riods several of their children and many of their friends and neighbours have been hopefully converted to God.

She was among the first who united in the Methodist Church in that place (and this was the first christian Church of any religious denomination ever formed in the county, or for many miles around in that part of the country). Our beloved sister N. has uniform. ly and constantly maintained her first confidence in God. The next year after her conversion she experienced an uncommon degree of the sanctifying power of divine grace, a sense of which she retained, and of which she gave a uniform testimony by her holy life and godly conversation, to the day of her death.

It is not to be expected that every one who may possess an equal degree of grace, should be noticed in the manner she was among her christian friends. Few have equal natural talents and gifts to appear to that advantage. She possessed a good nat ural understanding, strong reasoning powers of mind, and a peculiar gift to speak of her religious views and experience. Yet it has been frequently observed by those who knew her, that she spoke with a peculiar unction, which was the fruit of an intimate acquaintance with the scriptures, and a close communion with God in his ordinances. Indeed, the ordinances of God were her delight. O ye survivors of our mother in Israel, I call you to witness how often you have heard her express her delight in the means of grace. How often have you heard her say that she never attended her class-meetings-her prayer meetings-her love-feasts and her sacraments, in vain. For twenty years has the writer had the happiness of meeting with you and our beloved departed sister in the use of the means of grace, in which we have often witnessed the presence and power of our divine master to comfort and bless us,-to him be all the glory. Mrs. N. was one of those who always appeared to have the cause of God lay near her heart. As she was always desiring and praying for a revival, she was among the first to encourage the hearts and strengthen the hands of the preachers who laboured on the circuit ;-and indeed were it proper I might with much pleasure mention the names of a number more in that place who were like minded to encourage the Lord's servants in their arduous labours. Although Mrs. N. delighted in public ordinances and the social means of grace, her religion was not confined to these. How much she cared for her family, and how ardently she laboured for their good, is known and recollected by

them. When her husband was gone, it was her constant custom to attend family devotions. The writer of this memoir has frequently found her with her Bible in her hand, and her chil dren around her, listening to her admonitions, instructions, and encouragements. It was her constant practice to read a portion of the Holy Scriptures in the morning; and her family well knew her private devotions were not neglected. She would grieve and weep if any professor of religion stepped aside from the path of duty, or grew cold and remiss in the ways of religion. "I have often witnessed (said one of her children) with pain and anxiety, her falling tears when about her family concerns, which led me to enquire the cause, when she would break out in some such language as this: "O how can I help weeping to see souls decline from the ways of religion, and turn back to the world, and wound the precious cause of the Redeemer." I can well remember when I was but a child, her earnest prayers and intercessions at a throne of grace for her tender offspring, that their minds might be early impressed with a sense of the importance of religion, the worth of their souls, and the necessity of being prepared to live to the honour of God here, and to live with him. hereafter. She often observed days of fasting and prayer, in which she was more particularly engaged for a revival of religion, for the prosperity and happiness of the Church. These often proved seasons of refreshment to her own soul; so that from the abundance of her heart, her mouth spake of what she felt and enjoyed in her private devotions. "I never (continued the same child) can be sufficiently thankful for her continued watchfulness over me. Whenever she saw me or any of the children step out of the way, she never failed to give gentle and salutary reproof; particularly for the neglect of duty."

(To be concluded in the next.)

MISCELLANEOUS.

OF VOLITION.

From Smith's Lectures on moral and political Philosophy, deliverered in the College of New-Jersey.

THE will is that power of the soul, and volition the exercise of that power which is the immediate cause of action in man. Propensities, affections, and other active principles in our nature, may stimulate the mind to action, and thus prove motives to the exercise of its voluntary powers. These internal emotions, therefore, and the various external objects which tend to incite them, may be regarded as primary and remote causes of our actions; but the immediate and proximate cause, is volition.

The nature of the will is understood, as far as we understand any of the acts or powers of our own minds, only by consciousness. The plainest and most unlettered man perfectly conceives the meaning of these phrases, I will, and I will not. And the nature of this faculty, as of every other power of the soul, is understood only in its acts.

The principal enquiry on this subject which merits your attention, relates to the freedom of the will, as it is generally expressed; or, as it ought, perhaps, to be more definitely stated, the freedom of the mind in her volitions.—It is an enquiry on which volumes have been written by the most acute and distinguished metaphysicians, and moralists. And, as they have embraced directly contradictory opinions upon the question, or have come in their conclusions to opposite results, it is probable that there is some peculiar subtlety in the subject, or that they have set out in the discussion on erroneous principles, or embarrassed it by the introduction of the peculiar tenets of their respective sects of philosophy or religion.-One party maintain not only that the will is free in acting, but that it determines its own acts. Another party contend that the will is, in all cases, determined by motives; that it cannot act in any other way; and that, therefore, it must necessarily be determined by the strongest motive, or the last motive in the view of the mind at the time of acting.That is, laying aside all consideration of the interior energy

or power of the soul over its own acts, the will is, by a separate mechanism, subjected to the impulse and control of motives, as the water wheel, to use Dr. Priestly's own analogy, is to the force and gravity of the fluid that turns it round.

One would think, indeed, that it is a question of the utmost simplicity, and the most obvious solution. It is a question strictly of experience; and to experience alone we ought to appeal for its decision. Every man is conscious to himself that he acts frecly; and that, in all ordinary cases, when he is not under the impulse of some violent passion, or under the commanding influence of some inveterate habit, he has it in his power to pursue a directly contrary course of action, from that to which he is invited by the present predominant motive. But philosophers have opposed speculation to fact; and commencing with an erroneous principle, that the acts of the will must be determined solely, and irresistibly by the motives before it, as they are presented in the order of nature, they have been led to conclusions contrary to nature and experience. We seem to be free, they say, yet, we are only barne along by a powerful stream, to which we make no resistance because it concurs with our inclinations; but which, otherwise, it would be vain to attempt to resist.

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In the beginning, permit me to observe, that the decision of this question involves considerations of no small importance to morals. The doctrine of necessity, when pursued to its ultimate consequences, appears to destroy all moral distinctions, and to away merit from virtue, and demerit from vice. I am aware that notwithstanding the errors of speculation, nature will often find means to enforce the practical dictates of truth and reason. Many of those philosophers who have most strenuously contended to bind the moral world under the chain of a speculative necessity, not only obey the laws of virtue themselves, but, would reprehend any departure from them in others, no less severely than the advocates of a rational liberty. It is, however, too much to be apprehended that the greater part of the modern disciples of this school, have intended to annihilate the true distinction between vice and virtue, except so far as it may be made a convenient political engine of public order. On the regulation of individual manners it has certainly an unfavourable aspect. Those writers who have embraced the system of necessity, connecting it at the same time with the principles of religion, have endeavoured, except Dr. Priestly, and a few others, to state a dis

tinction between physical and moral necessity. After all the explanations, however, which have been given of these phrases, they appear to amount only to this, that the one is the necessity of matter, the other, the necessity of mind. The consequences of the doctrine on the merit and demerit of virtue and vice, seem not to have been, clearly at least, guarded against by the friends of the latter phraseology. If by moral necessity were intended to be expressed the extreme difficulty of changing, or correcting old and inveterate habits, we could admit it as a justifiable figure of speech. But if it be he meant to indicate a real necessity, in vicious men of acting iminorally, resulting from a depraved disposition of the heart, which is natural, constitutional, incurable.

I see not how the term, so circumstanced, at all relieves the consequences, as to the accountability or guilt of the agent imputable to the principal of physical necessity. To say that the course of immoral action being voluntary, is therefore criminal, is merely an abuse of words, when the will itself, in the language of these writers, is infused by the author of our being; at best is the necessary result of the moral constitution of man.*

The controversies concerning liberty and necessity have been extended to so great a length, that it would be impossible, in a course of lectures like the present, to give even a concise abridgment which would be intelligible, and satisfactory, of the various reasonings which have been held on one side and on the other. They have, besides, been so mingled with the doctrines of religion, converting the simplicity of the gospel into a system of abstruse metaphysics, that it is become almost dangerous to touch a subject on which each party claims a merit for detecting a latent heterodoxy under the most guarded and philosophic expression of truth. We often see, moreover, speculations so bold, and hear a language so presumptuous, with regard to the power,

*It will be easily perceived that, in these reflections, there is an oblique reference to the extravagant, not to say atheistical tenets of some metaphysical divines. I mean not, however, to enter into any religious discussion. The depravity of human nature, which the scriptures teach, and which experience proves, I am very far from denying, but would strenuously assert. But can any moral necessity be attached to man's condition of depravity, which was not attached to his original state of innocence and perfection? Or do these writers forget their own principle that man has been placed in a new state of trial, under a dispensation of grace? But can any trial be imposed on a subject bound under the chains of an invincible necesstiy, though softened under the deceptive name of moral ?