LECTURE ON JOHN STUART MILL.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 74, 26 August 1874, Page 4

LECTURE ON JOHN STUART MILL.

A lecture was delivered last evening at the Oddfellows' Hall, on "John Stuart Mill," by the Rev A. F. Douglas, pastor of St Paul's Presbyterian Church. The hall was fairly filled, a number of ladies being present. |

The chair was occupied by Dr Campbell, who briefly introduced Mr Douglas to the audience.

The lecturer began by supposing a case !of an unhealthy village, whose unhealthinEJss was found, on investigation, to proceed frojm deficient drainage, or choked watercourses, whence proceeded a miliaria which fostered diseases. Even so for the last thirty or forty years there had been in the moral arid religious atmosphere a malaria destructive to the moral and religious welfare of men. This influence had been something ekceedingly vague, difficult to lay hold of ; but it had been everywhere, in politics and political economy, in philosophy, in literature, even in sermons and religious periodicals, A terminology appeared, new to the English language. It unsettled philosophy, spoke of religion with disdain, as if there were some new discoveries which rendered utterly effete all that had been thought or written in its defence in time past. Tre personnel of this school had been to the ovitside world as indefinite as its first principle's. The tide, however, had now turned. As the original members of the company are dying off we know both the men and their principles. The last and most effective blow which this school had received had been delivered by Mill himself from his grave. He had scuttled his own ship. Mill's disciples would soon be as few as those of Johanna Southcote. As before you can thoroughly understand a man and his opinions, it is necessary to know his upbringing and surroundings, so it is impossible to understand Mill without studying his early history. The lecturer then briefly sketched the life of the elder Mill; quoted his opinions on the God of Christianity, which he described as shocking and blasphemous, and indicated the strange path by which he reached them. He then gave an account of the early training of John Stuart Mill. He said that after being put into such a Procrustean bed it was impossible that his mind should ever recover a healthy tone. His father had done for him what a.Chinese mother does for her daughter when she puts her infant feet into stubborn bandages. When the child became a woman she was crippled for. life, and no efforts of hers will undo the effects of her early discipline. Mill was subjected by his remorseless parent to a discipline which crippled him for life. He limped all his days. His entrance upon the business of life was next described, his despondency dwelt upon, his fondness for the St Simonians, his admiration for the manner in which they dealt with the subject of family. Here the lecturer stopped to remark that we owed the family, to Christianity. Home was a word which socialism loved not. And it was a fact profoundly significant that every kind of infidelity ended by making an assault upon marriage. He then related his friendship and eventual marriage with Mrs Tayler ; his admiration for her ; her influence upon his opinions ; his views on social questions ; the natural results of this connection were there fore biased and worthless in the extreme. His parliamentary life was next described, and described as an utter failure. He supported his liberal friends by argument which furnished their opponents with their best weapons. The lecturer dwelt upon the sad spectacle of the old man mourning as those that have no hope for his departed wife—his only religion being the worship of her memory. Mill's admirers claimed for him great usefulness. They said he had liberalised thought. The only benefit he had in this direction conferred upon the world was that he had compelled the discussion of first principles. The influence he had was owing to the fact that the esoteric principles of the school wore kept in the back ground. Now that all is known that influence would cease. He failed, and his principles would fail to meet with acceptance because they were opposed to the indestructible instincts of humanity. That all knowledge is derived from the senses; that all character is formed by circumstances; that right and wrong is a question of utility, were doctrines which no company of men in the possession of reason would or could long believe. His assertion that since the abolition of American slavery, the one slave on the face of the earth was the married English lady was of a piece with much that he himself had learned to believe. Through his narrowness of vision, his ignor-

ance of society and religion, above all he failed not only because in his view man was only a higher form of the brute creation, but because the world had no Maker, nor ruler, and no future. Happy for us, concluded the lecturer, that there is too much sound thinking and too much Bible religion in our English communities for Mill's theories in an\ appreciable degree to work their way. Were they to prevail they would inaugurate a revolution even more fundamental and destructive than the worst the world has hitherto known. Their power in the way of destruction would prove unbounded, while their ability to construct anything would be absolutely nil. A social deluge, an earthly pandemonium would be the natural and necessary result of their prevalence ; and when we turn from them to our long-tried principles—principles of social and religious life which have the sanction of God himself as well as of ages, wfi say without hesitation the old is better. God save the Queen — a song or psalm which generationsof Englishmen have sung, and which John Stuart Mill forbid us to sing, as he was not sure there was such a being as God, and he was sure that all that the Queen represents is a nightmare upon the nation—God save the Queen shall still be our watchword, and after considering the melancholy vagaries of this man, we will sing it with new zest, and teach it with fervor to our children's children. The rev lecturer resumed his seat amid loud applause. The chairman then rose, and said he felt sure that they would accord Mr Douglas a hearty vote of thanks for his able and instructive lecture. [Applause.] The vote was carried by acclamation. Mr Clephaue moved a vote of thanks to the chairman, which was rendered in a similar manner.

During the evening the choir of St Paul's Church sang several hymns and anthems capitally, and Mrs Long gave a song, " Too Late," which was loudly applauded, The singing of the National Anthem concluded the proceedings.