of heaven, and a few years shall reveal it all. Be assured it is even so to happen to the despisers of holy writ. With this in arrear, what boots liberty, pleasure, enjoyment—all within the hourglass of time, or the round earth's continent, all the sensibilities of life, all the powers of man, all the attractions of woman! "Terror hath sitten enthroned on the brows of tyrants, and made the heart of a nation quake; but upon this peaceful yolume there sits a terror to make the mute world stand aghast. Yet not the terror of tyranny neither, but the terror of justice, which abides the scorners of the most High God, and the revilers of his most gracious Son. And is it not just, though terrible, that he who brooked not in heaven one moment's disaffection, but launched the rebel host to hell, and bound them evermore in chains of darkness, should also do his sovereign will upon the disaffected of this earth, whom he hath long endured and pleaded with in vain. We are fallen, 'tis truewe found the world fallen into ungodly customs, 'tis true-here are we full grown and mature in disaffection, most true. And what can we do to repair a ruined world, and regain a lost purity? Nothing -nothing can we do to such a task. But God hath provided for this pass of perplexity; he hath opened a door of reconciliation, and laid forth a store of help, and asks at our hand no impossibilities, only what our condition is equal to in concert with his freely offered grace. These topics of terror, it is very much the fashion of the time to turn the ear from, as if it were unmanly to fear pain. Call it manly or unmanly, it is Nature's strongest instinct-the strongest instinct of all animated nature and to avoid it is the chief impulse of all our actions. Punishment is that which law founds upon, and parental authority in the first instance, and every human institution from which it is painful to be dismembered. Not only is pain not to be inflicted without high cause, or endured without trouble, but not to be looked on without a pang: as ye may judge, when ye see the cold knife of the surgeon enter the patient's flesh, or the heavy wain grind onward to the neck of a fallen child. Despise pain, I wot not what it means. Bodily pain you may despise in a good cause, but let there be no motive, let it be God's simple visitation, spasms of the body for example, then how many give it licence, how many send for the physician to stay it? Truly, there is not a man in being whom bodily pain, however slight, if in cessant, will not turn to fury or to insensibility-embittering peace, eating out kindliness, contracting sympathy, and altogether deforming the inner man. Fits of acute suffering which are soon to be over, any disease with death in the distance may be borne; but take away hope, and let there be no visible escape, and he is more than mortal that can endure. drop of water incessantly falling upon the head, is found to be the most excruciating of all torture, which proveth experimentally the truth of what is said. A There are no "Hell, therefore, is not to be despised, like a sick bed, if any of you be so hardy as to despise a sick bed. comforting kindred, no physician's aid, no hope of recovery, no melancholy relief of death, no sustenance of grace. It is no work of earthly torture or execution, with a good cause to suffer in, and a beholding world or posterity to look on, a good conscience to approve, with scornful words to revenge cruel actions, and the constant play of resolution or study of revenge. It is no struggle of mind against its material envelopements and worldly ills, like stoicism, which was the sentiment of virtue nobly downbearing the sense of pain. I cannot render it to fancy, but I can render it to fear. Why may it not be the agony of all diseases the body is susceptible of, with the anguish of all deranged conceptions and disordered feelings, stinging recollections, present remorses, bursting indignations, with nothing but ourselves to burst on, dismal prospects, fearful certainties, fury, folly and despair. "I know it is not only the fashion of the world, but of Christians, to despise the preaching of future woe; but the methods of modern schools which are content with one idea for their gospel, and one motive for their activity, we willingly renounce for the broad methods of the Scripture, which bring out ever and anon the recesses of the future to upbear duty and downbear wickedness, and assail men by their hopes and fears as often as by their affections, by the authority of God as often as by the constraining love of Christ, by arguments of reason and of interest no less. Therefore sustained by the frequent example of our Saviour, the most tenderhearted of all beings, and who to man hath shown the most excessive love; we return, and give men to wit, that the despisers of God's law and of Christ's gospel, shall by no means escape the most rigorous fate. Pain, pain inexorable, tribulation and anguish shall be their everlasting doom." pp. 64-67. We cannot pass over the concluding sentences of the fourth oration. 66 as among the very worst or the very best specimens of our author's peculiar powers, but as calculated to shew the reader, with some tolerable fairness, what manner of man Mr. Irving is: and, without seeking to combat the prejudices which may exist in any mind against him, or to excuse faults of composition which may readily be found in his writings, we cannot but repeat, that the author who can write thus is of no ordinary character; and we feel assured that he will meet with no ordinary attention. Many will think it an unchristian thing to reason thus violently, and many will think it altogether unintelligible; and to ourselves it would feel unseemly, did we not reassure ourselves by looking around. -They are ruling and they are ruled, but God's oracles rule them not. They are studying every record of antiquity in their seats of learning, but the record of God, and of him whom he hath sent, is almost unheeded. They enjoy every communion of society, of pleasure, of enterprise, this world affords; but little communion with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. It would, doubtless, be an easy They carry on commerce with all lands, task, for those who take pleasure in the bustle and noise of their traffic fill the such things, to hunt out many paswhole earth; they go to and fro, and knowledge is increased, but bow few in the sages in these Orations which, when hasting crowd are hasting after the king-detached from the general reasondom of God! Meanwhile death sweepeth ing, especially if viewed through on with his chilling blast, freezing up the the medium of party, might appear life of generations, catching their spirits to be liable to just exception. Mr. unblessed with any preparation of peace, Irving would probably be surprised quenching hope, and binding destiny for to hear it stated, that he does not evermore. Their graves are dressed, and believe in the corruption of human their tombs are adorned :-but their spi- nature, or in the necessity for a rits, where are they? How oft hath this Divine influence to change the heart; city, where I now write these lamentations that he is an enemy to expositions over a thoughtless age, been filled and emptied of her people since first she of the Scripture; that he ascribes reared her imperial head! How many to education and to human reason, generations of her revellers have what gone to another kind of revelry; how many generations of her gay courtiers to a royal residence where courtier-arts are not; how many generations of her toilsome tradesmen to the place of silence, whither no gain can follow them! How time hath swept over her, age after age, with its consuming wave, swallowing every living thing, and bearing it away unto the shores of eternity! The sight and thought of all which is my assurance, that I have not in the heat of my feelings surpassed the merit of the case. The theme is fitter for an indignant prophet, than an uninspired sinful man. "But the increase is of the Lord. May He honour these thoughts to find a welcome in every breast which weighs them -may He carry these warnings to the conscience of every one whose eye peruseth them. And may his oracles come forth to guide the proceedings of men, that they may dwell together in love and unity, and come at length to the everlasting habitation of his holiness. Amen." pp. 96-98. We adduce these passages, not properly and exclusively belongs to the operation of the Holy Spirit; that, according to his creed, the hostility of the human mind to the ways of the world is as strong as its hostility to religion; that man is capable of attaining perfection; that no value can attach to a death-bed repentance-with various other unsound positions. He may probably be surprised by our even hinting at the possibility of these charges, knowing full well how little such opinions are connected with his creed, and how unfair and uncandid are such imputations. But candour and fairness are, in reference to religious discussions, by no means the leading virtues of the age: and we have more than once heard Mr. Irving censured for maintaining opinions not a whit more scriptural than these opinions which, on reading this publication, we perceive to be in direct opposition to all his senti ments and feelings; though, at the same time, there prevail in his writings a hardihood of statement, and a love of paradox, or saying strong things in strong terms, which tend to render the import of insulated passages abundantly capable of misconstruction. There are, however, two or three particulars in which, if we rightly understand our author's statements, we cannot concur with him. We advert more especially to his remarks on the subject of catechisms; and as it is a question of some importance, we shall very briefly deliver our sentiments upon it: possibly they may accord with his: they do not, however, accord with those which he seems to maintain. Having stated, in the first oration, that the Christian public, as well as worldly men, come to the perusal of the word of God with minds preoccupied and prepossessed, inclining to it a partial ear, a straitened understanding, and a disaffected will, he proceeds to observe, that "to this prejudgment the early use of catechisms mainly contributes, which, however serviceable in their place, have the disadvantage of presenting the truth in a form altogether different from what it occupies in the word itself." In a subsequent oration (p. 42) he laments that "catechisms have come to usurp it as the great instrument of a religious education, and the great storehouse of religious knowledge, in our families, in our schools, and even in the ministry of our churches;" and upon catechisms, thus generally used, he charges sundry evils of considerable magnitude. Now, while we admit it as a possible, and not improbable, result of an overweening regard for these formularies, that they may virtually stand in the place of other instruction; while we allow, on the same principle, that "the WORD, which is diversified for men of all gifts, may come to be prized chiefly as a treasure of intellectual truth, elements of religious dogmatism, often an armoury of reli gious warfare ;"-while we grant that, on this account, "the aspect with which religion looks out from the temples of the land" may be frequently "logical and metaphysical, playing about the head, but starving the well-springs of life, the heart, and drying up the fertile streams of a holy and charitable life;"-while we concede to our author, according to the forcible contrast which he has drawn between catechisms and the word of God, that there are in the former "no features of Christian imagery to catch the conception, nor patterns of holy men to awaken the imitation of excellence, and draw on the admiration of holiness; no joyful strains of hope and promised bliss to rouse nature's indolence; nor eager remonstrances against the world's ways; nor stern denouncements like the thunder of heaven upon the head of its transgressors; nor pathetic bursts of sympathy over nature's melancholy conditions and more melancholy prospects;"-yet if it be, as it seems to be, the purport of all this reasoning to discredit catechisms as an instrument for the instruction of the rising generation, the conclusion is one to which we cannot accede. Catechisms, Mr. Irving appears to admit, are serviceable in their place: he is proud to possess such as his church doth acknowledge: but he regards it as their proper place to discern heresy, and to preserve in the church a unity of faith. We by no means undervalue them in this point of view: but, surely, the Catechism of the Church of England, and Watts's Catechisms, and scores of other compositions which are flying about under a like name, were primarily intended for the instruction of the young, and were drawn up for this very purpose. It will not, moreover, be denied that it is a desirable thing to impress upon the understandings and memories of children, "so soon as they are able to learn," the leading articles of the Christian faith; and that, in order to accomplish this, they should be presented in the most concise and the simplest manner. In what other way can this be done so effectually as by catechisms? This mode of instruction does not supersede oral observations from the teacher: it does not prohibit the perusal of the sacred oracles: it excites no prejudice against them; on the contrary, it prepares the mind for the understanding of them: it propounds certain great principles, which are there developed and illustrated and enforced in a way suited to reach the improving intellect, and, having gained the understanding, to awaken the most powerful emotions of the heart. The catechism does not effect every thing that is wanted; it is not expected to do so: but it does something, and that something is very important; leaving to the Scriptures their far nobler province, and opening the way for their influence upon the condition of mankind. (To be continued.) An Essay on Faith. By THOMAS We have already had occasion to fully, unfolded his views on the internal evidences of the Christian Revelation; as consisting in the adaptation, the fitness, of that revelation to the actual wants and feelings of man. And in the present he shews, with equal brevity and beauty of illustration, if not with quite the same clearness, his views respecting the Faith necessary to receive such a revelation. His style indicates a man strongly impressed with the notions which he has adopted, and which it is his object to enforce upon his reader; without those discursive flights, and far and near researches, which might belong to the more full and professional investigation of his subject. This may perhaps be one advantage, amongst others, attending the labours and meditations of pious laymen upon points which, indeed, equally concern us all: and, though we should think ourselves out of place in assisting Mr. Erskine in the investigation of any legal question, we are not at all the less willing to acknowledge our obligation to this "advocate" for thus pleading the cause of faith in the Christian revelation, On the subject of Christian faith, many speculations have been entertained, and many volumes directly or collaterally written. Mr. Erskine would teach us that the question lies in a very narrow compass. It is not an assent to the propositions of Christianity; it is not a conviction of their truth; it is not an acting upon a conviction of their truth: but it is a right understanding of those propositions, and an actual sense of their real, genuine, and intrinsic nature. It is a full conception of the loveliness of what is lovely in them; of the value of what is valuable; the desirableness of what is desirable; and the terrors of what is terrific. There is a wide difference, as we understand Mr. Erskine, between a man merely believing in the existence of a lovely object, however fully he may be assured of that fact; and his believing in the loveliness of such an object from a direct knowledge of it and acquaintance with it.. A man born blind may believe in the existence of something which he hears called colour; but he can have no conception of the nature of colour; and therefore, according to Mr. Erskine, no belief, no faith in colour. A man may hear a message delivered in an unknown tongue, and have a perfect belief that the messenger is saying something that is true; but, for want of understanding the substance of the message, he can have no faith whatever in the subject matter intended to be conveyed. The last illustration is but a variation from Mr. Erskine's own words, which are as follow: "Let us suppose a Chinese, who can speak no language but his own, brought before an English jury as a witness. Let him bring with him certificates and testimonials of character which place his truth and integrity above all suspicion. There is not a doubt entertained of him. But he gives his evidence in his own language. I ask, does any one juryman believe him? Certainly not,-it is absolutely impossible -nobody understands a word that he utters. If, during the course of the evidence, the jury were asked whether or not they believed what he was telling them, would they not smile at the question? And yet they know that it is truth. They understand that the witness is an honest man, and they believe as far as they understand, but they can believe no farther. An interpreter is brought-he translates the evidence; now the jury understand it, and their belief accompanies their understanding. If one of the jury had understood Chinese, the difference between his belief and that of the rest, would have been accurately measured, by the difference of their understandings. They all heard the same sounds, and saw the same motions, but there was only one of them, to whom these symbols conveyed any meaning. Now the meaning was the thing of importance to be believed-and the proof of the man's integrity was of consequence merely on account of the authority which it gave to his meaning." pp. 22, 23. Gospels who was born blind, is also thus used in pp. 33, 34. "A man born blind has no impressions from light, and therefore he can have no faith with regard to such impressions. He has not the slightest conception of what is meant by a coloured body, and therefore he cannot believe in a coloured body. He may believe that bodies have a quality which he is incapable of perceiving, but what that quality is he does not know, and therefore cannot believe in it. Faith is the persuasion that the impression on the mind was produced by a real object. But if no impression is made upon the mind, what room is there for the exercise of belief? If he, like another blind man, has formed an idea that red is like the sound of a trumpet, the impression is a false one, that is, it is appended to a false impresand the belief appended to it is also false, sion. For faith must always derive its character from the impression to which it is appended. "If the impression is correct, the faith is correct; and if the impression is incorrect, the faith is incorrect. And when we are considering impressions as produced by objects supposed or known to be real, the impression made on our minds by some we may very properly explain faith to be such object." pp. 33, 34. The first misconception which Mr. Erskine, on these grounds, suggests in the ordinary rules for defining faith, is that of laboriously searching after the mode of believing rather than the object of faith. Give a person but a right object, and let him thoroughly appreciate its intrinsic nature and qualities, and he then possesses ipso facto faith in that object, and a faith necessarily producing its corresponding effects. * We think there is some little confusion in the above double definition of faith, which we conceive is better defined, according to Mr. Erskine's representations, by the last than by the first sentence in Italics. At the same time, we may add that his definition would have more accorded with the commonly received notion of faith, if it had been confined to the first. Faith cannot be both an impression as to quality, and a persuasion as to truth. The reader may refer to a passage, which we shall quote further on in our remarks, from The case of the man in the |