Maker's excellence; to himself a mystery which he cannot explain, he beholds him self encompassed on all hands by doubts and darkness; his wisdom folly, and his researches vain. Pursuing a happiness which eludes his grasp; following the phantoms of wealth and of grandeur; in possession he feels the emptiness of all that before he had desired, and laments that the path of obscurity, and the path of glory, lead equally to the grave.

“To a being thus circumstanced, it might seem unnecessary to recommend the virtue of humility; for surely ' pride was not made for man, nor a high look for him that was born of a woman.'" pp. 229–231.

From the twenty-second sermon, "on the Advantages of Affliction,' we shall present our readers with the only remaining quotations we shall think it necessary to produce as illustrations of Dr. Moodie's style of composition.

"Much of the virtue and happiness of life depends on our adjusting the strength of our affections to the real worth of the objects by which they are excited. If we estimate too highly the riches, the honours, or the pleasures of the world, by this false judgment, the whole system of our conduct will be perverted. Hence will proceed excessive eagerness in the pursuit, excessive indulgence in the enjoyment, and excessive regret on the removal, of those advantages whose value our fancies have magnified, and in which we place our supreme delight. From this fatal source, how many vices and miseries arise! If we behold the covetous sacrificing their integrity and honour for the sake of some pitiful gain; if we behold the ambitious following the phantom of power, through scenes of oppression and cruelty; if we behold the votary of unlaw ful pleasure extinguishing every generous principle in the gulph of low sensuality, or the worldling overwhelmed with unmanly sorrow, by every trivial disappointment which he sustains; is it not, that in the eyes of such persons as these, the profits, the distinctions, and enjoyments of life, are clothed with a thousand imaginary attractions which captivate their unwary hearts? In the day of our prosperity, it is in vain that we are reminded how insufficient those objects are in which we have suffered our happiness to centre. While fancy spreads her colouring around them; while passion prompts to pursuit, and health enlivens our enjoyment; the sober admonitions of wis dom are heard with indifference and con

tempt, and the warnings which religion gives concerning the vanity of all earthly advantages, are regarded as the complainings of gloomy and peevish spirits, who vilify pleasures which they never knew. But in the hour of adversity, our imaginations return from their wanderings, and things appear as they are. When we are stretched on the bed of languishing, oppressed with sickness, or racked with pain, and looking around with anxious eye to every quarter from which comfort may be derived; of what avail to us now are the pleasures which we are unable to taste; the honours which confess themselves insufficient to lift the drooping head; or the riches which cannot procure for us, even a momentary respite from our sufferings? Miserable comforters are they all! It is now that our eyes are opened. The world is presented to our view in all its native emptiness. We perceive how precarious and unsatisfying those enjoyments are, on which we have hitherto placed our affections. With pity we be hold the inconsiderate multitude pursuing a thousand airy vanities; building their hap piness on the swimming sceue; and sacrificing the unspeakable joys of virtue, for the sake of those uncertain advantages, of which the most trifling accident may deprive them, and which can afford them no support in the hour when they stand the most in need of consolation. Taught, in the school of adversity, how to estimate the objects of the world, we return to the business of life, fortified against many temptations by which others are betrayed into guilt. The attraetions of pleasure, the glare of wealth, and the splendour of power, lose much of their influence on our minds. We regard them as fleeting and unsubstantial forms, which we will no longer pursue with immoderate care, or purchase by the ruin of our integrity. We seek them only in subordination to higher and more important interests; we labour to establish our happiness on a foundation which no earthly disaster can shake." pp. 400-403.

"One would imagine, indeed, that pros. perity were the season most favourable to the exercise of piety. When Providence smiles most graciously on our lot; when we are blessed with health, and honour, and abundance, and all the outward means of felicity; it is then that our condition calls for the liveliest gratitude to Heaven, and that our hearts should be most strongly disposed to acknowledge the goodness of the Almighty..

"But, alas! the heart of man is seldom affected as it ought to be; for it is then

mons.

tences, in this well-sized octavo, which would not fairly harmonize with the theology of Pelagius or Socinus, were collected together into one place, they would not oc cupy three pages of one of his serNor do we merely complain that Dr. Moodie is almost wholly si lent respecting those great doctrines Christianity, which not only the Church of which he was a member, but the Confessions of every other Protestant Church, following the guidance of Scripture, have pronounced to be essential and fundamental;—or that he has chosen to dwell exclusively in the lower regions, as it were, of evangelical truth; on those minor topics, in which Socinians and enlightened heathens are found to accord with the Apostles of Christianity-although such a proceeding were hardly to be vindicated in a single sermon, much Jess in twenty-four sermons, evidently written with much care and deliberation :-but we have further to complain, that the volume before us conveys views of the state and character of man which appear to us to be fundamentally erroneous and unscriptural, as well as irreconcileable with the formularies their author had solemnly subscribed, and according to which he had engaged to model his instructions,

One of the most prominent doctrines of the Confession of Faith of the Church of Scotland-and we may add, of every other confession of faith, nay, of the Scriptures themselves—is the fall, and consequent corruption of man. Now we do not complain, although we are fairly entitled to complain, that Dr. Moodie no where propounds this doctrine explicitly to his congregation; on no occasion reminds them of the corrupt and polluted nature they inherit, or of the indispensable pecessity thence arising of the renewal of their souls by divine grace. Our charge distinctly is, that he takes a view of the state and character of man which stands in opposition to

this doctrine, and which, in our apprehension, is subversive of the Gospel of Christ. But let Dr, Moodie himself speak:

"Man, by the constitution of his nature, is evidently a religious being." "Reverence, admiration, and love, are emotions

which arise spontaneously in the soul at the view of what is great, and excellent, and good," p. 131.

He tells us, further, of persons of "a certain delicate sensibility of soul," whose minds are "prepared for receiving the impressions of religion," and who have only to turn their attention to the nature and work of the Supreme Being, that reverence, and admiration, and gratitude, and every devout emotion, may be awakened in their breasts." p. 132. This correspondence between the attributes of God and the affections of the human heart, we are further assured," is established by nature itself; and they need only to be placed before us, that every religious feeling may be excited." p. 134. Nay,"by the constitution of human nature, all the interesting events of life have an influence, which is almost irresistible, in raising the soul to God." p. 136. "You are formed by nature," says Dr. M. to the splendid circle that surrounded himthe fashionable world of the Scotch capital: "you are formed by nature for receiving the impressions of religion; and the affections of your heart accord with the objects which religion presents." p. 142. Then we hear of virtue flowing native from pure hearts;" of the virtuous "seeing the actions of their brethren through the mirror of their own purer souls;" of minds which "retain all their native simplicity and innocence;" with much of the same wretched jargon, which we hoped had long since been banished from the pulpit, and transferred to the exclusive use of the Minerva Press, One more extract on this subject, and we have done.

"Our affections are adapted, with ads

mirable wisdom, to the objects which religion presents; and these objects need only to be suggested to our minds by the works of creation around us, by the great events of life, or by the institutions of religious worship, that the devout impression may be felt. "Man is a religious being. There is an altar erected in his heart by the hand of God himself, and the living fire needs only to be touched, that the incense may blaze to heaven." p. 139.

After having read these quotations, no intelligent reader will require from us any laboured proof that these sermons have little or no claim to be denominated Christian, supposing the great end of Christianity to be what we have stated it to be,— to proclaim salvation to perishing sinners through faith in Christ, and by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. For what place can be found for any of the doctrines which this view of the Gospel involves, in a scheme which is built on the native purity of the human heart, and its natural adaptation to religion? Accordingly, we find in these sermons no expositions of the indispensable necessity of repentance and conversion of the heart from sin to holiness; no warnings to flee from the wrath to come; no urgent entreaties to have recourse, by faith, to the mercies of a dying Saviour, or to the grace of the Divine Sanctifier; no warm appeals to the conscience; no energetic remonstrances addressed to the understanding or the affections, either of the proud speculatists, the busy worldlings, or the gay votaries of dissipation, who crowded the pews of St. Andrew's Church. In the pages of Dr. Moodie we find the Gospel of Christ divested of almost all its awful sanctions, its efficacious motives, its enlivening hopes, and its divine consolations. It is frittered down, not merely to a consistent scheme of moral instruction; this might be read with some profit; but to a strange and incoherent patch-work of scraps of Christian morality, grounded too often on worldly motives, and directed too often to worldly ends. In short, if we were called upon to express an opinion

respecting the tendency and effect of such preaching as is here exemplified, we should not hesitate to pronounce it to be adverse to the best interests of man; conveying to his mind false and delusive representations of his own state, and hiding from his view not only his real misery and danger, but the remedies which have been provided for both, by the infinite mercy of his God, and the dying love of his crucified Redeemer.

A Sermon preached in the Parish ·Church of Cheadle, June 3, 1814; at the Visitation of the Rev. Robert Nares, M. A., Archdeacon of Staf ford. By the Rev. T. COTTERill, M. A., Minister of Lane. End, Staffordshire; and late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge." Printed at the Request of the Archdeacon and Clergy. London Hatchard. Price 1s. 6d. pp. 39.

Ir the state of the national church were estimated by the general character of Visitation Charges and Sermons, the verdict of an impartial reader of those publications would communicate little gratification to such persons as, either from political or religious considerations, wish for her extension and perpetuity. The majority of these addresses are confined, indeed, to subjects understood to be ecclesiastical, and therefore fitly to be pointed ad clerum; but the latitude thus allowed to prelates, archdeacons, and inferior officers of the church, appears to be all but immeasurable. In various instances, within immediate recollection, the charge or the sermon has not contained a paragraph which the audience could, in any practical degree, appropriate. It was an address delivered at a visitation, but not to the visited. The Separatists, against whom the speaker urged his severe periods, were far, far away; the Catholics were all at confession; and as to the Enthu

tianity, he is yet ever willing to look for such a modicum of good as may serve some practical purpose: for example, a hint capable of being expanded, within his own breast, into a rule of duty; an illustration tending to brighten a subject previ ously obscure; or an article furnish

It would naturally be concluded, that the visitor and his coadjutor possessed such a measure of pastoral sympathy, as might, at least, persuade them to minister to their fellows something of the stimulus, the warning, the direction, or the consolation, which every overseer of souls will receive with gratitude; provided-and it is necessary to add this limitation-he makes his parish no sinecure; but, in preparing for the final audit, feels the need of being, at one time, awakened from the insensibility inherent in his nature, and at another, the almost equal need of being consoled in cir cumstances of failure and perplexity which, with all humility, he cannot assert to arise from his own want of sincerity. A character of this sort is, however, generally sent empty away from the annual ceremony of a visitation. He also "looks up, and is not fed;" and the disappointment is more bitter, because he wishes to return to the subordinate flock with greater ability to satisfy their hunger; and by a kind of spiritual transfer, to impart to them the whole of what has been bestowed upon himself. Remembering the affectionate injunction delivered to the earliest teachers of the Christian church, by the Chief Shepherd, Freely ye have received, freely give, he would gladly feel its divine reality as often as the successors of those teachers appear in the chair of authority: and though conscious of the inexpediency of expecting great things from human institutions, however consecrated by the profession and usages of Chris

tion to his original stock ;-but if, instead of being favoured with these minute benefits, he is compelled to endure a repulse, in the form of a charge or sermon, consumed on to pics which are better discussed by a legislative assembly, or dilated into a polemical pamphlet, he finds himself in the situation of a son who asks bread, and receives a stone.

To pass, however, from the subject of unproductive visitations to the discourse before us, we have a pleasure, in some measure correspon dent to its excellence, in selecting Mr. Cotterill's pastoral address as a sterling specimen of clerical discretion, fidelity, and personal sympathy with the pains and pleasures of his companions in the ministry. Here is no declamation against sectaries, which sectaries would never read; no adulation to offend and grieve the faithful servant, and to strengthen the delusions of the faithless; no shallow lecture on the evidences of Christianity, read to persons who of all mankind profess to be farthest removed from scepticism; no wandering in the labyrinths of political speculation; no complimentary review of recent publications; and, finally, here is not a sermon, the beginning, middle, and end of which might change places, without the least disadvantage to its arrange ment, perspicuity, and usefulness.

The positive character of Mr. Cot❤ terill's discourse will be gathered from the succeeding extracts.

"I come now to the personal conduct of Lord should rest with no ordinary lustre on the Christian minister. The glory of the him who waiteth at the altar, and ministereth in holy things. The priests of Israel were said to be sanctified unto God: and the head of their order wore on his mitre