Through his essays and
composed sermons Samuel Johnson made available a complex portrait of the man
and his religion. Here are excerpts taken from a paper by Philip
Harvey delivered to The Johnson Society of Australia.
It is commonplace to speak of
Samuel Johnson’s essays as moral examples based squarely, if usually covertly,
in Christian teaching. Stand back from such popular, or secular essays, and the
classical epithet at the head may as easily be a saying from the Bible or the
Fathers of the early Church. This grand endeavour of preaching and exhorting by
other means joins together separate literary forms that reached a special level
of popularity in the 18th century: the urbane essay composed along
classical lines; the burgeoning fictional form of parable and allegory; and the
inspiring sermon. Some of Johnson’s Rambler essays are overt works of Christian
meditation.
Rambler no. 44 is an allegorical
essay that contrasts two female figures met by the author in a dream. The first
is a “most shocking figure.” “She was drest in black, her skin was contracted
into a thousand wrinkles, her eyes deep sunk in her head, and her complexion
pale and livid as the countenance of death.” This figure, we live to learn, is
Superstition. The other figure, “the loveliest object I had ever beheld,” calls
herself Religion. “The most engaging charms of youth and beauty appeared in all
her form; effulgent glories sparkled in her eyes, and their awful splendours
were softened by the gentlest looks of compassion and peace. At her approach,
the frightful spectre, who had before tormented me, vanished away, and with her
all the horrors she had caused.”
By 1750, superstition had taken
on new meanings. For some, religion itself was no more than superstition. For
the English, superstition had come to be a word synonymous with Roman
Catholicism and all the works of the ‘old religion’, suppressed at the
Reformation. But Johnson quietly avoids branding. His Wisdom figure exclaims:
“My name is Religion. I am the offspring of Truth and Love, and the parent of
Benevolence, Hope and Joy. That monster from whose power I have freed you is
called Superstition, she is the child of Discontent, and her followers are Fear
and Sorrow. Thus different as we are, she has often the insolence to assume my
name and character, and seduces unhappy mortals to think us the same, till she,
at length, drives them to the borders of Despair, that dreadful abyss into
which you were just going to sink.”
Johnson is condemnatory of any
religion that drives people to Despair, and this is being directed at any form
of Christianity, whether Catholic, Dissenter sect, or within his own Church of
England. Johnson makes no distinctions and gives no favours. All forms of
Christianity, organised or not, have the potential to drive their adherents
into wrong religion and despair. What follows is an extensive discourse from
the fair figure of Religion, in which she adumbrates the identifying marks of
true religion.
“For what end has the lavish hand
of providence diffused such innumerable objects of delight (the various
beauties of the globe), but that all might rejoice in the privilege of
existence, and be filled with gratitude to the beneficent author of it? Thus to
enjoy the blessings he has sent, is virtue and obedience … Infinite goodness is
the source of created existence.”
Confronted with the objection
that such religion invites an unlaborious life and escapes the “painful toils
of virtue”, she replies: “The true enjoyments of a reasonable being do not
consist in unbounded indulgence, or luxurious ease,” before instructing that
“whoever would be really happy must make the diligent and regular exercise of
his superior powers his chief attention, adoring the perfections of his Maker,
expressing good-will to his fellow creatures, cultivating inward rectitude.”
Elsewhere she says of suffering:
“Suffering is no duty but where it is necessary to avoid guilt, or to do good;
nor pleasure a crime, but where it strengthens the influence of bad
inclinations, or lessens the generous activity of virtue.”
All told, Johnson is saying that
where there is happiness you will find true religion and that one of religion’s
certain signs of truth is, indeed, happiness. Salvation is the ultimate aim of
a Christian life, yet happiness in this life is “a needful support and
refreshment for the present moment.” Again, enjoyment of the created world and,
despite all travail, an emphatic trust in happiness are not by any means
uniquely Anglican preserves, yet Johnson’s measure of happiness (or call it
felicity or bliss) as a sure indication of spiritual well-being is one that has
become familiar in Anglican life. Only listen to the final call of the figure
Religion and you can hear Johnson hearing his own command: “Return then with me
from continual misery to moderate enjoyment, and grateful alacrity. Return from
the contracted views of solitude to the proper duties of a relative and
dependent being. Religion is not confined to cells and closets, nor restrained
to sullen retirement. These are the gloomy doctrines of Superstition, by which
she endeavours to break those chains of benevolence and social affection, that
link the welfare of every particular with that of the whole. Remember that the
greatest honour you can pay to the author of your being is by such a cheerful
behaviour, as discovers a mind satisfied with his dispensations.”
Laden with big words, Johnson’s
essay on forgiveness [Rambler no. 185] is directed at the educated reader, not
at a mixed congregation of the literate and illiterate. It opens, forbiddingly:
“No vitious dispositions of the mind more obstinately resist both the counsels
of philosophy and the injunctions of religion, than those which are complicated
with an opinion of dignity; and which we cannot dismiss without leaving in the
hands of opposition some advantage iniquitously obtained, or suffering from our
own prejudices some imputation of pusillanimity.
“For this reason scarcely any law
of our Redeemer is more openly transgressed, or more industriously evaded, than
that by which he commands his followers to forgive injuries, and prohibits,
under the sanction of eternal misery, the gratification of the desire which
every man feels to return pain upon him that inflicts it. Many who could have
conquered their anger, are unable to combat pride, and pursue offences to
extremity of vengeance, lest they should be insulted by the triumph of an
enemy.”
Before dealing with long term
consequences of not forgiving, Johnson then details a distinctive psychology of
wilful vengeance: “He that, when his reason operates in its full force, can
thus, by the mere prevalence of self-love, prefer himself to his fellow beings,
is very unlikely to judge equitably when his passions are agitated by a sense
of wrong, and his attention wholly engrossed by pain, interest, or danger.
Whoever arrogates to himself the right of vengeance, shows how little he is
qualified to decide his own claims, since he certainly demands what he would
think unfit to be granted to another.”
Johnson follows the deepening
convolutions that beset an unforgiving person: “For it can never be hoped, that
he who first commits an injury, will contentedly acquiesce in the penalty
required: the same haughtiness of contempt, or vehemence of desire, that prompt
the act of injustice, will more strongly incite its justification; and
resentment can never so exactly balance the punishment with the fault, but
there will remain an overplus of vengeance which even he who condemns his first
action will think himself entitled to retaliate. What then can ensue but a
continual exacerbation of hatred, an unextinguishable feud, an incessant
reciprocation of mischief, a mutual vigilance to entrap, and eagerness to
destroy?”
Forgiveness is one of the central
commands of Christian life. Johnson expresses with energetic mind how real is
the possibility for a person to forgive and be forgiven. This possibility has a
special place in Anglican thought, with enormous emphasis in Johnson’s main reference,
The Book of Common Prayer, which was edited in its 1662 form after years of
divisive civil war; the Book of Common Prayer was a serious solution toward
national reconciliation. Johnson’s essay takes time to warn just how far an
unforgiving individual can go, while all the time convincing himself he (or
she) is right. It asserts, “Nothing is more apparent than that, however
injured, or however provoked, some must at last be contented to forgive.” It
shows that forgiveness is possible for all. One reason the essay works is that
any reader can see themselves in any of the roles – persecutor, victim, sinner,
redeemed.
Perhaps nothing in Johnson’s
religious writings is more “serious and surprising” than the 28 known sermons.
Fulsome and authoritative, they are written using the complete support of
Anglican doctrine. They are also written to be delivered by clergy friends, not
by Johnson himself. Some of these sermons were paid for by the clergyperson,
privileged to repeat the measured and handsome language of Johnson. Whether the
clergy assisted in the final drafts is impossible to discern. The Revd John
Taylor of St Margaret’s Westminster was a special beneficiary of this unusual
practice, though commentaries on the composition hint that Johnson wrote
sermons for Taylor in order to get a free lunch after the service. All this
seems to be perhaps somewhat unAnglican behaviour and there are good reasons
why records of such practice are scarce.
Of use in this context are
Johnson’s two sermons on the Eucharist. In Sermon 9 Johnson places value on the
Lord’s Supper as a means for repentants to improve their lives, and therefore
find a better life. “The terms, upon which we are to hope for any benefits from
the merits of Christ, are faith, repentance, and subsequent obedience. These
are therefore the three chief and general heads of examination.” While Sermon
22 uses the same essential and superlative language to extol the Eucharist in
the following way, its emphasis is on the necessity of all Christians to partake
of the Communion: “The celebration of the sacrament is generally acknowledged,
by the Christian church, to be the highest act of devotion, and the most solemn
part of positive religion, and has therefore most engaged the attention of
those, who either profess to teach the way to happiness, or endeavour to learn
it.”
Johnson’s own failure to attend church as regularly as he
thought fit is made abundantly clear in the Diaries, as we have seen. The old line about those who write CE in the
census when they mean Christmas-Easter, does not apply to Johnson. At home he
regularly said prayers, made devotions, and went through long self-examination,
all part of preparation for the sacrament of Eucharist; even if he did not then
attend the service. This pattern of worship, serious and surprising in its
method, remained his usual way throughout his life. Johnson maintained the
potential for communicating, even if his attendance was sporadic.
The accepted view of
eighteenth-century English religion as decadent, uneventful, even moribund, is
gradually being overturned by recent historians. Rowan Williams may have
explained this perception when he said that far more work has to be done.
Samuel Johnson contradicts the perception in an overwhelming manner. By his
life and manner, an Anglican layman shows how to adapt his religion to everyday
life more effectively and creatively than almost any of the contemporary clergy
of his time.
