92 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
Hymn 75. The spacious firmament on high. JOSEPH ADDISON.
Addison was son of the Rev. Lancelot Addison, afterwards Dean of Lichfield, and was born at his father s parsonage, Milston, near Amesbury, Wilts, on May I, 1672. Lancelot Addison, the son of a poor Westmorland clergyman, began life as chaplain to the garrison at Dunkirk. The modest living at Milston enabled him to marry a clergyman s daughter. His son was educated at Charterhouse and Magdalen College, Oxford. Intended for the Church, he gave himself to law and politics, and became Chief Secretary for Ireland. In 1716 he married the Dowager Countess of Warwick, and died at Holland House, Kensington, June 17, 1719. He said to the Earl of Warwick, See in what peace a Christian can die. His contributions to the Tafterand the Spectator ka.vQ, won him a chief place among English men of letters. These papers were started by his old schoolfellow and friend, Richard Steele. Dr. Johnson said, Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison. Macaulay describes him as the unsullied statesman, the accomplished scholar, the consummate painter of life and manners, the great satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it ; who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform ; and who reconciled wit and virtue after a long and painful separation, during which wit had been led astray by profligacy and virtue by fanaticism. The spacious firmament on high appeared in the Spectator for Saturday, August 23, 1712, at the close of an essay dealing with the means by which faith may be confirmed and strengthened in the mind of man. Addison holds that when once convinced of the truth of any article, and of the reasonableness of our belief in it, we should never after suffer ourselves to call it into question. Then he urged that those arguments which appear of the greatest strength, and which cannot be got over by all the doubts and cavils of infidelity, should be carefully laid up in the memory. The practice of morality, habitual adoration of the Supreme Being, retirement and meditation, are other means for strengthening faith. He argues that when retired from the world, faith and devotion naturally grow in the mind of every
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