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is more than enough perhaps, for a heavy poem but it relates to my country, and that circumstance must be my apology for saying thus much.

To the Editor of the Christian Spectator.

SINCE your correspondents have
taken in hand latterly to speak of
Sabbath-breaking, suffer me a word
or two on that subject.--One of the
"by-laws and regulations of the
Boston Athenæum" is the follow-
ing." The Reading Room is
opened on Sunday afternoon after
divine service, and closed at the
same hour as on other evenings."-
I have no knowledge of the fact;
but I suppose it not improbable
that the reading room is more re-
sorted to on that day than on any
other. Indeed there must be a
strong inclination to such a prac-
tice, or the above regulation, so
uncongenial to the religious habits
of New-England, would not have
been admitted. Probably, how
ever the proprietors of the Athe-
næum do not allow that the prac-
tice is a violation of the Sabbath.--
"Where is the impropriety of
spending an hour or two, after the
tedium of divine service, in a qui-
et reading room?"-Jehovah's own
commentary on his law is in the
following words :-"If thou shalt
call the Sabbath a delight, the ho-
ly of the Lord, honourable; and
shalt honour him, not doing thine
own ways, nor finding thine own
pleasure, nor speaking thine own
words:"Let us then look into
the reading room, and see how we
are employed there. You shall
find one poring over the late pamph-
lets respecting the "Greek frig-
ates ;" another is reading the low
wit of Blackwood; another the
news of the day; and, in short,
each selects, as humour prompts him,

from the mass of periodicals, of all sorts, with which the liberality of the proprietors loads their ample tables. Among the rest, peradventure, some one takes up your own Spectator, and to him let me say, in reference to the employment above described;-Is this making the holy of the Lord, honourable, not doing our own ways, nor finding our own pleasure?

In no city in the Union is a more enlightened spirit of freedom cherished than in Boston. Of this its more than two hundred schools and more than ten thousand pupils are the best evidence. And with no gentlemen in the world would it be more superfluous to argue that our nation's safety depends on the preservation of its morals than with the two hundred and five most respectable proprietors of the Boston Athenæum. None are more aware than they, that the corruption of the people is the rottennes of a free state. And are they not equally aware that the Sabbath is the great means of preserving the public morals? Do they not know that, under a government like ours, the restraints of law are gossamer without it? In a word, the Sabbath lost, all is lost. It is the Sabbath with all its salutary influences that must sustain the tone of moral feeling in this great and free community; and those who treat it with neglect, and by their example "teach men so," are pulling down the strongest bulwark which God has given us for the safety of our civil institutions. It is devoutly to be hoped therefore, that the patriotism-if a more religious motive cannot influence them, will induce the Boston gentlemen to do away the above regulation, and that the doors of that conspicuous institution will be suffered to remain closed till the sacred hours are past.

Ξένης.

FOR THE CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR.

AMONG the more remarkable phenomena, that have been observed to happen in the celestial system, that of a star seen by Tycho Brahe and another philosopher in 1572 deserves especial notice. Its magnitude and brightness, during most of the time of its appearance, exceeded those of the largest stars: it even equalled Venus "when nearest the earth, and was seen in fair day-light. It continued sixteen months at length it began to dwindle; and at last, in March 1573, totally disappeared, without any change of place in all that time."-See Ree's Cyc. Art. Stars.

"Tis thought, while earth is subject to decay,
The distant suns in their unchanging spheres
Wheel round, unconscious of the waste of time,
Most like their author. Yet the wise have told,
How miracles, arising in the sky,
From astronomic sight and skill obtain
No just solution. To the amazed eye
Of Tycho, from amid the smallest lights,
Where, since the framing of the universe,
It dwelt in distant majesty unknown,—
A star shone forth, beyond the ruddy glow
Of old Arcturus, or the dreaded blaze
Of Sirius, brightest of the distant suns.
With undiminished lustre, for a time
Measured on earth by months and fleeting days,
Fit match of Jupiter, it shot its beams
Across the boundless passage to our world.
From his star-tower amid the waves, the Dane
Watched its effulgence; and with earnest eye,
Gazed, as it languished, faded, and retired
Amid the undistinguished throng, whose beams
Fill their own empyrean in the vast
Expanse, where sight and sound of earth are lost.
O for some message from the highest heaven
To explain the wonder: Publish, who can tell,
What news this beacon, speaking from afar,
Spread through the realm of God; what warlike hosts,
From many a shining, many a loyal world,
It called to battle; or what fiery doom
O'ertook some orb invisible before,
But blazing at its dread catastrophe.

Perhaps some wandering comet missed its way;
Or sun,--the heavenly ordinance transgress'd,-
Fell from its sphere: perhaps some guilty world;
Its day of doom arrived, its countless sons
Sentenced; and at the Almighty's voice, received
The fires to spoil and purify its face,

To melt away the dross of grosser things,
And mould it for a dwelling-place of saints,
Perhaps but here I hold; for 'tis in vain.
To pluck unripe conjecture, when ere long
Upon the records of the heavenly years
That mark the passage of eternity,
1826.-No. 12.

81

I may find written by the hand of God

The story of his reign:what counsels past

Have imaged him in all material things;

And at his order what new scenes shall rise,
Scenes of surpassing glory, such as earth

And heaven in their young being ne'er have known.

So all things tend towards God; until at last

His glory, as a visible sun, shall shine
Before his saints, and he be all in all.

HEX.

Reviews.

Letters to a Friend, on the Evidences, Doctrines, and Duties of the Christian Religion. By OLIN THUS GREGORY, LL. D., Professor of Mathematics in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, &c. &c. First American, from the fourth London edition. N. York: G. & C. Carvill. 1826. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 300 and 302.

WE were unwilling that this American edition of a valuable foreign work should leave the press, and mingle with the great community of authors, without bestowing on it some notice. There is such a multitude of books published at the present day, and it is so much the fashion to recommend them by their newness, that even valuable works soon lose, in a great measure, the distinction which their merits claim. They make their appearance like one in a great train of strangers: the last that enter attract the most attention, while others have passed on and become lost in the common

mass.

In respect to the work before us, if there is any circumstance, apart from the merits of its execution, which should commend it to special favour, it is the circumstance of its being written by a layman. A man of learning who steps aside from his own profession, like Bacon, and Locke, and Newton, to write for the Christian religion,

deserves the thanks of its friends; for besides that, from his acquaintance with other subjects of knowledge, and his peculiar habits of investigation, he may bring to the Christian doctrines new methods of illustration and defence, he deprives the infidel of a favorite weapon of attack: it cannot be objected to his performance, as has been done to the similar works of clergymen, that it is a clerical view of the subject-written in the way of the author's profession, and therefore from motives of interest or prejudice.

A book which treats of the "evidences, doctrines, and duties, of the Christian religion," must of necessity embrace a great variety of topics, and a multitude of particular facts and arguments; and it has been remarked that if there is any work more difficult to be produced than a book of this description, it is a critique on such a book. For as the original performance is a selection from a mass of materials, rather than a work of invention, to review it in all its parts is to compile a separate work; and as a main difficulty in the execution of the former consisted in bringing it within convenient limits, the labour is proportionably enhanced when an attempt is made to embrace the same field of inquiry within the still narrower compass of a review. Our remarks on Dr. Gregory's book, therefore, will be

scattered and immethodical; some of its topics may engage our attention more particularly, but others will elicit only a few passing reflections, while others must be omitted altogether. We will here remark however, that the work is interesting in every part. The reader will everywhere perceive in it a manly, disciplined,and well instructed mind, and what is of greater consequence in a religious treatise, a benevolent and candid temper.

Our author commences with the "folly and absurdity of Deism," as contrasted with Christianity; and treating it with a mixture of argument and irony, he sets it in a light as humbling to the reason of its advocate, as it must be cheerless to his heart. He proceeds then, in his second letter, to consider the necessity of a divine revelation. That such a revelation would be made was probable from the character of God; that it was necessary was evident from the condition of mankind. It is a part of the teaching even of natural religion, that the invisible Creator exercises a providential care over his creatures. "He left himself not without witness," said an apostle to the worshippers of Jupiter, "in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." This even the philosophers and wise ones who set at naught the scriptures, or treat them with indifference, do admit. They have seen that the Creator's paths drop fatness in the present world; and it is from this experience of his goodness here, that they affect to look for the same kind treatment hereafter. Was it then to be expected, deists themselves being judges, that the beneficent Being who had so abundantly regarded the physical necessities of his children, would make no provision for their moral wants? Was it probable that he would see them sinking, through successive ages,

from one depth of vice to another, and groping from one shade of darkness to another; and put forth no hand to lift them from the miry clay, nor shed one beam of light upon them to guide them to himself? The light of nature was indeed sufficient, the apostle tells us, to render the idolatry of the heathens inexcusable; for the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen: and they to whom the revealed will of God was not imputed, were not guiltless in their errors; for having not the law, they were a law unto themselves. But having once lost the knowledge of the true God, they continually wandered farther from the light. Their wisest spec

ulations about religion and a future state tended only to greater darkness and perplexity; while the religious rites they practised only made them the more impure and grovelling. The great masters of antiquity left behind them models in every department of human genius, but left no lights to the theologian. They pushed their progress, with admirable success, in every direction save in that one which might lead them to a knowledge of Jehovah, and of their relations to him and to their fellow-men. But out of all their wisdom what one doctrine in theology, or what one rule in morals, may be gathered, concerning which it can be said, this so far rendered a divine revelation needless. But though the fact were otherwise, a revelation had still been indispensible. For admitting that some great inquirer among the heathen had discovered, and taught to others, all that the light of nature teaches; in other words, had embodied in a system of natural religion, all the truths which may be known without a revelation-his system would still have been without authority, and consequently without any reforming power. It would have been regarded at the best as only a bean

tiful theory, which the hearers might adopt or not, as they saw fit; and how generally it would have been neglected may be understood by the treatment which Christianity receives. Christianity enforces its communications by the retributions of eternity, and yet how great a proportion of men, will rather set at naught its sanctions than yield obedience to its precepts. After the most that can be said, therefore, of the efforts of human reason to discover religious truth, this great deficiency would still remain to be supplied by a revelation. This deficiency was accordingly pointed out and insisted on by the early Christians, in their reasonings with the disciples of the philosophers. "Your systems of virtue," says Tertullian, "are but the conjectures of human philosophy, and the power which commands obedience, merely human: so that neither the rule nor the power is indisputable; and hence the one is too imperfect to instruct us fully, the other too weak to command us effectually but both these are abundantly provided for by a revelation from God. Where is the philosopher who can so clearly demonstrate the true good, as to fix the notion beyond dispute? and what human power is able to reach the conscience, and bring down that notion into practice? Human wisdom is as liable to error, as human power is to contempt."*

"The opinions of the heathens, their legislators, poets, and philos. ophers, relative to God, to moral duty, and a future state," are the third topic of our author; and we do not remember having met with an epitome at once so brief and so impressive as is here given. What the religion of the populace, in all heathen countries is, as to its moral tendencies, is strikingly exhibited in the words of an apostle ;t it is

* Apology for the Christians, as referred to by our author.

Romans i. 21-32:

also known to every reader of missionary journals, and we need not quote our author on this subject. His view of the precepts of the Greek and Roman lawgivers we must likewise omit. But we cannot forbear transcribing the following passages, which show the opinions of their poets and philosophers in regard to a future state,-though they are familiar to every classic reader.

The effusions of the heathen poets have also a deplorably mischievous tendency, on account of the manner in which they almost uniformly speak of the state after death. On some few occasions, it is true, they introduce the idea of rewards and punishments to make a part of the poetical machinery: yet, frequently they express themselves as though they thought death brought an utter extinction of being. Plutarch, in his consolation to Appollonius, quotes this passage of an touches the dead, ancient poet, that no grief or evil

Αλγος γαρ οντως εδέν απτεται νεκρά.

He there also quotes another passage from a poet, declaring that the dead man is in the same condition that he was before he was born. The first of these passages is ascribed by Stochus, Idyll. iii. lin. 107, having obbous to Eschylus. So again, Mosserved that herbs and plants, after seeming to die, yet revive in the succeeding year, subjoins,

Αμμες δ' οι μεγαλοι, και καρτέροι, η σο φοι ανδρες,

Οπποτε πρώτα πανωμες ανακοπή εν χθονι

κοιλα

Eudouss ET MAAA MAKPON, A

ΤΕΡΜΟΝΑ, ΝΗΓΡΕΤΟΝ ύπνον.

But we, or great, or wise, or brave,
Once dead, and silent in the grave,
Senseless remain; one rest we keep,
One long eternal unawaken'd sleep.

There are passages of the same kind in Epicharmus, in Sophocles, Euripides and Astydamas, referred to by Dr. Whitby.*

*Whitby's Commentary on 2 Tim, i. 19

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