Darwinism in morals, and other essays : reprinted from the Theological and Fortnightly reviews, Fraser's and Macmillan's magazines, and the Manchester Friend / by Frances Power Cobbe.

  • Cobbe, Frances Power, 1822-1904.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Darwinism in morals, and other essays : reprinted from the Theological and Fortnightly reviews, Fraser's and Macmillan's magazines, and the Manchester Friend / by Frances Power Cobbe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by the currency of millenniums. The philosophy of the eighteenth century believed itself of mushroom birth, and * adopted all the rude airs of an upstart. The better philo- sophy of the nineteenth seeks to attach itself to the noblest names in the spiritual pedigree of the human race, and speaks with somewhat of the calm dignity of one who though far surpassing his fathers, yet deems himself to come of goodly stock and worthy parentage. On the other hand, there are not a few dangers connected with this rehabilitating of discredited dogmas ; dangers, above all to candour and simplicity. From these, however, Robertson was nobl}^, I had almost written, splendidly, exempt. No one could tax him with “ putting new wine into old bottles,” in the spirit of that Janus-preaching we hear so often; one face for those who adhere to the Past, and one for those who aspire to the Future. He was beyond the suspicion of tampering with the purest simplicity of the truth, as he understood it; nay, he seemed to desire to find always to express his thoughts, not old consecrated words which remain for ever burdened with first associa- tions, but the freshest phrases of English life of to-day wherein his meaning might be absolutely transparent. And one other great service Robertson did for us. He taught in a thousand forms the truth, best expressed in one of his Sermons, wheie he says, that the Vinevard is made indeed for the culture of vines, but if vines be found healthy and full of fruit oufsidB the vineyard, they are none the less therefore to be accounted true vines. Perhaps the relation of the Church to the individual soul was never more happily exemplified. Brought home, as by Robertson’s eloquence, to a thousand hearts, we all owe much, and shall year by year owe more, to this lesson, gradually sjireading among minds whose orthodox creed would formerly have seemed to be a wall of partition forbidding them to recognize any test of