Volume 1

Horae subsecivae / by John Brown.

  • Brown, John, 1810-1882.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Horae subsecivae / by John Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    he moved, he seemed as if leaving; indeed, we beUeve he intended then to leave, when turning round upon the class, with a face serious almost to anger, and a voice trembling with feeling, he said, ' Yes, gentlemen! there is a God, omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal^ as he vanished under the gallery into his room. Depend upon it, this single sentence made a deeper impression on his hearers than any more elaborate demonstration after the manner of Paley. The ardent old man did not linger among particulars, but passed at once, and with a sort of passionate fervour, to the full abso- lute assertion. Two examples of these brief lightnings, which at one flash ' unfold both earth and heaven,' occur to us now. Dr. Dick, in his System of Theology, at the close of his lecture on the Immensity and Omnipre- sence of the Deity, pictures a man about to commit some great sin, as shutting himself in his room, or going into the depths of an unfrequented wood, so as to get absolutely by himself, and then turning and looking and looking again to make sure—^ let him turn and look again f And John Foster, in that intense bit of spiritual vivisection, the Preface to Doddridge's Hise and Pro- gress, when minuting the process of a step-by-step descent into the deepest meditative wickedness and impiety, the very ' superfluity of naughtiness,' repre-