able living, to teach personal virtue, and to extend that personal virtue to society and to the body politic was the end of their labor.

ADDISON'S RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY.

Addison has, very explicitly stated his religious philosophy.1 Religion has two phases: belief and practice. Belief has to do with revealed religion and may be called faith. Practice has to do with the duties of reason or natural religion and may be called morality. Of these two morality has the pre-eminence, because the greatest part of morality is eternal in nature; because a man without faith is more effective in the world than a man who emphasizes faith to the exclusion of morality; because morality quiets the mind, moderates passions, advances private happiness; because the rule of morality is more certain than faith; because infidelity is not so malignant as immorality; because the excellence of faith is to be tested from its influence upon morality. On the other hand revealed religion has force in explaining and exalting morality, in furnishing motives for action, in giving truer ideas of God, of our neighbor, and of ourselves. Revealed religion shows the blackness of vice, and through the Church of England is prescribed an institutional method of making morality effectual to salvation. The Christian faith is necessary to support and perfect morality. It is plain, however, that Addison was consistent in giving morality pre-eminence over faith, for he made nothing an article of faith which does not confirm or improve morality. His attitude towards religion was the typically negative one of the eighteenth century. "The greatest friend," he said, "of morality or natural religion can not apprehend danger from the Christianity of the English church." And his practical counsel was in all dubious points to consider all ill consequences before giving up assent. The tree is to be judged by its fruit.

1 Spectator, 459.

Both conviction and patriotism led Addison to adhere to the established religion.1 He used almost the vocabulary of a modern psychologist in speaking of the mechanical effect of custom upon the body and of its influence upon the mind. Custom makes things pleasant. Application to study increases delight in it. "Habit may

render pleasant even a disagreeable condition in life." And so Addison found the practice of religion pleasant from habit, from its power to satisfy reason, from hope of immortality. The support of an established religion, he argued, was considered patriotic duty by the Greeks. Pythagoras urged the worship of the gods "as it is ordained by law." Socrates accepted the established worship of his country. Xenophon worshipped in the manner of the Persians. Even the Epicureans feared to "shock the common belief of mankind" and the religion of their country.

Pure metaphysics, Addison said, is an illusive guide.3 The man who assumes to follow pure reason so far alienates himself from the commonalty as to be adjudged fit for Bedlam. A man must adjust himself to the demands both of reason and of social duty. Just as "the soul abstracted from passions is slow in execution",5 so metaphysics divorced from practical activity is an ineffectual beating the air. "In a word a man should not live as if there was no God in the world; nor at the same time as if there were no men in it."6

In addition to his general defence of Christianity Addison gave a somewhat detailed exposition of his religious philosophy. He accepted Locke's conception of Deity as far as the light of reason could explain the divine attributes. God is infinite perfection, Omnipresent, Omni1 Spectator, 287.

2 Spectator, 447. 3 Spectator, 576.

4 Spectator, 576. 5 Spectator, 598. 6 Spectator, 598.

potent, Omniscient. In one of the most eloquent papers of the Spectator (565) Addison tried to give fuller content to these words that we speak so glibly and often so coldly in defining the Divine. As he walked in the open fields at sunset, night insensibly fell. Stars and planets appeared. The moon rose in clouded majesty and took her progress among the constellations. Addison, considering the wonders of the Heavens, the insignificance of man "lost among that infinite variety of creatures, which in all probability swarm through all those immeasurable regions of matter," tried to enlarge his conceptions somewhat to compass the attributes of the Divine Nature.

"If we consider Him in His omnipresence; His being passes through, actuates, and supports the whole frame of nature. His creation, and every part of it, is full of Him. There is nothing He has made that is either so distant, so little, or so inconsiderable, which He does not essentially inhabit. His substance is within the substance of every being, whether material or immaterial, and as intimately present to it as that being is to itself. It would be an imperfection in Him were he able to remove out of one place into another, or to withdraw Himself from anything He has created, or from any part of that space which is diffused and spread abroad to infinity. In short, to speak of Him in the language of the old philosopher, He is a Being whose centre is everywhere, and His circumference nowhere.

"In the second place, He is omniscient as well as omnipresent. His omniscence, indeed, necessarily and naturally flows from His omnipresence: He can not but be conscious of every motion that arises in the whole material world, which He thus essentially pervades, and of every thought that is stirring in the intellectual world, to every part of which He is thus intimately united. Several moralists have considered the creation as the temple of God, which He has built with His own hands, and which is filled with His presence. Others have considered

infinite space as the receptacle, or rather the habitation of the Almighty but the noblest and most exalted way of considering this infinite space is that of Sir Isaac Newton, who calls it the sensorium of the Godhead. Brutes and

men have their sensoriola or little sensoriums, by which they apprehend the presence and perceive the actions of a few objects that lie contiguous to them. Their knowledge and observation turns within a very narrow circle. But as God Almighty can not but perceive and know everything in which He resides, infinite space gives room to infinite knowledge, and is, as it were, an organ to omniscience.

"Were the soul separate from the body, and with one glance of thought should start beyond the bounds of creation, should it for millions of years continue its progress through infinite space with the same activity, it would still find itself within the embrace of its Creator, and encompassed round with the immensity of the Godhead. Whilst we are in the body, He is not less present with us because he is concealed from us. 'Oh that I knew where I might find him', says Job. 'Behold, I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I can not perceive Him; on the left hand, where He doth work, but I can not behold Him; He hideth Himself on the right hand, that I can not see Him'. In short, reason as well as revelation assures us that He cannot be absent from us, notwithstanding He is undiscovered by us."1

In another paper2 Addison expressed his sense of a divine presence in the universe with a warmth of sensibility which shows that in spite of his seemingly negative faith, he did by feeling transcend merely prudential religion and in a sense apprehend some of the countless perfections which he admitted God may have, though we cannot comprehend them.3 Our human conception of infinity, of time, infinite past and infinite future, is a

1 Spectator, 565, pp. 43-45.

2 Spectator, 571.

3 Spectator, 531.

demonstration of God's existence.1 Man who is helpless, subject to misfortune and calamities, owes a natural homage to his Creator, by rendering which he loses his insufficiency and increases his power of actual achievement. This sense of reliance upon divine power Addison finely expressed in a poetical version of the twenty-third psalm.2

After one has once accepted the orthodox faith as reasonable, Addison contended one should never admit a doubt of his position. Practice, more than argument, gives strength of faith. One should remember the conclusion at which he arrived in his original speculation and abide by that without repeating the steps of inquiry. Thus a man's faith is established. One should also confirm faith by "habitual adoration of the Supreme Being." "The devout man does not only believe but feels there is a Deity. He has actual sensations of Him; his experience concurs with his reason; he sees Him more and more in all his intercourses with Him, and even in this life almost loses his faith in conviction".3 Addison thus admitted that feeling is an ally to reason in interpreting the relation of the human to the divine. His hymn The Spacious Firmament, is another poetical expression of the argument that the heavens and earth are the best proofs of God's existence. Nevertheless, though Addison admitted devotion as an aid to right reason, he had a horror of superstition and enthusiasm. Enthusiasm was excess of devotion. "A strong steady masculine piety" was his notion of religion.

In Addison's remarks on the nature and immortality of the soul the influence of Locke is evident.5 There is no division in the soul itself. "It is the whole soul that remembers, understands, wills, or imagines". Immortality would then imply the happiness of the whole man in 1 Spectator, 590. 2 Spectator, 441. 3 Spectator, 465. 4 Spectator, 201. 5 Spectator, 600.