TWENTY-FOURTH DISCOURSE,

Delivered before the Society of Universal Benevolence, in the New Chapel, Salters' Hall, London,

On Sunday, January 1, 1826,
On Ambition.

By the Rev. Robert Taylor, B. A. Orator of the Society.

MEN AND BRETHREN,-In continuation of our studies through the extensive course of moral science in which we are engaged, and which we commenced in July last, we must necessarily labour under considerable disparagements, for the chance of being understood by those who have not had the means of informing themselves as to the nature of the principles upon which this course of science has proceeded.

Upon visiting, for the first time, this, our Areopagus, now for the first time redeemed, and redeemed, I trust for ever, from all the wicked purposes of priestcraft and imposture, to which it was originally devoted, and dedicated from this happy day, to the inculcation of a pure morality to the improvement of the hearts, by the cultivation of the understandings of men, and to the promotion of universal benevolence, affectionate feelings, and brotherly confidence between man and man; a stranger to our system and objects, must take for granted all the previous stages of demonstration through which we have proceeded, and fall in as well as he can, giving us credit for our assumptions, and taking up the thread of our ratiocination, where now he finds us. We have, then, already defined, described, and analised, all the great qualities of heart and mind, that is, all the mathematically demonstrable proprieties of sentiment and action, by the acquisition of which, it is in the power of a man to render himself perfectly wise and good, and consequently, as happy as the predicaments of humanity admit of his being, without-withoutwhat he can do without.*

Our last tractation, (taking no more account of the parenthesis in which, on Sunday last, we discoursed on the occasion of Time) brought us upon the study of those ambiguous or heteroclite qualities, which leave us in a considerable degree of hesitation whether we should range them as virtues or vices, whether we should propound them to the emulation, or denounce them to the avoidance of those for whose happiness we are solicitous.

Of these affections of human sentiment, we have already These suppressions and suspensions, which have the finest conceivable effect in delivery, and charmed and delighted the hearer, can by no means be exhibited to the eye of the mere reader.

treated on that of Pride. Pride the virtue, or, pride the vice, right or wrong, that is issuing in happiness or misery, (the sole and only test of right and wrong,) according to modifications of the affection itself, and according to the direction given to it.

Now, it is precisely the tendency of the same qualities to opposite issues, and the nice and critical business of discrimination between these tendencies, which makes morality a genuine science, and shows the necessity of studying it, as wholly and eternally separate from religion, which always was, and always will be, the greatest enemy to morality that can possibly exist. Absolute drunkenness and intoxication is not worse, downright idiotcy is not so bad as Because all strong and overbearing impressions of the mind, (and all religious impressions are supposed to be strong and overbearing ones,) are fatal to the mind's calmness and tranquillity, and consequently, fatal to its faculty of discrimination, and to the precision and accuracy of its action, in which all virtue consists.

Of the qualities which call for the most heedful discrimination to determine how far they are right or wrong, how to be commended, or how to be denounced; next to the sentiment of pride, is that, which pride in sentiment ripens into actionambition, the distinction of which, from any modification of pride merely, consists in this, that ambition seems to have a more natural and uniform attraction to great and worthy objects, while pride will often acquiesce in mean and grovelling pursuits. The very proudest men on earth have been destitute of ambition. The ambitious have found their ambition drive them on the complete surrender and sacrifice of their pride. Like the revengeful Zanga, reasoning between the importance of the object he proposes, and the degradations he must put up with, to accomplish it;

"And greater sure my merit who to gain,

A point sublime can such a task sustain ;
At once to actions low my feelings bend,
And sink my nature, to attain my end;

Late time shall wonder, this, my joy shall raise,
For wonder is, involuntary praise."

It is rather a paradox in the terms merely, than any virtual departure from the straight-forward and ingenuous principles of moral virtue, when our science seems to allow the introducing of one vice for the purpose of expelling another. As when we reason with a man that he ought to be too proud to be vain'; and then again, that he ought to be too ambitions to be proud. At each remove, it is supposed that the evil which we would seem to allow, is less than that which we condemn ; the economy our advice is therefore good, because it propounds a certain consequential gain on the side of virtue. He who is by any means

of

was.

rendered not so bad a man as he was, is certainly better than he And it may be, that the bad man who is in the way of mending, is in a state more propitious to the chances of virtue, than one who is not so bad, but yet in no way of becoming much better. The quality of ambition, therefore, inasmuch as it indicates activity and energy of character, even in the gloomiest estimate we can make of it, is a frailty "that leans to virtue's side." Nor is there indeed any quality in man, not even his worst passions in their worst and most frightful expression, but what in the calm estimate of the moral science, have this redeeming property.

It is the same energy of character which launches men with such fatal velocity on the tide of crime, which, had it been applied in precisely an opposite direction, would have borne them on to perfect wisdom and consummate virtue.

What is revenge, so frightful in aspect, so terrible in counsels? Revenge, which uncontrouled by reason, " sweet at first, bitter ere long back on itself recoils;" but the self-same awakened energy of character, which with reason its monitor, and wisdom its pilot, is nothing else than justice in arms, beating up for the wars, and summoning all the faculties of man, to serve in the field of honour? "Revenge," the attribute of gods, they stampt it as their image on our natures.

Were this affection of mind wholly wanting, oppressions, injuries, and cruelties, would be eternal, and tyrants would sleep in safety. For this reason and no other, tyrants and oppressors of all sorts have preached against it, and endeavoured to eradicate the principle itself out of nature.

And with very good reason, too, on their part. For when you want to cheat and impose upon mankind, the best advice you can give them, is to believe your gospel. "All things are possible to him that believeth." If you want to trample them in the mire. recommend them, for God's sake, to be patient. There never was a god that liked kicking.

And what is envy? more frightful still in nature, standing like the planet Saturn, or remotest Herschell, further off from the attraction of virtue, than any other affection of the human mind, scarce drinking of its light, or warmed by its influence? Yet it comes within the moral system, and upon a philosophical analysis, will be found to be the usefully-implanted property whereby the mind punishes itself, upon every discovery of superior excellence which it might have attained, and hath not. It is majesty in ruins. It is the sentiment which nature causes to arise in the mind, for the useful end of punishing its indolence, and scourging it into action, upon the reflection of its own deficiencies in the attainments of another. Its natural language is that of the imaginary genius of evil, to the star of day

"O thou that with surpassing glory crowned,
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the God
Of this new world, at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads to thee I call,
And add thy name, but with no friendly voice,
O SUN! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
Of blessedness I fell."

Thus, all the natural affections of the human mind have their useful and necessary bearings in the great economy of virtue, and are to be regulated and modified, not eradicated and wholly put out of the system.

Let your envy admonish you of your short-comings and deficiencies of what you might and ought to have been-let your revenge correct the faults of other people-let your ambition mend your own-let your pride raise you above the possibility of committing mean and unworthy actions-let your vanity gratify itself in conciliating the good opinions of your fellowmen. So shall the combination of opposing forces, find the exact balance of their respective action, and make up the chef d'œuvre, or perfect finish of the excellence that nature intended;

"Her piece of work,

Noble in reason, and excellent in faculties,

In form and movement most express and admirable."

A nobility and excellency which nature would never have created, had it been either natural or fitting that men should be indifferent to the admiration which excellence, in any way, excites, and to the praise it merits. It is so; and it is Nature's great law that it should be so; and therefore it is right, however affected Modesty, or canting Hypocrisy, may pretend to conceal or to deny it.

"The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art,
Glows more or less, and reigns in ev'ry heart,
The proud, to gain it, toils o'er toils endure,
The modest shun it, but to make it sure.

It aids the dancer's heel, the writer's head,
And heaps the plain with mountains of the dead:
Nor ends with life, but nods in sable plumes,
Adorns our hearse and flatters on our tombs."

The advice which men have given to each other, on the subject of this quality of ambition, has been so universally tinged and coloured by the complexion of their own minds in the giving of it, that it has been rendered nugatory, by the consequent difficulty of determining whether it were better to reject, or to follow their counsels.

Ambition has always been most discouraged, and decried by those who have themselves been most ambitious. Poets, who are

allowed to be retailers of fiction, and divines, who deal in it by wholesale, have concurred in ringing in our ears, the eternal ding-dong of the fate of Bajazet, and how terrible a thing it is to be ambitious. Over every instance of human failure, they have set up their death's head and bones; and as if disappointment even in the most just and generous aspirings were not enoughthese day-after-the-fair counsellors, step in, like Job's comforters, to tell you, that "you should have taught your boy to say his prayers, and then he'd not have broke his neck with climbing."

But what is the admonition of Wisdom on the subject? "Tis, know well the character and the circumstances which have formed the character of your adviser; and with that knowledge as your key and index, perpend the advice. The fox, you know, never found out what an unnecessary appendage, what an inconvenient incumbrance, what a defect, and what a vice it was for a fox to have a tail, till the fox had lost his tail. So the crestfallen, white-feathered coward, Cardinal Wolsey, after having ventured, "like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, so many summers on a sea of glory," when at length, "his highblown pride broke under him," turns moralist at last, and at his breaking up, in order that he might not feel himself to be the greatest fool in the universe, admonishes his secretary, "Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition."

While our good priests, the implacable enemies of ambition in every body but themselves, have set all heaven's artillery in array, against the sin, by which they tell us, (and I dare say its as true as any thing else they tell us) that the angels fell.

"Ambition first sprung from their blest abodes,
The glorious fault of angels and of gods."

A doctrine, which how true soever it may be, must show us at least that they are not quite so happy, and contented in their "blest abodes," as I'm sure we shall be, when we get there. But though divines and religionists are quite at home in matters of doctrine, and have made all things of this nature, so clear and intelligible to the meanest understanding, that the meaner the understanding is, the clearer and more intelligible their doctrines always appear to be; yet they have played sad havoc whenever they have gone beyond their province, and dabbled in the science of morals.

With that sublime and adorable absurdity which makes up the essence of the things appertaining to godliness, while they have denounced every emotion of temporal ambition, and forbidden us so much as to covet "our neighbour's house, or any thing that is his," (that is to say, any thing that is theirs,) they have propounded to men's spiritual avarice, the enjoyment of nothing short of infinite and eternal wealth, thrones, sceptres, crowns, and