Whenever strength is only useful,and employed for our benefit or our pleasure,then it is never sublime:for nothing can act agreeably to us,that does not act in conformity to our will;but to act agreeably to our will,it must be subject to us,and therefore can never be the cause of a grand and commanding conception.The deion of the wild ass,in Job,is worked up into no small sublimity,merely by insisting on his freedom,and his setting mankind at defiance;otherwise the deion of such an animal could have had nothing noble in it.Who hath loosed (says he)the bands of the wild ass?whose house I have made the wilderness,and the barren land his dwellings.
He scorneth the multitude of the city,neither regardeth he the voice of the driver.The range of the mountains is his pasture.The magnificent deion of the unicorn and of leviathan,in the same book,is full of the same heightening circumstances:Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee?canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow?wilt thou trust him because his strength is great?-Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?-will he make a covenant with thee?wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?In short,wheresoever we find strength,and in what light soever we look upon power we shall all along observe the sublime the concomitant of terror,and contempt the attendant on a strength that is subservient and innoxious.The race of dogs,in many of their kinds,have generally a competent degree of strength and swiftness;and they exert these and other valuable qualities which they possess,greatly to our convenience and pleasure.Dogs are indeed the most social,affectionate,and amiable animals of the whole brute creation;but love approaches much nearer to contempt than is commonly imagined;and accordingly,though we caress dogs,we borrow from them an appellation of the most despicable kind,when we employ terms of reproach;and this appellation is the common mark of the last vileness and contempt in every language.Wolves have not more strength than several species of dogs;but,on account of their unmanageable fierceness,the idea of a wolf is not despicable;it is not excluded from grand deions and similitudes.Thus we are affected by strength,which is natural power.The power which arises from institution in kings and commanders,has the same connexion with terror.Sovereigns are frequently addressed with the title of dread majesty.And it may be observed,that young persons,little acquainted with the world,and who have not been used to approach men in power,are commonly struck with an awe which takes away the free use of their faculties.When I prepared my seat in the street,(says Job,)
the young men saw me,and hid themselves.Indeed,so natural is this timidity with regard to power,and so strongly does it inhere in our constitution,that very few are able to conquer it,but by mixing much in the business of the great world,or by using no small violence to their natural dispositions.I know some people are of opinion,that no awe,no degree of terror,accompanies the idea of power;and have hazarded to affirm,that we can contemplate the idea of God himself without any such emotion.I purposely avoided,when I first considered this subject,to introduce the idea of that great and tremendous Being,as an example in an argument so light as this;though it frequently occurred to me,not as an objection to,but as a strong confirmation of,my notions in this matter.I hope,in what I am going to say,I shall avoid presumption,where it is almost impossible for any mortal to speak with strict propriety.I say then that whilst we consider the Godhead merely as he is an object of the understanding,which forms a complex idea of power,wisdom,justice,goodness,all stretched to a degree far exceeding the bounds of our comprehension,whilst we consider the Divinity in this refined and abstracted light,the imagination and passions are little or nothing affected.
But because we are bound,by the condition of our nature,to ascend to these pure and intellectual ideas,through the medium of sensible images,and to judge of these divine qualities by their evident acts and exertions,it becomes extremely hard to disentangle our idea of the cause from the effect by which we are led to know it.Thus when we contemplate the Deity,his attributes and their operation,coming united on the mind,form a sort of sensible image,and as such are capable of affecting the imagination.Now,though in a just idea of the Deity perhaps none of his attributes are predominant,yet,to our imagination,his power is by far the most striking.Some reflection,some comparing,is necessary to satisfy us of his wisdom,his justice,and his goodness.
To be struck with his power,it is only necessary that we should open our eyes.But whilst we contemplate so vast an object,under the arm,as it were,of almighty power,and invested upon every side with omnipresence,we shrink into the minuteness of our own nature,and are,in a manner,annihilated before him.And though a consideration of his other attributes may relieve,in some measure,our apprehensions;yet no conviction of the justice with which it is exercised,nor the mercy with which it is tempered,can wholly remove the terror that naturally arises from a force which nothing can withstand.
