The Stupendous Whole: Newton and Carlylean Belief

Abstract

The stupendous whole, indeed, fascinated Carlyle all his life; his interest in (and even obsession with) it owes much to his earlier ‘inherited religious faith’ and his studies in Newton and other figures of the Enlightenment. As he read in Hume and Newton of the cosmic order, he connected these with those sermons he had heard and the many family worships in which he had participated. Indeed, he sounds usually nostalgic in the essay on Edward Irving when he writes of the family worship, ‘what they call “Taking the Book” (or Books, i.e. taking your Bibles, Psalm and Chapter always part of the service)’. He also sounds usually nostalgic in speaking of old Adam Hope, a rigid Seceder, who, with a ‘select group’, was in ‘the habit of pilgrimage for Sermon’. Carlyle emphasises the importance of attendance:

Less zealous brethren would perhaps pretermit in bad weather; but I suppose it had to be very bad when Adam and most of his group failed to appear. The distance, a six miles twice, was nothing singular in their case; one family, whose streaming plaids, hung up to drip, I remember to have noticed one wet Sunday, pious Scotch weavers, settled near Carlisle, I was told,—were in the habit of walking fifteen miles twice for their Sermon, since it was not to be heard nearer.