thing in the condition in which it finds itself at first awaking from a more than usually vivid dream, the incidents and images of which, it may require some hours thoroughly to shake off. But where we are cognizant of such effects-and from no materials for mental application are they more likely to ensue than from works of fiction; and still more, when we are further cognizant that the impressions left on the mind are none of the purest or most hallowed, then must the test be admitted to be a just one.

Whether these effects are likely to ensue from the reading the works of "the immortal bard," I leave those who are acquainted with them to judge. I may be expected, perhaps, to adduce proofs from his works, of their especial tendency towards the worst character of consequences which I have intimated; and if required, should find no difficulty in doing so in abundance; but the admissions of Mr. Hamilton save me the pain, and your pages the pollution, of their transcription. "The guardian of youth and the minister of religion," says Mr. H., "have here no easy path to walk, nor unhesitating counsel to enunciate. It cannot be denied that, in perusing him, there is danger of moral contamination. It is vain to say that his worst evil is his fidelity, that he calls the spade the spade. There is sometimes a lavish pruriency. His power is occasionally for evil as well as good. Explore his deep lore of human nature, study the principles and laws which he so clearly expounds, mark how even he can only make vice look frightful, and leprously deformed; and, as our taste passes by his verbal conceit and idle pun, let our better and purer sensibilities reject and spurn the oblique, and the too often undisguised, grossness which blots his page -grossness so uncongenial with the poet, so injurious to the dramatist, so unworthy of the man!"* After reading this one feels at a loss, which most to admire ;-the peerless mind which can make popgun's of some of the tempter's choicest artillery, or the forgetfulness which has lost sight of the numbers unable to sustain its fire.

To the above very ample condemnation, I will only add the testimony of one, whose station, piety, and experience, entitle his opinion to the deference of all. 'Shakspeare," says Mr. Cecil, "had a low and licentious taste. When he chose to imagine a virtuous and exalted character, he could completely throw his mind into it, and give the perfect picture of such a character. But he is at home in Falstaff. No high, grand, virtuous, religious aim beams forth in him. A man, whose heart and taste are modelled on the Bible, nauseates him in the mass, while he is enraptured and astonished by the flashes of his preeminent genius."+ The question, then, again, involuntarily presents itself is this the author whom we are bound to read-is a Christian to be put to feed upon carrion, for the sake of the seasoning of some flourishes of genius?

"When a minister," says the writer just quoted, "takes one step into the world, his hearers will take two." What more will the timid reader, who has just, perhaps, dipped into Shakspeare by stealth, require to banish all pre-existing scruples, and to plunge into his scenes with avidity, than the authority of a Christian minister? Who will ensure his stopping here, or undertake to say that this may not prove the first stage in the facilis descensus Averni? The youth who can make himself at home with Shakspeare, will not be long in paying his respects to Byron; as he who has learnt to dally with Ovid, will not be shy with Catullus, when he comes in his way. Nor does the danger end with reading, however the apologist for Shakspeare may flatter himself to the contrary. Mr. Hamilton indeed says, "Conscientiously adverse to theatrical amusements, I see no reason why a poem should become dangerous to morality, because cast into scene and dialogue, the true dramatic shape." This opinion may be received as true, so far as relates to written dramas, designed only for reading, and having instruction as their chief end. But it is not true as relates to such as are written expressly for stage effect; which, as every one knows, would fail entirely, if something more than instruction and innocent amusement were not served up; if the true morality and pure principles of the Bible, were made rigidly to keep the place, of the loose morals, and accommodating principles of the world. Further, he who gets entranced amongst the magic scenes of Shakspeare, will soon perceive that the splendid conceptions of the poet were never designed to be fully realized, and cannot possibly be realized, on the page before him; and he has heard or read the names of Garrick, and Kemble, and Kean, of their wonderful powers, the charm of their acting, and the homage paid them by all who claimed to preside in the world of fashion, of letters, and of taste ;-what then must his favourite be in such hands, and what more harm can there be in seeing them, than in reading? When matters have proceeded thus far, a few helpless scruples will not stand long in the way; the ice has been broken, a theatrical taste perhaps imbibed, and another retrograde slide made on the moral incline.

Reviewing the dangers which the subject brings out before us (of which this is but a very imperfect sketch,) it appears to me that there is something more for the Christian teacher to do, than merely to discountenance the grosser poets; the taste for them is to be suppressed; and I offer it as a question of, perhaps, far greater moment than it is generally held to be-whether he who lives with eternity in his eye, will not, in every instance, unless where it is visibly restrained and directed by Divine grace, check the developement of the poetic genius in a young mind, rather than foster it?

Parnassus and Zion stand on opposite sides of the Christian's route; and he who has drank deep of the waters of Castalia, has seldom found

either inspiration or refreshment from those of Siloam. If Mr. Hamilton can drink of both, and can make the waters of either minister to his spiritual health, he must not fancy that other less gifted mortals can do the same.

Far be from us the day when our religious professors will be of a stamp to seek solace in Shakspeare; or our youth, bold with the sanction of Christian ministers, shall plunge headlong into the witcheries and wonders of that wonderful man. If to those of maturer years, and regulated thought, the study of such an author may be safe, to those who have not arrived at this post of strength, it is full of dangers; and if such we wish to save from mental vagrancy and moral contamination-Shakspeare-yes, even Shakspeare, laureate, idolized, and almost deified as he is, must, for them at least, be consigned to the index expurgatorius.

PHILALETHES.

ON THE DESECRATION OF THE SABBATH BY SOME

MODERN USAGES.

To reprove the faults, either real, or supposed, of fellow Christians, is at all times an unwelcome task. It awakens in our breasts the consciousness of many failures equally reprehensible, and the apprehension of participating to a greater extent than we may be aware in the offence which we attribute to others; and is liable to be viewed externally as an assumption of authority over the consciences of the brotherhood, or as the ebullition of a jealous and envious spirit. These difficulties accumulate in proportion to the plausible and insinuating character of the evil to be exposed. Of excessive violations of duty, men are easily convicted, but minor aberrations yield only to careful and diligent inquiry. An incipient disease requires a more tender treatment than a positive and fatal disorder. These considerations, however, must not deter us from rebuking each other's faults, but they require that it should be done with meekness and fear, as in the sight of God, with a sincere desire to promote each other's welfare, to provoke to love and good works, and to remove every obstacle which our own inadvertence may have opposed to the progress of truth.

An error in Christian conduct may insensibly arise from the everchanging aspect of human society, and the fluctuating nature of its laws. An unalterable religion and ever-shifting position in the world requires perpetually new adjustments of the one to the other, which without considerable watchfulness and energy cannot be kept up at all points. Discrepancies through inattention are continually occurring, which for a time elude observation, become at length too glaring to be endured, excite discussion, and finally work their own remedy, or secure their own condemnation. As these evils arise from the altered state of

society, they require to be viewed with a more jealous eye, and to be repressed with a more vigorous hand. There are seasons in which, owing to these external changes, the same conduct, would be more reprehensible in Christians than at other times, obviously because it is more accordant with the prevailing errors of the day. The liberty which is most abused by the world should be most sparingly indulged by the church. It is a part of true Christianity to watch the occasions, in which indulgence in matters of indifference, may be safely allowed or profitably suppressed; "All things are lawful for me," says the apostle, "but all things are not expedient." The things which are lawful for us are not at all times expedient, and this expediency is determined by the position we occupy in relation to the surrounding world. Nor must it be forgotten that temptations to indulgence are strongest in those very instances in which it is most injurious. Christians are more easily led to sanction the excesses of the wicked, by going with them as far as they can, than to rebuke them by singularity and self-denial.

There are few subjects to which these remarks admit of a more obvious and direct application than to the observance of the Christian Sabbath. The piety of nations, of families, and of individuals, has been distinguished by the veneration they have shown for this day, and one great reason for its appointment, doubtless, has been to preserve this distinction through all the generations of men. The preservation of that distinction depends not so much upon the spiritual exercises and public devotions of the Sabbath, as upon the degree of our conformity with the usual habits and enjoyments of life; not upon what we do more than others, but upon what we refuse to do in common with them. We are to be most strict where others most transgress, and show the spirituality of our principles where they can best appreciate and discern them. We must guard most the frontiers, where we are most liable to attack, and most exposed to view.

It is probably on this account that the law of the Sabbath descends more into details than any other in the decalogue. It differs remarkably from the rest in this respect. "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." The injunction is limited to that observance of the Sabbath which is most exposed to public view. The master of a household is not merely to abstain from all secular occupation, but he is not to allow it in a son or daughter, nor to require it of a manservant or maidservant, or even of his cattle, nor to sanction it in a stranger. In this way he is to keep the Sabbath holy, and because the connexion between the means and the end is not so obvious in this case, as in the other laws

of the decalogue, without serious consideration, it is accompanied with the admonition to keep it in remembrance.

Other laws in relation to the Sabbath are interwoven with the Jewish polity, but this forms a part of the moral law, of which, whoever transgresses a part, is a transgressor against the authority that enjoins the whole. The obligation to observe literally the other demands of this law will not be disputed, upon what ground then can we deny it in this one? By what authority do we assume an alteration in the character of the Sabbath in its transfer to the Christian dispensation? Was it not the Sabbath that was transferred? and what constituted the Sabbath, or that part at least of the Sabbath that could be transferred, but its unsecular aspect? This is the form in which it appears in the moral law, and in this form is of universal obligation. This is the law of the Sabbath which the Son of God came not to destroy but to fulfil, while at the same time he freed it from all that was characteristically Jewish, whether derived from Divine legislation or human distortion. That our Lord had instructed his disciples to adhere to the strict letter of the moral law of the Sabbath, is evident from the exhortation he gives them in reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, to pray that their flight might not be on the Sabbath-day, and that this day was thus observed by them seems more than probable, from an expression which occurs in the narrative of the day on which the Redeemer ascended, in the presence of his disciples, to heaven. After relating that Jesus had assembled together with them, and led them to Mount Olivet, and the disciples soon afterwards returned to Jerusalem, it is added that this mount is from Jerusalem a Sabbath-day's journey. For what purpose is this added, if not to show that even upon such an extraordinary occasion, the law of the Sabbath was not broken? This appears to have been upon the sixth weekly commemoration of the resurrection, and on the next first day of the week, which was the Pentecost or fiftieth day from the Passover, the disciples were assembled together, and received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. A Sabbath-day's journey or distance, to which these early Christians were confined, is about a mile.

Conceding, however, for argument's sake, the literal interpretation of this law, let us see what its spirit requires. In its transfer from the Jewish to the Christian dispensation, it has lost, as we have seen, much of its ceremonial rigour, but none of its moral obligation. Its unelastic parts have been withdrawn, and all that was capable of universal application has been retained. Less sacred in its ritual, it becomes more so in principle. Principle, under the new dispensation, is expected to effect more than law under the old. The relaxation of the ancient rigour was not intended to render the Sabbath less sacred, but more so. The very indulgence should lead us to be more jealous of transgression. In nothing should we be more scrupulous than in