If, as is implied, we are inevitably miserable in this life,
1 The word here is illegible. |
| FALLACIOUS REASONING. | 197 |
The fallacies contained in the succeeding statements are apparent enough. In the first place, it is unduly assumed that Christianity can never prevail among men; inasmuch as statistics plainly prove that from the date of its foundation its influences have been steadily, if slowly, increasing, and as there is every reason to believe that they will continue to increase until ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’ Secondly, that is emphatically asserted, which no reasonable person could seriously deny, that those to whom the Gospel message has never been offered cannot be considered responsible for its rejection.
What follows is so sadly and strangely prophetic, and so obviously devoid of
all logical consistency,
| 198 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
The scathing sarcasm of the next sentence was surely not much more or less justifiable sixty years ago than it is singularly appropriate to the contemptible disunions and controversies on non-essentials which characterise more modern Christianity; but the unfairness of arguing generally against a creed because it necessarily involves abuses, is too manifest to demand serious comment. Of the conclusion it may be noticed that it certainly does not follow from the premisses; but that, even if it did so follow, the premisses having been proved unsound, the conclusion would fall with them. The last words merely repeat the mistakes before pointed out, which ignore the doctrine of the gradual development of Christianity until to all is vouchsafed the opportunity of refusing the evil and of choosing the good.
The only answer from the recipient of these letters is the following fragment of verse, which may be taken as a clue to the spirit of the advice which elicited them:—
|
Alone, my Byron, on Shelfordian plains,
For thee I meditate my careless strains;
Roam, undisturb’d, in free-born thought along,
And yield a day to friendship and to song.
|
| THE FOLLY OF SCEPTICISM. | 199 |
|
Say, whence thy doubt of God’s o’er-ruling pow’r,
Thou troubled dreamer of a darksome hour?
Is it that, dimly through this veil of sin,
The ray of virtue glimmers from within?
Is it that, soaring to sublimer things,
The flight of mind betrays her feeble wings?
But whence thy right, ephemeral phantom whence,
To purer instinct or to loftier sense?
Would Reason prompt thee louder to complain
If lower link’d in being’s general chain?
She prompts not now thy discontented voice,
Nor bids thee choose where Heaven denies a choice.
What, if surrounded by a drearier shade,
Or by thy fate, or by thy folly made,
No beam of love illumed thy lonely path,
But, wandering on, an outcast child of wrath,
Without a guide, a father, or a friend,
Thy melancholy progress met its end,
Lost in the shoreless floods of silent space,
Thy time an instant, and a speck thy place.
What, if imprison’d in this ruin’d earth,
All traces gone of thy diviner birth,
Scarce could thy shuddering nature bear its doom,
The painful cradle, and the hopeless tomb!
What could’st thou more than blame thy Maker’s plan,
And call His Providence the foe of man?
But praise Him now who gives unbounded scope
For Reason’s honour, and for Virtue’s hope;
Presents a world thy generous strength to try,
And spreads the prize of conquest in the sky.
What prize were that without an effort won?
Or why reward the deed that must be done?
|
| 200 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
|
No! to thy choice is offer’d good or ill,
And conscience owns thy liberty of will.
Where then begin, where end, our fruitless strife?
Waive doubt awhile, and purify thy life.
Ask you what land contains the lustral fount?
Behold it flowing from Judæa’s mount!
There weary pilgrims drink at Wisdom’s shrine,
A water spotless from a source divine.
There pining cares and stormy passions rest,
And love dwells happy in the peaceful breast;
There Mercy weeps o’er human faults forgiven,
And Heav’n-born friendship reascends to Heav’n.
Say, can obedience lose the promised bliss?
Can Faith be groundless in a life like this?
No! the cleansed heart assures the doubting eyes,
And new-born hopes to new-born virtues rise.
Then, ranging boundless o’er the Almighty whole
In every part a God! shall strike the soul—
From one vast temple shall a God! be heard;
A God from Judah’s voice, a God! from Nature’s word.
.......
As journeying darkly o’er the midnight heath,
The seeming reign of solitude and death,
Some fainting wretch pursues his fearful way;
Till o’er yon lengthening ocean gleams the day—
Wide and more wide the growing gold expands,
A cloudless glory lightens seas and lands!
Then lovely order through the prospect shines
.......
|
The remainder of the verses is lost, but it is not difficult to complete the simile.
| GLORIOUS POSSIBILITIES. | 201 |
If the wise counsels of this truest of friends had been allowed their legitimate force, and had exercised a more immediate influence upon the mind of the wayward poet, what a different future might, from that moment, have been opened to him! Untrammelled by the weaknesses of that lower nature which bound him down to earth, his mighty genius would have soared to loftier flights; unfettered by the chains of a morbid self-consciousness, his noble, generous nature would have found scope for its energies in the exercise of the purest philanthropy. That marvellous combination of rank, and talent, and beauty, which made him alternately the idol and the scapegoat of his age, if tempered and guided by religious discipline, would have enabled him to confer incalculable benefits upon his fellow men. All that is grandest and noblest in human nature would henceforth have been inseparably associated with the name of Byron.
It is melancholy, indeed, to turn from the contemplation of such glorious possibilities to the strange reality of mingled faith and doubt which bore such bitter fruit; lamentable, however deeply instructive, to look back upon the perilous rocks and subtly-shifting quicksands upon which so beautiful a bark was wrecked almost at the outset of its voyage.
| 202 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
My dear Hodgson,—I thank you for your song, or, rather, your two songs—your new song on love, and your old song on religion. I admire the first sincerely, and in turn call upon you to admire the following on Anacreon Moore’s new operatic farce,1 or farcical opera—call it which you will:—
Good plays are scarce, So Moore writes farce; Is fame like his so brittle? We knew before That ‘Little’s’
Moore,
But now ’tis
Moore
that’s Little. |
1 The M.P.; or, The Blue Stocking, which, after having been acted for a few nights, disappeared finally from the stage. |
| IMPERFECT ARGUMENTS. | 203 |
Besides, I trust that God is not a Jew, but the God of all mankind; and, as you allow that a virtuous Gentile may be saved, you do away the necessity of being a Jew or a Christian.
I do not believe in any revealed religion, because no
religion is revealed; and if it pleases the Church to damn me for not allowing
a non-entity, I throw myself on the mercy of the
‘Great First Cause, least understood,’
who must do what is most proper; though I conceive He never made anything to be
tortured in another life, whatever it may in this. I will neither read pro nor con. God would have made
His will known without books, considering how very few could read them when
Jesus of Nazareth lived, had it been His pleasure to
| 204 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
I will write, read, and think no more; indeed, I do not wish to shock your prejudices by saying all I do think. Let us make the most of life, and leave dreams to Emanuel Swedenborg.
Now to dreams of another genus—poesies. I like your song much; but I will say no more, for fear you should think I wanted to coax you into approbation of my past, present, or future acrostics. I shall not be at Cambridge before the middle of October; but, when I go, I should certes like to see you there before you are dubbed a deacon. Write to me, and I will rejoin.
In this second letter, the first point to be noticed
| HUMAN NOTIONS OF JUSTICE. MIRACLES. | 205 |
The great subject of miracles is dismissed in so summary a manner as to render a distinct refutation of the opinion definitely expressed impossible, without an exhaustive inquiry into the credibility of witnesses such as is to be found in Paley’s ‘Evidences;’ or a comprehensive consideration of the whole subject of God’s omnipotence, and consequent power to change for a specific and unique purpose the laws which He has made, such as is amply afforded by Butler’s ‘Analogy.’
To the truism that God is the God of all man-
| 206 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
| SUICIDAL SELF-DECEPTION. | 207 |
That God did make His will known without books, as well as through them, is proved by the unprecedented and unparalleled effects of the Apostles’ teaching, and to the widespread influences of oral instructions and traditions throughout the early ages of the Church’s history.
The painfully irreverent allusion to the doctrine of the resurrection of the
body is an instance of the determination (so characteristic of its writer) to press
forcibly to their natural conclusion any opinions which arrested his attention. But it is
strange that he should have altogether overlooked the Christian belief that the natural
body which dies is raised a
| 208 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
In these days of universal inquiry and rigid criticism, the consideration of the religious sentiments of so powerful a thinker as Byron, if conducted in a conscientious spirit, cannot be devoid of useful interest. For the necessary conviction which such a consideration will inculcate is obviously this: that if such a mind could find no stronger arguments than these in favour of scepticism, Christianity, however it might suffer temporarily from the insensibility of its opponents, would be in no danger of ultimate suppression even if it depended solely upon human agencies for its support; while the fatal influences of such self-reliant speculations are strikingly exemplified in the hapless life and premature death of the greatest poet of his age.
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