‘To the arguments urged by some very worthy people against showy dress,’ Macaulay says, ‘Johnson replied with admirable sense and spirit, “Let us not be found, when our Master calls us, stripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues. Alas! sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.’” And though, as Macaulay goes on to say, Johnson himself was under the tyranny of scruples, and gravely records in his Diary that he once committed the sin of drinking coffee on Good Friday, this by no means detracts from the fact that in all essential things his religion was sound and Scriptural.
Correctness of opinion, orthodoxy in doctrine, do not alone or pre-eminently constitute a religious man. Supremely above these things in importance is what a great modern preacher once called ‘orthodoxy of the heart.’ And orthodoxy of the heart, we know, may co-exist with indecision or even positive heresy on some dogmas of the Church as generally received and interpreted. Right through the history of the Christian Church have not saintly lives of the finest type been found among those who have been branded with the sin of heresy? And who that reads the religious literature of to-day, or mixes in thoughtful religious circles, will controvert the fact that some of the most devout and sweet-souled Christians one meets, must be reckoned among those who, on some of the generally accepted Christian dogmas, are outside the pale of orthodoxy. So that, to base Johnson’s character as a religious man either on the general soundness of his views on Christian doctrine, or his ardent churchmanship, or both, would be to fashion a chain of very inconclusive reasoning. But all the same religion, to be vital, must have some sure foundation of rational belief. And the Christian religion, assuredly, based as it is on a historic Person and a divine Revelation, can have no motive force on conduct unless it is founded on accepted dogma. Otherwise it is mere speculative opinion, or uncertain emotion, and cannot be trusted radically to change and determine human life and destiny. No man will live, or die, for an opinion, however beautiful, which in his heart he feels may, or may not, be true.
The clearness which marked Johnson’s belief in the cardinal doctrines of the Christian religion is what might be expected from his keen logical faculty and decision of character. But more admirable still was his firm persuasion that saving faith meant a great deal more than intellectual consent to the truths of Christianity; that it meant, indeed, the daily worship of God, penitence for sin, and personal trust in Christ as the Saviour of men. This is made abundantly evident in his Prayers and Meditations. No sympathetic reader of this book can see its author, as the hour of midnight steals on, kneeling in solemn silence before his God, or listen to him as with strong cries and tears he confesses his sins and pleads for pardon, and doubt the sincerity of his piety. There the gruff, overbearing dogmatist feels and pleads his weakness, and humbly clings for protection from the penalty of sin, and the woes of time and eternity, to the skirts of the Most High. Equally marked, also, was the influence of religion on Johnson’s everyday life. His steadfast adherence to truth, his keen distinction between right and wrong, vice and virtue, and his brooding sense of responsibility for the work given him to do were accompanied by unstinted benevolence and the most generous kindness to all who were in need. His house was a refuge for the infirm and the destitute among his friends, and the untiring patience with which he bore the peevish ill-temper of Mrs. Williams and the gentle consideration he showed her, excited not only the admiration, but almost the anger of his friends. Few men had more glaring defects of Christian character, but few men showed a more anxious desire to amend what was amiss, and to live in the fear of God, and the service of his fellows. Dr. Strahan knew Johnson intimately. In the original preface to this work he writes thus of him: ‘The integrity of his mind was not only speculatively shadowed in his writings, but substantially exemplified in his life. His prayers and his alms, like those of the good Cornelius, went up for a continual memorial; and always from a heart deeply impressed with piety, never insensible to the calls of friendship or compassion, and prone to melt in effusions of tenderness on the slightest incitement.’ Murphy, the editor of his collected works, who knew him equally well, is equally emphatic in his testimony. In his essay on Johnson he says: ‘Since virtue, or moral goodness, consists in a joint conformity of our actions to the relations in which we stand to the Supreme Being and to our fellow creatures, where shall we find a man who has been, or endeavoured to be, more diligent in the discharge of those essential duties? His first prayer was composed in 1738; he continued those fervent ejaculations of piety to the end of his life. In his Meditations we see him scrutinising himself with severity and aiming at perfection unattainable by man. His duty to his neighbour consisted in universal benevolence and a constant aim at the production of happiness.’ Such is the judgment of men who knew Johnson intimately. Upon two speculative religious subjects the opinions of Johnson have been much canvassed, viz., his belief in apparitions and dreams, and his practice of praying for the dead. Those questions need not be discussed at length here. They involve opinions or pious hopes, which, in the judgment of many people, may be either cherished or rejected without any infringement of the Christian faith. It is beyond controversy, that appearances of departed spirits are occasionally recorded in the Bible, and that good men in ancient times were profoundly influenced by dreams and visions. Johnson, undoubtedly, admitted the possibility of apparitions, and in one of the prayers in memory of his wife, he expresses the desire that God may permit him to enjoy his wife’s ministrations by ‘appearance, impulse, or dreams.’ In his Rasselas, also, he maintains the credibility of apparitions. But beyond that he does not go. He takes the same ground in his prayers for the dead, though from his long-continued use of these prayers it may be inferred that, on this question, he approached more nearly to certainty of faith. Still, he is always careful to note that he offers such petitions ‘as far as might be lawful’ for him to do so. If this must be reckoned as a superstition, then, as Strahan observes, it is of all superstitions ‘the least unamiable, and most incident to a good mind.’ But is it a superstition? Without giving adhesion to the gross development of the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, many Christian people of to-day have been graciously led to believe in the probability of an intermediate state. So many of our loved ones die, of whom it may be said, as was said of Rob Roy, that they were ‘ower bad for blessing, and ower good for banning.’ Indeed, who, even of the best among us, will affirm that he is prepared by a life of saintly consecration to enter at once the heaven of the pure in heart, who alone can see God? Anyway, there are some thousands of stricken hearts in Britain to-day to whom the growing belief in an intermediate state has brought the comfort of God. It is a message of living and loving hope in the dreary waste of life’s bereavements.
Surely the least we can do is to let the great hope bide!
H. — H.
PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS
COMPOSED BY
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
and published from his manuscripts by GEORGE STRAHAN, A.M.
Vicar of Islington, Middlesex; and Rector of Cranham, in Essex
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION IN 1785
THESE Posthumous Devotions of Dr. Johnson will be, no doubt, welcomed by the public, with a distinction similar to that which has been already paid to his other works. During many years of his life, he statedly ‘observed certain days with a religious solemnity; on which, and other occasions, it was his custom to compose suitable Prayers and Meditations; committing them to writing for his own use, and, as he assured me, without any view to their publication. But being last summer on a visit at Oxford to the Reverend Dr. Adams, and that gentleman urging him repeatedly to engage in some work of this kind, he then first conceived a design to revise these pious effusions, and bequeath them, with enlargements, to the use and benefit of others.
Infirmities, however, now growing fast upon him, he at length changed this design, and determined to giv
e the manuscripts, without revision, in charge to me, as I had long shared his intimacy, and was at this time his daily attendant. Accordingly, one morning, on my visiting him by desire at an early hour, he put these papers into my hands, with instructions for committing to the press, and with a promise to prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them. But the performance of this promise also was prevented, partly by his hasty destruction of some private memoirs, which he afterwards lamented, and partly by that incurable sickness, which soon ended in his dissolution.
As a biographer, he is allowed to have excelled without a rival; and we may justly regret, that he who had so advantageously transmitted to posterity the lives of other eminent men, should have been thus intercepted in constructing the narrative of his own. But the particulars of this venerable man’s personal history may still, in great measure, be preserved; and the public are authorised to expect them from some of his many friends, who are zealous to augment the monument of his fame by the detail of his private virtues.
That the authenticity of this work may never be called in question, the original manuscript will be deposited in the library of Pembroke College in Oxford. Dr. Bray’s associates are to receive the profits of the first edition, by the author’s appointment; and any further advantages that accrue will be distributed among his relations.
I have now discharged the trust reposed in me by that friend, whose labours entitle him to lasting gratitude and veneration from the literary, and still more from the Christian, world. His Lives of the English Poets are written as he justly hopes, in such a manner as may tend to the promotion of Piety. This merit may be ascribed, with equal truth, to most of his other works; and doubtless to his sermons, none of which indeed have yet been made public, nor is it known where they are extant; though it be certain, from his own acknowledgment, both in conversation and writing, that he composed many. As he seems to have turned his thoughts with peculiar earnestness to the study of religious subjects, we may presume these remains would deserve to be numbered among his happiest productions. It is therefore hoped they have fallen into the hands of those, who will not withhold them in obscurity, but consider them as deposits, the seclusion of which from general use, would be an injurious diminution of their author’s fame, and retrenchment from the common stock of serious instruction.
But the integrity of his mind was not only speculatively shadowed in his writings, but substantially exemplified in his life. His Prayers and his Alms, like those of the good Cornelius, went up for a continual memorial; and always, from a heart deeply impressed with piety, never insensible to the calls of friendship or compassion, and prone since dead, except Humphrey Hely, who married — Ford, sister to the Rev. Cornelius Ford, and first cousin to our author. This poor man, who has seen better days, is now a tenant of Whicher’s Almshouses, Chapel Street, Westminster. to melt in effusions of tenderness on the slightest incitement.
When, among other articles in his Dictionary, Lichfield presents itself to his notice, he salutes that place of his nativity in these words of Virgil, Salve, magna parens. Nor was the salutation adopted without reason: for well might he denominate his parent city great, who, by the celebrity of his name, hath for ever made it so —
‘Salve, magna parens frugum, Staffordia tellus,
Magna virum.’
Virg. Georg, lib ii. 1. 173.
More decisive testimonies of his affectionate sensibility are exhibited in the following work, where he bewails the successive depredations of death on his relations and friends; whose virtues, thus mournfully suggested to his recollection, he seldom omits to recite, with ardent wishes for their acquittal at the throne of mercy. In praying, however, with restriction, for these regretted tenants of the grave, he indeed conformed to a practice, which, though it has been retained by other learned members of our Church, her Liturgy no longer admits, and many, who adhere to her communion, avowedly disapprove. That such prayers are, or may be, efficacious, they who sincerely offer them must believe. But may not a belief in their efficacy, so far as it prevails, be attended with danger to those who entertain it? May it not incline them to carelessness; and promote a neglect of repentance, by inducing a persuasion, that, without it, pardon may be obtained through these vicarious intercessions? Indeed the doctrine (I speak with deference to the great names that have espoused it) seems inconsistent with some principles generally allowed among us. If, where the tree falleth, there it shall be; if, as Protestants maintain, our state at the close of life is to be the measure of our final sentence; then prayers for the dead, being visibly fruitless, can be regarded only as the vain oblations of superstition. But of all superstitions, this perhaps is one of the least unamiable, and most incident to a good mind. If our sensations of kindness be intense, those whom we have revered and loved during life, death, which removes them from sight, cannot wholly seclude from our concern. The fondness, kindled by intercourse, will still glow from memory, and prompt us to wish, perhaps to pray, that the valued dead, to whose felicity our friendship can no longer minister, may find acceptance with Him, who giveth us, and them, richly all things to enjoy. It is true, for the reason just mentioned, such evidence of our surviving affection may be thought ill-judged: but surely they are generous; and some natural tenderness is due even to a superstition, which thus originates in piety and benevolence.
We see our author, in one place, purposing with seriousness to remember his brother’s dream, in another, owning his embarrassment from needless stipulations; and, on many occasions, noting, with a circumstantial minuteness, the process of his religious fasts. But these peculiarities, if they betray some tincture of the propensity already observed, prove, for the most part, the pious tenour of his thoughts. They indicate a mind ardently zealous to please God, and anxious to evince its alacrity in His service, by a scrupulous observance of more than enjoined duties.
But however the soundness of his principles might, in general, be apparent, he seems to have lived with a perpetual conviction that his conduct was defective; lamenting past neglects, forming purposes of future diligence, and constantly acknowledging their failure in the event. It was natural for him, who possessed such powers of usefulness, to consider the waste of his time as a peculiar delinquency; with which, however, he appears to have been far less frequently, and less culpably chargeable, than his own tender sense of duty disposed him to apprehend. That he meritoriously redeemed many days and years from indolence, is evinced by the number and excellence of his works; nor can we doubt that his literary exertions would have been still more frequent, had not morbid melancholy, which, as he informs us, was the infirmity of his life, repressed them. To the prevalence of this infirmity, we may certainly ascribe that anxious fear, which seized him on the approach of his dissolution, and which his friends, who knew his integrity, observed with equal astonishment and concern. But the strength of religion at length prevailed against the frailty of nature; and his foreboding dread of the Divine Justice, by degrees subsided into a pious trust and humble hope in the Divine Mercy.
He is now gone to await his eternal sentence; and as his life exhibited an illustrious example, so his death suggests an interesting admonition. It concerns us to reflect, that however many may find it impossible to rival his intellectual excellence, yet to imitate his virtues is both possible and necessary to all; that the current of time now hastens to plunge us in that gulf of Death, where we have so lately seen him absorbed, where there is no more place of repentance, and whence, according to our innocence or guilt, we shall rise to an immortality of Bliss or Torment.
GEORGE STRAHAN.
Islington, August 6, 1785.
PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS
The Year 1738
ON MY BIRTHDAY. Sep. 7/18
The double dates, September 7th and 18th, mark the difference of eleven days between the new and the old style of reckoning-. Taking the N.S., Johnson was born September 18, 1709. Though he refers to this prayer as the first of which he has a copy, the following passage from John
son’s diary, dated September 7, 1736, may be legitimately included among his prayers. ‘I have this day entered upon my twenty-eighth year. Mayest thou, O God, enable me, for Jesus Christ’s sake, to spend this in such a manner that I may receive comfort from it at the hour of death, and in the day of judgment. Amen.’ Whenever the word ‘transcribed’ appears at the foot of the prayer, the reference is to a parchment book into which Johnson began to copy his MS. prayers in the year 1768. See Strahan’s note under that year.
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson Page 360
