CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

  CHAPTER  1  -  ( CHRISTIAN LEADERS IN THE 18TH CENTURY )  -  { PT.  13 } - What was the popular literature a hundred years ago? I pass over the fact that Boling-broke, Gibbon, and Hume the historian were all deeply dyed with skepticism. I speak of the light reading that was then popular. Turn to the pages of Fielding, Smollett, Swift, and Sterne and you have the answer. The cleverness of these writers is undeniable, but the indecency of many of their writings is so glaring and blatant that few people today would want to allow their works to be seen in their coffee tables. My picture, I fear, is a very dark and gloomy one. I wish it were in my power to throw a little more light into it, but facts are stubborn things, especially facts about literature of a hundred years ago is to be found in the moral writings of Joseph Addison, Samuel Johnson, and Richard Steele, but the effects of such literature on the general public, it may be feared, was incredibl...

  [ CHAPTER  1 ] - ( THE RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY )                                                               { PT.  1 } - The subject I discuss in this book is partly historical and partly biographical. You will be disappointed if you expect a story of fiction or something partly drawn from my imagination. Such writing is not in my field, and I would have no time for it even if it was. Plain facts and the stern realities of life absorb all the time that I can spare to write. I believe, though, that with most readers, the subject I have chosen is one that needs no apology. The person who feels no interest in the history and biography of his own country is certainly a poor patriot and a worse philosopher. He cannot very well be called a patriot. True pat...