The old man felt that this reproach was contained in my reply; for he said very gravely: If I well understand you, sir, you tell me, that, supposing I have attended to religion in order thereby to gain the approbation of God, and consequently the pardon of my sins, I have acted for myself, and not for God. And, in fact, I see that it is so; and that, perhaps unknown to me, those works which appeared most destitute of ostentation have secretly had that impure character. This is a very serious thought; and I question if there is an individual in existence who can be virtuous except from an interested motive. Do you not think, replied I, that if it pleased the king to grant me a complete and gratuitous pardon for some crime, I should feel certain that the law could no longer affect me; and that, therefore, my obedience would henceforth flow from a source totally different from that which produced it before he granted me my pardon? The old Man, eagerly. Yes, because you would be assured of your pardon, and you would only have to follow, without alarm or disquietude, the emotions of a heart full of gratitude. Well, continued I, with the same earnestness with which he had answered me, and touching the cross with my hand; if a sinner believes that God has cancelled his debt, and has given him eternal life, because of the blood of the new covenant which has been shed upon this cross, will he, thus justified, continue to act with a view to obtain pardon; or, rather, will he not follow, without alarm or disquietude, the emotions of a heart which the certainty of possessing this blessing will have filled with gratitude? CHAPTER V. He who desires to merit, does not act from Love, but from Interest. The old man appeared surprised, and I thought I perceived that the idea was new to him; for he answered me with the distraction of one who is still pondering upon the meaning of what he last heard. "Certainly, if I believed that God had already pardoned my sins, I should cease to think that I must merit the pardon of them." And your attention to good works, I continued, would no longer be excited by the fear of punishment, or by a desire of gaining heaven? Old Man. No, doubtless; that is evident. I should not think of meriting that which I had already received through grace. Traveller. Whence you may conclude, that if you consider salvation as a gift, resulting from the grace of God, you must cease to present any merit or work of your own as a means of gaining pardon. Old Man. I confess, sir, that I have not hitherto understood the word grace in this sense, and I feel that I have erred respecting it. For either salvation is a gift; or it is a reward, a payment. If it be a gift, why should I try to merit it? Yet this is what I have done; I have therefore been in the wrong. But still my mind is not at rest; for, as I perceive that it is absolutely necessary to live well in order to obtain heaven, I again repeat, If I do not the works which God commands, there will be no salvation for me. I must then do these good works, in order that I may be saved. Traveller. But do you not perceive, that if the Law says, Be sober, lest you perish; and Grace says, Be sober, because you are redeemed; the same work will be done in both cases, but from two very different motives? Old Man. Say rather inconsistent motives, and not different; since the law will constrain me through fear, whilst grace will draw me by love. Traveller. If, then, the pardon of sin is given through grace, it cannot at the same time come by the law. That is to say, if the remission of sin is obtained by means of a Saviour, and through his merits, it is quite useless, it is contradictory, to seek it by obedience to the law for if the king declares that he pardons my revolt, by an act of his good will, can I think of meriting, by subsequent submission, this free and absolute indemnity? I must then, as a sinful man, and deserving of condemnation, choose in my conscience between a pardon which I shall try to gain by my obedience, and another pardon freely given me. : Now observe, that if I choose the one, I renounce the other for how can I pretend to unite them; since one would proceed from myself, who am a sinner, and an inhabitant of the earth; and the other descends from God, who is holy, and who " dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto?" If then, I say, I will obey God's commandments in order to gain pardon, I must admit that I consider this pardon as a payment, or a recompence; for I have acquired it by my own works, ceremonies, groans, and tears; and if I receive it, it is because it is my due. But if, on the contrary, adopting another language, I say, I see myself justly condemned, and without resource, and I look to nothing but the goodness of God, his mercy and grace, for the pardon of my sins, I immediately declare that this pardon does not come from myself, and that I cannot merit it in any way. Old Man. So that if I, sir, who know that I am a sinner, labour to merit pardon, I thereby turn away from the grace of God? Traveller. That is what the Apostle declares, when he says, "If by grace, then is it no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace; otherwise work is no more work" (Rom. xi. 6). Old Man. What a new view of this important subject! How evident is this alternative. And how solemn is all this. For, since salvation is by grace, of which there is no doubt, what have I been doing up to this day, by seeking it through my own works! My multiplied devotions, alms, prayers, and labours, then, for so many years, avail me nothing. Traveller. Judge for yourself, sir. If you have done all these things in order to merit pardon, and gain heaven, it is certain that you have, in looking for a recompence, rejected the grace of God. (To be concluded in the Appendix.) REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. REVIEW OF THE LIFE OF DR. ADAM CLARKE. DR. Clarke soon found that in becoming a Methodist preacher he had not taken up a sinecure. The Bradford circuit, to which he was appointed, extended into three counties, and had more than one station for every day in the month; so that the preachers rarely stopped two days in the same place, and were almost constantly on horseback. This circumstance, however, he says, was advantageous to him as a young preacher, who could not be supposed to have any great variety of texts or of matter; but as he diligently read the Scriptures, prayed much, and endeavoured to improve his mind, he added by slow degrees to his stock, and became better qualified to minister each time of his going round his circuit. His youth was often a grievous trial to him; for he thought " How can I expect that men and women, persons of forty, threescore, or more years, will come out to hear a boy preach the Gospel? And is it likely, if through curiosity they do come, that they will believe what I say? As to the young, they are too gay and CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 384. 5 C giddy to attend to divine things; and if so, among whom lies the probability of my usefulness?" But he was enabled, he adds, so to act that no man despised his youth; and when the "little boy," as he was called, came to any place to preach, the congregations were always respectable, and in many places unusually large and it soon appeared, he says, that "the Divine Spirit made the solemn truths he spoke effectual to the salvation of many souls." Amidst his travels and preaching he continued to study Hebrew, and to keep up his Classics, chiefly by reading on horseback, to the great risk of his limbs and with much injury to his eyes. But a circumstance had nearly put an end to his studies; for, observing in the preachers' room at Motcomb, near Shaftsbury, a Latin sentence written on the wall relative to the vicissitudes of life, he wrote under it the following lines from Virgil, corroborative of the sentiment ; Quo fata trahunt retrahuntque, sequamur.— Tendimus in-cŒLUM. The next preacher that followed him in this place, seeing these lines, which he could not understand, wrote under them the following words: "Did you write the above to shew us you could write Latin? For shame! Do send pride to hell, from whence it came. Oh, young man, improve your time, eternity's at hand." Young Clarke was thrown into confusion he knew not how to appear before the family, who had a whole week to con over this reproachful effusion of a professed brother: and in a moment of strong temptation he fell on his knees in the midst of the room, and solemnly promised to God that he would never more meddle with Greek or Latin as long as he lived. He saw that learning might engender pride; and it was too plain that it might also excite envy. He ever carried about with him, he says, "not only a tender, but a scrupulous and sore conscience," so that it was easy for him to make any sacrifice in his power: and this now made had nearly ruined all his learned researches and scientific pursuits for ever; and added one more, he says, "to the already too ample company of the slothful servants, and religious loungers, in the Lord's inheritance." His vow appeared to him so binding, that he even threw by his Greek Testament, endeavoured to forget all that he had learned, and laboured to tear every thing of the kind for ever from his heart. This he did for four years, to his irreparable loss; till, happening to translate for Mr. Wesley, from the Abbè Maury's work on Pulpit Eloquence, the well-known exordium of Bridaine's sermon at St. Sulpice, Mr. Wesley charged him to cultivate his mind as far as his circumstances would allow, and not to forget any thing he had ever learned. This was a word in season, and, next to the Divine Oracles, of the highest authority with him; and his reflections upon it led him to see the evil of his rash vow, and to pray God to forgive his folly in making it. He had, however, great difficulty in making up his intellectual lee-way, having almost forgotten the very rudiments of his grammar. He states, however, notwithstanding the rebuke of his illiterate censor, that it is not true that the Methodists cry down human learning : there is no religious people in the land, he says, who value it more; and when they find it in their preachers associated with humility and piety, they praise God for the double benefit. Having about this time read Mr. Wesley's Letter on Tea, he renounced it, and from that day never once tasted tea or coffee. He avers that he was a great gainer in every way, particularly in the saving of time, by his abstinence. We think his scruple very crotchety; but it was at least harmless, as were all his scruples-except that they often gave him as much inconvenience as more serious matters could have done; as for example : "August 6th, 1783, Mr. Clarke was admitted into full connexion, after having travelled only about eleven months. When preachers on trial are admitted into full connexion with the body of the Methodist preachers; among many important questions put to them is the following, Are you in debt? To this the most satisfactory answer must be given. Through rather a whimsical incident, this question was likely to have deeply puzzled and non-plused Mr. Clarke. Walking in the street that morning with another preacher, a poor man asked a halfpenny. Mr. C. had none, but borrowed one from the preacher who was walking with him. That preacher happening to go out of town, he could not see him during the day to repay this small sum. When he stood up with the others he knew not what to say, when the question, Are you in debt? should be proposed: he thought, If I say I am in debt, they will ask me How much? when I say I owe one halfpenny, they will naturally suppose me to be a fool. If I say I am not in debt, this will be a lie; for I owe one halfpenny, and am as truly under the obligation to pay, as if the sum were twenty pounds; and while I owe that, I cannot, consistently with eternal truth, say, I am not in debt.' He was now most completely within the horns of a dilemma; and which to take he knew not, and, the question being put to him before he could make up his mind- Mr. Clarke, are you in debt?' he dissolved the difficulty in a moment, by answering, Not one penny. Thus both his credit and his conscience were saved. The reader may smile at all this, but the situation to him was, for some hours, very embarrassing." Vol. i. pp. 193, 194. At this conference he was removed to the Norwich circuit. There was no place, he says, in this circuit in which religion flourished, either among the Methodists or elsewhere. "Norfolk appeared to Mr. Clarke to be the most ungodly county he had ever yet visited. He found it generally irreligious. Except among a very few religious people, the Sabbath-day was universally disregarded. Buying and selling were considered neither unseemly nor sinful; and on that day the sports of the field, particularly fowling, were general. Multitudes even of those called religious people, bought and sold without any remorse. To find a man saved from this sin, was a very rare thing indeed. Against this horrible profanation, Mr. C. lifted up a strong and steady voice." Vol. i. pp. 207, 208. The Norwich circuit contained at this time three preachers; one of whom, "a good holy man of God, and a good sound preacher," went over next year to America, and became "a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church;" another "excelled in nothing," and next year "retired from preaching;" the third professed to cure many disorders--and his prescriptions were made up of a pennyworth of oil of leeks, a pennyworth of oil of swallows, &c. ; but although the druggists had no such medicaments, they gave the poor people something under those names that would do as well. He was a disgusting slave to tobacco, and "never preached without a quid in his mouth." "He fell the following year; and was heard of in the church of God no more." It is but justice to add, that the Methodist connexion proscribes both quackery and tobacco, as in all their forms disgraceful to a Christian minister. So little in the way of learning did the Methodist laity at that period expect from their preachers, that a young woman of the society gravely asked Dr. Clarke if he could read; and so little did they do for them, that our preacher was obliged himself to tinker the worn-out bellows and cinder-sifter, as a bribe to encourage the stewards "to get the poker new bitted." He also frequently blacked his own shoes, and found no difficulty in acting according to the advice given to preachers when admitted into the Methodist connexion: "Do not affect the gentleman; and be not above cleaning your own shoes, or those of others, if need be." There being but one horse for four preachers, neither the riders nor their steed had much travelling comfort to boast of. Fuel was an almost unknown luxury; and the cabins in which the preachers lodged were often so wretched, that Dr. Clarke sometimes carried with him a parcel of coarse brown paper, and with a hammer and chisel payed up some of the larger crevices under the bed, to prevent him from total starvation. Add to all this, very homely food, and sometimes but little of it; which, however, the poor people most readily shared with him who came to their houses and their hearts with the Gospel of their salvation. But for such preaching, these people must have been almost totally destitute of religious instruction. It was by such means, adds Dr. Clarke, and often in such circumstances, through many privations, much pain and suffering, that "the Methodist preachers spread Scriptural Christianity throughout the land; and became the means of ameliorating the moral and civil condition of the great mass of its comparatively poor and almost totally neglected inhabitants." Dr. Clarke thus further sketches the picture: "Mr. Clarke preached in several new places, and among the rest in Diss, then very unpromising, but now the head of a circuit. He has gone frequently there, put up his horse at an inn, preached, paid for his horse, and rode several miles to preach at some other place, without any soul offering him even a morsel of bread: and such was the state of his finances that he and his horse could not both eat, and the poor brute must not fast. What could three pounds per quarter do, besides providing clothes, a few books, and all necessaries of life, the mere articles of food excepted; which were furnished at the different places where he preached. These twelve pounds per annum, out of which each preacher paid a guinea for the support of superannuated preachers and preachers' widows, was the whole salary of a Methodist itinerant preacher." Vol. i. p. 204. We do not quote such passages as these in the way of disparagement : far from it but rather with the utmost feeling of reverence for men who could consent thus to labour and to suffer for the spiritual welfare of their fellow-creatures; and often with the most ungrateful return; for Dr. Clarke says, that the preachers scarcely ever preached in Norwich without “a mob at the chapel doors," and at the greatest risk of personal violence. Nor do we think the accusation just, that the Methodists themselves were intentionally parsimonious towards their preachers; for most of them were very poor, and it was much that out of their pittance they could bestow even the little that was afforded. At the present day the sums raised by the Methodist community for the maintenance of their preachers, of public worship, of their sick and poor, and for general objects of Christian charity, more especially for Missionary exertions among the Heathen, are liberal almost beyond example. We heartily wish that all the professed members of our Church, in proportion to their numbers and ability, would make equal exertions. We should not then hear of the difficulties which so often prevail in getting churches built and endowed, in duly maintaining the clergy, and in keeping up our religious and charitable institutions. From Norfolk Mr. Clarke was drafted to Cornwall, with the allowance of only one guinea, added to half-a-crown which he had saved from his stipend, to defray his expenses during a journey of four hundred miles. The "keep of his horse," he says, " required nearly the whole of his cash;" its master lived on a penny loaf for his breakfast and dinner, with a "very light repast" in the evening. But he had abundant comfort and blessing in his labours; and among the first-fruits of his ministry was that remarkable and highly-gifted man, the late Samuel Drew, the author of several metaphysical works of singular ability, and, what was better still, "a man of primitive simplicity of manners, amiableness of disposition, piety towards God, and benevolence to men." Mr. Drew, like Bloomfield, and the late Mr. Gifford of the Quarterly Review, had followed the " gentle craft" of a shoemaker, which, for whatever reason, has furnished a larger number of literary aspirants than probably any other handicraft. Among the next memoranda of his life we find the following: He nearly loses his life by the falling of his horse; injures his health by his exertions; preaches 568 sermons, besides giving numerous exhortations, and travelling some hundreds of miles, in eleven months; turns his attention to chemistry; |