The Supplicating Voice by Samuel Johnson

First published: New York: Vintage, 2005, edited by John F. Thornton and Susan B. Varenne

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Devotions; essays; sermons

Core issue(s): Charity; death; prayer; suffering; trust in God

Overview

The Supplicating Voice is a collection of Samuel Johnson’s writings and statements dealing with religion. It includes sermons, personal prayers, diary entries, poems, published essays, relevant definitions from Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language: To Which Are Prefixed, a History of the Language, and an English Grammar (1755), and comments made in conversation and recorded by his friend and biographer James Boswell in his Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791).

Johnson did not deliver the sermons he wrote. They were intended for presentation by clergymen who, lacking the skill, the time, or the inclination to make up sermons of their own, bought them from Johnson for two guineas each. An exception was the sermon on immortality that Johnson wrote for presentation at the funeral of Johnson’s wife, Elizabeth “Tetty” Johnson, on March 17, 1752. It was one of only three sermons that were dated and the only one to be published. According to Boswell, the preacher decided not to use it, but the sermon, whose subject was immortality, was printed later that month. Though Johnson believed he wrote at least forty sermons, perhaps many more, he did not keep records of his sales. Therefore only the twenty-seven in this book can be ascribed to him with relative certainty.

In all of his sermons, Johnson began with biblical texts, which he then discussed in a rational, methodical manner. In them, he often contrasted God’s majesty and righteousness with the lowly, sinful state of human beings and urged the imagined congregation to avoid pride, to be compassionate, and above all, to be charitable.

Ironically, though Johnson was a loyal member of the Church of England, he seldom attended services. He was too restless, both physically and intellectually, to sit through long sermons that were so often pedestrian and uninspired. However, he valued prayer highly, and throughout his life he composed prayers in the formal style of the Anglican collects, which he used in his personal devotions. From time to time, he also kept a diary. Neither the prayers nor his diaries were intended for publication, but fortunately some of these writings survived. In them, it is evident that though even as a young man Johnson had accepted the truths of Christianity and was living according to the Christian moral system, his faith grew steadily more profound as he grew older.

Johnson’s most famous poem is “The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal, Imitated” (1749). Like the Roman writer Juvenal, Johnson points out the futility of every human endeavor. Worldly power is easily lost; military glory ends in death; feminine beauty soon fades; and even intellectual prowess vanishes. However, while Juvenal maintained the Stoic position, that to be rational means to subdue every emotion, even hope, Johnson ends his poem by asserting that happiness can come to human beings as the byproduct of obedience to God and faith in Providence. Also included in this collection are the early poem “Upon the Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude” and a modern translation of a Latin poem by Johnson, “Christianus Perfectus,” in which the poet outlines a Christian’s spiritual progress on the road to heaven.

Between 1750 and 1760, Johnson wrote essays for his own publication The Rambler, then for the periodical The Adventurer, and finally for The Idler. Although many of these essays were light in tone, often satirizing foolish behavior, Johnson made it clear that his serious essays were solidly based on Christian teachings. Those selected for The Supplicating Voice deal with such issues as how one can live a worthwhile life, whether a Christian should live in solitude or in society, and how a believer should face old age and death.

Because Johnson was known sometimes to argue first one side and then the other, it is to be expected that the passages from Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson would sometimes seem to contradict each other and that they would not always be consistent with his dictionary definitions. For example, Boswell reports Johnson’s castigation of the Presbyterians for having no fixed form of worship and for dispensing with the apostolic succession, and yet he relies on the great Presbyterian writer John Milton for many definitions involving religion. On more than one occasion Johnson states his belief that the differences between Christians are trivial, that where the essentials of the faith are concerned, they agree. However, such inconsistencies demonstrate the depth of Johnson’s thought. While he was too precise in his reasoning to ignore details, he also knew that even the most thoughtful human beings cannot see earthly matters as God does. It is significant that, as Boswell reports, on his deathbed Johnson declined painkillers, asserting that he wished to have a clear mind when he surrendered his soul. Not only does that incident demonstrate his unswerving faith in God, but also it shows that he hoped to have all of his questions answered when he arrived in the next world.

Christian Themes

Johnson held to the doctrines and the practice of the Church of England, which he believed was linked through the apostolic succession to the church founded by Christ. Like other Reformation churches, the Church of England believed that the Scriptures contained all that was necessary for salvation. Johnson, too, considered the Scriptures, not later doctrines or papal decisions, the ultimate authority. However, he also looked to the early patristic writings for guidance. He believed that the Roman Catholic Church was wrong in many of its actions, such as its use of purgatory to extract money from the faithful. In theory, however, Johnson saw nothing wrong with such Roman Catholic practices as believing in purgatory, praying for the dead, or making one’s confession and being assigned penance.

As for the Presbyterians, Johnson not only thought their practice flawed and their system of church government erroneous but also emphatically rejected their doctrine of predestination, which, unfortunately, had been mentioned with approval in the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. Johnson believed that Christ died for all people, that everyone has free will, and that salvation is available to all through grace, conditional on their having faith in God, repenting of their sins, and performing works of charity. When he referred to his “late” conversion, he did not mean that he came to faith or to Christian practice late in his life. In his Latin poem and throughout his writings, Johnson makes it clear that, in accordance with the Church of England, he thought of conversion as a gradual process, involving systematic self-examination, amendment of life, and spiritual growth, a process that ended only with death.

Johnson’s lifelong preoccupation with death has been seen as evidence that his faith was not always as strong as it seemed. However, Johnson does not fear death; he fears the judgment that will follow. Ironically, Johnson was a very model of that quality he so emphasized, charity toward others. He supported a household of needy people, and he gave so generously of his substance that often he could not meet his own financial obligations. Nevertheless, his habit of self-examination kept him always aware of how far short of Christian perfection he fell. It is ironic that Johnson had such difficulty believing that God would exhibit the same compassion toward him that he routinely did toward others. In his final days, however, Johnson seemed to lose his fear of death and the subsequent judgment. He died secure in salvation through the grace of God.

Sources for Further Study

Chapin, Chester F. The Religious Thought of Samuel Johnson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968. Traces the development of Johnson’s faith and contrasts his views with that of contemporary evangelicals. Notes and index.

Clark, Jonathan, and Howard Erskine-Hill, eds. Samuel Johnson in Historical Context. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Essays by literary critics and historians address the controversy between critics who see Johnson merely as a moralist and those who note his intense commitment to religious and political causes. Notes and index.

Potkay, Adam. The Passion for Happiness: Samuel Johnson and David Hume. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. Argues persuasively that Johnson and Hume share a definition of happiness drawn from classical sources. However, the author fails to point out the Christian basis of Johnson’s beliefs.

Quinlan, Maurice J. Samuel Johnson: A Layman’s Religion. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964. Explains gradual change in Johnson’s beliefs, including his acceptance of the doctrine of the atonement. Notes and index.

Suarez, Michael F., S.J. “Johnson’s Christian Thought.” In The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, edited by Greg Clingham. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Johnson was an outstanding theological thinker as well as a Christian moralist. A systematic, lucid analysis.