highly disagreeable; and judging of others by themselves, they, doubtless, will acquiesce in the sufficiency of the apology. I have known this method followed with complete success; and have no reason to imagine that any inconvenience arose from it, or that any disgust was given by its means. But, thirdly, it may be remarked, that the cause which detains the lady from receiving the visits of her acquaintance, may be so trifling, so insignificant, that she is ashamed to confess it, and assign it as an apology; if so, then certainly the lady ought to be ashamed to refuse them admittance. This is undoubtedly one of those times in which it be comes her to "take up her cross," and to submit her inclination to her duty. The subject of self-denial has at different times and in various shapes, been treated upon in some very able and admirable papers in the former volumes of the Christian Observer, and particularly by its steady friend, S. P.; it does not, therefore, become me to introduce it here, otherwise than to intimate that this is but a small necessity for its exercise: a case infinitely inferior to what is recorded of the apostles and primitive Christians, who "took joyfully" even the very "spoiling of their goods," that they might "follow their Lord," and " maintain a conscience void of offence to wards God and towards man.” I trust Sophronia will see the propriety of this plan, and, the advantages of following it; and that she may do so, unmoved by the frowns of the worldly, or the instigations of the temporising "Agrippe" of the age. I am, &c. X. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. AFTER the discussion which the prevailing habit of falsely denying ourselves to be at home has undergone in your pages, I beg leave to introduce to you a passage or two on this subject, extracted from Mrs. "That ingenuity which could devise some effectual substitute for the daily and hourly lie of not at home, would deserve well of society. Why will not some of those illustrious ladies who lead in the fashionable world invent some phrase which shall equally rescue from destruction the time of the master and the veracity of the servant? Some new and appropriate expression, the not adopting which should be blended with the stigma of vulgarity, might accomplish that which the charge of its being immoral hs failed to ac complish." "The ill effects of the custom we are lamenting may be traced in marking the gradual initiation of an unpractised country servant. And who has not felt for his virtuous distress, when he has been ordered to call back a more favoured visitant whom he had just sent away with the assurance that his lady was not at home? Who has not seen his suppressed indignation at being obliged to become himself the detector of that falsehood of which he had been before the instrument? But a little practice, and a repetition of reproof for even daring to look honest, soon cures this fault, especially as he is sure to be commended in proportion to the increased firmness of his voice and the steadiness of his countenance. "If this evil, petty as it may seem to be, be really without a remedy; if the state of society be such that it cannot be redressed, let us not be so unreasonable as to expect that a servant will equivocate in small instances and not in great ones. To hope that he will always lie for your convenience and never for his own, is perhaps expecting more from human nature in a low and uncultivat ed state than we have any right to expect. Nor should the master look for undeviating and perfect rectitude from his servant in whom the prin ciple of veracity is daily and hourly weakened in conformity to his own command. "Let us bring home the case to ourselves; the only fair way of determining in all cases of conscience. Suppose that we established it into a system to allow ourselves regularly to lie on one certain given subject every day and every hour in the day; while we continued to value ourselves on the most undeviating adherence to truth on every other point. Who shall say, that at the end of one year's tolerated and systematic lying on this individual subject, we should continue to look upon falsehood in general with the same abhorrence we did when we first entered on this partial exercise of it?" Een of the beast will I require man's life. True magnanimity, is so to live As uever to infringe the laws of God, * Only he Of laws divine or human, and foregoes 'Tis nobler far To bear the lash of slander, and be styl'd + Exod. xxi. REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. Sermons, by SAMUEL HORSLEY, LL.D. THE same cause which has prostrated Europe at the feet of the Corsi can, will, in part, account for the banishment of learning from the highest seats of ecclesiastical dignity in her various commonwealths. As governments grow old, or splendid; as the functionaries of the crown multiply; as the supreme power strengthens itself against the people, by borrowing the arm of the nobles; as the caprice of the monarch issues in a more extended system of favouritism; just in the proportion in which these events arise, and these dispositions have full play, merit ceases to be a title to dignity, and the powerful and the specious occupy the places of the wise and the good. In many of the countries of Europe, the highest places in church and state were all thus appropriated; and there needed little other qualification for a general or a bishop, than a specific number of acres, or a definite length of pedigree. No arrangement could be more convenient to both those persons, whom divines and politicians respectively denominate the "great enemy of man." In casting our eyes upon our own bench, and contrasting its state with that of the different foreign consistories, we have certainly much cause of thankfulness to God. There have been, at all periods, individuals seated upon it, who advanced better titles to that distinguished place, than those of blood and name. Indeed, we ourselves do not view, with quite the same jealousy with some of our brethren, the distinction conferred, even in the church, upon men of high worldly connections. At the same time, we must not conceal our opimion, that the church of England has for some time languished, in some degree, under the disease which has proved fatal to her continental sisters. Political connections in too many instances confer ecclesiastical dignities; and borough influence is rewarded with that mitre which real piety alone should wear. A country, however, does not at once consign itself to the mere influence of political considerations in the distribution of ecclesiastical honours. The next stage to that in which it crowns the good, is that in which it places the learned upon its seats of honour. And this stage is far preferable to that where the church is made the mere tool of the governing party in the state. The outworks of Christianity must be defended-the contest with philological enemies maintained-and if our crosiers are not stretched out to guide the sheep, they may, at least, be employed to beat off the wolves. Every one will at once perceive how naturally this last reflection will suggest itself to the critic who approaches any volumes of the late Bishop of St. Asaph. We are not sure that the name of Horsley would have been found among those of the pri mitive bishops; but, in our degene rate days, he will be quoted as a triumphant evidence that great talents and professional industry will sometimes force their way even to the most elevated seats of ecclesiastical power.-On a former occasion, we attempted something of an analysis of the character of Dr. Horsley. Before this article is concluded, we anticipate an opportunity of illus trating, and, perhaps, enlarging those remarks. We shall, first, however, enter into a pretty extended critique of the sermons before us. Our space, indeed, will not admit of our doing them justice. The curious, and in various degrees important, questions which they sug gest, or discuss, are really without end. Much we think profoundmuch original-much devout and evangelical; but there is no discourse in which we are not compelled to stop and to assert the rights of common sense in its controversy with learning, speculation, critical acumen, and the most extensive acquaintance with Scripture. But let us, first, indulge the curiosity of our readers with some facts with which the Preface to these sermons sup plies us. At the death of this prelate, every one at all acquainted with his restless energy, his inquisitorial powers, and his successful labours in the field of controversial and critical divinity, inquired with impatience into the extent of the literary legacy he had left to posterity. His posthu mous works appear to be these "Translation of the Psalms, with notes; a treatise, with notes, on the Pentateuch and the historical books of the Old Testament; a treatise on the Prophets, containing notes on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, (already published), Joel, Amos, and Obadiah;" and, in a different department of literature, the Life of Sir Isaac Newton. These are not left in a crude and unfinished state, but are ready for publication; and the editor of the present volumes, his don, is desirous of publishing the last mentioned work, and the Translation of the Psalms, as soon as he shall meet with any encouragement from the public. We should be shocked to bear that at any period, but particularly in an age of much superfluous expenditure, such encouragement were wanting. It will be seen, that the bishop is not less terrible in his death than in his life to the enemies of orthodox divinity; and that, like Old John Ziska, his very remains continue the ancient warfare, and achieve the accustomed victories. We now proceed to the detailed examination of these volumes. 66 The sermons are twenty-nine in number. The first volume opens with three upon the phrase so frequently recurring in the New Testament, the coming of the Lord." The object of these sermons is to prove, that the figurative use of this phrase to denote the destruction of Jerusalem is very rare, if not altogether unexampled in the Scriptures of the New Testament, except, perhaps, in some passages of the Revelation; that, on the other hand, the literal sense is frequent, warning the Christian world of an event to be wished by the faithful, and dreaded by the impenitent; the coming of our Lord, in all the majesty of the godhead, to judge the quick and the dead, to receive his servants into glory, and send the wicked into outer darkness." The argument, as might be expected, is conducted with great ability; but the position we conceive to be still liable to considerable question, if not as it re spects the Epistles, yet as it respects the Gospels. A brief account of that character of mind, and order of feelings, which has induced this great divine to maintain so strongly the view he has taken of this and other passages of Scripture, may serve as a key to many of the controversies carried on in these volumes. Dr. Horsley is the farthest possible from that order of theologians who, by an abuse of the term, delight to appropriate to themselves the title of rational. In other words, he does not consider Christianity merely as a more authoritative promulgation of the law of nature, as a system of moral precepts, as a code of philosophical maxims, as a set of notions which must be measured by their apparent expediency, and squared with the dictates of reason, as a schedule of laws, guarded only by temporal sanctions. He receives the laws of the Scriptures, not merely because they are reasonable, but above all because they are the will of God. He views religion chiefly as a system of reconciliation between God and a guilty world through the sacrifice of Christ. He reveres and inculcates the doctrines which, in general, are termed evangelical, that is to say, which are essentially and inseparably connected with this sacrifice of Christ; or, in other words, with the fall and the recovery of man. He reads the Bible, spiritualizing and evangelizing every passage which seems to admit of it. Every type with him is referred to its antetype, and Christ and eternal judgment are discerned in a multitude of expressions, in which ordinary readers discover merely a worldly monarch, or a temporal punishment. Now, to such a mind, many of the most celebrated commentators of our own country present an affecting spectacle. They are subjecting the Scriptures to an alarming process. They are substituting philosophy for religion; reason for faith; temporal objects and interests for such as are eternal. Doctrines are discredited in the defence of precepts; every thing of mystery and sublimity in religion is lowered down, or explained away; and Christ himself spoiled of the honour of that "salvation" of which he is the "author and the finisher." Having, in his former controversies with Priestley, triumphantly refuted the errors of Socinianism, Dr. Horsley has next devoted himself to combat with that large class of biblical critics to whom we have just alluded; and both in his charges, and in many parts of his Exposition of Hosea, as well as in these ser. mons, has done, as we conceive, essential service to the cause of evangelical religion. Warburton, Whitby, and others of the same class, may be read with less dan ger, and at least equal profit, by those whose minds are imbued, and whose principles are guarded, by the views and the arguments of Horsley. But precipitancy is often the companion of zeal and genius; and Dr. Horsley is certainly not cha. Facterized by moderation. He sometimes quits the ranks in his heroic pursuit of the enemy; and when he has done all that security requires, goes on to establish himself in some untenable position. Nothing can be more complete than the defeat given in the first three sermons, to these who, after their narrow and cold rule of interpretation, would appropriate the expression of the coming of the Lord" exclusively to the destruction of Jerusalem; but, it appears to us, as has been already intimated, that his reasoning requires to be qualified when he goes on to maintain, that, not only in the epistolary writings of the apostles, but in the Gospels, the phrase in question is never to be applied to that event. The whole of the argument, however (into which our limits will not now permit us to enter), is well worthy of the attention of the biblical student. We give one extract from the first sermon, as a specimen of the author's manner: "That they (the apostles) are to be thus understood, may be collected from our Lord's own parable of the fig-tree, and the applicaon which he teaches us to make of it. After a minute prediction of the distresses of the Jewish war, and the destruction of Jerusalem, and a very general mention of his second coming, as a thing to follow in its appointed season, he adds, Now learn a parable of the fig-tree: When its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, ye know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.' That it is near-so we read in our English Bibles; and expositors render the word it, by the ruin foretold, or the dess lation spoken of. But what was the ruin foretold, or desolation spoken of? The ruin of the Jewish nation-the desolation of Jerusalem. What were all these things, which, when they should see, they might know it to be near? All the particulars of our Saviour's detail; that is to say, the destruction of Jerusalem, with all the circumstances of code fusion and distress with which it was te be accompanied. This exposition, therefore, makes, as I conceive, the desolation of Jeru salem the prognostic of itself,—the sign and the thing signified the same. The true rendering of the original I take to be, So like; wise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that He is near at the doors.' Hethat is, the Son of Man, spoken of in the verses immediately preceding, as coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The approach of summer, says of Lord, is not more surely indicated by the first appearances of spring, than the final destruction of the wicked by the beginnings of vengeance on this impenitent people.” Vol, i. pp. 17—19. The reader will find in these three discourses, some very able conjec tures as to the meaning of ambiguous texts; and if he finds it difficult to yield his assent to some solutions proposed by the bishop, will yet find it more difficult to defend other solutions by arguments of equal power. Much of our author's reasoning is here pointed at Whitby, who certainly seems to err in too gene. rally securalizing the phrase in question. We cannot, however, acquit the bishop of some degree of harshiness, when he characterizes Whitby, and other such critics, as “blind leaders of the blind." But a little may be forgiven to a man, who coceives another to be veiling, behind the refinements of verbal criticism. the solemn scene which he himself so awfully describes. |