senee can be ascertained, but holiness of life." If the Dean of Chester intended what he here appears to have advanced (for I do not wish to take any unfair advantage of his words), it follows, that the presence of the Holy Spirit cannot be ascertained either by the purity of the affections or by the uprightness of the will. It was to obviate this mischievous,

and I fear not unfashionable, conclusion, that I thought it necessary to shew that some of the most emi. nent divines of the Church of England, together with the compilers of the Seventeenth Article, admitted an internal as well as external test of the Holy Spirit's presence in the human soul. My quotations, therefore, I trust, were strictly applica ble to the matter then in debate. JUSTITIA,

POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS, ADDRESSED TO THE EDITOR OF

THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER.

(Continued from p. 300.)

7. On the Causes of unhappy

Marriages.

IT has been often questioned, whether more marriages are happy or unhappy. The papers of the Rambler have been accused of leaning too much to the side of representing the majority of them as unhappy. Novelists, on the other hand, usually conduct the hero and heroine of their piece to marriage, as the termination of all their sufferings; and lead you to suppose, that, when they are joined in matrimony, it is unnecessary to say more concerning them, because the residue of life is of course a scene of unvaried bliss. But novelists, in this as well as many other respects, give a false map of human life. Marriage has its blessings and its trials; and in most cases proves, on the whole, to be a benefit or a curse, according to the temper and character of the parties united by it.

I purpose, Mr. Editor, to trouble you with a few remarks on the causes of unhappy marriages. Some thoughts of a religious nature will occasionally enter into the discussion,

First: I apprehend that great inequality between the two parties

ness.

united in marriage inequality either of rank or of age, of taste, of talents, or of acquirements (I except great inequality of fortune)is one common source of unhappiLet us imagine the case of two persons whose taste and talents are widely different; and let the superiority be assumed, if you please, to be on the side of the husband, which is the supposition the more favourable to hap piness. One of the means of uniting the affections of a married couple, is a participation of each other's occupation. If the wife be totally estranged from all the pursuits of the husband, and the husband from those of the wife; if their departments not only are different, as they necessarily must be to a certain degree, but are totally separate and unconnectedif the husband, for example, is engrossed by politics, or much engaged by science, and the wife is incapable of any higher occupation than that of overlooking the kitchen---there will arise between such a couple a distance not altogether unlike that which usually subsists between a well-educated man and his housekeeper. The husband will devote himself to the society of his intelligent friends; the wife will become familiar with. her servants. Is it to be expected that love will subsist in its due degree between such a couple? Will

there be no consciousness in the husband of his affording to his wife a smaller proportion of his time, and in the wife of her receiving less honour from her husband, than is usual in the case of other wives and husbands? And will there be no jealousies or heart-burnings on this account? Will there be no secret dissatisfaction on his side, on account of her indifference to his topics of conversation; and no complaining on hers, of the difficulty of interesting him in her subjects of domestic œconomy? A woman of sense proportionate to his own, would cut short these smaller discussions, or would deduce from the little events of her department some great and general inferences. She would, at least, be pleased with deductions of this kind, which should proceed from the more enlarged understanding of her husband. The affections would be strengthened by thus multiplying the topics in which both could take an interest: they would have a larger share of the society of each other: causes of jealousy would be diminished: the husband (unless some peculiarly unhappy temper should exist on one side or the other) would love the company of his wife, the wife that of her husband.

I am aware that there may be some husbands who may so remarkably abound in the kind affections, and others who may be under so strong an influence of religion, as to pay very considerable attention to women who are greatly their inferiors. Nevertheless the general observation is just, that great inequality of taste and talents, and, by parity of reason, a great inequality of many other kinds (inequality of fortune always excepted), is unfavourable to con. jugal happiness. Let this circumstance be therefore taken into consideration, in forming matrimonial connexions. Let not, for example, the young man of rising talents be too easily charmed with the agree

8. On the Way of Salvation.

The Gospel came from heaven ; and since it is not the invention of man, we may expect it to contain many things which man never could discover. It is likely that it should oppose some of our most natural opinions: for if man without the Gospel were not inclined to err, and even to err materially, doubtless this revelation of the mind of God would not have been given. He would not have sent his Son from heaven, if we, without this Divine knowledge, had been already sufficiently wise unto salvation.

We ought, therefore, to suspect ourselves to be naturally inclined even to some fundamental errors in religion.

Let us now proceed to inquire in what way and degree it is natural for man to err in that great and important article, the way of salvation.

If you ask a person unacquainted with the Christian Religion, by what means it is that he hopes to be saved, he probably will reply, that he must do good, and avoid what is evil, and then hope the best. There is a mixture of truth and error in such an answer, as we shall presently shew. But let us first a little cross-question the man who gives this answer. How much good must a man do, in order that he may be saved; and how long must he continue doing it? Moreover, what is doing good? Is it enough to do nothing? And how much evil musta man avoid?

May he commit fifty sins, or only twenty? and great sins, or only small ones? Is there any such thing as the pardon of sin? Are there any transgressions which can be completely buried as in the depths of the sea? Will sorrow for sin suffice for this purpose; or is some kind of present suffering or penance also necessary? To what, in short, ought we to trust-to God's justice, that he will not, and cannot, punish persons who, on the whole, have been so good as we have been; or to his mercy, that he, for his own goodness' sake, in spite of all our sins, will finally save us? Most men, perhaps, naturally halt between these two opinions. They do not exactly know which to take, and they are more of one sentiment to-day, and more of the other tomorrow. They are inconsistent with themselves. When in health and spirits, when subject to no great temptation, when, being free from the grosser crimes, their conscience is at ease, and when their pride suggests how very good they are, then, say they, God's justice shall save me. But when they fall into some foul sin, or have but recently recovered from it; or, again, when sickness comes on, and death threatens them; when conscience is far from whispering peace, and their more ordinary ground of hope fails; then they betake them selves to the thought of the Divine mercy. They are unstable in their judgment, and their confidence even in the Divine mercy is weakened by some reflections on the interfering claims of the Divine justice. From the confusion of mind *

*

9. On Religious Jealousies and Rivalships.

Permit me, Mr. Editor, to trouble you with a few remarks on a subject which I do not recollect to have heard particularly treated of in the pulpit, or to have seen sufficiently discussed in print. I allude to those little rivalships and jealouCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 198.

sies which are perpetually arising in almost every society, and which so much diminish the happiness of human life. I suspect that the soundness of the Christianity which subsists in any circle, may be as certained in a great degree by this test; and I think that I can bring various passages from Scripture to prove my point.

If we look abroad into the world, we shall find that emulation, or the desire of excelling others, is the great principle of human action. It is professedly resorted to at schools and colleges; and though not acknowledged to be the ruling motive in riper years, it clings to the man of the world through life. Now this eagerness to excel implies two things; the depression of others, and the elevation of ourselves: for our wish is to be comparatively great. Men are not jealous of all their neighbours, nor perhaps even of all those who may be jealous of them. We are not jealous of those who are either much above us or much below us, or of those who rival us in some point to which our chief attention is not turned. The competition is with the persons by whom we think ourselves in danger of being surpassed in some point which we deem important; and our mind is fertile in inventing circumstances to the prejudice of the neighbour to whom we have thus become ill affected, without perhaps having the least consciousness of it.

But I shall not dwell on a point so plain as that of the general prevalence of jealousy among worldly men; nor shall I spend my time in proving the sinfulness of it. My object is to follow this principle into the religious world, to which, I apprehend, the majority of your readers belong. Now I do not believe that the evil exists there in the same force. I am persuaded that it is the endeavour of every sincere Christian to expel it from his bosom; and that his labour, in this as in other things, is crowned

3C

body, and are also commonly called Methodists.

4. I would be understood to include under the same name by much the largest part of the whole body of the present Dissenters.

The three old denominations were the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists. Of the Presbyterians (who are not the most numerous or active of the three), many are Unitarians, and these are in doctrine, as well as in style of preaching, the very antipodes to the Methodists: some hold a nearly middle course between Unitarians and Methodists; and others favour the Methodists, and so far resemble them that they may (for the purpose of the present paper) pass under that name.

Of the Independents, I rather think that a very large proportion agree much with the Methodists; that is to say, they engage as much as they in missions, both to the villages in England and to foreign parts, and much resemble them in doctrine as well as in style of preaching.

Of the Baptists, a still larger proportion may, in like manner, for the purpose of the present paper, be ranked among the Methodists, only a few of the Baptists being Unitarians, and the great body of them being amongst the most active and zealous of the three classes of Dissenters.

I understand that the old division of Dissenters into Presbyterian, Independent, aud Baptist, though still existing, is now by no means the most important division. The distinction now rather is into the Calvinistic, or Methodistical, and the moderate and Unitarian Dissenters.

5. Under the general name of Methodists, I would here be understood further to include a by no means inconsiderable body of persons of the Established Church. În London, there are many Ministers commonly reputed to be of this class: the proportion in some

parts of the country is perhaps not quite so great. These preachers are very clear in the opinion that their doctrines are those of the Articles of the Church of England; and that the ministers who differ from them, differ also from their own Articles, and are at the same time wanting in religious zeal and strictness of life. The congregations of these Church Clergy are, at least some of them, formed partly of Dissenters and Methodists, who hear them because they approve of their doctrine and manner of preaching. A large part of their congregations, however, are much attached to the forms and the constitution of the Church, although many of them rate the point of doctrine above all questions of forms of **

12. On Preaching.

There seem to be two ways in which a preacher ought to judge of the propriety of that general mode of preaching which he has adopted. The one, is its conformity to what he finds in the Scriptures; and the other, is the effect on the lives and character of his hearers, which, after a sufficient length of experience, he finds it to have produced. And it is, doubtless, by combining these two means of judging, and not by confining himself to either of them, that he ought continually to be endeavouring to discover whether his preaching be truly such as it ought to be or not.

That the preaching of a minister of Christ ought to be conformable to the Scripture, is a truth which, when stated in these general terms, can certainly need neither observation nor proof. It may, nevertheless, be worth observing, even in this place, that it may require much care and investigation; much attention to the several parts of Scripture, particularly of the New Testament; much reflection on the times in which they were written, and the character and circumstances of those to whom