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Samuel Johnson's Sermons: Consolations for the Vacuity of Life Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1988 Samuel Johnson's Sermons: Consolations for the Vacuity of Life Thomas George Kass Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Kass, Thomas George, "Samuel Johnson's Sermons: Consolations for the Vacuity of Life" (1988). Dissertations. 2627. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/2627 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1988 Thomas George Kass SAMUEL JOHNSON'S SERMONS: CONSOLATIONS FOR THE VACUITY OF LIFE by Thomas George Kass, c.s.v. A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 1988 (c) 1988, Thomas George Kass ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a pleasure to thank those who helped me in the research and writing of this dissertation. I am indebted to Professor David Loewenstein for his scholarly preci­ sion. I am indebted to Professor Douglas White for his careful reading of my chapters in draft form; his percep­ tive suggestions for revision prevented the stylistic deficiencies which otherwise would have impaired the persuasiveness of the argument. My major debt of thanks goes to the Director of this dissertation, Professor Thomas Kaminski, for his sound guidance and sensible advice at all stages of the writing. Without Professor Kaminski 1 s availability and encouragement, this disserta­ tion would remain a figment of my idle fancy. I owe those consolations for the vacuity in my life, which have issued from this inquiry, to Professor Thomas Kaminski. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the librarians at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University and the Newberry Library in Chicago for their gracious and courteous assistance. ii VITA The author, Fr. Thomas George Kass, C.S.V., is the son of the late Anthony Joseph Kass and the late Eleanor (Baszhowske) Kass. He was born August 29, 1946, in Chicago, Illinois. He received his elementary education at St. Ferdinand school in Chicago. His secondary education was completed in 1964 at St. Patrick High School, Chicago. In July, 1964, he entered the Religious Congregation of the Clerics of St. Viator. Fr. Kass received the degree Bachelor of Arts in English on February 2, 1969, from Loyola University of Chicago. As an undergraduate, Fr. Kass pursued the Honors Program in English. In September, 1968, he was granted early admission to the graduate program in English at the University of Chicago. Fr. Kass received the degree Master of Arts in English on August 29, 1969, from the University of Chicago. He taught English at Griffin High School, Springfield, Illinois, from 1969 to 1973. In addition, during these same years, he taught composition at Lincolnland College on a part-time basis. iii In September, 1973, he entered Catholic Theological union, Chicago, where he pursued graduate studies in theology. Fr. Kass received the degree Master of Divinity on May 27, 1976, from Catholic Theological Union; he was ordained a Catholic priest on January 8, 1977. Fr. Kass taught English and religion at St. Viator High School, Arlington Heights, Illinois, from 1977 to 1979. In 1979, he returned to Griffin High School to teach English and religion and to serve as Chair of the Religion Department until June, 1984. He was recognized as "Master Teacher of English" in 1984. He collaborated with Nancy c. Dodge in writing Thumpy's Story: ~Story of Love and Grief Shared (Springfield: Prairie Lark Press, 1984). Moreover, Fr. Kass' syllabus and lesson plans for his course in English composition were published in A Teacher's Guide to Advanced Placement Courses in English Language and Composition (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1985), 90-98. In August, 1984, Fr. Kass entered the Ph.D. program in English at Loyola University of Chicago and was awarded a teaching assistantship. On May 2, 1988, he was awarded membership in the National Jesuit Honor Society, Alpha Sigma Nu. In addition, he was awarded the Catherine A. Jarratt Lectureship in English for 1988-89. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ii VITA iii CHAPTER ONE: EXPERIENCE: THE CRUCIBLE FOR RELIGION IN JOHNSON'S SERMONS . 1 CHAPTER TWO: JOHNSON'S SERMONS AND THE NATURE OF MAN . 37 CHAPTER THREE: JOHNSON'S SERMONS AND THE CONSOLATION OF SALVATION . 109 CHAPTER FOUR: JOHNSON'S SERMONS AND ENGLISH SERMON STYLE . 183 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION . 255 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 268 v CHAPTER ONE EXPERIENCE: THE CRUCIBLE FOR RELIGION IN JOHNSON'S SERMONS I Even the most cursory reading of Samuel Johnson's writing makes it clear that he was intensely interested in religious and moral issues. Walter Jackson Bate has con- structed an extremely lucid analysis of the complex interrelationship between the religious and secular aspects of Samuel Johnson's definition of--and exhorta­ tions to--right conduct in the Rambler essays.1 Bate's analysis is an essential point of departure for this dissertation which focuses on the complexity of that same relationship within Johnson's Sermons. This dissertation will explore the sophisticated interrelationship in the Sermons between the religious and the secular aspects of Johnson's exhortation to right thinking and living as basic for an appreciation of the solace he offers us for the vacuity of life. 1 Walter Jackson Bate, The Achievement of Samuel Johnson (New York: Oxford University Press,-r955). See, especially, Chapters II, III, and IV. 1 2 Yet, the question remains to be asked: Why a study of Johnson's Sermons? While the study of the religious views and moral philosophy of Johnson has been a subject of great interest for more than two hundred years, few scholars have turned their attention to the Sermons. since nearly all of Johnson's writing reflects his interest in religion, it would seem logical and worthwhile to consider in some detail the single context, apart from his Prayers and Meditations, which contains his religious views in their most concentrated form. Johnson believed that the question of what one must do to be saved--"the important question which it becomes every human being to study from the first hour of reason to the last" (Sermon 28, 302)--could be seriously considered only if men could recognize without self­ delusion some essential characteristics of their nature: the dangerous sallies of the imagination, the insatiable desires of the will, and man's limited use of reason. I have no doubt that these principles expressed by Johnson in his Sermons can be found in his other works. I make no claim for the uniqueness of the Sermons. Yet, after having said this, I must state that I do find the Sermons different from Johnson's other works because throughout the Sermons he portrays the utter pervasiveness of the vacuity of life. Indeed, the idea that human life is in a special sense "vacuous" may be seen as the starting point 3 of Samuel Johnson's thought on the diverse aspects of human nature which he treats in the Sermons. His basic metaphor for human experience is the empty receptacle which cannot tolerate its own emptiness; it is used in the sermons to describe that very problem which most vexed him--the problem of reconciling the misery and wickedness of the temporal state with the Christian hope of redemp­ tion and eternal happiness. In the Sermons, we find no dethroned monarchs, no Abyssinian princes searching the world for the perfect way of life, no famous poets disappointed of a pension. The world of the Sermons is largely the world of shopkeepers and merchants; it is a world of middle-class persons with modest ambitions and humble hopes. Johnson shows us that sorrow is sorrow regardless of the social or intellectual sphere it operates in; every man needs sympathy from time to time, needs his hopes encouraged. Most importantly, the Sermons demonstrate that religion is efficacious in this world, and that even these ordinary shopkeepers can aspire to salvation and can attain it with as much toil as their superiors. Johnson's Sermons demand an absorbed and reflective reading in which the reader at every point compares his or her own way of living with the life described in the sermon text. Thus, a sermon like Sermon 1£, on the folly of vanity, will have failed in its effect for someone who 4 regards it as the sort of thing that happens only to other people. The sermon begins to work only when the reader enters and engages it, associating its analysis with some half-forgotten private experiences and realizing, perhaps with surprise, his or her own susceptibility. Walter Jackson Bate says that ''it does not minimize Johnson's criticism or indeed his writing on human experience itself to say that his ultimate greatness lies in the example they provide" (Achievement, 233). Johnson pursues his readers beyond the page, back into the pragmatism of daily life: If we cast our eyes over the earth, and extend our observations through the system of human beings, what shall we find but scenes of misery and innumerable varieties of calamity and distress, the pains of sickness, the wounds of casualty, the gripings of hunger, and the cold of nakedness; wretches wandering without an habitation, exposed to the contempt of the proud, and the insults of the cruel, goaded forward, by the stings of poverty, to dishonest acts, which perhaps relieve their present misery, only to draw some more dreadful distress upon them.
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