No. 34.]

ON RELIGIOUS SERIOUSNESS. If it be true, that we can have no reasonable hope of success in any thing that we undertake, unless we call into our aid all the powers of our body and mind; I mean, unless we are seriously impressed with the importance of what we have in hand, and attentive to the directions of those, who from their profession or experience, are likely to know better than ourselves, and fully purposed moreover to comply strictly with what they shall advise; and if the degree of this impression and consequent attention and compliance on our part is always found to be proportioned to the importance of what we have in view, we must be either very careless, or very inconsistent in our conduct, if we can hear the subject of religion proposed to our consideration without the liveliest interest and most profound attention. For religion is confessedly the most important of all things, since it is able to make us wise, and good, and happy: and that in a way which nothing else can; because religion is alone independent of external circumstances. A man may be rich to day, but he may not be so to morrow; he may be in health now, and the next moment in his grave; he may be the envy of all in the morning, and in the evening their pity or their scorn. But religion never faileth. It accompanies us to our grave, yea, rather beyond the grave, into the blissful regions of immortality. It is our anchor on REMEMBRANCER, No. 34.

[VOL. III.

earth, and our companion to hea ven. We can do without all other things, I mean, all the immoderate pleasures and superfluities of life, all that the world thinks so highly of, and fancies to be so necessary: but we can never do without religion. We may go on for a time, deceiving others, and even deceiving ourselves; but ask the worldlyminded, the dissolute, and the unbeliever, in his last moments, if sickness (as is but too often the case,) hath not too much deadened, enervated, and distracted his powers, to suffer him to think at all, ask him then, what is really worth having? what is the one thing needful? Will he say, Riches? they will soon be no longer his-Health? it is gone, death is at the door:-Infidelity? the word is bitterness to his soul, it is agony and despair. Religion, will be his answer; and, as the dreadful conviction flashes across his mind, what would he not then give to have secured for himself by

a life of habitual faith and obedience, its support and solace at the hour of his departure.

Consider religion in itself-look to what it has revealed, and see how adapted it is in all its parts to the wants and capacities of man! how full in its commands! how rich, how abundantly rich in its promises! It is religion, or more scripturally speaking, the faith or the Gospel of Christ, which has laid open, (as far as our present experience and finite reason could be supposed, or was required to comprehend,) the nature,

4 E

of God, and the end of man; the spirituality, the wisdom, and power, and goodness, and mysterious existence of the former in three united Persons, and the great and glorious objects for which the latter was created, not, as many by their conduct seem to think, to live for ourselves alone, for the pleasures of sense, for the pursuit of wealth, and honour, and fame, or for the mere propagation of our species, but to do good to others, to their souls and bodies; to improve the talents, whether intellectual or moral, which it has pleased our heavenly Father to give us; to look on this world as a place, and this life only as a time, of trial-the one, a theatre on which we are to exhibit in all their attrac⚫ tion the graces of the Christian-the other, a season, in which we are to sow the good seed, that springeth up unto an everlasting life; and thus in the full conviction that we are but strangers and pilgrims on earth, to pass the time of our sojourning here in fear, in working out our own salvation, and providing heirs, like ourselves, of a blessed eternity. Such are the glorious truths, that religion reveals, teaching us moreover by the most perfect laws, and the surest and most appropriate promises of consolation and strength, that "" denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world, looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour,-Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and "purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works, and meet to be partakers through his blood of the inheritance of the saints in light."

How can it be, that any man of the commonest reflection, can hear such a subject as this proposed to his consideration-a subject so great, so glorious, so blessed-without feeling at the time, and conti.

nuing to feel ever after, the utmost seriousness and concern about it? "The first requisite in religion," says Archdeacon Paley,-(I quote from his Sermons, which with a few exceptions, are invaluable for their matter and manner)-" the first requi. site in religion is seriousness. I can have no hope at all," he continues, "of a man who does not find himself serious in religious matters, serious at the heart. If the judgment of Almighty God at the last day, if the difference between being saved and being lost, being accepted in the Beloved, and being cast forth into outer darkness, being bid by a tremendous word either to enter into the joy of the Father, or go into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for all who have served him and not God,-if these things do not make us serious, then it is most certain, either that we do not believe them, or that we have not yet thought of them at all, or that we have positively broken off thinking of them, have turned away from the subject, have refused to let it enter, have shut our minds against it; or lastly, that such a levity of mind is our character, as nothing whatever

can

make a serious impression

upon." It would be well for every one of my readers, if they would suffer these words of the Archdeacon to have their full effect on their minds. And here let me not be misunderstood. I am far, very far, from wishing to inculcate any thing like a severe, or gloomy, or melancholy spirit. Religious persons, on the contrary, if we make allowance for any peculiarity of constitution that this or that individual may have, are generally cheerful: they have indeed the most reason to be so, since their conscience sits light within them, and they have always something beyond this world to look to for support. The religion of Christ is in itself a cheerful religion, it is a social religion.

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Its divine Author was ever seen walking about among the sons of

of our Lord's ascension into beaven, we cannot but think on " the glory that he had with the Father before the world was," and of which for our sakes he voluntarily emptied himself, when he descended from thence. His exaltation to heaven is but his return unto his own, agreeably to those words of his, that" no man hath ascended up into heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven;" so that in our Lord's case, there is a close connection between his ascent and descent-we may reason from the one to the other. "If he has ascended, what is it but that be descended first"-and far. ther, he that descended and took our flesh in the womb of the blessed Virgin, and became very and perfect man, is the same divine and everblessed Being, that with this very flesh thus assumed unto the divine nature, did" ascend up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things."

Taken in this sense, the words of the Apostle are plain and forcible, and form a brief, but complete summary of a Christian's faith-a short creed or profession easily laid up in our memories, of all that we are to believe respecting our everblessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

C.

To the Editor of the Remembrancer. Sir,

THROUGH the medium of your valuable publication, I beg permission to notice a circumstance which appears to me to demand explanation on the part of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

I refer to the French translation of the Bible published by that Society, and pronounced in the titlepage, to have been " carefully revised and corrected according to the Hebrew and Greek texts."

Sanctioned by the authority of a Society, a numerous part of which avow their attachment to the Church of England, and see not the danger of a union with Dissenters of all denominations, the French translation was referred to by me, for the purpose of quoting texts in proof of the divine nature of Jesus Christ.

My surprize was great, when I met with a passage of the utmost importance to my purpose.

In our authorized English translation, the 18th and 19th verses of 2 Cor. v. stand thus:

"And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation."

In the French translation of the Bible Society, we read thus:

"18. Et tout cela vient de Dieu, qui nous a reconciliés avec lui par Jésus-Christ, et qui nous a contié le ministère de cette réconciliation. 19. Car Dieu a réconcilié le monde avec soi-même, par Christ, en n'im putant point aux hommes leur péchés; et il a mis en nous la parole de la réconciliation."

This is pronounced, as I have observed, to have been "carefully revised and corrected from the He brew and Greek text."

At this distance from England, I have but few books for reference, and can only compare this "revised and corrected" version, with the passage in the Greek Testament of Mill.

« Τὰ δὲ πάντα ἐκ τε Θεῦ τε καταλλα

ξοντος ἡμᾶς ἑαυτῷ διὰ Ἰησὲ Χρισέ, καὶ δόντος ἡμῖν την διακονίαν της καταλλαγής. Ὡς ὅτι Θεος ην εν Χριςῷ, κοσμον καταλλασσων ἑαυτῷ, μη λογιζόμενος αυτοις τα παραπτώματα αυτῶν καὶ θέμενος εν ἡμῖν τον λογον τῆς καταλλαγές."

The Bible Society's French translation is said to be printed from the