conception, another succeeds it, to surprise us by opening fresh and higher sources of delight. He seems, indeed, almost exhaustless in the production of new and interesting thought.

As in paintings, effect is the standard of excellence, we shall find that the general effect of these essays evinces that they are portraitures of a master. As their author has succeeded in arraying truth in her native majesty and beauty, so he has admirably produced that combinaton of thought and sentiment, which gives life to thought, and dignity to sentiment. A glow of feeling, as well as an almost constant perception of beauty, attends the reader through these essays. They awaken neither the sterner nor the gentler natural passions; but those high and lofty sentiments, which are emanations of the purest and noblest thoughts, and inspire a calm and steady course of heavenly action. The originals of his pictures are in the heavens, and he has transferred to his copies much of the native symmetry and perfection of their archetypes. His motives are from the unseen objects of revelation, and he has inspired them deeply with the living powers of a faith, which views the substance and mighty import of things invisible. We not only admire, but feel the excellence of his delineations. Their energy and warmth kindle a flame of sentiment within us. And as his plans open, in their rising greatness, from a mind severe in its logic, and imbued with correctness and delicacy of taste, so is emotion, as we proceed, ever striking deeper, and spreading higher.

The advantage of a well-balanced mind, of a proper discipline of all the powers, and a nice adjustment of them to each other, is strikingly seen in these essays. If taste be perverted, both reason and sentiment are shocked, and thrown from their equilibrium. If reason be unsound or illogical, feeling may come, indeed, at its bidding, but it will break forth in irregularity or wildness. And if feeling be free from the dominion of reason, and not under the restraint of discipline, it will drown our faculties and perceptions in its boisterous surgings. Where reason takes the command, and is fitted for a proper exercise of its powers, by discipline, and subjection to its rod; where taste is well cultivated, and feeling is under the controul of reason and conscience, and animates their efforts by its cogent impulses, arises and retires at their bidding, we may expect such genuine

offspring of a well-adjusted mind, as we find in the productions of McLaurin.

From such a writer, it is difficult to cull out specimens of his style of thought and expression. Conceptions, magnificent in themselves lose, by detachment from the wholes to which they belong, much of their relative greatness. We, however, select the following passages, the latter of which strikes us as being peculiarly fine. Neither of them are in that aphoristical style, which the author sometimes adopts.

"God

"The scripture commendations of the love of God to sinners, lay more stress on God's giving his Son, than on his giving heaven. commends his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God, by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life: He who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also, freely give us all things?" It was observed above that there is an incomprehensible greatness, in the blessings of God's covenant, the fruits and purchase of redemption, which must fill the heart of an attentive penitent with wonder and admiration. Such scriptures as these now cited show that our admiration of the fruits of redemption should be, as it were, swallowed up in superior admira. tion of redemption itself: that this is so transcendent a mystery or wonder of mercy as eclipses all other wonders: that as God's mercies are above all his other works, this is above all his other mercies: that after God's giving his Son, comparatively speaking, it is not so great a wonder that he should give all things: that it would rather be a wonder if he should withhold any thing. "How will he not with him also freely give all things? Much more shall we be saved by his life." Abstracting from redemption, we cannot conceive any effect of infinite goodness, but what might possibly be surpassed, by some other effect of the same amiable attribute. It could not have entered into the heart of man to conceive any thing that could manifest divine mercy, as it were, to the uttermost. Such is the manifestation given of it in redemption. No wonder therefore that it is commended as a mystery of love, whose height and depth, length and breadth passes knowledge: and that in order to just impressions of it, we are directed to seek the spirit of God to strengthen us with might in the inner man, and to shine into our hearts."

"The subject we are treating contains all the attractives that can reasonably affect one that loves society; it is made up of the choice of all other societies, contains all the true heroes that ever were, and comprehends the flower of the universe. The meanest member is promoted at the same time to a near relation of the infinite Creator, and to all the best of his creatures: allied to the spirits made perfect in heaven, and to the excellent ones of the earth, he can claim kindred to the patriarchs; and prophets, and martyrs, and apostles, and all the other excellent persons, who adorned this world, and of whom it was not worthy though they be in heaven and he on earth, one spirit animates them both. Surely it is industrious stupidity, if one contemplate such a society, without being enamoured with it; and all other society or solitude is only so far valuable as it is subservient to it: a society headed by infinite perfection,

cemented by eternal love, adorned by undecaying grace, supplied out of all-sufficient bliss, entitled to the inheritance of all things, and guarded by Omnipotence: a society as ancient as the world, but more durable; and to whose interest the world, and all that is in it, are subservient: a society joined together by the strictest bands, where there is no interfering of interests, but one common interest, and where at last there will be no opposition of tempers or sentiments; when its members, now many of them scattered far and near, but still united to their head, shall one day have a glad universal meeting in an eternal temple never to part, and where they shall celebrate a jubilee of inconceivable extacy and transport, without mixture, without interruption, and, which crowns all, without end."

In the Essay on Happiness, which is the first of the series, and which is a most full and satisfactory investigation of the subject, all his excellencies as a writer may be seen. The comprehensiveness with which, in the outset, he unfolds the question he is to discuss, at once convinces us that his examination of it will be a radical one. The skill with which he analyses the various kinds of pleasure, and with which he leads us to that pleasure, which is "the highest,"" and the longest enjoyment of which is happiness," displays the hand of a master. The essay is well worthy of repeated perusal.

But upon those which follow, we would more especially dwell, as there the great excellence of M'Laurin is developed. His knowledge and appreciation of the plan of Redemption in all its parts, is a most predominant feature in his works. To the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom he gave his life, and the Gospel in its simplicity he studied with a humble and diligent use of all his great powers. His insight into the mystery of Redemption, was deep and clear. In the Essay on Christian Piety, the development of new and simple views upon the most common objects of faith, the almost unceasing flow of rich and pious thought upon these much handled themes, are surprising, and awaken in the mind of the reader, unwonted emotions, and open to him stores of sweet reflection upon topics, of which he imagined he had taken a full survey. We realize that in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, when some of these hidden treasures are brought to light by the mind of M.Laurin. We believe, from the glimpses we have in his delineations, there is a fulness in the Gospel we have not yet comprehended. We can imagine that it is full enough to occupy our thoughts for eternity, that it is wonderful enough to awaken the curiosity of angels. VOL. III.

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But the study by which we must enter into a knowledge of its greatness and glory, as we have hinted, is as peculiar as the system towards which it is directed. It is a study, the foundation of which must be laid in Christian experience, and which must advance to ripeness with the growth of the life of God in the soul of man. Not that any power is to be idle in its prosecution. It is the great perfection of the Gospel that it affords ample scope for the most vigorous and harmonious exertion of all our faculties. All our powers of thought, as well as every sentiment of the heart, and every emotion of the soul, may pour forth their energies in its contemplation. But they must all act under the dominion of the Spirit. The Spirit of revelation is its sacred, ever-present guardian, and opens its treasures only to those, who have been baptized in the Spirit's gracious influence, The proud disdain of unsanctified reason in rejecting the word of God, and the attempts of unaided reason, to develope the glory and harmony of the gospel scheme may convince us of the futility of studying the objects of faith, by the simple and dim light of Nature. The miserably cold and lifeless expositions of such a mind as that of Locke upon the mysteries of redemption, their want of spirituality and heavenly beauty, may teach us an instructive lesson upon the insufficiency of reason to compass the system of revelation. Without the certainty of inward experience, and the constant direction of God's Holy Spirit, it is ever turning aside into the paths of ceremony and formality, and presents us in the end with systems no ways comparable with the beauty or nobleness of ancient systems of philosophy. Life and light are sadly wanting. From such speculations, we turn with heartfelt pleasure to the fervid sentiment and divinely original views of McLaurin. With glowing admiration we follow him, as from the simple element of faith, he leads us to the efficacy of the great Christian sacrifice in the remission of sins, and admission to eternal life, in removing the burden and perplexity of guilt, and inpiring a most perfect confidence in the sufficiency of the gospel scheme, to be our guide to heaven, and a full earnest of our future glory; and with still increasing admiration we follow him, as from the fruits of redemption, he passes to its intrinsic excellence, in the most perfect harmony which it exhibits of God's most glorious attributes, and especially in its manifestation of that infinite mercy in which it had its origin, and

which stamps it with a superiority to all other works of God. His remarks upon the perplexity, which guilt causes in the soul, and the barrier which a sense of guilt interposes between a sinner and his righteous Judge and Creator, are singularly worthy of notice. His views of the intrinsic glories of Christ's redemption, and his intercession, which last he describes as a transcendent, real, durable declaration "of God's holiness and justice, fit to produce the strongest impressions, and to inspire God's immense kingdoin, with the highest thought of the righteousness of his government, and of the purity of his administration, as well as of the riches of his grace," are full of life, and evince the deep realization which he possessed of divine things. The accurate delineations which he gives of the nature of faith and repentance, show how rigidly he had analyzed and resolved into its elements, Christian experience. His thoughts on the Gospel are highly scriptural. Indeed his original views of the plan of redemption derive their excellence and energy, from the success with which he had meditated upon the oracles of God, and compared them with his own experience. Thus was he able to enter fully into their lively and comprehensive import. He had revolved the word of truth, till the God who indited it, and "who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shone in his heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Nor did the light communicated from such a source, through a mind so singularly clear and original, lose aught of its brightness by contact with the medium of its transmission. The medium was too transparent to obstruct the progress of a single ray, too high in its converging power to allow a particle to wander from the bright centre, in which all were gathered. That centre was the redemption of Christ. The mass of Scripture light, in the form of allusions and direct assertions, in the varieties of narrative, ascriptions of praise, exhortations to holiness, or decisions upon moral questions and cases of discipline, which in the essay on Christian Piety, he collects and brings to bear upon this single point, show how all revelation is suspended upon it, or rather, how all the parts of the plan of salvation are emanations from it. It diffuses its eminent peculiarity through the whole, and all the ethics of the Gospel, even its minutest casuistry, becomes pure and elevated by connex