that this way of salvation magnifies, beyond compare, the divine law, is no less honourable to all the divine attributes, and exhibits the ever-blessed Mediator in the most illustrious and the most delightful view. All these considerations, under the influence of the eternal Spirit, have determined my judgment and established my faith: so that I trust, neither the subtilties of wit, nor the sneers of ridicule, nor any other artifice, shall ever be able to separate me from the grace and righte ousness which are in Jesus Christ. Let me now, by way of conclusion, review that awful subject which introduced the letter. Let me suppose the Judge, who is at the door, actually come; the great and terrible day which is hasting forward, really commenced. Hark! the trumpet sounds the universal summons: the living are struck with a death-like astonishment; the dead start from their silent abodes. See, the whole earth takes fire, the sun is turned into darkness, and the stars fall from their spheres! Behold, the Lord Jesus comes, with myriads of his angels! the judgment is set, and the books are opened. Observe those exemplary Christians, whose sentiments I have been collecting. They renounce themselves, and rely on their glorious Surety. Methinks I hear them say, each as they quit their beds of dust, 'I will go forth' from the grave in thy strength,' O blessed Jesus; and' at the decisive tribunal will make mention of thy righteousness only. At the same time will you, Theron, or shall I, stand forth and declare The sacred writers, I observe, often remind their readers of this grand event; often display this delightful, dreadful scene. Their manner of speaking shews, that they themselves lived under the habitual and joyful expectation of it; as persons who were looking for, and hastening to, the coming of the day of God.' They represent it, not only as sure, but near, yea, very near, and upon the point to take place. The Lord is at hand: the Judge is at the door. Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.' The last passage is the most spirited and emphatical of them all, but has lost much of its emphasis by the English version. It is in the original, pov o dov: a beautiful pleonasm, by which the Septuagint, though too often inaccurate in translating the prophetic text, have very happily expressed Isaiah's yy, which may, I think, be rendered in our language, yet a very, very little while.' Heb. x. 37. Isa. xxvi. 20. before the innumerable multitude of anxious sinners, and adoring seraphs, Let those pusillanimous crea. tures fly for refuge to their Saviour's righteousness: we will confide in works, in accomplishments of our own. We are the men who have personally kept the divine law, and want no supposititious obedience from another. Let the eye that glances through immensity, and penetrates the recesses of the heart, let that holy and omniscient eye examine our temper, and sift our conduct. We are bold to risk our souls, and all their immortal interests, on the issue of such a scrutiny.' Perhaps your mind is impressed with this solemn scene, and your thoughts recoil at such daring presumption. If so, it will be proper for me to withdraw, and leave you to your own meditations. At such moments to obtrude on your company, would render me the troublesome and officious, rather than The respectful and affectionate, ASPASIO. LETTER VI. Theron takes a cursory view of the habitable creation-Traces the perfections of nature through the earth, air, and fire-Admirable construction and advantageous effects of these elements. DEAR ASPASIO, Theron to Aspasio. THE last evening was one of the finest I ever saw. According to my custom, I made an excursion into the open fields, and wanted nothing to complete the satisfaction but my friend's company. I could not but observe, how much your improving conversation heightened the charms of nature: when religion applied philosophy, every thing was instructive as well as pleasing. Not a breeze swept over the plains to clear the sky and cool the air, but it tended also to disperse our doubts and enliven our faith in the supreme all-sufficient Good. Not a cloud tinged the firmament with radiant colours, * Tu quod abes excepto, cætera lætus. or amused the sight with romantic shapes, but we beheld a picture of the present world, of its fading acquisitions and fantastic joys, in the mimic forms aud the transitory scene. Even the weakest of the insect tribe that skim the air in sportive silence, addressed us with the strongest incitements, and gave us the loudest calls to be active in our day and useful in our generation: they cried, at least when you lent them your tongue, Such is vain life, an idle flight of days, A still delusive round of sickly joys, A scene of little cares and trifling passions, How often at the approach of sober eve have we stole along the cloisters of a sequestered bower, attentive to the tale of some querulous current, that seemed to be struck with horror at the awful gloom, and complained with heavier murmurs as it passed under the blackening shades and along the root-obstructed channel: or else, far from the babbling brook, and softly treading the grassy path, we listened to the nightingale's song; while every gale held its breath, and all the leaves forbore their motion that they might neither drown nor interrupt the melodious woe: from both which pensive strains you endeavoured to temper and chastise the exuberant gaiety of my spirits. You convinced me that true joy is a serious thing, is the child of sedate thought, not the spawn of intemperate mirth; nursed, not by the sallies of dissolute merriment, but by the exercise of serene contemplation. Sometimes at the gladsome return of morn we have ascended an airy eminence, and hailed the new-born day, and followed with our delighted eye the mazes of some glittering stream: here, rushing with im petuous fury from the mountain's side, foaming over the rifted rock and roaring down the craggy steep, impatient, as it were, to get free from such rugged paths and mingle with the beauties of the lower vale: there, slackening its headlong career, and smoothing its eddies into an even flow, while deep embosomed in the verdant mead, it glides through the cherished and * Res severa est verum gaudium.-Sen. smiling herbage; sometimes lost amidst closing willows, sometimes emerging with fresh beauty from the leafy covert; always roving with an air of amorous complacency, as though it would caress the fringed banks and flowery glebe. Reminded by this watery monitor of that constancy and vigour with which the affections should move towards the great centre of happiness, Christ Jesus; of that determined ardour with which we should break through the entanglements of temptatation and obstacles of the world, in order to reach our everlasting rest; and of the mighty difference between the turbulent, the frothy, the precipitate gratifications of vice, and the calm, the substantial, the permanent delights of religion. Or else, with eager view we have surveyed the extensive prospect, and wandered over all the magnifi. cence of things; an endless variety of graceful objects and delightful scenes, each soliciting our chief regard, every one worthy of our whole attention, all conspiring to touch the heart with a mingled transport of wonder, of gratitude, and of joy. So that we have returned from our rural expedition, not as the spendthrift from the gaming table, cursing his stars and raving at his ill luck, gulled of his money and the derided dupe of sharpers; not as the libertine from the house of wantonness, surfeited with the rank debauch,dogged by shame," goaded by remorse, with a thousand recent poisons *Solomon, in order to deter unwary youth from those sinks of uncleanness, represents the harlot under the character of a pestilent hag, or baleful sorceress: Her feet go down to death,' Prov. v. 5; her house is the high road to hell,' Prov. vii. 27; yea, her guests are in the depths of hell,' Prov. ix. 18. The second clause seems to be emphatical. The original expression is in the plural number I choose therefore to render it, not simply the road,' but more largely the high road;' from which many other ways of guilt branch out, in which many other paths of ruin coincide. "There, murder is often known to drench her dagger in blood, and robbery forms the rash resolve which ends in the ignominious halter: there, intemperance daily brews the bowl which enervates the constitution, and transforms the man into a beast; while disease, pale, cadaverous, noisome disease, anticipates the putrefaction of the grave, and causes the wretched martyrs of vice to rot even above ground. Well may every one who loves life, and would fain see good days, cry out with a mixture of detestation and dread, O my soul, come not thou into their horrid haunts!" Dii meliora plis, erroremque hostibus illum.-Virg. tingling in his veins; but we returned as ships of commerce from the golden continent or the spicy islands, with new accessions of sublime improvement and solid pleasure; with a deeper veneration for the almighty Creator, with a warmer sense of his unspeakable favours, and with a more inflamed desire to know him now by faith, and after this life to have the fruition of his glorious Godhead.' Sometimes, with an agreeable relaxation, we have tranferred our cares from the welfare of the nation to the flourishing of the farm; and, instead of enacting regulations for the civil community, we have planned schemes for the cultivation of our ground and the pros. perity of our cattle: instead of attending to the course of fleets and the destination of armies, we have directed the plough where to rend the grassy turf, or taught the honey-suckle to wind round the arbour, and the jessamine to climb upon the wall; instead of interposing our friendly offices to reconcile contending kingdoms, we have formed a treaty of coalition between the stranger scion and the adopting tree, and by the remarkable melioration of the ensuing fruit, demonstrated (would contending empires regard the precedent) what advantages flow from pacific measures and an amicable union: instead of unravelling the labyrinths of state, and tracing the finesses of foreign courts, we have made ourselves acquainted with the politics of nature, and observed how wonderfully, how mysteriously, that great projectress acts. In this place, she rears a vast trunk and unfolds a multiplicity of branches from one small berry. She qualifies by her amazing operations a few contemptible acorns, that were formerly carried in a child's Jap, to bear the British thunder round the globe, and secure to our island the sovereignty of the ocean. In another place, she produces from a dry grain, first, the green blade, then the turgid ear, afterwards the fullgrown and ripened corn in the ear; repaying with exact punctuality and with lavish usury the husbandman's toil and the husbandman's loan: causing, by a most surprising resurrection, the death of one seed to be fruitful in the birth of hundreds. * Mark iv. 28. |