This fond heart throbs for thee alone Oh! leave me not to languish; Look on these eyes, whence sleep hath flown, Bethink thee of my anguish: My hopes, my thoughts, my destinyAll dwell, all rest, sweet girl, on thee. Young bud of beauty, for ever bright, Oh! must I in vain adore thee? Talk not of fair ones known of yore; Speak not of Deirdre the renowned She whose gay glance each minstrel hail'd; Nor she whom the daring Dardan bore From her fond husband's longing arms; Name not the dame whose fatal charms, When weighed against a world, prevail'd; To each might blooming beauty fall, Lovely, thrice lovely, might they be; But the gifts and graces of each and all Are mingled, sweet maid, in thee! How the entranc'd ear fondly lingers On the turns of thy thrilling song! The noble, the learn'd, the ag'd, the vain, How winning, dear girl, is thine air, Oh! lov'd one, come back again, With thy train of adorers about thee Oh! come, for in grief and in gloom we remain- My memory wanders-my thoughts have stray'd- Why, why on thy beauty must I dwell, When each tortur'd heart knows its power too well? Or why need I say that favour'd and bless'd Must be the proud land that bore thee? Oh! dull is the eye and cold the breast That remains unmov'd before thee. I've not a cravat-to save my throat, If you'd cheer me again in the morning! When you've heard prayers on Sunday next, The Bard resumes his address— You're my soul and my treasure, without and within, My sister and cousin and all my kin; Come, vein of my heart! then come in haste, Had my christening bowl been filled with this, Many's the quarrel and fight we've had, When you smile at me full on the table; Oh! I'll stand by you-while I am able. But Claret untasted may pass us; When they've saved us with matins and Painting's sweet power, Philosophy's pure flame, And Homer's lyre, and Ossian's harp were mine, The splendid arts of Erin, Greece, and Rome, In Mary lost, would lose their wonted grace; All would I give to snatch her from the tomb, Again to fold her in my fond embrace. Desponding, sick, exhausted with my grief, Awhile the founts of sorrow cease to flow; In vain! I rest not-sleep brings no relief; Cheerless, companionless, I wake to woe. Nor birth, nor beauty, shall again allure, Nor fortune win me to another bride; Alone I'll wander, and alone endure, 'Till death restore me to my dear one's side. Once ev'ry thought and ev'ry scene was gay, Friends, mirth, and music all my hours employ'd, Now doom'd to mourn my last sad years away, Adieu each gift of nature and of art, That erst adorn'd me in life's early prime !The cloudless temper, and the social heart, The soul ethereal, and the flights sublime! Thy loss, my Mary, chas'd them from my breast! Thy sweetness cheers, thy judgment aids no more: The muse deserts a heart with grief opprestAnd flown is ev'ry joy that charm'd before. SONG FOR GRACEY NUGENT. (TRANSLATED BY MISS BROOKE.) Of Gracey's charms enraptured will I sing! How blest her sweet society to share! That alabaster form, that graceful neck, Blest is the youth whom fav'ring fates ordain Sweet is the cheer her sprightly wit supplies! Hers is the voice tun'd by harmonious love, Gay pleasures dance where'er her footsteps bend; And smiles and rapture round the fair attend: Wit forms her speech, and wisdom fills her mind. And sight and soul in her their object find. Her pearly teeth in beauteous order plac'd; Here break I off;-let sparkling goblets flow, SONG FOR MABEL KELLY. (TRANSLATED BY MISS BROOKE.) The youth whom fav'ring Heavens decree No thought but joy can fill his mind, For the bright flowing of thy hair, That decks a face so heavenly fair; And a fair form to match that face, The rival of the cygnet's grace When with calm dignity she moves Grace gave thy form in beauty gay, to Dublin, but refused it, For this he incurred the violent displeasure of the Presbyterian Synod. [John Abernethy, who became one of the most eminent among the Dissenting ministers of Ireland, was born at Coleraine on the 19th October, 1680. At nine years of age he was Soon after this Abernethy entered with carried into Scotland by a relation, to avoid much zeal into the formation of a society the horrors of the insurrection, in which all chiefly composed of ministers, and having for the other children of his parents were lost. its object "improvement in knowledge, by For some years he was kept at a grammar- bringing things to the test of reason and Scripschool, and afterwards sent to Glasgow Uni- ture, without having a servile regard to any versity, where in due course he took the degree human authority." This society, which, from of M.A. From Glasgow he moved to Edin- its place of meeting, was called the Belfast burgh for the purpose of studying divinity, Society, soon became troubled with hot debates and he was so successful a student that he was and fierce dissensions on the question of sublicensed to preach before he had attained his scription to the Westminster Confession. The twenty-first year. In 1703 he received a call matter was carried into the General Synod, from a congregation in Antrim, and, accepting and ended in 1726 in a complete rupture, it, was ordained. He soon became famous for Abernethy and his friends, the non-subscrihis eloquence not only in his own parish but bers, being declared no longer members of the through a wide district. In 1717 he had a call | body. Upon this the greater part of his con VOL. I. 11 gregation forsook him, and he accepted an offer from a congregation in Wood Street, Dublin. This struggle was undoubtedly the prelude to the subsequent division of the Arian and Socinian element in the Irish Presbyterian Church. Abernethy took a prominent part in the memorable controversy relating to religious tests and disabilities. He took up the position that religion should not exclude men of talent from political office, and he was so far in advance of the opinions of the time that he gave it as his firm conviction that a Presbyterian or Roman Catholic might be a man of ability, and thus fitted to serve his country. He laboured in Dublin for ten years, adding greatly to his reputation, and during which period he wrote an immense number of eloquent and weighty sermons and tracts. In 1740 he was attacked by gout in a vital part, and died in December of that year, leaving behind him a great mass of sermons and tracts, still highly valued by students of his own school, and the work for which he is now chiefly known, Discourses concerning the Being and Natural Perfections of God, which has been declared, "for solidity of argument, strength and clearness of reasoning, and justness of sentiment, equal if not superior to anything of the kind in the English language." It was given to the world in 1743, two volumes of the sermons were issued in 1748, and in 1751 a selection from the tracts, &c., appeared.] THE EXISTENCE OF GOD PROVED BY HUMAN MORALITY.' The importance of morality to the human life and to its main ends shows wisdom and design in giving men the sense and knowledge of it. Political constitutions are reasonably judged to be formed with understanding because of the ends which they answer. When laws are well framed for the preservation of public peace and order, the measures of civil authority and subjection wisely settled, provision made for supporting the legal powers of the rulers and liberties of the people, for securing them against foreign invasions and intestine broils, for deciding their debates about property in an equitable manner, for encouraging industry and other virtues, which tend to the benefit of society, and restraining 1 This and the following extract are from Discourses concerning the Being and Natural Perfections of God. those irregularities which threaten its destruction; when all this is apparent in the constitution of any community, no one will attribute it to a casual unconcerted encounter of men, since there are so plain evidences of wisdom and design in the whole scheme. As little reason is there to imagine, that when a species of intelligent beings are sent into the world with sentiments of morality, which are so evidently conducive to their happiness, tending to improve their nature, to ennoble the life of every one of them, filling it with a variety of rational pleasure, and to render them eminently useful to one another, so that it is hardly to be conceived to what a height of perfection and felicity they would be raised if these moral sentiments were duly improved and had their full effect; and, on the other hand, how miserable the whole race would be if entirely destitute of them; it is unreasonable, I say, to imagine that this should be without a directing intelligence in the cause of it. Nothing can be more groundless and unsupported with any pretence of reason than to allege that the notions of morality so common and prevailing in the world were originally invented by politicians, and by their artifice imposed upon credulous mankind as the dictates of nature. For besides that strict virtue is often too little agreeable to the maxims and measures of their policy to give it any appearance of proceeding from such an original, every man who will look carefully into his own heart may find there a standard of right and wrong prior to any instructions, declarations, and laws of men, whereby he pronounces judgment upon them. Nor was it ever known that any human invention, nor anything which was not the voice of reason and nature itself, appeared so uniform and unvaried, always consistent with itself, and always in the same light to the minds of men, as the principal moral species do. The forms of civil government differ according to the circumstances and inclinations of the people who create them, the external forms of religion too are variable, and so is everything of positive appointment and institution; but justice and mercy, gratitude and truth, never alter; the learned and the unlearned, the most uninstructed and the most polite nations agree in their notions concerning them, and whenever they are intelligibly proposed approve them. It is, therefore, evident that morality is a part of the human constitution, and must be attributed to its Author. Let this be understood in a sense agreeable to the nature of the thing. I do not mean that we are necessarily virtuous, as we are sensitive and intelligent, or that the practice of virtue is so essential that no man can possibly be without it, for the very notion of it imports free agency or choice; but I mean that the mind of man is so framed, as, when it attains the full exercise of its rational powers, to be necessarily sensible of moral obligations, and so far determined to satisfy them that it cannot wilfully and designedly act a contrary part without doing violence to itself, which is all the necessity that is consistent with the nature of such a being and the nature of morality. If it be so we may surely infer that the cause of this constitution was intelligent, since all the individuals of mankind are found to have a sense of virtue, and every one who reflects upon it must be conscious that it is engraven upon his heart prior to any intention of his own, or any instruction that he knows of: it must either have happened without any design at all, or it must have been designed by the Author of our being. To say that moral agency, which is so universally the character of men that without it no one can be reckoned perfectly of the kind, and which is of so great importance, not only to the ornament and convenience of life, but to all the highest purposes of our being, so far that the want of it would make an essential difference in the species- to say that this is merely accidental, in other words, that there is no cause to be assigned for it at all, is too gross an absurdity to require any confutation. If our minds can rest satisfied with that solution there is an end of all rational inquiry; it may be said everything came from nothing, and there is no cause to be sought of any perfection whatever. But if this be what we cannot possibly acquiesce in, and indeed I will venture to say no man can, however he may force himself to a stupid inattention, there is nothing left to conclude but that we were made moral agents by an intending intelligent cause. I do not at present carry the argument so far as to infer from it the moral perfections of the Deity, though it will very well bear even that; but he that will shut his eyes against the evidence of understanding and design in the formation of the human nature, as we see it is formed universally, with a sense of virtue and vice, good and evil, right and wrong in actions, and with a necessary approbation of the one and disapprobation of the other; I say, he that can shut his eyes against this evidence is hardened beyond the power of reasonable conviction, and is no more fit to be argued with. RELIGION AND TRUE INTEREST But the writers in this controversy against religion, against natural morality and the social affections of mankind, seem to be diffident of that basis upon which they place civil government, and which has been already considered, namely, contracts and covenants, and therefore they have their recourse to another, which they hope will be more stable, having strength enough to secure itself, that is, the force of the magistrate, to which all must submit. Sometimes they deduce from this alone the very nature and the measures of right and wrong in the whole extent of them, for they say that justice and injustice are determined by a law, and a law is nothing else but the declared will of a superior with a sanction added to it. Let us see now upon what foot authority stands according to this account of it, and it is plainly no other than superior power causing terror, or the weakness and fear of its subjects. This does it no great honour, nor will make it appear amiable to men, so long as the generous affections and a sense of liberty have any place in their hearts; but especially it is to be observed, in opposition to these writers, that the security of civil government is hereby rendered precarious. There is nothing to hinder attempts against the public tranquillity and the power which is raised to preserve it but the danger of miscarrying in them; whenever treasonable conspiracies can be formed and rebellions raised with a fair probability of prevailing, all scruples vanish, and the actual success makes them actually just; the restraints of honour and conscience and a regard to the public are mere bugbears which keep fools in awe, but men of sense despise them. Let any one judge who knows at all the state of mankind, whether these are principles which have a tendency to secure civil authority, and thereby to secure peace and order among men. the main strength of our adversaries' objection lies in this, that religion tends to weaken, and even to subvert civil government, by setting up private judgment or conscience as a superior tribunal in the breast of every subject, which claims a right of examining the acts of But |