their belief of his doctrines: How can ye believe,' says he, who receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour which cometh from God only?" John v. 44. How often, in our intercourse with the world, do we hear it said, 'that such a man cannot estimate the character of such another, that he cannot comprehend his feelings?" And it is so. Perfect faith in a history of high moral excellence, supposes moral faculties in a high state of power and exercise; for no faculties except in that state are capable of receiving such an impression." It may, This line of argument appears to me remarkably direct and conclusive. It is also supported by various collateral considerations, on which the necessary limits of this essay forbid me to enter. however, be remarked, that it is only on the principle of this connexion between the state of the moral feelings and the power of intellectual apprehension and belief, that the reception of any doctrine can be matter of duty or of command. The same connexion is either affirmed or implied throughout the scriptures. "If any man will do his will," says our Lord, "he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." And again, "He that believeth not is condemned already;" and immediately adds, "And this is the condemnation-that light is come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil;" thus most explicitly referring belief and unbelief to the state of the heart and the affections. There appears, then, [to be an essential and most sufficient difference between what is sometimes called, by way of distinction, a speculative or historical faith, and that with which justification and eternal life are associated, without sophisticating the simple statements of scripture, or supposing them invariably to involve a latent implication; a mode of theorizing which, apart from its tendency to rob the Christian system of the matchless charm of its simplicity, is at utter variance with the principles of sound and candid interpretation. This essential difference consists, not, as is sometimes stated, in the kind of belief entertained, (for of that there can be but one kind,) but in the nature of the thing believed. The man who sincerely professes to believe the doctrines of the gospel, but whose character is at variance with their holy tendency, is not, probably, the victim of an intellectual obliquity; his error is not attributable to an inadequate appreciation of evidence; the defect in such a mind is of a more radical and preliminary kind; it consists in a state of the affections dissonant from the spirit of the propositions commended to his belief,-upon which they fall pointless and powerless, and to which they fail to convey a corresponding conception. It is not, therefore, the gospel which such an individual believes, it is something either short of it, or at variance with it. But it is the gospel, and the gospel alone, the belief of which can operate a change of heart; it is it alone which is essentially and eternally distinct from all other subjects of belief, as "the power of God unto salvation to every one who believeth;" and it is hence, alone, that God is said to have "magnified his word above all his name." But while we attribute these stupendous effects to the gospel, it surely enhances our notion of its divine excellence, and irresistible potency, to consider that the simple belief of it is sufficient to produce them. There is in this view that which, by "placing parsimony in the means, and opulence in the end," harmonizes with all that we know of the Divine administration. It is when we invest with this simple and independent efficiency, the remedy prescribed for our distempered nature, that we ascribe to it the omnipotence of that Being who alone could design and organize its structure, repair its ruins, and stamp upon its renovated graces the impress of his own eternity. RECOLLECTIONS OF A MISSIONARY.NO. XII. ON THE WANDERING AND HOMELESS CONDITION OF MISSIONARIES. THE love of home seems very much like an instinct in the human mind; and its delights and fascinations have been described and sung a thousand times.-This is perfectly natural. Home is the seat of all those social and domestic enjoyments for which the mind of man is best adapted, and from which it is found to derive the most constant satisfaction. All is there assembled, which nature and habit alike endear to him, -the scenes of his infancy, the wife of his bosom, the children of his love. These are the "dear delights" which never become insipid and unsatisfactory. From such sources arise those pleasures which, occasioning but little of passionate and turbulent excitement, leave behind them no residuum of discontent and ennui. Their perpetual recurrence does not weary, for they are the native element of the soul. Each season has its appropriate and innocent pleasure. The first meeting of the morning is the scene of welcome and of gladness; and when the shades of evening have fallen, the gaiety of the social circle chases its gloom, "Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, How different, however, is the lot of foreign missionaries. "Here we have no continuing city," is the feeling of all the followers of Jesus; but there is a still more dreary, naked, and destitute state, "a lower deep," into which the soldiers of the cross must fall. Is he in Africa? he must domiciliate among savages. Is he in the West Indies? he can have no fellowship with planters. In Canada, Labradore, Greenland? his privations will be many. Siberia and Tartary will not mend the matter, and burning India can be no friend to social pleasure and domestic comfort. Mr. Ward thought missionaries ought always to be moving, and perhaps this is more consistent with the lives and itinerant labours of the ancient apostles and evangelists, who must have bidden (for Christ's sake) a final farewell to all domestic comforts, and must have given home, sweet home, a resolute bill of divorcement. They were called to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, and in the prosecution of their work to realize the prophet's declaration to his scribe, "Seekest thou great things for thyself ? seek them not, for he that will not leave father, mother, wife and children, home and country, (if need be,) for Christ's sake, is not worthy of him." The ancient patriarchs dwelt in tents, and so did the Rachabites; but sometimes the Christian missionary has neither tent nor cover, like his Divine Master he has no certain dwelling-place; literally, nowhere to lay his head. Fine dwellings are magnets of great attraction, and may extort the cry of Milton's Adam about to leave the delightful garden of Eden, Ah! paradise, must I then leave thee? These happy mansions, fit abodes for gods, But how terrible soever the removal, he must forego them, to dwell in the wilderness. He is sent to the heathen, and if he fare better than the first missionaries, he may lose the spirit of his office in local attachments, instead of cultivating, and enduring as seeing Him who is invisible;" cutting up by the roots all desire to seek his happiness in persons, things, houses, and places. Like his Lord, while he lives he will always have some man's house to enter; and when he dies, some man's grave to sleep in. Were he forsaken of all men, and dying in a cottage, other brave spirits have found their way to glory through the same rough defile. Even in the prosecution of worldly objects, how many are deprived of domestic comforts? The sailor on the bounding billows of the ocean has no home. Soldiers in a foreign camp. Travellers in a distant country.— But they brave it; and shall not the Christian missionary ? What, if I dwell in a black man's hut, my peace shall rest upon it. If I sleep under the dews of heaven, the hand of God can protect me. When a man becomes a missionary, he leaves all for Christ's sake. If in South Africa, he sleeps in a waggon: Christ sometimes kept his vigils upon a mountain. To have left all for Him, fills the mind with unutterable peace. In wandering from place to place, he is sowing the good seed at every remove. If he have difficulties, and what path in life is without its difficulties? Wherever the Christian missionary goes, Providence will open his way: he carries a blessing with him. Does a stranger receive him as a righteous man or a prophet, he shall receive a prophet's reward; his house shall prosper, as Obed-Edom's did for the ark's sake. Does a widow receive him? as the Shunamite did Elijah, or Lydia St. Paul, the blessing of God will be upon him. I have lived abroad fourteen years, yet I was happy: I lodged in the house of a black man for some time, yet I ate the bread of peace. Let the missionary possess a humble, thankful, praying spirit,-he will never be unblest. His path may be upon the mountain-top, his home upon the deep, yet having nothing he will possess all things. I have been on the western shore of the Atlantic, and many a fisherman has made me welcome into his cabin; and the humble settler in the woods, has hailed my arrival at his log hut. The negro has greeted me to his hovel; and the widow has opened her door to receive me, and I have been as welcome as a prince. In the cottages of the poor I have seen smiling content surround mean and scanty fare. In a missionary's vocabulary-home means the grave : or a little further on-glory. Let them sing sweet home, who seek all their felicity upon earth; his must arise from diffusing in every place the savour of the knowledge of Christ. In point, however, even of earthly comfort,-if variety form the charm of life, none will have more of this than the Christian missionary. To-night in a mean hovel, to-morrow in the mansions of a gentleman, or planter, or merchant. Now in a waggon, traversing the waste; then in a wigwam, buried in the depth of a forest. At one time swinging in a hammock upon the mountain-waves; then in an Indian palanquin, see-sawing across the plains of Hindostan. Some make it so snug and warm, they are always cold elsewhere. It is a magic circle, but the line of duty is the mind's true meridian, and makes the sweetest home. Some have such attractions at home, and in the study, they cannot visit a sick man. It shortens their duties,-they must be at home. A mission is intolerable, -they could never bear to be so long from home. They are so smitten with dead men's sculls in their study, that they have no time to put knowledge into living men's brains, out of it. They have a garden at home, a wife, a parlour, children,-it becomes their Eden; visits of mercy,-mission work,-going about doing good, must all yield the palm to home. Home is their Tusculum,-their Capua,-their enchanted bower, their delectable mountains. The niche fits, and they fit themselves to the niche. To them the world is a wilderness, nothing pleases from home; they build three tabernacles, one is the study, the next the parlour, and the other the sleepingroom; no chair so easy as theirs, no fire-side so snug, no slippers fit so well. Their study is a perfect centre of thought, and their collection of books the most select they have ever seen: hence they say, "it is good to be here." But the wide world is the true missionary's parish, and the sphere of usefulness his home. It is sometimes in South Africa, where he resides among Hottentots, and raises brutes to the rank of men, and the piety of saints. Sometimes in the Charibbees, where he teaches the negro a jubilee amid his chains; or, on the Pacific Isles, where he teaches Tahitian savages to sing the name of Jesus. Now you see him wandering the forests of Canada, to make them blossom as the rose. Now toiling up the Ganges, to lift the healing cross on the burning sands of Cawnpore. Shall the merchant, the mariner, the soldier, the man of science, all leave their homes, and shall not the missionary, with a nobler aim, and for a far higher object? If home were a bed of roses, Wisdom can plant thorns in it. Let the minister of Christ seek his centre in God, his locality in usefulness, and his happiness in doing good; let him less for care nicknacks, less for comforts, less for popu larity, and he may chant amid the wilds of Africa, "He who has pleasures of his own, POETRY LINES WRITTEN AFTER AN EXCURSION ON THE THAMES. IN sorrow, pain, or dark suspense, the day so fleet before, Protracts the grief by long delay, and seems to move no more; If joy prevail, a vain regret succeeds the blissful hours, That time should fly so swiftly, when we strew his path with flow'rs. A cheerful band, we sought delight where nature's face is fair, And faces lovelier far than her's wore smiles of beauty there; But pleasure's end,' alas! must come, and pleasure's end is pain, We met to part, and, parted once, may never meet again. As now, the cedar may diffuse her branch in stately shade, The aspen shake her myriad leaves, the beech adorn the glade; The sedge may rustle by the bank, obedient to the tide, And down the winding Thames again the bark may swiftly glide; The summit of the distant hills may catch the brightning sun, The swarded but deceitful slope invite the feet to run, And Windsor, like a shadowy fort in lands of fairy rear'd, Appear to other gazing eyes as it to ours appear'd. But who can say that every foot which trod the margin green, And every eye which rov'd at ease along the shady scene, And every friendly voice which spoke the quick vivacious word, Together on that spot again shall e'er be seen and heard? Another river bears us all, and tow'rds another sea, If faith, which purifies the heart, and fills with love sincere, To God, and men, and chiefiy those who bear His image here, Be found in all, when once the word for our departure's giv'n, Then those who met to part on earth shall "go not out" from heav'n. There, fairer than the fairest here, the healing tree shall grow, The stream, shall be the stream of life, with neither ebb nor flow; The sun, the Sun of righteousness, which cannot cease to shine, The day, a Sabbath-day serene, which never knows decline. The monarch whom our eyes behold, the King of kings shall be, Who died on earth, to reign in heav'n, O, ransom'd man, with thee; And we ourselves shall wear the robes the great Redeemer wove, With palms of conquest in our hands, exclaiming, "God is love." J. O. REVIEW.-Prose Works of John Milton. Edited by R. Fletcher. Westley and Davis. London. 1834. (Continued from p. 35.) MILTON'S prose works, it appears, in addition to the attractions which they contain for the students of elegance in composition, will be of equal utility to the patriotic Christian. With respect to the title of patriot, we may observe, that so numerous have been the pretenders to it, and so different the grounds upon which their pretensions have been founded, that it is no easy matter to determine to whom it justly belongs. That it has been assumed, however, by every factious spirit, who has endeavoured to extricate himself, by unprincipled acts of violence, from the wholesome restraints of authority, the whole tenor of history is loud and constant in proclaiming. To omit all examples of ancient date, the Jacquerie of France, and the followers of Jack Cade in England, were, no doubt, in their own estimation, patriots upon the grand scale. The tribune Rienzi, and the fisherman Massaniello, were also, according to themselves and the lazzaroni of Rome and Naples, great and consistent patriots; and in our own time, we have seen the patriotic terrorists of Paris and Lyons, writing their incontrovertible claim to the honourable designation in characters too legible to be mistaken. Differing very little in the way of proving their title, from those who daringly claimed for themselves the additionally distinguishing appellation of saints in the days of Cromwell, they, too, as well as the latter worthies, have had their hundreds of senseless advocates to echo their clamorous assertions, contradicted no less by reason than by that most uncom. promising of all evidences, the voix du fait. There are unfortunately but few in this fashion-guided world, who are able or will ing to distinguish the true coin from the counterfeit. We run, however, we presume but little chance of contradiction, when we affirm that something more than mere clamour and prejudice is required, to give real value to a word, which the fickle breath of popular opinion has often as lightly conferred as taken away; and that something more than a profession of disinterested devotion to the general good, should be demanded on the part of him who is exalted by so proud a distinction, before he is suffered to remain secure in its possession. True patriotism requires its possessor to pursue the good he has at heart, through evil as well as good report; to be as remarkable for patient abstinence from selfgratification, as for vigorous exertion in the cause he has embraced; to be as willing to encounter the difficulties and privations to which a failure is liable, as to secure the honours and distinctions promised by success; in short, to deem no sacrifice too great, no suffering too painful, no privation too severe, in pursuance of the course which an unbiassed judgment has once determined to lead to the common welfare. When on the noble name of patriot the still more noble title of Christian is engrafted, we need not say that the standard of moral excellence rises proportionably higher; but let none think that the united qualities implied by both names, are to be found in the inhabitants of a moral Utopia alone. Happily we need proceed to no great distance in our own history, to find many such. The numerous voluntary exiles who quitted their native country during the reign of James and Charles the First, preferring liberty and the free exercise of religion amidst the inhospitable wilds of America, to the restrictions attending an avowal of their principles at home; the great body of ministers who at once retired to certain poverty and probable want, after the passing of the illjudged act of uniformity; many of the victims of the courts of high commission and star-chamber; Bunyan pining in long imprisonment; the eloquent and judicious De Lorn perishing for conscience' sake in his lonely and forsaken cell: these are examples on which a hallowed recollection will ever rest; for the disinterested character of their sentiments is proved by a testimony which none can doubt. But with such we must unwillingly confess, that Milton, and his companions in the bloody and desperate game which it was their own misfortune, as well as that of the nation, too successfully to play,-are not to be reckoned. Milton had every thing to gain, and nothing to lose, by his political principles; and that he turned them to good account in the advancement of his temporal interests, needs not be stated here. There is scarcely one of his works which might not have been prompted either by self-interest, or by that proud and haughty impatience of control, which arose against every institution, human or divine, that stood in opposition to his rebellious spirit. His deprecatory sonnet, "Captain, or colonel, or knight at arms," does not shew much of the spirit of a republican martyr; and his virulent abuse of fallen power, of which, however, while yet unshaken, he could speak respectfully enough, is only equalled by his servile eulogiums on the vulgar usurper, who in one half-hour swept away the whole fabric, which the supporters of the "good old cause" had been labouring for years to establish. No one could be more severe than Milton upon an antagonist, who had been hired to write in defence of principles opposed to his own; yet we no where find that he refused ten times the sum which rewarded Salmasius, when presented to him by parliament, for that model of low abuse, the Defensio Populi. "The noble task, With which all Europe rang from side to side." And some of the noble expressions, in which we shall be greatly surprised if our readers fall below ourselves in admiring. Moreover, for mere consistency's sake, Milton, in his extreme love of freedom, and ardour to dispense the blessing, might, one would think, have imparted some litttle portion of it to those of his immediate household; yet, that he was a severe preceptor, an unkind husband, and a stern parent, is a truth, unluckily for his panegyrists, as incontrovertible as it is notorious to the world; nor is this the only instance in which those most clamorous against restraint abroad, have proved the most arbitrarily severe to their dependants and families at home: "License they mean, when they call liberty," is happily descriptive of patriots of this cast; but we doubt much, if the author of the line ever thought of being cited in its illustration. The writings of Milton upon subjects purely political, are chiefly devoted to the vindication and praise of that well known action, than which one more palpably unjust and unconstitutional never disgraced the annals of England. Upon which of the two great parties, between whom the kingdom was divided throughout the civil war, the guilt of bloodshed must rest, has been, and will yet be, a subject of dispute, not to say of uncertainty; but that the outrage on the person of the captive sovereign, which followed it, was an illegal as well as an unjustifiable action, few will be hardy enough to dispute. Charles the First, it will be remembered, was tried by no established law, by no properly authorised court, upon no available evidence. We are not, in his case, called upon to determine the question, whether a British king is personally amenable to his parliament by an act of mal-administration, since by that parliament, in whose name the war was carried on, he was never tried. A military force, forming but an insignificant part of the nation, having obtained possession of the person of their sovereign by one act of violence, and removed the majority of the house of commons from interference with their proceedings by another, went on, in mockery of every precedent, and in defiance of the protestations of the most sensible members of the community, to pass and carry into execution a sentence, which, as it was then received with almost universal abhorrence, has since been contemplated with different feelings, by those only who would be willing to use it as an excuse for similar acts of injustice. Three things are wanting to make the trial of Charles the First bear the remotest resemblance to a judicial process: first, the existence of some written statute, to the pains and penalties of which the monarch might be subjected; secondly, the proof of his having deserved punishment, by its violation; and thirdly, the constitutional acknowledgment of a court authorized to interfere on the occasion. We will not insult the good sense and information of any of our readers, by attempting to prove, that in all these points the proceedings by which Charles was brought to the scaffold, were totally and notoriously deficient; and the sense of the nation, as soon as it could make itself heard, after the astonishment into which by so desperate a crime it had been thrown, was sufficiently indicative of a right feeling upon the subject. The kingly bearing of the monarch himself, throughout the whole of the trying scene, greatly tended to strengthen the impression in his favour; and the pathetic incidents which attended his last hours, notwithstanding the sneers of Mr. Godwin, and others of the same school, have been, and always will be, the means of exciting an interest in his fate, which it would be in vain for any coolly reasoning philosopher, who prates to us about abstract rights and political justice, to attempt effacing. Of such feelings, we are not, and we need not, be ashamed. They are among the few which still connect somewhat of its once faultless character with our debased and fallen nature. |