The Light of Other Days; Or, the Lesson of Nineveh (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1852 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II.--PALMY DAYS. ANCIENTS VERSUS MODERNS--CITY--POPULATION--ARTS AND MANUFACTURES--COMMERCE AND WEALTH. ANCIENTS Versus MODERNS. In these days of light and knowledge we hear a great deal about" keeping up with the age," "having learned teachers for learned times, &c.," and "the wants of the age." But the difficulty is, to know what is meant by this keeping up with the age. In many cases, if it mean anything intelligible, it means agoing back to things and ages long departed, --the review, revival, and recommendation of ancient manners, customs, laws, language, literature, &c, --and which, so far as it goes, goes in fact to prove that our boasted progress is just no progress at all, but an inclination backwards. What is the study of history, or of languages long since dead, and some of which might, without much loss to learning, be quietly buried, their literature having been translated into modern tongues, but readings from the ancients. What are ethics and religion, but subjects which have existed from the beginning, and the nearer their fountain the purer. What are even politics and political economy but sciences which progress in proportion as they are based upon law and equity, ancient as the times before the flood. Well, this retrograde motion may after all be the right one, and our boasted progress and keeping up with the age, if it mean anything different from this, may be the thing we ought to deprecate, as being a departure from the simplicity of the truth, --from that doctrine which teaches, that, as regards physics to a large extent, but especially ethics, law, and religion, u as it was in the beginnings is now, and ever shall be, world without end." On the other hand, if this supposed progress be really onward, and the age of reason be runn...