Why is he idle? I mean towards the
public. We want such men to rescue this _enlightened age_ from
general irreligion."
I suppose Robert Hall is a name known to but few in these days, but at
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries
his fame was great and deserved.
As a divine, dowered with the gift of inspired eloquence, Coleridge
estimated his powers as second only to those of Jeremy Taylor. When
Napoleon was at the supreme height of his conquests, and England
alone of European countries still stood erect, uninvaded and
undismayed, a company of soldiers attended Robert Hall's place of
worship on the eve of their departure to Spain. The occasion was
memorable and moving, and the preacher's splendid periods deserve to
be preserved from oblivion:--
"By a series of criminal enterprises, by the successes of guilty
ambition, the liberties of Europe have been gradually
extinguished; the subjugation of Holland, Switzerland, and the
free towns of Germany, has completed that catastrophe; and we are
the only people in the Eastern Hemisphere who are in possession of
equal laws and a free constitution. Freedom, driven from every
spot on the Continent, has sought an asylum in a country which she
always chose for her favorite abode; but she is pursued even here,
and threatened with destruction.
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