THEOLOGIANS. ENGLISH LITERATURE. brought out, yet blended and subdued the colours on the marble, till they had a softness and harmony, for all their richness, which, in a picture, looks exaggerated, yet is, after all, within the truth. He would not tell how that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; nor take much account of the rare flavour of its honey, since Gozo and Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. He would look over the Agean from the height he had ascended; he would follow with his eye the chain of islands, which, starting from the Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto across the sea; but that fancy would not occur to him, nor any admiration of the dark violet billows with their white edges down below; nor of those faithful, fan-like jets of silver upon the rocks, which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver, and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and disappear in a soft mist of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving and panting of the whole liquid plain; nor of the long waves keeping steady time, like a line of soldiery, as they resound upon the hollow shore-he would not deign to notice that restless living element at all, except to bless his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the distinct detail, nor the refined colouring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the jutting crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otum or Laurium by the declining sun; our agent of a mercantile firm would not value these matters even at a low figure. Rather we must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student, come from a semi-barbarous land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible, unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote province, from Britain or from Mauritania, who, in a scene so different from that of his chilly, woody swamps, or of his fiery, choking sands, learned at once what a real university must be, by coming to understand the sort of country which was its suitable home. Influence and Law. Thus Deioces the Mede yet an army is a very beautiful object to look upon; and The Jewish and Christian Churches. The From Sermons bearing on the Subjects of the Day. ; This, I say, is what many persons are slow to understand. They think the Old Testament must be supposed to be our rule directly and literally, or not at all; and since we cannot put ourselves under it absolutely and without explanation, they conclude that in no sense is it binding on us; but surely there is such a thing as the application of Scripture'; this is no very difficult or strange idea. Surely we cannot make any practical use even of St Paul's Epistles, without application. They are written to Ephesians or Colossians we apply them to the case of Englishmen. They speak of customs, and circumstances, and fortunes which do not belong to us; we cannot take them literally; we must adapt them to our own case; we must apply We are not in persecution, or in prison; them to us. we do not live in the south, nor under the Romans; nor have we been converted from heathenism; nor have we miraculous gifts; nor live we in a country of slaves; yet still we do not find it impossible to guide ourselves by inspired directions, addressed to those who were thus circumstanced. And in somewhat a like manner, the or ritual, or Church polity, may be our guides, though directions of the Old Testament, whether as to conduct, we are obliged to apply them. Scripture itself does this for us in some instances, and in some others we ourselves are accustomed to do so for ourselves and we may do so in a number of others also in which we are Taking influence and law to be the two great principles of government, it is plain that, historically speaking, influence comes first, and then law. Thus Orpheus preceded Lycurgus and Solon. laid the foundations of his power in the personal reputation for justice, and then established it in the seven walls by which he surrounded himself in Ecbatana. slow to do it. For instance, the Law says, 'Thou shalt First we have the virum pietate graem, whose word love thy neighbour as thyself.' Does the Gospel abro'rules the spirits and soothes the breasts' of the multi-gate this command. Of course not. tude-or the warrior-or the mythologist and bard; then follow at length the dynasty and constitution. Such is the history of society: it begins in the poet, and ends in the policeman. The Beautiful and the Virtuous. Ac ; It is maintained that the beautiful and the virtuous 94 What does it do with it? It explains and enlarges it. It answers the question, Who is my neighbour?' The substance of but the Gospel opens and elevates it. And so again the the command is the same under Law and under Gospel; Ten Commandments belong to the Law, yet we read them still in the Communion Service, as binding upon ourselves; yet not in the mere letter; the Gospel has turned the letter into spirit. It has unfolded and diversified those sacred precepts which were given from the beginning. MR FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN, brother of the above, and born in 1805, is a distinguished scholar and author of various works. In 1824 he was admitted a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, but resigned his fellowship, as he could not subHe was Latin Professor in University scribe the Thirty-nine Articles for his Master's degree. College, London, from 1846 to 1863, when he 657 resigned. A History of the Hebrew Monarchy, and Lectures on History, were published by him in 1847; in 1849, The Soul, her Sorrows and Aspirations; in 1850, Phases of Faith-a work avowing the author's infidelity, but pervaded by a kind of mystical spiritualism; Lectures on Political Economy, 1851; Regal Rome, 1852; The Crimes of the House of Hapsburg, 1853. In this year, also, he published The Odes of Horace, translated into Unrhymed Metres, but the effort is described as not successful. In 1866 Mr Newman published a Handbook of Modern Arabic, and is understood to be engaged on an English-Arabic Dictionary. DR CHANNING. solitary being, living for purposes which none but himself comprehended, and enjoying not so much as the sympathy of a single mind. His apostles, his chosen companions, brought to him the spirit of the age; and nothing shews its strength more strikingly, than the slowness with which it yielded in these honest men to the instructions of Jesus. Jesus came to a nation expecting a Messiah; and he claimed this character. But instead of comforming to the opinions which prevailed in regard to the Messiah, he resisted them wholly and without reserve. To a people anticipating a triumphant leader, under whom vengeance as well as ambition was to be glutted by the prostration of their oppressors, he came as a spiritual leader teaching humility and peace. This undisguised hostility to the dearest hopes and prejudices of his nation; this disdain of the usual compliances by which ambition and imposture conciliate adherents; this deliberate exposure of himself to rejection and hatred, cannot easily be explained by the common principles of human nature, and excludes the possibility of selfish aims in the author of Christianity. vastness of his views. Whilst all around him looked for One striking peculiarity in Jesus is the extent-the a Messiah to liberate God's ancient people; whilst to every other Jew, Judea was the exclusive object of pride and hope-Jesus came declaring himself to be the deliverer and light of the world: and in his whole teaching and life, you see a consciousness, which never forsakes him, of a relation to the whole human race. This idea of blessing mankind, of spreading a universal religion, was the most magnificent which had ever entered into man's mind. All previous religions had been given to particular nations. No conqueror, legislator, philosopher, in the extravagance of ambition, had ever dreamed of subjecting all nations to a common faith. WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING (1780-1842), one of the most popular of the American prose writers and theologians, was a native of Newport, Rhode Island. After completing his education at Harvard University (where he took his degree in 1798), he studied divinity, and was ordained minister of a church in Boston. Though disliking all sectarian preaching, Channing undertook, in 1819, on occasion of the ordination of the Rev. Jared Sparks, to explain and defend the opinions of the Unitarians, dwelling on such topics as had been made the subject of misrepresentation. Still he described himself as 'more nearly related to Fenelon than to Priestley,' and in advanced life he said: 'I am little of a Unitarian, have little sympathy with the system of Priestley and Belsham, and stand aloof from all but those who strive and pray for clearer light.' He may be classed with Archbishop This conception of a universal religion, intended for Leighton and Baxter. His unfeigned humility Jew and Gentile, for all nations and climes, is wholly and piety endeared him to the good of all sects, inexplicable by the circumstances of Jesus. He was a and among his friends he could number even the Jew; and the first and deepest and most constant High Church Wordsworth and Coleridge. Dr impression on a Jew's mind, was that of the superiority Channing (he received his degree of D.D. from conferred on his people and himself by the national Harvard University in 1821) was author of various religion introduced by Moses. The wall between the essays and sermons-Essay on National Litera- Jew and the Gentile seemed to reach to heaven. The ture, 1823; Remarks on the Character and Writ- abolition of the peculiarity of Moses, the overthrow of ings of Milton, 1826; Analysis of the Character of in which all men would meet as brethren, and which the temple of Mount Sinai, the erection of a new religion, Napoleon Bonaparte, 1828; The Character and would be the common and equal property of Jew and Writings of Fenelon, 1829; On Negro Slavery, Gentile-these were of all ideas the last to spring up 1835; On Self-Culture, 1838, and Sermons on the in Judea, the last for enthusiasm or imposture to Christian Evidences, and other subjects. All his originate. works are distinguished by purity and elevation of thought, and though rather too measured and diffuse in style and expression, cannot be read without delight as well as instruction. The expansive benevolence and Christian ardour of the writer shine through the whole. Various editions of Channing's collected works have been issued, and in 1848 a copious life of him was published by his nephew, W. H. Channing. The Character of Christ. We are struck with this peculiarity in the author of Christianity, that whilst all other men are formed in a measure by the spirit of the age, we can discover in Jesus no impression of the period in which he lived. We know with considerable accuracy the state of society, the modes of thinking, the hopes and expectations of the country in which Jesus was born and grew up; and he is as free from them, and as exalted above them, as if he had lived in another world, or, with every sense shut on the objects around him. His character has in it nothing local or temporary. It can be explained by | nothing around him. His history shews him to us a Compare next these views of Christ with his station in life. He was of humble birth and education, with nothing in his lot, with no extensive means, no rank, or wealth, or patronage to infuse vast thoughts and extravagant plans. The shop of a carpenter, the village of Nazareth, were not spots for ripening a scheme more aspiring and extensive than had ever been formed. It insanity, some proportion is observed between the power is a principle in human nature, that except in cases of of an individual and his plans and hopes. The purpose to which Jesus devoted himself was as ill suited to his condition as an attempt to change the seasons, or to make the sun rise in the west. That a young man in obscure life, belonging to an oppressed nation, should seriously think of subverting the time-hallowed and deep-rooted religions of the world, is a strange fact: but with this purpose we see the mind of Jesus thoroughly imbued; and sublime as it is, he never falls below it in his language or conduct; but speaks and acts with a consciousness of superiority, with a dignity and authority, becoming this unparalleled destination. In this connection I cannot but add another striking circumstance in Jesus; and that is, the calm confidence with which he always looked forward to the accomplishment of his design. The New Testament Epistles. The Epistles, if possible, abound in marks of truth and reality even more than the Gospels. They are imbued thoroughly with the spirit of the first age of Christianity. They bear all the marks of having come from men, plunged in the conflicts which the new religion excited, alive to its interests, identified with its fortunes. They betray the very state of mind which must have been generated by the peculiar condition of the first propagators of the religion. They are letters written on real business, intended for immediate effects, designed to meet prejudices and passions, which such a religion must at first have awakened. They contain not a trace of the circumstances of a later age, or of the feelings, impressions, and modes of thinking by which later times were characterised, and from which later writers could not easily have escaped. The letters of Paul have a remarkable agreement with his history. They are precisely such as might be expected from a man of a vehement mind, who had been brought up in the schools of Jewish literature, who had been converted by a sudden, overwhelming miracle, who had been intrusted with the preaching of the new religion to the Gentiles, who had been everywhere met by the prejudices and persecuting spirit of his own nation. They are full of obscurities, growing out of these points of Paul's history and character, and out of the circumstances of the infant church, and which nothing but an intimate acquaintance with that early period can illustrate. This remarkable infusion of the spirit of the first age into the Christian records, cannot easily be explained but by the fact that they were written in that age by the real and zealous propagators of Christianity, and that they are records of real convictions and of actual events. Napoleon Bonaparte. His intellect was distinguished by rapidity of thought. He understood by a glance what most men, and superior men, could learn only by study. He darted to a conclusion rather by intuition than reasoning. In war, which was the only subject of which he was master, he seized in an instant on the great points of his own and his enemy's positions; and combined at once the movements by which an overpowering force might be thrown with unexpected fury on a vulnerable part of the hostile line, and the fate of an army be decided in a day. He understood war as a science; but his mind was too bold, rapid, and irrepressible, to be enslaved by the technics of his profession. He found the old armies fighting by rule, and he discovered the true characteristic of genius, which, without despising rules, knows when and how to break them. He understood thoroughly the immense moral power which is gained by originality and rapidity of operation. He astonished and paralysed his enemies by his unforeseen and impetuous assaults, by the suddenness with which the storm of battle burst upon them; and whilst giving to his soldiers the advantages of modern discipline, breathed into them, by his quick and decisive movements, the enthusiasm of ruder ages. The power of disheartening the foe, and of spreading through his own ranks a confidence and exhilarating courage, which made war a pastime, and seemed to make victory sure, distinguished Napoleon in an age of uncommon military talent, and was one main instrument of his future power. The wonderful effects of that rapidity of thought by which Bonaparte was marked, the signal success of his new mode of warfare, and the almost incredible speed with which his fame was spread through nations, had no small agency in fixing his character, and determining for a period the fate of empires. These stirring influences infused a new consciousness of his own might. They gave intensity and audacity to his ambition; gave form and substance to his indefinite visions of glory, and raised his fiery hopes to empire. The burst of admiration which his early career called forth, must in ambition that modification by which it was characterised, particular have had an influence in imparting to his and which contributed alike to its success and to its fall. He began with astonishing the world, with producing a sudden and universal sensation, such as modern times had not witnessed. To astonish as well as to sway by his energies, became the great end of his life. Henceforth to rule was not enough for Bonaparte. He wanted ing, bold, magnificent, and unanticipated results. To to amaze, to dazzle, to overpower men's souls, by strikgovern ever so absolutely would not have satisfied him, if he must have governed silently. He wanted to reign through wonder and awe, by the grandeur and terror of his name, by displays of power which would rivet on him every eye, and make him the theme of every tongue. Power was his supreme object; but a power which should be gazed at as well as felt, which should strike men as a prodigy, which should shake old thrones as an earthquake, and by the suddenness of its new creations should awaken something of the submissive wonder which miraculous agency inspires. race. rivalled in enlightened ages, and which reminds us of His history shews a spirit of self-exaggeration, unan oriental king to whom incense had been burned from his birth as to a deity. This was the chief source of his crimes. He wanted the sentiment of a common nature with his fellow-beings. He had no sympathies with his in truly great souls with peculiar energy, and through That feeling of brotherhood which is developed which they give up themselves willing victims, joyful sacrifices, to the interests of mankind, was wholly unknown to him. His heart, amidst all its wild beatings, never had one throb of disinterested love. The ties which bind man to man he broke asunder. The proper happiness of a man, which consists in the victory of moral energy and social affection over the selfish passions, he cast away for the lonely joy of a despot. With powers which might have made him a glorious representative and minister of the beneficent Divinity, and with natural sensibilities which might have been exalted into sublime virtues, he chose to separate himself from his kind, to forego their love, esteem, and gratitude, that he might become their gaze, their fear, their wonder, and, for this selfish solitary good, parted with peace and imperishable renown.* The spirit of self-exaggeration wrought its own misery, and drew down upon him terrible punishments; and this it did by vitiating and perverting his high powers. First, it diseased his fine intellect, gave imagination the ascendency over judgment, turned the inventiveness and fruitfulness of his mind into rash, impatient, restless energies, and thus precipitated him into projects which, as the wisdom of his counsellors pronounced, were fraught with ruin. To a man whose vanity took him out of the rank of human beings, no foundation for reasoning was left. All things seemed possible. His genius and his fortune were not to be bounded by the barriers which experience had assigned to human powers. Ordinary rules did not apply to him. His imagination, disordered by his egotism, and by unbounded of Coleridge's criticism on Milton's Satan: The character of We may illustrate Channing's argument by quoting part of action. It is the character so often seen in little on the Satan is pride and sensual indulgence, finding in itself the motive political stage. It exhibits all the restlessness, temerity, and cunning which have marked the mighty hunters of mankind that these great men, as they are called, must act from some from Nimrod to Napoleon. The common fascination of man is, great motive. Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. To place this lust of self in opposition to denial of self or duty, and to shew what exertions it would make, and what pains endure to accomplish its end, is Milton's particular object in the character of Satan. But around this character he has thrown a singularity of daring, a the very height of poetic sublimity. The career of Napoleon grandeur of sufferance, and a ruined splendour, which constitute certainly exemplifies the principle here so finely enunciated. flattery, leaped over appalling obstacles to the prize grateful to me in my utter exhaustion; and if in this which inflamed his ambition. Great Ideas. What is needed to elevate the soul is, not that a man should know all that has been thought and written in regard to the spiritual nature-not that a man should become an encyclopædia; but that the great ideas, in which all discoveries terminate, which sum up all sciences, which the philosopher extracts from infinite details, may be comprehended and felt. It is not the quantity, but the quality of knowledge, which determines the mind's dignity. A man of immense information may, through the want of large and comprehensive ideas, be far inferior in intellect to a labourer, who, with little knowledge, has yet seized on great truths. For example, I do not expect the labourer to study theology in the ancient languages, in the writings of the Fathers, in the history of sects, &c. ; nor is this needful. All theology, scattered as it is through countless volumes, is summed up in the idea of God; and let this idea shine bright and clear in the labourer's soul, and he has the essence of theological libraries, and a far higher light than has visited thousands of renowned divines. A great mind is formed by a few great ideas, not by an infinity of loose details. I have known very learned men, who seemed to me very poor in intellect, because they had no grand thoughts. What avails it that a man has studied ever so minutely the histories of Greece and Rome, if the great ideas of freedom, and beauty, and valour, and spiritual energy, have not been kindled by those records into living fires in his soul? The illumination of an age does not consist in the amount of its knowledge, but in the broad and noble principles of which that knowledge is the foundation and inspirer. The truth is, that the most laborious and successful student is confined in his researches to a very few of God's works; but this limited knowledge of things may still suggest universal laws, broad principles, grand ideas, and these elevate the mind. There are certain thoughts, principles, ideas, which by their nature rule over all knowledge, which are intrinsically glorious, quickening, all-comprehending, eternal. REV. HENRY BLUNT. The REV. HENRY BLUNT (1794-1843) was for several years incumbent of Trinity Church, Chelsea, and was not only a popular preacher but a voluminous author. He belonged to what is known as the Low Church or Evangelical party. Some of Mr Blunt's religious treatises are said to have gone through forty editions in England, besides having a great circulation in America. Among his works are-Lectures upon the History of Jacob, 1828; Lectures upon the History of St Paul, two parts, 1832-33; Family Exposition of the Pentateuch, with several volumes of Sermons, &c. After Mr Blunt's death three volumes of Sermons and Pastoral Letters were collected and published. half-awakened state, a thought of the matter entered my mind, I ascribed it to the unusual care and success of my friends in preserving silence around me. I saw them talking, indeed, to one another, and thought that out of regard to my feeble condition they spoke in whispers, because I heard them not. The truth was revealed to me in consequence of my solicitude about the book which had so much interested me in the day of my fall. It had, it seems, been reclaimed by the good old man who had sent it to me, and who doubtless concluded that I should have no more need of books in this life. He was wrong; for there has been nothing in this life which I have needed more. I asked for this book with much earnestness, and was answered by signs which I could not comprehend. Why do you not speak?' I cried. Pray let me have the book.' This seemed to create some confusion; and at length some one, more clever than the rest, hit upon the happy expedient of writing upon a slate, that the book had been reclaimed by the owner, and that I could not in my weak state be allowed to read. But, I said in great astonishment, 'why do you write to me; why not speak? Speak, speak! In my Those who stood around the bed exchanged significant looks of concern, and the writer soon displayed upon his slate the awful words 'YOU ARE DEAF!' Did not this utterly crush me? By no means. then weakened condition nothing like this could affect me. Besides, I was a child; and to a child the full extent of such a calamity could not be at once apparent. However, I knew not the future-it was well I did not; and there was nothing to shew me that I suffered under more than a temporary deafness, which in a few days might pass away. It was left for time to shew me the sad realities of the condition to which I was reduced. The deaf boy, after his recovery, was placed in the workhouse, until some employment could be found for him. He was put apprentice to a shoemaker, who used him with great cruelty, but an appeal to the magistrates procured his release from this tyranny; and being assisted, in his nineteenth year, to publish a volume of essays and letters, friends came forward, and he was enabled to follow out his strong bias for theological literature. He spent ten years in travelling and residing abroad, the result of which appeared in his Biblical criticism and illustrations, and in his account of the Scripture Lands, 1850. On his return to England, in 1833, he wrote for the Penny Magazine a series of papers called The Deaf Traveller, and ever afterwards was actively engaged in literature. He edited The Pictorial Bible, the Journal of Sacred Literature, and the Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature; also a valuable work, Daily Bible Illustrations. Two small volumes, entitled The Lost Senses, one on deafness and the other on blindness, were produced by Dr Kitto, and are interesting from the facts and anecdotes they contain. He concludes that the blind are not so badly off as the deaf. It is indeed possible that, so far as regards merely condition than the deaf; but in all that regards animal sensation, the blind man is in a worse the culture of the mind, he has infinitely the advantage, while his full enjoyment of society, from which the other is excluded, keeps up a healthy exercise of his mental faculties, and maintains him in that cheerful frame of mind, which is as generally observed among the blind, as the want of it is among the deaf.' A pension of £100 was settled upon Dr Kitto by the government. He went abroad to recruit his health, which had been injured by too close application, but died at Cannstadt, near Stuttgart, in his fifty-first year. DR ROBERT VAUGHAN. sarcasm in Mr Rogers's Eclipse and Defence, while in logical acuteness he is vastly superior to his opponent. Occasionally he rises into a strain of pure eloquence, as in the following passage: The Humanity of the Saviour. ROBERT VAUGHAN, D.D., was for some years Professor of Ancient and Modern History in the university of London, and President of the Independent College, Manchester. He was author of various important historical works, imbued with true constitutional feeling and principle, and evincing great care and research. Among these works are Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty from 1603 to 1688, published in 1831; Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell and the State of Europe during the Early Part of the Reign of Louis XIV, 1838; The Age of Great Cities, 1842; John De Wycliffe, a monograph, 1854; Revolutions in English History, 1859; Revolutions in Government, 1863; English Nonconformity, 1862; and a great number of discourses, reviews, and pamphlets on theological and philosophical questions. Dr Vaughan was born in 1795, and educated at Bristol, after which he became pastor of the Independent Chapel at Kensington. This indefatigable and conscientious literary worker died in 1868, in his seventy-third year. His pulpit oratory is described as of an impressive intellec-sorious hypocrisy, the name of the 'friend of publicans tual character. HENRY ROGERS. Few books of religious controversy have been so popular as The Eclipse of Faith, or a Visit to a Religious Sceptic, 1852. This work went through five editions within two years. Though the name of the author is not prefixed, The Eclipse is known to be the production of MR HENRY ROGERS, one of the professors at the Independent College, Birmingham. Mr Rogers officiated for some time as minister of an Independent congregation, but was forced to relinquish his charge on account of ill health. He has been a contributor to the Edinburgh Review, and a collection of his various papers has been published under the title of Essays: Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, three volumes, 1850-55. In 1856, Mr Rogers published an Essay on the Life and Genius of Thomas Fuller, with Selections from his Writings. He has also contributed some short biographies to the Encyclopædia Britannica. Learned, eloquent, and liberal in sentiment, Mr Rogers is an honour to the Dissenting body. Eclipse was written in reply to Mr F. W. Newman's Phases of Faith, noticed in a previous page. Mr Rogers adopts the plan of sending to a missionary in the Pacific Ocean an account of the religious distractions in this country. All the controversies and new theological opinions, English and German, which have been agitated within the last twenty years are discussed, and a considerable part of the reasoning is in the form of dialogue. The various interlocutors state their opinions fully, and are answered by other parties. Deism is represented by a disciple of Professor Newman, who draws most of his arguments from the Phases of Faith. A new edition of this work being called for, Mr Newman added to it a Reply to the Eclipse of Faith, 1854, and Mr Rogers rejoined with A Defence of the Eclipse of Faith. There is a good deal of vigorous thought and The And now what, after all, does the carping criticism of this chapter amount to? Little as it is in itself, it absolutely vanishes; it is felt that the Christ thus portrayed cannot be the right interpretation of the history, in the face of all those glorious scenes with which the evangelical narrative abounds, but of which there is here an entire oblivion. But humanity will not forget them; men still wonder at the 'gracious words which proceeded out of Christ's mouth,' and persist in saying, 'Never man spake like this man.' The brightness of the brightest names pales and wanes before the radiance which shines from the person of Christ. The scenes at the tomb of Lazarus, at the gate of Nain, in the happy family at Bethany, in the upper room' where He instituted the feast which should for ever consecrate His memory, and bequeathed to his disciples the legacy of His love; the scenes in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the summit of Calvary, and at the sepulchre; the sweet remembrance of the patience with which He bore wrong, the gentleness with which he rebuked it, and the love with which he forgave it; the thousand acts of benign condescension by which He well earned for himself, from self-righteous pride and cen and sinners;' these, and a hundred things more, which crowd those concise memorials of love and sorrow with such prodigality of beauty and of pathos, will still continue to charm and attract the soul of humanity, and on these the highest genius, as well as the humblest mediocrity, will love to dwell. These things lisping infancy loves to hear on its mother's knees, and over them age, with its gray locks, bends in devoutest reverence. No; before the infidel can prevent the influence of these compositions, he must get rid of the gospels themselves, or he must supplant them by fictions yet more wonderful! Ah, what bitter irony has involuntarily escaped me! But if the last be impossible, at least the gospels must cease to exist before infidelity can succeed. Yes, before infidels can prevent men from thinking as they have ever done of Christ, they must blot out the gentle words with which, in the presence of austere hypocrisy, the Saviour welcomed that timid guilt that could only express its silent love in an agony of tears; they must blot out the words addressed to the dying penitent, who, softened by the majestic patience of the mighty sufferer, detected at last the Monarch under the veil of sorrow, and cast an imploring glance to be remembered by Him when he came into His kingdom;' they must blot out the scene in which the demoniacs sat listening at His feet, and 'in their right mind; they must blot out the remembrance of the tears which He shed at the grave of Lazarus-not surely for him whom He was about to raise, but in pure sympathy with the sorrows of humanity-for the myriad myriads of desolate mourners, who could not, with Mary, fly to him, and say: 'Lord, if thou hadst been here, my mother, brother, sister, had not died!' they must blot out the record of those miracles which charm us, not only as the proof of His mission, and guarantees of the truth of His doctrine, but as they illustrate the benevolence of His character and are types of the spiritual cures His gospel can yet perform; they must blot out the scenes of the sepulchre, where love and veneration lingered, and saw what was never seen before, but shall henceforth be seen to the end of time the tomb itself irradiated with angelic forms, and bright with the presence of Him who brought life and immortality to light; they must blot out the scene where deep and grateful love wept so passionately, and found Him unbidden at her side, type of ten thousand |