CHAP. XII.

CONSIDERATION.

In a short period after the Rector's visit Osborne said to his son-To-morrow is Sunday; it is my intention to hear the Rector: I have been much pleased with him in the parlour; perhaps I shall be equally pleased with him in the church.

On the morrow morning the Osbornes were in their seat before the service began. The devout and impressive manner in which the Rector read the service was highly pleasing to Osborne. In the pulpit the Rector spoke with great seriousness: his sermon was solid and judicious, clear and argumentative; and it was addressed to the heart and conscience of every attentive hearer. He used no arts of oratory; he adorned his paragraphs with no splendid diction or rhetorical figures and flourishes, and he carefully avoided a useless profusion of language.

Osborne was so pleased in the morning that he resolved to hear him again in the afternoon, when similar excellence was exhibited, and similar approbation gained. In the evening Osborne retired to his library to indulge in serious meditation, to re

view in privacy what he had heard in public, and to commit to writing his own reflections. Our readers, it may be presumed, will not be displeased to hear what they were.

"In considering religion, I may examine and compare natural and revealed religion; the former is, at first view, specious and pleasing; the latter seems to have some repulsive features: but an apparent aspect may be delusive, and can form no just ground for disregarding it. To look upon God as the Supreme Being, the Creator and Upholder of all things, must fill the mind with noble conceptions. What is more pleasing than to view man as the immortal child of the immortal Father, watched by his eye, protected by his power, and fed by his bounty? A system of morality which teaches us that we please this great Being by virtuous conduct, is agreeable to the human mind. We live in the light of revelation, but we never listen with greater pleasure to its instructions than when its peculiarities are either veiled or omitted, and when nothing is advanced which contradicts our natural sentiments.

"But this accommodating mode of treating revelation must be unjust for if revelation be from God, of which there can be no reasonable doubt, it must be received by every one as it is, without any timid concealment, injurious refinement, or perverse adulteration. In revelation I see a God of unspotted purity and inflexible justice: I there see man an alien

ated creature, a corrupt and guilty transgressor: I hear of atonement, justification, and sanctification; of mortification and strenuous exertions; in short, I there find doctrines of a peculiar nature, and which have no place in the system of natural religion. But what does this prove? Certainly it does not prove, that revelation is false; for the evidence of fact cannot be subverted by the assumptions of reason; it therefore proves that natural religion is partial, defective, and incomplete. The conclusion, then, is incontrovertible-He who rejects revelation is unjust to God and to himself.

"I have professed Christianity: but I have been far more a disciple of natural religion than of that which I professed to receive. I have vaguely admitted some of the doctrines of the Bible; but I have not given any close and serious attention to what must be accounted its great and distinguishing doctrines. Nor is this all: for I have cherished strong prejudices against those exhibitions of Christianity in which its primary discoveries have been most lucidly proposed and strenuously maintained. Such prejudices must, from the nature of the case, be equally unjust and unreasonable.

"If from sentiments and opinions I look to mankind, there is a great diversity of character. Some men are careless and thoughtless in sacred matters; some men esteem religion, cultivate it, are more or less influenced by it, and labour to diffuse it through

the world. With some, religion is comparatively nothing; with others, it seems to be the great business of life. As to the friends and advocates of religion, I cannot speak of their particular tenets, of their wisdom or indiscretion, but who can question the grandeur of their object, or the benevolence of their intentions! If man be a spiritual and moral agent, which no one disputes, he cannot be too religious, or too desirous of promoting its interests. Those who regard religion, (admitting them to be honest and sincere,) attending to it in all the peculiarity of its doctrines, of its moral operations, and of its holy demands, must be acting the wisest, safest, and most rational part, however they may be ridiculed by some or calumniated by others.

"Of the truly religious character, I find that my views are at present very indistinct. I reproach myself for my past neglect; I lament my folly; but let me endeavour to correct what may not yet be irremediable. The one and only guide of man in the momentous things of eternity, is the volume of revelation. Let this be the commencement of a new period of my life. I will daily examine the oracles of divine truth: I will daily offer my supplications to the Father of lights, who hears the devout and instructs the ignorant.

"Man is born to die; and man is born to live for ever. Man is now in a world where matter is the abounding and prevailing element; but man will

soon be where spirit shall preponderate, and where the shadows and clouds of time will be for ever swept away from his view. An eternity, to be spent in the glories of heaven, or in the darkness and misery of the world of woe, demands our most serious thought. It is folly, it is madness, to live as we choose, to yield to our passions and prejudices, to be guided by the sentiments of the world, to copy the example of those who are strangers to reflection. True piety, in whatever it may particularly consist, is true wisdom. Let it henceforward be the subject of my daily and most deliberate consideration."

Thus Osborne wrote down his thoughts, reviewed the paper, dated it, folded it up, and put it in his desk. With the solemnity and tenderness of a thoughtful and anxious mind he offered his supplications to Him who seeth in secret. It was an hour not to be forgotten. Ye who condescend to read the moral history of Osborne ! was there any thing weak or absurd in his conduct? If there was, we allow you to laugh at him; but if there was not, may we not be allowed to say? Go ye, and do likewise.