CHAPTER CLXX.
THE AUTHOR REPEATS A REMARK OF HIS DAUGHTER UPON THE PRECEDING CHAPTER; COMPLIMENTS THE LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX UPON HIS LUNGS AND LARYNX; PHILOSOPHIZES AND QUOTES, AND QUOTES AND PHILOSOPHIZES AGAIN AND AGAIN.
Fato, Fortuna, Predestinazione,
Sorte, Caso, Ventura, son di quelle
Cose che dan gran noja a le persone,
E vi si dicon su di gran novelle.
Ma in fine Iddio d'ogni cose é padrone:
E chi é savio domina a le stelle;
Chi non é savio paziente e forte,
Lamentisi di se, non de la sorte.
ORL. INN.
“Pappa, it's a breathless chapter!” says one whose eyes when they are turned toward me I never meet without pleasure, unless sorrow has suffused them, or illness dimmed their light.
Nobody then can give so much effect to it in reading aloud as the Lord Chancellor Brougham and Vaux, he having made a speech of nine hours long upon the state of the law and thereby proved himself to be the most long-winded of living men. And fit it is that he should be so; for there are very few men to whom whether he be right or wrong, it can be so well worth while to listen.
Yet give me space a while for to respire,
And I myself shall fairly well out-wind.1
1 HENRY MORE.
For I have read no idle or unprofitable lesson in this remuneration. Were we thus to retrace the course of our own lives, there are few of us who would not find that that course had been influenced, and its most important events brought about, by incidents which might seem as casually or capriciously connected as the seventeen links of this mental chain. Investigate any thing backward through seventeen generations of motives, or moving causes, whether in private, or in public life: see from what slight and insignificant circumstances friendships have originated, and have been dissolved; by what accidents the choice of a profession, or of a wife, have been determined, and on how inconsiderable a point the good or ill fortune of a life has depended;—deaths, marriages, wealth or poverty, opinions more important than all other things, as in their consequence affecting our happiness not only here but hereafter; victories and defeats, war and peace, change of ministries and of dynasties, revolutions, the overthrow of thrones, the degradation and the ruin and the destruction and the disappearance of nations! Trace any of these backward link by link, and long before we are lost in the series of causes, we shall be lost in thought and in wonder; so much will there be to humble the pride of man, to abate his presumption, and to call for and confirm his faith.
On dit que quand les Chinois, qui n'ont pas l'usage des horologes, commencerent à voir ces rouës, ces balanciers, ces volans, ces contrepoids, et tout l'attirail de ces grandes machines, considerant les pieces à part et comme desmembrées, ils n'en firent pas grand estat, pource qu'ils ne sçavoient à quel usage devoient servir toutes ces pieces: mais comme elles furent montées, et qu'ils oüyrent les heures sur le tymbre, ils furent si surpris d'estonnement, qu'ils s'assembloient à trouppes pour voir le mouvement de l'aiguille, et pour entendre les heures; et appellerent ces machines en leur langue, LE FER QUI PARLE. Je dis que qui considera les parties de la Providence Divine comme desmembrées et à piece, tant de ressorts, tant d'accordans divers, tant d'evenemens qui nous semblent casuels, ne se pourra jamais imaginer la beauté de cette machine, la sagesse de cette Providence, la conduitte de ce grand corps; à cause qu'on fait tort à un ouvrage fait à la Mosaíque de le voir à lambeaux; il le faut voir monté et rangé par le menu pour marquer sa beauté. Mais quand on entend l'heure qui sonne sur le tymbre, on commence à cognoistre qu'il y avoit au dedans une belle et agreable police qui paroist au dehors par la sonnerie. Ainsi en est il à peu pres de la vie d'un homme. 2
2 GARASSE.
May not that which frequently has been, instruct us as to what will be! is a question which Hobbes proposes, and which he answers in the negative. “No;” he replies to it, “for no one knows what may be, except He who knows all things, because all things contribute to every thing”—
Nonne
Id quod sæpe fuit, nos docet id quod erit?
Non; scit enim quod erit, nisi qui sciat omnia, nemo;
Omni contribuunt omnia namque rei.
The philosopher of Doncaster was far from agreeing with the philosopher of Malmesbury upon this as upon many other points. De minimis non curat lex, was a maxim with him in philosophy as well as in law. There were many things he thought, which ended in as little as they began, fatherless and childless actions, having neither cause nor consequence, bubbles upon the stream of events, which rise, burst, and are no more:—
A moment seen then gone for ever.3
3 BURNS.
What John Newton said is nevertheless true; the way of man is not in himself! nor can he conceive what belongs to a single step. “When I go to St. Mary Woolnoth,” he proceeds, “it seems the same whether I turn down Lothbury or go through the Old Jewry; but the going through one street and not another may produce an effect of lasting consequence.” He had proof enough of this in the providential course of his own eventful life; and who is there that cannot call to mind some striking instances in his own?
“There is a time coming,” said this good man, “when our warfare shall be accomplished, our views enlarged, and our light increased; then with what transports of adoration and love shall we look back upon the way by which the Lord led us! We shall then see and acknowledge that mercy and goodness directed every step; we shall see that what our ignorance once called adversities and evils, were in reality blessings which we could not have done well without; that nothing befell us without a cause, that no trouble came upon us sooner, or pressed us more heavily, or continued longer, than our case required: in a word that our many afflictions were each in their place, among the means employed by divine grace and wisdom, to bring us to the possession of that exceeding and eternal weight of glory which the Lord has prepared for his people. And even in this imperfect state, though we are seldom able to judge aright of our present circumstances, yet if we look upon the years of our past life, and compare the dispensations we have been brought through, with the frame of our minds under each successive period; if we consider how wonderfully one thing has been connected with another; so that what we now number amongst our greatest advantages, perhaps took their first rise from incidents which we thought hardly worth our notice; and that we have sometimes escaped the greatest dangers that threatened us, not by any wisdom or foresight of our own, but by the intervention of circumstances, which we neither desired nor thought of;—I say, when we compare and consider these things by the light afforded us in the Holy Scriptures, we may collect indisputable proof from the narrow circle of our own concerns, that the wise and good providence of God watches over his people from the earliest moment of their life, over-rules and guards them through all their wanderings in a state of ignorance, and leads them in a way they know not, till at length his providence and grace concur in those events and impressions which bring them to the knowledge of Him and themselves.”
“All things are brought upon us by Nature and Fate,” says the unknown speculator who foisted his theology upon the world under the false name of Hermes Trismegistus: “and there is no place deserted by Providence. But Providence is the reason, perfect in itself, of super-celestial Deity. From it are the two known Powers, Necessity and Fate. Fate is the Minister of Providence and of Necessity; and the Stars are the ministers of Fate. And no one can fly from Fate, nor protect himself against its mighty force; for the Stars are the arms of Fate, and according to it all things are affected in Nature and in Men.” Take the passage in the Latin of Franciscus Patricius who produced these mystic treatises from the Ranzovian Library.
Omnia vero fiunt Naturâ et Fato. Et non est locus desertus a Providentiâ. Providentia vero est per se perfecta ratio supercælestis Dei. Duæ autem sunt ab eâ notæ potentiæ. Necessitas et Fatum. Fatum autem ministrum est Providentiæ et Necessitatis. Fati vero ministræ sunt stellæ. Neque enim Fatum fugere quis potest, neque se custodire ab ipsius vi magnâ. Arma namque Fati sunt Stellæ, secùndum ipsum namque cuncta efficiuntur Naturæ et hominibus.
Thus, says P. Garasse, there are six or seven steps down to man; Providence, Necessity, Fate, the Stars, Nature, and then Man at the lowest step of the ladder. For Providence, being ratio absoluta cælestis Dei, is comme hors de pair: and has under her a servant who is called Necessity, and Necessity has under her, her valet Fate, and Fate has the Stars for its weapons, and the Stars have Nature for their arsenal, and Nature has them for her subjects: The one serves the other, “en sorte que le premier qui manque à son devoir, desbauche tout l'attirail; mais à condition, qu'il est hors de la puissance des hommes d'eviter les armes du Destin qui sont les Estoiles. Or je confesse que tout ce discours m'est si obscur et enigmatique que j'entendrois mieux les resveries d'un phrenetique, ou les pensées obscures de Lycophron; je m'asseure que Trismegiste ne s'entendoit non plus lors qu'il faisoit ce discours, que nous l'entendons maintenant.”
The Jesuit is right. Necessity, Fate and Nature are mere abstractions. The Stars keep their courses and regard not us. Between Man and his Maker nothing is interposed; nothing can be interposed between the Omnipresent Almighty and the creatures of His hand. Receive this truth into thy soul whoever thou be'est that readest, and it will work in thee a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness! And ye who tremble at the aweful thought, remember that though there be nothing between us and our Judge, we have a Mediator and Advocate with Him, who is the propitiation for our sins, and who is “able to save them to the uttermost that come to God through Him.”
