very inconsiderable duration; or to secure to ourselves the pleasures of a life which is fixed and settled, and will never end? Every man, upon the first hearing of this question, knows very well which side of it he ought to close with. But, however right we are in

theory, it is plain that in practice we adhere to the wrong side of the question. We make provisions for this life, as though it were never to have an end, and for the other life, as though it were never to have a beginning.

"Should a spirit of superior rank, who is a stranger to human nature, accidentally alight upon the earth, and take a survey of its inhabitants, what would his notions of us be? Would not he think that we are a species of beings made for quite different ends and purposes than what we really are? Must not he imagine that we were placed in this world to get riches and honours? Would not he think that it was our duty to toil after wealth, and station, and title? Nay, would not he believe we were forbidden poverty by threats of eternal punishment, and enjoined to pursue our pleasures under pain of damnation! He would certainly imagine that we were influenced by a scheme of duties quite opposite to those which are indeed prescribed to us. And truly, according to such an imagination, he must conclude that we are a species of the most obedient creatures in the universe; that we are constant to our duty, and that we keep a steady eye on the end for which we were sent hither.

But how great would be his astonishment, when he

learned that we were beings not designed to exist in this world above threescore and ten years * ?"

Varying the views of our general subject, these citations, from the works of a distinguished man, it is hoped, will be received with approbation. Why we have quoted so much, is not to be misunderstood. The confessionalist (the principal topic of his book) had recommended an extensive propagation of the opinions concerning our faith, which had been, from time to time, laid before the world by eminent men; we felt with the confessionalist whatever interest the objects of such his recommendation possessed; and have been free in quoting the more irresitible arguments or more conclusive testimonies of the great men we have studied. No question but the subject is, in its own nature, one that will give an air of dignity, even of sublimity, to any thing written concerning it by any hand. Of this the confessionálist is an instance. But endeavours to propagate genuine truths, are in any one laudablein any one honourable. He who doubts the purpose of the narrator to be of this kind, has little reflected on the only imaginable design of his labours.

The confessionalist would call sinners back from the evil of their ways to undeviating repentance. The narrator would operate the like happy regeneration, doing so, not in all respects in the same way. The confessionalist has been a sinner, the narrator would inspire sinners with disgust for that monster SIN, the

* Addison.

ravages of whom have deformed the race and generations of man from the day of the degradation of the first-created of human beings. Inspiring men with disgust, with unappeasable disgust, with horror for sin, the narrator proposed to himself the advancement of the interests of Christianity, in a measure as large as the predicament of his undertaking would allow. He has all the feelings of the poet respecting sin.

"What havock hast thou made, foul monster, sin! Greatest and first of ills! the fruitful parent

Of woes of all dimensions! but for thee

Sorrow had never been. All noxious things
Of vilest nature, other sorts of evils

Are kindly circumscrib'd, and have their bounds.
The fierce volcano, from its burning entrails
That belches molten stone and globes of fire,
Involv'd in pitchy clouds of smoke and stench,
Mars the adjacent field for some leagues round,
And there it stops. The big-swoln inundation,
Of mischief more diffusive, raving loud,

Buries whole tracts of country, threat'ning more;
But that too has its shore it cannot pass.
More dreadful far than these, sin has laid waste,
Not here and there a country, but a world;
Dispatching at a wide extended blow
Entire mankind, and for their sakes defacing
A whole creation's beauty with rude hands;
Blasting the foodful grain, the loaded branches,
And marking all along its way with ruin.
Accursed thing! O where shall fancy find
A proper name to call thee by, expressive

Of all thy horrors? pregnant womb of ills!
Of temper so transcendently malign,

That toads and serpents of most deadly kind
Compar'd to thee are harmless. Sicknesses
Of ev'ry size and symptom, racking pains,

And bluest plagues are thine! See how the fiend
Profusely scatters the contagion round!

Whilst deep-mouth'd slaughter, bellowing at her heels,
Wades deep in blood new spilt; yet for to-morrow
Shapes out new work of great uncommon daring,
And inly pines till the dread blow is struck."

How hideous, in all

Indeed sin is a foul monster. his aspects, is sin! How beautiful virtue-that divine intelligence which Jesus in his Gospel would have us, next to his Almighty Father and himself, to zealously worship!

It is truly inexplicable how men can have chosen the bleak, blighting, villanous principles of infidelity, with the unembarrassing doctrines of the Gospel to chuse to their exclusion. A writer, who wrote well on all subjects, who could not have written ill on this, has bequeathed to his posterity, to all enlightened ages, a fine eulogium on the Gospel of Christ.

"I confess to you, the majesty of the Scripture astonishes me; the holiness of the Gospel speaks to my heart. See how little are the books of philosophers, with all their pomp, when compared to the Evangelists! Is it possible that a book, at once so sublime and simple, should be the work of man? Is it possible

that He, whose history it contains, should himself be but a man? Is there in him the tone of an enthusiast, or an ambitious sectary? What mildness, what purity in his manners! what affecting grace in his instructions! what elevation in his maxims! what profound wisdom in his discourses! what presence of mind, what ingenuity in his answers! what empire over the passions! Where is the man, where is the sage, who knows how to act, suffer, and die, without weakness or ostentation? When Plato described his imaginary just man covered with all the opprobrium of crimes, and worthy of all the reward of virtue, he described our Sa→ viour, feature by feature: the resemblance is so striking, that all the fathers of the church have seen it was impossible to mistake it.....Before Socrates had praised sobriety, before he had defined virtue, Greece abounded in virtuous men; but where had Christ learned that ele vated and pure morality, of which he alone has given the precepts and the example?..... If the life and death of Socrates be those of a sage; the life and death of Christ are those of God. Shall we say, that the evangelical history was invented at pleasure? It is not in this manner, my good friend, that men invent; and the actions of Socrates are less attested than those of Jesus Christ. Upon the whole, it is removing the difficulty without destroying it. It would be more inconceivable that several men, agreed among themselves, should have invented this book, than it is that one man only has furnished the subject of it....And the Evangelists have such grand, striking, and inimitable characters of truth, that the inventor would be still more astonishing than the hero."