each person who sees that Continent hereafter, it will discover itself as it now does to us." That, I understand, is the fundamental maxim of theology. We cannot discover the Eternal and Infinite, but He discovers Himself, and in discovering Himself helps us to see what we are, what our relations to our fellowcreatures are, what we are to seek, what we are to hate. Because I am convinced that this is so-because I should despair of myself and you, and of the universe, if I thought otherwise-therefore I can see a meaning, a worth, a sacredness, a hopefulness in every pursuit to which you devote yourselves here or elsewhere; therefore I can trust every New Year will do more for you than the last. The assurance of a Revelation that has been made, of a Revelation that is to be made to the whole earth; this I find the chief comfort and encouragement in thinking of your work, or of my work, of your little society, or of the whole society of human beings.

XIII.

ON CRITICS.1

IN the year 1801 a periodical was established in Edinburgh which has exercised a considerable influence upon the thought and the criticism of this country during the last half-century. Those who commenced this work took for their motto the words, "The judge is condemned when the guilty man is absolved or escapes condemnation." They therefore proclaimed themselves judges; their function was to decide what writers were deserving of punishment; on those who did, they pledged themselves to inflict it summarily.

It is said, that of the persons who felt themselves called to this office, and who formed this determination, scarcely one had passed his twenty-first birthday. That may appear an early time for men to take their seats upon the bench; yet many of us can recollect that at that age, though we might have few or none of the gifts which these Edinburgh Reviewers gave ample evidence that they possessed, we thought ourselves perfectly competent to assume the same position and to pass sentence upon the universe. If we did not

1

1 A Lecture delivered at the Brighton Athenæum, 1856.

think so then, we probably should never have arrived at the belief afterwards; for as we grow older painful doubts of our infallibility spring up within ourselves, and are encouraged by the persons with whom we converse. It now and then occurs to us that perhaps the judge is condemned for his severity as well as for his leniency, and that he may sometimes mistake an innocent man for a guilty one. Nay, the judge may even feel that his own office, grand as it is, does not quite satisfy his human cravings. He may wish for a little sympathy with his fellow-creatures; he may dream that he would be more comfortable if he were more on their level, if he stood at least on a not quite immeasurable height above them. He would like not always to be laying down the law, and to be occasionally receiving wisdom as well as giving it forth. Such desires and regrets begin to be awakened in us about that time when, as Young says, a man suspects himself a fool,-they have ripened considerably by that maturer time, when, according to the same authority, he knows it. One who was in his youth a severe, though certainly, on the whole, a genial critic, has said :

"A something whispers in my heart

That as we downward tend,

Lycoris, life requires an art,

To which our souls must bend ;

A skill, to balance and supply ;
And ere the flowing fount be dry,
As soon it must, a sense to sip
And drink, with no fastidious lip.”

But although great weight is due to this experience, it is also true that we may learn more of the tendencies of an age from young men than we can from old men. These accomplished Edinburgh Reviewers, and other reviewers much less accomplished, would not have aspired to such great tasks when they were young, and would not have produced so much effect, and excited so much rivalry, if there had not been a bias in our time towards criticism which there never was to the same degree in any former time, and which it is not possible and therefore, if we admit a Providence over the minds of men, which it is not desirable-to counteract. Shakespeare has put into the mouth of his worst character the words, "I am nothing if not critical." I believe it may be true of the very best men of our time that they are nothing if not critical. But then I apprehend that they have taken some pains with themselves that their criticism shall not be of the same kind with Iago's-that it shall not be cold, suspicious, hateful, quickly detecting all that is evil in things or in men, very slow in discovering the good because there is no wish to discover it. I think they must be aware how easily they may slide into that Iago temper, and must have sought help in cultivating that which is the direct contrary of it. In what I say to you this evening about critics, my object will be to point out, so far as I am able, how we may become critics of the one sort, or of the other. It is far enough from my intention to say who are of the one sort or of the other. I speak of errors which I know

in myself, much more than any I know of in my neighbours. I believe the capacities for both characters lie in each of us, and that it is almost certain that we shall all of us sink into the one if we do not rise into the other.

The word "critic" unquestionably means a judge. The motto of the Edinburgh Reviewers gives it its literal force. But if you have been at a criminal trial in English courts of justice, and have marked the demeanour of the wisest and most righteous of the men who preside in them, I think you will have observed that the task of pronouncing sentence, even the task of laying down the law for the guidance of the jury, is not the greatest or the most difficult which they perform. In our days, at least-I do not know how it may have been in the more hanging days of our fathers—the black cap is not regarded by the spectators, certainly not by him who puts it on, as the most worthy or distinctive ensign of his office. Sadly and reluctantly he resorts to it at last. Not till he has exercised all his higher faculties in discriminating between conflicting points of evidence; not till after the most patient toil in severing facts from guesses, truth from appearances after the most scrupulous allowance for unfairness in narrators, and for reasons why the act should not have been committed-he has been driven to the conclusion that it has been committed, and that the doer of it is before him. Even then, by the provisions of our law, he cannot, as you know, take the decision into his own hands. He can