1849.] Imagination the Mediator between Mind and Nature. 297 subject and harmonize these discordant elements to his own infinite despair. It will be seen from this review, what is the relation which imagination sustains to nature, and through this to language. It is the true mediator between the mind within, and nature or the world of things without; first, reading things, or educing the thoughts contained in them, and then embodying these thoughts anew, and sending them forth as things of the mind in the immortal creations of language. In both capacities, whether as looking through the outward forms of nature to the Divine indwelling thought, and thus wedding the universe to the mind as science, or as linking its own thoughts to the forms and imagery of nature, as in literature and art, it is the same sovereign, reconciling and assimilating power. Language is the true creature of the imagination, both originally and always; and the power or perfection of the one indicates and keeps pace with that of the other. This is seen most strikingly by contrasting the ancient Greeks and the Chinese, the intellectual antipodes of the human race. The latter people are utterly devoid of imagination, hence they have no language, or none that deserves the name. Of the former, imagination was the distinctive attribute, and in its highest degree; and their language is the most perfect ever created by man, the true child and image of the Grecian genius. But we may not dwell longer on the nature of this power, the highest, as we think we have shown, among the intellectual powers of man, the most essential to the perception and expression of truth, yet alas, how sadly misunderstood and abused! We have dwelt thus long on the exposition of it, and still linger a moment in its application, because we feel deeply its claims to a better understanding and regard, and not without the hope of awakening in others a like sense of its value. Without it, as we have seen, language is impossible except as a dead and mindless formula, and thinking, which involves language, is not less dependent on it for all its life and energy. Whoever apprehends the close and vital relation subsisting between thoughts and words, and the consequent reflex influence which the latter must have upon the former; especially whoever considers the almost miraculous charm and potency of "a word fitly spoken," and the pernicious and baneful effect both upon speaker and hearer, of a word unfitly spoken, or untrue to the thought, will be able to appreciate that power which gives the right word to the thought, which is the sealing and witnessing bond that unites the two, and is therefore the only true interpreter and mediator between them. It is the only security we know of clear, profound and accurate thinking, since it gives a body, with form and outline, to thought, and thus sets it before the mind with all the distinctness and reality of outward things. It illustrates and irradiates thought, and truth likewise, so that it is beheld in clear sunlight, not as a dim abstraction, but as an actual and living incarnation. The man without imagination may stumble upon truth, or hear its voice and follow it, but cannot discover it or discern its form. The difference between his thinking and that of its possessor, is just the difference between darkly "feeling after, and haply finding" the truth, and beholding it in clear and solemn vision. Hence the Divine revelations made to prophets, in the olden time, were addressed to the imagination, as the only faculty which could truly apprehend and convey them. To the metaphysician, by which we mean one who is conversant with the things of the mind, and not merely with abstract and dead terms divorced from these, and to whomsoever would obey the heavendescended precept, " Know thyself," this power is the most indispensable of all, and the highest degree of it too. None other can penetrate deep enough into the mind to seize its hidden and central laws, or arrest the subtle and vanishing apparitions that make up its phenomena, hold them in their individual shapes before the eye of the soul, and question them of their birth and issue. None but this can apprehend those tenuous distinctions which are the hieroglyphics of the mind, that must be traced and understood before it can be read. Hence it is that poets have hitherto been our best mental philosophers; and we must believe they will ever continue to be. But if this high power be thus essential to the thinker and student of truth, it surely is not less so to him who would exhibit it to others. Truth to be seen and embraced, must be embodied, clothed in a sensible and living form, that so it may meet and satisfy the whole being of man, and not the intellect alone. To satisfy a living man it must present itself as life, having form and breath and motion, and not as a dead abstraction. Hence the universal charm of fables, of ballads, of true romance, and even of allegory; where, as in Bunyan, moral truths are really incarnated, and live and walk in this our human world, and are not apparitions only, ghostly virtues from the realm of shades. To none, then, for hither our remarks and illustrations tend, to none is this power so absolutely indispensable, especially at the present day, as to the preacher, the commissioned seer and herald of divine truth to men. He of all others has to do with truth, and with truth alone. He is required to look the deepest into nature and man, to seck out and recognize its sacred presence wherever it abides, in all its near and 1849.] Imagination essential to the Preacher. 299 open or remote and secret dwelling places, to bring together and build again into a living body the disparted members of truth scattered everywhere among all the sects and schools of Christendom; in short, to read and interpret the divine word, both the written revelation and the no less sacred revelation of things, not superficially but as looking through and beyond the letter to the indwelling spirit. He needs therefore an insight, a searching depth and clearness of vision beyond what logic or hermeneutics can supply, a conscious light shining out of his own spirit, as well as a light meeting him from without. In a word, he needs "the vision and the faculty divine" of imagination, purged indeed and sanctified, first of all to see, and then to body forth in its own form, the truth it is given him to behold. Nothing, we repeat, will compensate for this, not piety itself; for are there not standing examples on every hand, of preachers eminent for godliness and orthodoxy, and sound wisdom withal, whose words are powerless because they come from them not as things, i. e. living and embodied realities, but as ghostly abstractions, detached from all communion with the actual living world, from aught that can move the senses or sensibilities of men, as truly so as if they were demonstrating a theorem in mathematics by the use of exponents x, y, and z. It is for the sake of the truth itself, which never is thus disembodied except in the mind of man or the domain of pure reason, it is for the truth's sake chiefly that we seek to vindicate the nature and claims of imagination; that in passing from the written word or the universe of things, through the mind of its interpreter, it may not suffer mutilation, but may go forth from man to man in the same radiant and living form in which God has arrayed it. If it be not too sacred an illusion here, we may refer to the Great Teacher himself, as the highest example of what we mean by the right use of this power. Himself the incarnation of Eternal Truth, it was his prerogative in all that he said to exhibit it in fresh and living forms. Never have we read words so instinct and alive with imagination in its very highest activity, as are to be found in the discourses and parables of Christ. Observe how he looks on nature with a spiritual and even poetic eye; how he seizes everywhere its open or lurking analogies, and makes all outward objects tributary to his thought, by furnishing alike the lesson he would teach and the words to convey it; lighting up by his illustrating similes not only the spiritual but the outward and material world, till it almost loses its materiality, and becomes a transparent language. How he goes even beyond the poet and the philosopher in his insight into nature; since to these it yields only partial and superficial meanings, but unveils to him its innermost divine import, as if the Lord and Author of nature were himself reading and interpreting his own works; making the houseless raven, the deciduous grass, and royally-apparelled lily, perennial preachers of trust and faith, and linking his immortal doctrines to the life-imprisoning seed, the clustered and embracing vine, and the heaven-descended, universal and emancipating light. Finally, for we must not proceed further, we would recommend to all readers, as one of the best means of cultivating this power, and the only means of getting at the full significance and power of words, to accustom themselves to the calling up of the primary images of the words they read, of looking at thought through the medium of things, and not merely of abstract terms. The mind will thus have a double grasp upon the thought, first with the senses, and then with the reason, or rather with both in one in the imagination. We shall come to know words as we know men, after the flesh, as well as after the spirit. At the same time it is well, and somewhat important we think, to be able to know and discriminate what is flesh and what is spirit, by a discernment that can distinguish without separating, and can apprehend the limits and power of each in the unity of both. ARTICLE V. REINHARD'S SERMONS. By Edwards A. Park, Professor in Andover Theological Seminary. § 1. Prefatory Remarks. THE clergy of every land are apt to regard their own pulpit as superior to every other. Bossuet, Fenelon, Saurin, Bourdaloue, Massilon, are in France thought to be unequalled. Luther, Dinter, Spener, Herder, Zollikofer, Reinhard, Schleiermacher, Dräseke, Hofacker, are in Germany regarded as without a foreign rival. Who, asks the Briton, have discoursed like Latimer, Barrow, Taylor, South, Tillotson, Whitefield, Hall, Chalmers? And the American is unwilling to exalt any preacher above Edwards, Bellamy, Davies, Mason, and some of more recent times. Now, if it be true that the clergy of every land are superior to their foreign brethren, in their ability to influence their own countrymen, they may still obtain essential aid from 1849.] Life and Labors of Reinhard. 301 the study of a foreign pulpit, how inferior soever to their own. As, according to the proverb, wise men have learned more from fools than fools have ever learned from wise men, so the most accomplished preachers may derive instruction from those who are most open to criticism, even from the very faults of the faulty. We should remember, that the excellences of every pulpit vary from those of every other, and are a complement to them in the formation of a perfect model of sacred eloquence. The object of the present Article is, not to eulogize the divines of any particular land, nor to make lengthened criticisms upon any individual preacher, but to give some illustrations of the sermons of Reinhard, who is confessedly one of the princes among the pulpit orators of Germany. It is not pretended that his sermons are patterns for indiscriminate imitation, that they are free from glaring faults, but it is supposed that they deserve a studious examination, as specimens of a peculiar style of preaching, which, while it contains many evils to be shunned, contains also many excellences to be admired. Before we make any excerpts from his discourses, let us briefly consider the § 2. Life and Labors of Reinhard.1 Francis Volkmar Reinhard was born in Vohenstrauss, a markettown once belonging to the principality of Sulzbach, Bavaria, March 12, 1753. His early education was superintended with great skill by his father, who was the learned preacher of Vohenstrauss. In his sixteenth year he was sent to the Gymnasium Poeticum at Ratisbon, and in 1773 he entered the university of Wittenberg, where in 1778 he was invited to take part in the instructions of the philosophical faculty. In 1780 he was appointed Professor Extraordinary of Philosophy, and in 1782 Ordinary Professor of Theology at Wittenberg. In 1792 he was called by the Saxon government to be First Court Preacher, Ecclesiastical Councillor, and First Assessor of the Consistory. To fill these important stations he removed to Dresden, and there resided twenty years. He died Sept. 6, 1812, in the sixtieth year of his age. A view of his philosophical and theological principles was published by Pölitz, in four volumes, in 1801-4. The same author issued, in 1813-15, in two volumes, an account of Reinhard's life and writings. A description of Reinhard's character was also given by Charpentier and Böttiger in 1813. Since his death, some of his works have been edited by such men as Schott, Bertholdt, and Heubner. The statements in this section are derived from several notices of Reinhard, particularly from that in Cons. Lex., Auf. 1836. |