Whenever I read the following lines, they affect me much, being applicable to myself and many others, as well as to Dick. 'Poor wretch! he read, and read, and read, He had unlawful thoughts of many things; With holy men, nor in a holy place It is a perilous tale!" WORDSWORTH." Upon the same principle the following passages have also been selected. "Yes, sir, by the great mercy of God I am, (as you say,) returned to the study of my bible. You may well be affected with my wonderful escape from such a dreadful precipice, on the crumbling brink of which I long slept. For these last two or three years I have not even loved the sight of that part of my private library where the books stand which seduced me from the simplicity of the gospel. They have been to me will-o'-the-wisps; and I have followed them through bog and quagmire, briars and thorns, until my poor benighted and bewildered mind was lost in such a labyrinth, for it was next to impossible for me ever to find my way out. As I suppose you will be glad to know how so great a deliverance was effected, I will give you a short account of it. "Notwithstanding the bad lives of some infidels of my acquaintance, as I continued to retain a regard to decency, honour and honesty, myself; and as a few freethinkers are studious, and, to appearance, moral characters, professing to believe in natural religion; while, on the other hand, I have remarked that some were guilty of gross enormities, who yet professed to believe the bible to be the word of God; I, for a long time thought that infidels were as likely to be governed by virtuous principles as Christians were; the vicious lives of some pretenders to Christianity in some measure tended to confirm me in this erroneous conclusion. I was still more confirmed in this opinion by the plausible reasoning in some infidel writers, who, as you know, talk much about moral rectitude, the eternal rule of right, moral obligation, moral sense, &c. &c. Lord Shaftesbury goes very far on this head. He asserts that vice as much disorders the mind as disease does the body; which no doubt is true. He is also right in asserting, that virtue is moral beauty, and vice moral deformity. But his lordship goes much farther; he, like an ancient sect of heretics, and many modern mystics, says a great deal about loving God and virtue purely for their own sakes, without any regard to future rewards and punishments; that to do good actions in hopes of being rewarded is mercenary; and that persons influenced by such motives are endeavouring to overreach the Deity, by purchasing eternal happiness with a short life of virtue. He insinuates that the old saints, who had respect to the recompense of reward, were cunning people, and only good from the fear of hell and the hope of heaven. How much is this like the devil's objection-Job does not serve God for nought? In another place his lordship asserts that there is no more rectitude, piety, or sanctity, in a creature thus reformed, than there is meekness or gentleness in a tiger strongly chained, or innocence and sobriety in a monkey under the discipline of the whip. "If the rewards proposed to Christians had been like those promised by Mahomet to his followers, sensual and voluptuous, his lordship would have had some reason to object to their being proposed as incentives to virtue; but the idea given us in the New Testament of the happiness in a future state is noble and sublime. It is represented as a state of consummate holiness, goodness, and purity, where we shall arrive to the true perfection of our natures; a state into which nothing shall enter that defileth; where the spirits of the just are made perfect, and even their bodies shall be refined to a wonderful degree; where they shall be associated to the glorious general assembly of holy and happy souls, and to the most excellent part of God's creation, with whom they shall cultivate an eternal friendship and harmony; and, which is chiefly to be considered, where they shall be admitted to the immediate presence of the Deity, and shall be transformed, as far as they are capable of it, into the divine likeness. Such is the happiness the gospel setteth before us, and which furnisheth a motive fitted to work upon the worthiest minds. And the being animated with the hopes of such a reward hath nothing mean or mercenary in it, but rather is an argument of a great and noble soul.' "As to the fear of punishment, his lordship, although inconsistently with what he in other places asserts, (in vol. ii. p. 273, of his Characteristics,) says, that although fear may be allowed to be ever so low or base, yet, religion being a discipline, and progress of the soul towards perfection, the motive of the reward and punishment is primary and of the highest moment with us; till being capable of more sublime instructions we are let from this servile state to the glorious service of affection and love.' “It may be also remarked, that after a wicked man has been roused by the terrors of the Lord, if he continue to obey the good motions of the Spirit, God then gives him a clean heart, and renews a right spirit within him. He then begins to love God and fears to offend him, fears to be separated from him and his people for ever. The fear of hell is scarcely remembered by a real Christian: but having taken God for his portion, for his supreme happiness, he loves God, because God first loved him, and his greatest fear is lest he should do anything to displease him. He can heartily and truly say to God, Thou art my all! My strength in age, my rise in low estate, My soul's ambition, pleasure, wealth! My world! My boast through time! bliss through eternity.' "But to return. Although I imbibed his lordship's refined notions of virtue, and for many years, at times, talked much in his lordship's strain, I found those notions insufficient to preserve me from falling into some vicious courses. Nothing but the belief of the gospel could induce me entirely to renounce the vices and follies of the world, and to live godly, righteously, and soberly, in so ungodly and dissipated an age. The motives held out by other systems are insufficient to restrain the passions and evil propensities of man. "Yet was I so attached to infidelity, and so blinded by it, as not to believe its evil tendency, until for some time I had observed how much the morals of men, in every rank and station, had suffered in a great part of Europe; and that every kind of vice was gaining ground in proportion as infidel books and principles were disseminated. I then began to see that religion must before have had great influence on the morals of mankind, and in that point of view must be very valuable in society; and this brought on more serious reflections. "I have for many years taken in several of the reviews of new publications, which are published monthly, and I now began to read some of the extracts which the reviewers make from sermons and other books in divinity. In those extracts I frequently found weighty arguments in favour of Christianity. About a year past in this way, during which time I was in rather a careless suspense, and yet I was more attentive to my words and actions; and by degrees I began to relish divine subjects, and found that they elevated the mind and filled the soul with sublime ideas. I now began to read a little in the bible, and took some pleasure in it; and I became more and more serious and thoughtful. I had nearly finished a second volume of my Life, which I in tended soon to publish. I now read it over agai. and cropped out and put in again and again, as thought that I had treated serious subjects with to much levity; but after all the alterations, I was no satisfied that in writing against fanaticism and enthusiasm, I had not said what might hurt some weak Christians, or what might be by freethinkers brought against Christianity. I was now also afraid, lest by ridiculing and laughing at enthusiasm and fanaticism, I should not only laugh some out of their enthusiasm, but of their religion also. For these and other reasons of the same nature I thought it best not to publish it, by which I have disappointed some of my laughterloving aquaintance. "As soon as I had acquired a relish for religious subjects, I wished to promote it in others, and therefore begun with Mrs Lackington. Mrs L. is in her moral conduct one of the most perfect beings I ever saw. 'Her life's as moral as the preacher's tongue.' Her reason for being so was 'because she always thought she ought to be as good as she could.' She, like some other ladies, had studied well, and very well understood the art of dressing elegantly, but had not the least knowledge of religion beyond that of being as good as she could; and by the bye, it were to wished that all ladies even knew as much as that. As to going to church, or private devotion, she could not see of what use it could be to her. As she wanted for nothing, she did not know what she could pray for, she had never done any person any harm; she had never slandered, backbited, or ridiculed any person, nor did she know that she had committed any other sin, and so she had no need of praying for pardon. 66 In this state of affairs I sent to my late partners for Secker's Lectures on the Catechism, Gilpin's Lectures on the same, Wilson's Sermons, 4 vols., and lpin's Sermons. These are very plain discourses, asy to be understood, and calculated to leave a very ting impression on the mind. These excellent serons Mrs L. and I read together, and while they E E |