Skiddaw! Eternal mountain, hast thou been Thou wast not dumb, nor to the rains when they Art thou indignant then, or hear I not? Who wander: haply now some wretch, whose barque Beholds thee shine, and kneeling pours his soul -And shall I, while these things may be, complain? A thing of grandeur; and throughout the year Thy high protecting presence (let not this Be forgot ever) turns aside the winds Which else might kill the flowers of this sweet vale. B. STANZAS, Written, after viewing one evening, from Yarmouth Jetty, the Sea in a luminous state. Behold, on the bosom of Ocean, how fire With flame lights the foam of each kindling wave; And let us this magic of nature admire, Which bids fiery water the strand thus to lave! Dark, dark is the surface, like Julia's eye: Yet where the oars dash, golden lustre appears; As in that deep azure we oft may descry All the flash of the lightning as seen through her tears. Though silence and gloom all encircle around, These rays vivid lustre to night can impart ; Can irradiate my hopes, while its beams cheer my heart. Yes! such were the fires that, the main erst illuming, And now, all the charm of that moment resuming, These flames are the traces which beauty hath left For when earth is of sun and its radiance bereft, Still, like beauty, they glow in the darkness of night. PULPIT ORATORY. No. II. THE REV. JOHN LEIFCHILD. THE individual whom we have chosen as the subject of this notice has scarcely yet attained that eminence among his fellows which his talents deserve. He is, perhaps, usually esteemed by them, merely as an able and faithful minister, and considered as more remarkable for his zeal than for extraordinary powers. To us he appears to possess some of the mightiest elements of oratory-not finely tempered or harmoniously blended-but still having potency over the heart, exceeded by that of no living preacher. Of all professors of Calvinism whom we ever have heard, he seems to us its most fitting champion. He alone has displayed strength to cut the knots of its mysterious difficulties-to exhibit its doctrines in all their austere grandeur-and to wield its terrible artillery. There are few things more surprising, or better worthy of analysis, than the listless indifference with which many of its preachers descant on its most thrilling themes. They tell their hearers, that on a few short moments their eternal fates are suspended that each hour is big with imperishable joy, or with undying despair in accents more drowsy and unimpassioned than they would speak of any subject of present interest to their own worldly possessions. Or they strive to show how gracefully they can touch on these awful subjects-how delicately they may hint damnation—or what pretty fantastic desires they can intersperse among the tremendous threatenings and promises which they declare. In listening to them we are almost tempted to think that, without absolute insincerity, their belief is worth but little-that the certainty of a future state of retribution cannot be vivid in their minds -and that they are rather repeating certain cant phrases, to which they attach no very definite meaning, than that they are fully impressed with the reality of "things not seen as yet" by mortal eyes. Mr. Leifchild is not one of these. He feels "the future in the instant." He has almost as intense a consciousness of the world to come as he has of the visible objects around him. He speaks, not only as believing, but as "seeing that which is invisible." The torments of the hell which he discloses are as palpable to his mind as the sufferings of a convict stretched on a rack by a human torturer. He speaks as if he and his hearers stood visibly on this "end and shoal of time," with the glories of heaven above him, and the eternal abyss beneath, and on the reception of his living words the doom of all who heard them were, on the moment, to be fixed for ever. He makes audible to the heart the silent flight of time, as that the wings of the hours seem to rustle as they pass by with fearful sound. There are, however, two circumstances which we regard as impairing the effect even of Mr. Leifchild's noblest effusions-and as these are matters rather of feeling and taste than of doctrine, we shall dwell a little upon them. The first is the too perpetual endeavour to awaken hope and terror, in his representations of the future world; and the second consists in the frequency of his appeals to sensibilities which are merely physical. He confines himself too exclusively to the truth, that godliness is great gain. He constantly sets before his hearers the blessedness of heaven, and the agonies of hell; and, with intense anxiety, implores them to fly from the wrath to come, and lay up treasures that will never perish. And for this he has, no doubt, the warrant of Scripture, and the sanction of experience, which proves that a large portion of men can be affected only thus. But this after all-tremendous as the excitements are-is only an appeal to very low and ignoble motives. The passion of fear, the basest in the human heart, is a miserable foundation of piety. He who serves God for reward, is but a poor menial, though the reward he seeks be paradise! In short, the appeal of the preacher is only made to self-love; and this is neither the purest, nor the strong est incitement to penitence or to virtue. This may, at first, sound like a paradox, but we think it may be established as a truth, even without referring to the noble subtleties of Mr. Hazlitt's eloquent and ingenious "Essay on the Principles of Human Action." It is not true, that men do good or evil according to the rectitude, or the fallacy of their calculations of happiness. How often do they not only prefer the present to that which is to come, but relish joy the more because it is fleeting; and snatch a desperate delight on the verge of ruin! How false is it that men are only excited to action by the hope of something which they may personally taste! The desire of posthumous fame cannot be accounted for on selfish principles, but is part of the very nature and essence of an immortal spirit. Its anticipation, indeed, forces men to realize more intensely the chillness of that grave which will cover them, while the shadows cast from their deeds shall endure. Were they incited only by self-love, they would desire to be forgotten when consciousness ceased, as jealous of their own memories. It is a mere assumption, and we think a false one, that man is prompted by his nature to seek his own good in preference to that of all others. On the contrary, we contend that there is in the human heart a constant desire to go out of itself a principle of diffusion-a tendency to impart life to other objects which may survive its final beatings. Hence the exquisite delight with which a father anticipates the prosperity of his children, when he shall be resting from his labours. Hence the consolation of the philanthropist, who casts the seeds of good into the earth for a brighter day which he must never look on. Hence those rare moments in which the mind seems to overleap the boundaries of its mortal tenement, lives in the light of holier days, and almost loses its individuality among the anticipated harmonies of the universe. Mr. Hall, whose fine talents we imperfectly characterized in our last Essay, has a striking passage in opposition to our views of this subject in one of his sermons. "It may," he contends, "be assumed as " a 307 maxim, that no person can be requir ed to act contrary to his greatest good, or his highest interest, comprehensively viewed in relation to the whole duration of his being. It is often our duty to forego our own interest partially, to sacrifice a smaller pleasure for the sake of a greater; to incur a present evil in pursuit of a distant good of more consequence. In a word, to arbitrate amongst interfering claims of inclination, is the moral arithmetic of human life. to risk the happiness of the whole But duration of our being in any case whatever, admitting it to be possible, would be foolish; because the sacrifice must, by the nature of it, be so great as to preclude the possibility of compensation."-It is difficult, notwithstanding our respect for the individual who has put forth this reasoning, to refrain from expressing the strong sentiments of indignation which it awakens. What! has goodno higher aim than reward? Is the ness no other basis than expediency, holiest of men only the best of calculators? Does heaven pour nothing higher than a subtle arithmetic into the hearts of those whom it selects can be no intrinsical beauty in virtue, for its divinest purposes? If so, there or, at least, none which is capable of affecting the motives of those creatures for whose preference it is offered. If so, there can be no whatever pity or contempt may well-founded abhorrence of crime, be felt for those who have so far neglected their true interest as to choose it. But the theory is contradicted by all the principles of imagination, and the noblest incidents in human history. Would not suffering virtue affect us, even though it were doomed to be afflicted for ever? Is it only in the presence or the assurance of happiness, that we can feel the dignity of our being? Is it necessary that a golden wreath should be seen quivering over the head of the heroic sufferer, that we may gaze with admiration on the picture of his sorrows? Were there no heaven to readmire her the less? Assuredly ward a Clarissa, should we love or not ;-nor is there more ground for the assertion that the pleasure derived from virtue itself is the motive which instigates the best to practise it. They have not thought at all, or but little of themselves, when they devoted all their energies to its service. While Howard was wearing away his life in abstinence, travel, and solitude chequered only by visits to the inmost recesses of loathsome dungeons-did he purpose to himself no higher aim than the gratification of his own sensibilities, or the approval of his own conscience? Or did he only think that he was treading an arduous road to imperishable rewards? Was the amelioration of the state of man his end, or only his means? In those hours of awful joy in which Clarkson formed his high purpose of devoting his existence to the abolition of the Slave Trade, did he think of Africa, or of himself? Could we conceive him left abandoned to his own resolve-feeling that his holy labours should, on their success, be blotted from the remembrance of man, of heaven, and of himself, would he have relaxed in his agony of toil? He would still see-all he then saw-an incalculable load of misery, and guilt, and feel a burning desire to remove it. And we earnestly believe, in spite of Mr. Hall's hypothesis, that there are minds capable of choosing even annihilation, could they, by resigning immortality itself, confer some great blessing on their species. It is, indeed, only so far as this spirit of such a resolve prevails, that man can be regarded as virtuous. We do not mean to dispute that a scheme of rewards and punishments, as such, is proposed in, the Bible; or that it may not fitly be referred to as supplying motives to human action. But we deny that it was the chief engine to which Christ and his Apostles appealed in their recorded discourses. They delighted to establish the true foundations of goodness-to expose the hollow pretensions of hypocrites and formal worshippers-to show spiritual pride in its own littleness-and to set before men's hearts a purer system of morals than had ever been combined by the philosopher. To arrogance they opposed the gentlest humility, to the law of retaliation forgiveness, to passion meekness, forbearance, and long suffering; and, for the most part, they left their system to commend itself to the soul by its own beauty, without other incitements to its reception. And this, we are persuaded, was and yet is the surest way profoundly to touch the noblest natures. There are souls which may more easily be moved by a touch of love, than by the most terrific threatenings, or the brightest promises. A perpetual display of terrors to some, and these not the least noble minds, may inspire nothing but aversion"the spirit of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield." Or they may break some hearts into pieces before they can soften them. It is, in short, ill to neglect an appeal to the honest source of human action-which is neither fear nor hope-but deep love never entirely dryed up in the heart, amidst all the varieties of character and of fortune. Mr. Leifchild not only, we think, attempts too exclusively to awaken apprehension and hope, in reference to a future world, but paints both the states to which he so often refers in somewhat injudicious colouring. He lavishes all his great powers of terrific painting in his representations of eternal torments. He is not contented with construing the figurative language of the sacred writers literally-nor with applying passages in the Old Testament to a future state, which the best commentators regard as having no such reference-but he sometimes literally puts forth pure inventions of horror, as though they were truths of holy writ. He will give a kind of topography of the infernal regions, and enter into all the minutiae of torture. His hell is as absolutely a creation of the human mind as that of Milton; and sometimes is almost as mighty a production of mere power, as the poet's is of genius. The imagination of an orator may give birth to pictures This sentiment is expressed in the unctuous spirit of one of the Calvinistic hymns: "Law and terrors only harden All the while they work alone, which are merely terrible, but never that of a poet. He cannot attempt to hold us with a grasp of iron. Beauty always mingles with his terrors. His sublimity never consists in mere vastness. Milton, whose theological opinions did not greatly differ from those of our preacher, could not depict hell itself without dignifying its pains, and substituting for images of mere torment, those of dusky magnificence and awful grandeur. The representations of the orator, on the other hand, though evidently given in all the earnestness of sincerity, are calculated to awaken nothing but mere disgust or wonder. They can, at least, affect none but the coarsest and most unreflecting minds. The heart involuntarily rejects them; and thus they tend to create doubts of the very system which they are intended to realize. Is there not in the inevitable consequences of guilt-in those evils which we instinctively feel must follow itenough for the preacher to dwell on? Are not the pollution of the soul, the decay of the faculties, the sad recurrence of guilty associations, the loss of the glory, honour, and wisdom of the "just made perfect," the long retardment of the spirit's progress in its eternal career, sufficient to move -if aught can move-those whom gratitude and love cannot soften? Will nothing touch an immortal being but the dread of mere bodily anguish? Are there no miseries which On the purest spirits prey, As on entrails, joints and limbs, the Apostles. Attempts to describe another state of existence must always produce dissatisfaction in beings whose bodily organs at least are wisely adapted to the present. Let the preacher dwell on the joys of innocence restored-of faculties ex panded-of severed friendships reunited-and on all the negative blessings which the absence of pain, and sorrow, and death contribute; but let him not expatiate on visible splendours which must always seem cold in proportion as they are removed from those things which custom has endeared to us. But Mr. Leifchild too often expressly shuts out from his bright prospects all that for which "we bear to live or dare to die." He represents the affections of the heart, as destined to be absorbed in the will of God, so that it will be reconciled even to the everlasting misery of those whom it has loved most fondly. If this be true, a future state is nothing to us. It is not the same human heart which we shall bear; and if so, it is of little consequence to us that some being, who may retrospectively be endowed with our consciousness, shall enjoy a splendid destiny. What are martyrs, and saints, and apostles to us, compared with the friends of our youth, the companions of our mortal struggles and sufferings! The golden link of sympathy between our present and future being is thus broken asunder, and we can only look up to our own beatified spirits as strangers. What are roses and crowns, and sceptres With answerable pains, but more intense?" immortal palms and amaranthine Men are not to be scared into piety. And it may almost be laid down as an axiom, that nothing can affect them to their real good, which does not touch on chords of generous sympathy. The Heaven which Mr. Leifchild sets before his hearers is also somewhat cheerless. Here again he works out a creation of his own fancy, from a few figurative expressions of Scripture. All is shadowy and heartless in his paradise. Could his gilded clouds, or jewelled streets, or bright mansions be realized, they would not be so inviting, as a quiet valley in this "dear spot, this human earth of ours." "It doth not yet appear which we shall be," said the first of VOL. III. flowers," compared to one pure gush of human love, one coming of the old affection "back upon the heart again?" If these holy instincts these feelings stronger than deathwhich were life of our life on earth, are to be annihilated in heaven, we may bow to the wisdem which shall revive beings, in some sense, io be called ourselves, but we can take no interest in what they shall do or enjoy. We have, in a great measure, anticipated our second objection to some of Mr. Leifchild's discoursesthat he appeals too much to sensibilities, which are merely physical. Of this kind, besides his pictures of the future world, are his representations of the sufferings of Christ, and 2 B |