INTERLUDE SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON1 PHILOSOPHY is a tyrant that had for centuries reigned with undisputed authority in the realm of religious thought, until Sir William Hamilton proved it a usurper and dethroned it. Until the 1" Sir William Hamilton was a man of charming personality. Above the medium height, of a sinewy and well compact frame, with a massive head, decisive and finely cut features, a dark, calm, piercing eye, perfect self-possession and reliance, finished courtesy of manner, and a voice remarkably distinct, silvery and melodious, he stood before his hearers, the perfection of a man in every physical adornment. Whatever the previous expectations of Sir William's appearance might be, they were certainly realized, if not surpassed; and however familiar one might afterward become with the play of thought and feeling on that noble countenance, the first impression remained the strongest and the last-that it was altogether the finest head and face you had ever seen; strikingly handsome, and full of intelligence and power. When he began to read, Sir William's voice confirmed the impression his appearance and manner had produced. It was full, clear and resolute, with a swell of intellectual ardor in the more measured cadences, and a tone that grew deep and resonant in reading any striking extract from favorite author, in prose or poetry." (American Cyclopedia, Volume VIII., page 423.) year 1836, when Hamilton took the chair of logic and metaphysics in Edinburgh University, religion was a weeping captive maiden, wearing the shackles of first one and then another system of philosophy, with no liberty of thought and with her forms of expression, her powers of locomotion, hampered. Not a step had she taken in freedom since apostolic times. To the honor of the great Scotchman be it said, that by him were her shackles broken, and she has had her liberty until during the last quarter of the century just closed; then she was caught again in the net of German rationalism and is now being led about in chains, both in Europe and America. As a philosopher, it is universally conceded that "Hamilton stands among the greatest." He has been called the philosopher of common sense. Hamilton was a natural metaphysician. He had mastered, before he entered Baliol College, Oxford, all the science extant in Greek and Roman philosophy. In fourteen of his books on Greek philosophy, he was not questioned: the greater part of these being declared by the masters to be too abstrusely metaphysical for examination. Until his day, the two schools of thought, the real and the ideal, had used religion as a shuttle cock between them. Now one and then the other holding it. Religion, as a result, had lost nearly all its influence on human char 1 acter. It was the plaything of the universities, and the sport of the pulpit. The plain people who did not keep up in the chase of philosophy, slept in church or stayed at home. The light had not failed, but had been covered under the bushel of metaphysical discussion. Hamilton wrote for religion, the first Declaration of Independence that had been proclaimed since the Apostle Paul had declared, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." Hamilton's philosophy aimed to divorce reason and religion. As Dr. Shields says, "Over the very portal of revelation he wrote, as a flaming menace, the inscription, 'To an unknown God'; even from philosophy herself, he sought to wring stultifying testimonies, displaying the chance confessions of her disciples in learned array, as but so many fagots for her funeral pyre." Dr. Shields adds, "It was the protest of robust Scottish common sense against the vagaries of German transcendentalism, and the dazzling generalizations of French eclecticism. Appearing at a time when philosophy seemed in a fair way to degenerate into mere speculative cosmogony, it served to dissipate the brilliant word bubbles with which grave thinkers were amusing themselves, and has already re 1 Gal. 6: 14. |