ion; it is the defect of their quality; but what are
we without them? Dead driftwood on the tide; dismantled hulls rotting in
harbor; anything that awaits destruction, to give its imprisoned forces
a chance of asserting themselves in new forms of being.

Bacon was not a Shakespeare; still, he was a very great man. His
writings are a text-book of worldly wisdom. His philosophical force
is almost proverbial. Nor was he wanting in a certain "dry" poetry.
No philosophical writer, not even Plato, equals him in the command of
illuminative metaphors; and the fine dignity of his style is beyond all
praise. The words drop from his pen with exquisite ease and felicity.
He is never in a hurry, never ruffled. He writes like a Lord Chancellor,
though with something in him above the office; and if he is now and then
familiar, it is only a slight condescension, like the joke of a judge,
which does not bring him down to the level of the litigants.

The opinions of such a man are worth studying; and as Lord Bacon is
often quoted in condemnation of Atheism, we propose to see what he
actually says about it, what his judgment on this particular theme
is really worth, and what allowance, if any, should be made for the
conditions in which he expressed himself. This last point, indeed,
is one of considerable importance. Lord Bacon lived at a time when
downright heresy, such as Raleigh and other great men of that age were
accused of, could only be ventilated in private conversation. In writing
it could only be hinted or suggested; and, in this respect, a writer's
_silence_ is to be taken into account; that is, we must judge by what he
does _not_ say, as well as by what he _does_ say.

Some writers, like Letourneau, the French ethnologist, have gone to
the length of arguing that Lord Bacon was a Materialist, and that his
Theistic utterances were all perfunctory: as it were, the pinch of
incense which the philosopher was obliged to burn on the altars of
the gods. This much at least is certain--Lord Bacon rarely speaks of
religion except as a philosopher or a statesman. He is apt to sneer at
the "high speculations" of "theologues." There is no piety, no unction,
in his allusions to theology. He looks upon religion as a social bond,
an agency of good government. It is impossible to say that he took
a Christian view of things when he wrote, "I have often thought upon
Death, and I find it the least of all evils"; or when he wrote, "Men
fear death