Strong Souls A Sermon
STRONG SOULS: A SERMON, PREACHED IN RENSHAW STREET CHAPEL, LIVERPOOL, ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1882. BY CHARLES BEARD, B.A. PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.
for admission, and, as things then were, I was refused by all.
Here, from the first, I vainly fixed my hopes, and here, in
a happier hour, after five-and-forty years, they are at last
fulfilled.
I desire, first, to speak to you of that which I may reasonably
call the Unity of Modern History, as an easy approach to questions
necessary to be met on the threshold by any one occupying this
place, which my predecessor has made so formidable to me by the
reflected lustre of his name.
You have often heard it said that Modern History is a subject to
which neither beginning nor end can be assigned. No beginning,
because the dense web of the fortunes of man is woven without a
void; because, in society as in nature, the structure is
continuous, and we can trace things back uninterruptedly, until
we dimly descry the Declaration of Independence in the forests of
Germany. No end, because, on the same principle, history made
and history making are scientifically inseparable and separately
unmeaning.
"Politics," said Sir John Seeley, "are vulgar when they are not
liberalised by history, and history fades into mere literature
when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics."
Everybody perceives the sense in which this is true. For the
STRONG SOULS: A SERMON, PREACHED IN RENSHAW STREET CHAPEL, LIVERPOOL, ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1882. BY CHARLES BEARD, B.A. PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.