have ever been attacked, by its most inveterate foes, is harmless, compared with this dotage of intellect. There are, however, but few Evangelical Ministers capable of thus disgracing religion; and none have been more forward to expose the folly of it, than the friends of Evangelical piety. In the Christian Observer, there is a letter from the Rev. Peter O'Leary, a Roman Catholic priest, to the editor of that work, giving an account of a sermon preached by himself, upon this very parable, in the true spirit of allegorical romance; which mode of interpretation, he says he adopts, because it is highly favourable to the interests of his Church. The man who fell among the thieves, he says, is the Catholic Church. The thieves were Luther and Calvin, who stripped the Church of her rites, ceremonies, and doctrines. With respect to the Church being left half dead, his interpretation is almost the same with that of the Evangelical divines, formerly mentioned. The priest and the Levite represent two of the Monkish orders, who were able to effect the recovery of the Church. The good Samaritan he very ingeniously proves to be no other than the Pope.-This excellent discourse of Priest O' Leary, in which he has, with great force, wrested the illustrations from the hands of the Evangelical preacher, and turned the materials to his own use, is a happy specimen of the benefits to be derived from the immeasurable latitude of fanciful interpretation. This specimen of Mr. O'Leary's powers for fanatical illustration, is said to have excited in a high degree the indignation of one Clergyman; but we cannot help thinking that it gave 'much satisfaction to all men of sober fancy, and correct understanding. Ridentem dicere verum quid velat? Some men will feel the force of ridicule, who cannot be

brought to feel the force of argument; and men may be laughed out of their follies, who cannot be reasoned out of them.

There is another species of folly, nearly related to the other, to which some Evangelical ministers, both out of the Church and in it, are said to have given indulgence. When they represent the love of the blessed Saviour to his Church, and the individuals of which it is composed; or the gratitude which this unbounded love kindles in the heart of a Christian, they call in the mystical dialogue of the Song of Solomon, and employ its metaphors and similies, many of which, to us at least, are either not very intelligible, or so exceedingly remote from those to which we are accustomed in the writings of the New Testament, that we have no commentary to explain them. In other words, they call in the darkest part of the Old Testament, to illustrate the glories and beauties of the Gospel; as if the sun needed a candle to light up, or to display his beams. We would fain ask such ministers of Christianity, Is there any thing wrapped up in the mystical allusions of the Song of Solomon, which the New Testament bas not placed in a clearer light, and exhibited with a glory infinitely superior? If there is not, why then do you seek to throw under a cover what the Gospel has unveiled, and to envelope in darkness what it has brought to light? Why, instead of illustrating what is dark by what is clear, do you seek to hide what is lucid, by bringing a cloud over it, and when life and immortality, and a Saviour's dying love are set before us in the blaze of day, do you bring us back again to the shadows after the substance has chased them away. A predilection for the eastern allegorical style of composition, how well so ever that style was suited to the country and to the time in

It

which the Song of Solomon was written, is, in these times, a poor evidence of a man's possessing either a solid understanding, or a correct taste. How extremely different is the style of our Saviour, and of his Apostles, and Evangelists. We do not, for a moment, question either the Authenticity or the Inspiration of the Song of Solomon. It is unquestionably a part of the Canon of Scripture, which the Christian Church has received from the Jews, to whom were committed the lively Oracles of God. had its use, when the great doctrines of our Redemption were wrapped up in covers. To us it has its use, when we see in it a rude sketch of the glorious salvation the Gospel has unfolded. It is worthy of our particular observation, that neither our Saviour himself, nor any of his Apostles or Evangelists, in the New Testament, have either quoted it, or employed any of its peculiar images; and surely the similes which they use, and the language in which they spoke, are the consecrated vehicles of Evangelical instruction. We frequently find, that a rank imagination and a perplexed intellect, are the general qualifications of those who are fondest of this allegorical mode of preaching; and there have been various instances of their approaching even to indelicacy, by saying that which made every body blush for them, though they had not reflection enough to blush for themselves.

Another charge brought against the discourses of the Evangelical Clergy is, that the paucity of the topics they embrace, and the weight they lay upon them, generally confine their instructions to a few subjects, and prohibit that ample range into which a more extended and generous system would invite their excursions. That the great truths of the Gospel are reduced to a few first principles, is a position that cannot be denied; and, considering the

vast importance attached to them, this paucity is among those considerations which most forcibly illustrate the excellence of the Christian Faith. Had its leading articles of belief been multifarious and complicated, the attention they would have required from those who embrace it, must have been more divided, and consequently must have been more distracted. The fewness of its influencing topics is, therefore, a circumstance that particularly adapts it to the condition of man, whose mind is liable to be broken or overwhelmed, by a multiplicity of great and important objects. The simplicity by which the Christian system is distinguished from the complex and folded intricacies of human Science, is wonderfully adapted to the weaknes of the human mind. Neither great nor brilliant talents are necessary to qualify a man for entering into the views, and for acting upon the principles it 'inculcates. The love of our Creator, of our Redeemer, of our Sanctifier; and, in subordination to the love of God, the love of ourselves, in unison with the love of human beings in general, are the substance of all its requisitions. The possession of these dispositions is called in Scripture a single eye; and he in whom they dwell has his whole body full of light. But notwithstanding the simplicity of the motives that animate Christian obedience, the subjects it embraces are complicated and many, and yet so simplified by the plain instructions it gives, that nothing but the absence, or the imperfection of the principle, can cause a deviation from the practice. The way-faring man, though a fool, shall not err therein.

If, by the paucity of the topics which Evangelical instruction contains, it is insinuated that the public discourses of its ministers are generally confined to the doctrines of Grace, and the promises of the Gospel, without

enforcing the necessity of the tempers the Gospel is designed to form, the dispositions it is intended to superinduce, and the relative duties it enjoins, the charge is of a serious and most awful knd, and one to which every preacher of the Gospel will do well to attend. He who confines his attention to what have, very improperly, been sometimes called the doctrines of Christianity, in distinction from its precepts and laws, (for all the precepts and laws of Christianity are, equally with the other, Christian doctrines), is implicated in the charge of neglecting to preach the Gospel, as much as he, who, overlooking the great truths that distinguish Christianity from Natural Religion, inculcates a morality detached from the Grace of the Gospel. As neither of them rightly divides the word of Truth, it is impossible that either the one or the other can allot to every man his portion of spiritual food. The congregation of the former may grow in acquaintance with a sort of profile Christianity; they may grow in attachment to separate parts of the system, and, by mistaking a part for the whole, may cheat themselves into a belief that they have attained the Christian character, merely from the orthodoxy of their sentiments. But they are in the greatest danger of contracting the spirit, if not the tenets of Antinomianism, and of substituting a few articles of their Creed, for universal holiness and obedience. This sort of religion is equally fatal to the best interests of men, as that which rests upon decorous manners without vital principle, and it is so much the worse, as it turns the noblest dispensation of the grace of God into licentiousness. The congregation of the

latter may improve in the habits of a more correct deportment, and in all the studied decencies of polished life, but having no root, their religion, in time of trouble, will languish and die.