Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition)

In the sermon and the notes both the historical truth and the necessity of the miracles are strongly and frequently asserted. ‘The testimony of books of history (namely, relatively to the signs and wonders with which Christ came,) is one of the strong and stately ‘pillars’ of the church; but it is not the ‘foundation’.’ Instead, therefore, of defending myself, which I could easily effect by a series of passages, expressing the same opinion, from the fathers and the most eminent protestant divines, from the Reformation to the Revolution, I shall merely state what my belief is, concerning the true evidences of Christianity.

1st. Its consistency with right reason, I consider as the outer court of the temple, the common area within which it stands.

2ndly. The miracles, with and through which the religion was first revealed and attested, I regard as the steps, the vestibule, the portal of the temple.

3rdly. The sense, the inward feeling, in the soul of each believer, of its exceeding ‘desirableness’ — the experience, that he ‘needs’ something, joined with the strong foretokening, that the redemption and the graces propounded to us in Christ are ‘what’ he needs — this I hold to be the true foundation of the spiritual edifice.

With the strong ‘a priori’ probability that flows in from 1 and 3, on the correspondent historical evidence of 2, no man can refuse or neglect to make the experiment without guilt. But,

4thly, it is the experience derived from a practical conformity to the conditions of the gospel — it is the opening eye; the dawning light; the terrors and the promises of spiritual growth; the blessedness of loving God as God, the nascent sense of sin hated as sin, and of the incapability of attaining to either without Christ; it is the sorrow that still rises up from beneath, and the consolation that meets it from above; the bosom treacheries of the principal in the warfare, and the exceeding faithfulness and long-suffering of the uninterested ally; — in a word, it is the actual trial of the faith in Christ, with its accompaniments and results, that must form the arched roof, and the faith itself is the completing keystone. In order to an efficient belief in Christianity, a man must have been a Christian, and this is the seeming argumentum in circulo, incident to all spiritual truths, to every subject not presentable under the forms of time and space, as long as we attempt to master by the reflex acts of the understanding, what we can only ‘know’ by the act of ‘becoming’. ‘Do the will of my Father, and ye shall know whether I am of God.’

These four evidences I believe to have been, and still to be, for the world, for the whole church, all necessary, all equally necessary; but that at present, and for the majority of Christians born in Christian countries, I believe the third and the fourth evidences to be the most operative, not as superseding, but as involving a glad undoubting faith in the two former. Credidi, ideóque intellexi, appears to me the dictate equally of philosophy and religion, even as I believe redemption to be the antecedent of sanctification, and not its consequent. All spiritual predicates may be construed indifferently as modes of action, or as states of being. Thus holiness and blessedness are the same idea, now seen in relation to act, and now to existence.”

Biog. Liter. Vol. ii. p. 303.

His next publication was the ‘Zapolya’, which had a rapid sale, and he then began a second edition of the ‘Friend’ — if, indeed, as he observes,

“a work, the greatest part of which is new in substance, and the whole in form and arrangement, can be described as an edition of the former.”

At the end of the autumn of 1817, Coleridge issued the following prospectus, and hoped by delivering the proposed lectures to increase his utility; they required efforts indeed which he considered it a duty to make, notwithstanding his great bodily infirmities, and the heartfelt sorrow by which he had, from early life, been more or less oppressed: —

“There are few families, at present, in the higher and middle classes of English society, in which literary topics and the productions of the Fine Arts, in some one or other of their various forms, do not occasionally take their turn in contributing to the entertainment of the social board, and the amusement of the circle at the fireside. The acquisitions and attainments of the intellect ought, indeed, to hold a very inferior rank in our estimation, opposed to moral worth, or even to professional and specific skill, prudence, and industry. But why should they be opposed, when they may be made subservient merely by being subordinated? It can rarely happen that a man of social disposition; altogether a stranger to subjects of taste (almost the only ones on which persons of both sexes can converse with a common interest), should pass through the world without at times feeling dissatisfied with himself. The best proof of this is to be found in the marked anxiety which men, who have succeeded in life without the aid of these accomplishments, shew in securing them to their children. A young man of ingenuous mind will not wilfully deprive himself of any species of respect. He will wish to feel himself on a level with the average of the society in which he lives, though he may be ambitious of ‘distinguishing’ himself only in his own immediate pursuit or occupation.

Under this conviction, the following Course of Lectures was planned. The several titles will best explain the particular subjects and purposes of each; but the main objects proposed, as the result of all, are the two following:

I. To convey, in a form best fitted to render them impressive at the time, and remembered afterwards, rules and principles of sound judgment, with a kind and degree of connected information, such as the hearers, generally speaking, cannot be supposed likely to form, collect, and arrange for themselves, by their own unassisted studies. It might be presumption to say, that any important part of these Lectures could not be derived from books; but none, I trust, in supposing, that the same information could not be so surely or conveniently acquired from such books as are of commonest occurrence, or with that quantity of time and attention which can be reasonably expected, or even wisely desired, of men engaged in business and the active duties of the world.

II. Under a strong persuasion that little of real value is derived by persons in general from a wide and various reading; but still more deeply convinced as to the actual ‘mischief’ of unconnected and promiscuous reading, and that it is sure, in a greater or less degree, to enervate even where it does not likewise inflate; I hope to satisfy many an ingenuous mind, seriously interested in its own development and cultivation, how moderate a number of volumes, if only they be judiciously chosen, will suffice for the attainment of every wise and desirable purpose: that is, ‘in addition’ to those which he studies for specific and professional purposes. It is saying less than the truth to affirm, that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit-tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals, we may recur to it year after year, and it will supply the same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we ourselves return with the same healthful appetite.

The subjects of the Lectures are indeed very ‘different’, but not (in the strict sense of the term) ‘diverse’: they are ‘various’, rather than ‘miscellaneous’. There is this bond of connexion common to them all, — that the mental pleasure which they are calculated to excite is not dependant on accidents of fashion, place or age, or the events or the customs of the day; but commensurate with the good sense, taste, and feeling, to the cultivation of which they themselves so largely contribute, as being all in ‘kind’, though not all in the same ‘degree’, productions of GENIUS.