things occur in his writings to show that he was familiar with the vital doctrines of revelation, and knew what should have been their bearing on the life of man. When he would give solemnity, for example, to certain of his Vows, he would inscribe on the blank leaf of a Bible the words, "Ye shall not swear by my name falsely; I am the Lord:" and add, as if to augment the strength of the obligation, "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." Truth in one of its forms was thus ascendant in his mind; and were this all that we know of the history of his soul, we might conclude that revelation had acquired its rightful authority there, that in the noble mind of that wondrous man, grace had added its influence to the gifts which dignified his nature. It is requisite, however, to study his character more minutely; and, in doing so, we find how frail is every barrier—whether it be natural conscience, or rationalism, or sentiment and poetry—against the passions which tyrannise in the heart of unrenewed man. While Burns was yet an obscure youth, and years before he shone forth to amaze and dazzle so many, he wrote to his father as follows:-"I am quite transported at the thought that ere long, perhaps very soon, I shall bid adieu to all the pains, and uneasiness, and disquietudes of this weary life; for I assure you, I am heartily tired of it; and if I do not very much deceive myself, I could contentedly and gladly resign it." He proceeds to say, “It is for this reason, I am more pleased with the last three verses of the seventh chapter of the Revelation, than with any ten times as many in the whole Bible, and would not exchange the noble enthusiasm with which they inspire me for all that this world has to offer." Now all this is full of promise; this enthusiasm would be hailed by not a few, as constituting pure religion; and yet we know that he who wrote these sentences lived to outrage the truth which he professed to admire. It was mere emotion; there was no work of grace, no guidance of that Spirit who leads into all truth; and the whole was therefore the gleam of a meteor, not the shining of the Sun. The melancholy which dictated such sentiments, inspired many of his verses in future years; and one cannot hear the wail of so noble a mind, as it closes one stanza with the words, "But a' the pride of spring's return, and another, exclaiming "When yon green leaves fade frae the trees Around my grave they'll wither," without detecting the impotency of the mere sentiment of religion, when the power and demonstration of the Spirit do not give direction and force to the truth. Gifts the most noble, and genius the most transcendant, only render man a more able self-tormentor, when grace does not illuminate and guide him. In sober truth, they are as unavailing as the Jup, the Dyan, the Tup, and the Yoga of certain Hindoo ascetics. But these are only the beginnings of our proof regarding the insufficiency of mere sentiment. The same gifted man, endowed as he was with remarkable versatility and power, was the victim of a sorrow which refused to be soothed. Amid the blaze of his reputation he wrote: "I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life, as an officer resigns a commission, for I would not take in any poor ignorant wretch, by selling out. Lately I was a sixpenny private, and a miserable soldier enough,-now I march to the campaign a starving cadet, a little more conspicuously wretched." And again, as if he would open up the very fountains of his chagrin, or display the extent of the moral distemper, which continued unhealed in his mind, he says:-" When I must escape into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim, What merit has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being, with the sceptre of rule and the key of riches in his puny fist; while I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?" Now, the man who recorded these bitter and distempered complaints, was, the author of the following exquisite lines:— this gifted man could scatter gems around him like the brilliants emitted by the creations of Eastern fable, he was himself "poor, and wretched, and miserable,”—the sport of passion,-a thing driven of the wind, and tossed. And why? Was there no anchorage for such a soul?-nothing to teach that troubled mind, that, as all things are guided by Him who is love, all things are overruled for good to them that love him? Had he never learned, or was there no one at hand to whisper, that it is possible for man, instead of indulging such violent outbreaks against the ways of God, to say, I have learned in all circumstances in which I am, to be therewith content ?" Was there no power in the words, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven?" Alas for man, when poetry, or genius, or sentimentalism, however exquisite, is the only guide of his soul in trouble! In this gifted man's life we read with the clearness of a revelation, of the impotence of genius, or any natural gift, to restrain the passions, or promote the real happiness of man. Power, whether intellectual or imaginative, only enables man to go more signally astray, when it is not under the control of a pure conscience and sanctified reason. 66 whom he loved and admired,—" His temper now became more irritable and gloomy. He fled from himself into society, often of the lowest kind. And in such company, that part of the convivial scene in which wine increases sensibility and excites benevolence, was hurried over to reach the succeeding part, over which uncontrolled passion generally presided. He who suffers the pollution of inebriation, how shall he escape other pollution?" He adds, “Let us refrain from the mention of errors over which delicacy and humanity draw the veil." Yet Burns had a God whom he often professed to revere. He wrote new versions of some of the Psalms, he is the author of some poetical prayers, as well as of poems, which one can scarcely read without tears; and from these we may ascertain what was the religion of Burns. And at the very most it was the religion of emotion or the imagination. The holiness of God formed no element in it; and because that was left out, it was a kind of pantheistic figment which was worshipped, and not the true Jehovah. The wondrous Alp-clouds which are sometimes seen at sunset fringed with gold, by his light are brilliant, no doubt, and gorgeous, but they are not the sun himself; and, in like manner, the ideal creations of men's minds, poetically attractive as they may be, are not the living and true God, though they are often substituted for him; and there is profoundest wisdom in the saying, that "those imaginations about the Godhead which make up a religion of poetry, are not enough for a religion of peace." And it is curious to observe how Burns had worn away the idea of God till it became evanescent and uninfluential. By his own confession, "the daring path Spinoza trod," was trod for a season by him; and his views of the Great One were such as could not restrain a single passion, nor stand against a single temptation. But, amid all his gloom and despondency, had Burns no internal guide to enlighten and cheer him? Had he got no hold of the truth which conducts the soul amid a thousand perils and trials, to serenity and repose? He had a godly father, and his early training was in the best school of religion. Had that no effect on his conduct and history? Beyond all controversy it had; but it was chiefly to deepen his wretchedness and give a keener poignancy to his sorrow. He was one of those who could admire the drapery of religion, while he neglected itself. Like Sir Walter Scott, and many more, he was shrewd and quick to detect the hypocritical pretence to godliness, but he had no discernment of In one of his dedications he prays to the the intrinsic power of truth; and hence, he "Great Fountain of honour, the Monarch of was tortured to agony amid trials, even till the Universe," and that was his substitute he sometimes wished for death. Had he for the great personal I AM. In a prayer been utterly ignorant of religion, conscience on the prospect of death, he says, might have been more easily appeased; but, knowing it as he did to a certain extent, yet setting it often utterly at defiance, he just heaped woes upon himself by his own right hand. The fearful gift of genius, like the fatal gift of beauty, may thus help on man's misery, unless it be controlled by the wisdom which comes from above; and even Dr. Currie was obliged at last to write of the man "If I have wandered in those paths "Thou knowest that thou hast form'd me * Chalmers. - In other words, the Creator of all, the very "I saw thy pulse's maddening play, But yet the light that led astray Was light from heaven." religion,—its drapery,—its music,-its grand ASSYRIAN SEPULCHRES.+ WE have no certain information on the mode in which the Assyrians disposed of their We have another view of the religion of considerable number in some of the palatial dead. Tombs, indeed, have been found in Burns presented in the following extract: mounds, consisting of sarcophagi, either of "Now that I talk of authors, how do you brick or earth, and frequently covered with like Cowper? Is not the 'Task' a glorious an Assyrian slab for a lid. Most of these poem? The religion of the 'Task,' bating when opened were found to contain human a few scraps of Calvinistic divinity, is the bones, together with vases and bottles of religion of God and of nature, the religion pottery, alabaster and glass, necklaces of that exalts, that ennobles man." Now, had we no record of Burns's life, we might here trinkets. But there is no reason to believe gems, plates, mirrors, spoons, and other conclude that, though anti-Calvinistic, he that these were properly Assyrian; the conwas devout in his piety, and pure in his life, tents of the coffins, as well as their character, like Cowper, whom he eulogised; but how are perfectly Egyptian in form and materials; completely must all moral perception have and in each case, whether in the south-east been dulled, when such admiration could be corner of the Nimroud mound, in the centre, lavished upon a poet who was at so many or at Kalah Sherghat, they lie immediately points the very antithesis of Burns! And must have occurred so long before their conover an Assyrian edifice, the ruin of which struction, that its existence was probably unknown. Mr. Layard is inclined to attribute these sepulchres to a foreign race who held possession of Assyria between the eras of the Higher and Lower Dynasty. again we say, how naturally does such a state The Assyrians, probably, like the Jews, did not bury their dead within the walls of their cities, at least while the latter were densely inhabited by the living. Among the Jewish people none were buried within walls, *See "Edinburgh Review" for January, 1809, Lord Jeffry's Contributions, Vol. III. From "Assyria."-By Philip Henry Gosse.Christian Knowledge Society. London, 1852. except at Jerusalem, and there only the royal family, and persons of eminent virtue to whom extraordinary honour was to be shown, as in the case of Jehoiada. (2 Chron. xxiv. 16.) Hence, in all probability, should an Assyrian necropolis be discovered, it will not be in any of the palatial mounds, but in some smaller heap expressly devoted to the dead. At the north-east extremity of the Khorsabad mound, M. Botta found a number of jars or urns of terra cotta, placed upright in niches on each side of a deep trench, and resting on a bed of lime. The urns, which are of an elegant shape, were destitute of a lid; they contained fragments of bones partially calcined embedded in the earth which filled the urns. The remains were too much decomposed for the discoverer to determine whether they were human, though of course it is most probable. At the rock-tablets of Bavian, about seventeen miles north of Mosul, Mr. Ross found some sepulchres of considerable interest. Immediately opposite the village 66 rise the cliffs, on which are the bas-reliefs. There are eight small tablets, each containing the portrait of a king, about four feet high; and one very large tablet, with two kings, apparently worshipping two priest-like figures standing, the one on a lion, the other on a griffin. Some of the small tablets are on the perpendicular face of the rock, others are reached by a narrow ledge. The large tablet, and one containing the figure of a bull, have chambers cut behind them. I am inclined to think that these chambers were excavated at the same time as the portraits were sculptured. Their use is obvious. They were tombs; and my idea is, that the bas-reliefs outside are the portraits of the monarchs who were buried within. Picture to yourself a small room, square in shape, and with a flat vault. On either side, recesses or niches (resembling a small oven) are cut into the wall, evidently to hold a body. These niches, being only about four feet long, may be thought too small to receive a man; but I imagine that the corpse was crammed into a sarcophagus, similar to those discovered at Nimroud, which the recesses are well calculated to contain. These tombs must once have been closed; now they have small doors and even windows. It would seem that these bas-reliefs covered royal tombs, with concealed entrances, which were at a later period broken open and pillaged, and afterwards converted into dwellings, and the windows opened. It is possible that chambers still unrifled might be found behind the smaller tablets. There are various signs and religious emblems scattered about, chiefly representations of the sun and moon.' There are several allusions in Scripture to a mode of burial allied to this; and the sepulchre in which the body of our blessed Lord was deposited was not very dissimilar, being "hewn out in the rock" (Matt. xxvii. 60.) But there are two passages of more than usual interest because they expressly designate Assyrian customs. The first is that magnificent dirge (Isa. xiv.) which the prophet takes up against the King of Babylon, that is, we are inclined to think, Sennacherib, who probably made Babylon one of his royal residences. In this poem the kings of the nations are represented as "lying in" solitary "glory, every one in his own house " or sepulchre. Hell, or the invisible world, is, by a bold prosopopeia, pictured as moved from beneath, and as rousing up the mighty dead, to meet the new tenant; the kings of the nations start from their royal cells to greet with astonishment the conqueror of the earth, now become weak as themselves, and brought down to the grave, "to the sides of the pit." The other (Ezek. xxxii. 18-32) is somewhat similar in character: various nations are poetically personified, and represented as inhabiting Hades, or the invisible world. Though spoken of generally in similar terms, there are some peculiarities of description appropriated to particular nations, such as the weapons buried with the Scythians, and the heavy mounds of earth that covered their bones,-which doubtless had an exact reference to special customs. "It is more than possible," says Taylor, " that if we could discriminate accurately the meaning of words employed by the Sacred Writers, we should find them adapted with a surprising precision to the subjects on which they treat. The numerous references in Scripture to sepulchres supposed to be well peopled, would be misapplied to nations which burned their dead, as the Greeks and Romans did; or to those who committed them to rivers, as the Hindoos; or to those who exposed them to birds of prey, as the Parsees: nor would the phrase 'to go down to the sides of the pit' be strictly applicable to, or be properly descriptive of, that mode of burial which prevails among ourselves."+ "Nineveh and its Remains," ii. 142. (Note.) "Taylor's Calmet," art. SEPULCHRE. Among the nations in the passage we refer word than that of Solomon: "There is no to, Assyria is thus distinguished :— "Asshur is there, and all her company: his graves are about him: all of them slain, fallen by the sword: whose graves are set in the sides of the pit, and her company is round about her grave: all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused terror in the land of the living." Ezek. xxxii. 22, 23. The description of the prophet is strictly applicable to such chambers as Mr. Ross discovered in the rock at Bavian; a pit, or cavern, in whose sides the individual tombs are set, where the company of the illustrious dead, that spread terror during their lives, met round about in grim and silent assembly. Similar rock-hewn chambers have been found in various localities in the East; of which it may be sufficient to allude to those that are cut upon the face of the mountain contiguous to Persepolis. Their outside is much adorned with sculpture, representing some of the Achæmenian kings, and the interior is hollowed at the remote extremity end of making many books." This sight verifies it. There is no end; indeed, it were a pity there should. God hath given to man a busy soul; the agitation whereof cannot but, through time and experience, work out many hidden truths: to suppress these, would be no other than injurious to mankind, whose minds like unto so many candles should be kindled by each other. The thoughts of our deliberation are most accuWhat rate: these are sent into our papers. a happiness it is, that, without all offence of necromancy I may here call up any of the ancient worthies of learning, whether human or divine, and confer with them of all my doubts !—that I can at pleasure summons whole synods of reverend fathers and acute doctors from all coasts of the earth, to give their well-studied judgments, in all points of question, which I propose. Neither can I cast my eye casually upon any of these silent masters, but I must learn somewhat. It is The Editor of the "Pictorial Bible" states a wantonness to complain of choice. No that there are many existing sepulchral sites law binds us to read all; but the more we on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, can take in and digest, the better-looking Blessed be God, some of which he examined, and found must the mind needs be. them to consist generally of " that hath set up so many clear lamps in his urns of various forms, lined with bitumen, and some-church. Now, none but the wilfully blind times glazed, containing bones and dust. They are found in almost every situation, in mounds of ruin, in the cliffs of the rivers, and even within the thick walls of ancient towns and fortresses. into three cells. Few of the urns are large enough to contain an adult human body, which therefore could not have been deposited entire." From a passage which the writer quotes from a Persian work, the "Desatir," it appears that among other modes of disposing of the dead, it was common to immerse the body in a trough of aqua-fortis, until the flesh and ligaments were consumed, after which the bones were deposited in au urn. This passage refers specially to ancient Persia, but it is not improbable that the same custom prevailed in Assyria and Babylonia.* ON THE SIGHT OF A NEAT LIBRARY. WHAT a world of wit is here packed up together! I know not, whether this sight doth more dismay or comfort me: it dismays me to think that here is so much that I cannot know; it comforts me to think that this variety yields so good helps to know what I should do. There is no truer "Pict. Bible," iii. 177. can plead darkness. And blessed be the memory of those his faithful servants that have left their blood, their spirits, their lives, in these precious papers, and have willingly wasted themselves into these during monuments to give light unto others.-BP. HALL, AN AFRICAN PREACHER. A RESPECTABLE man, who had become interested on the subject of religion, and who had begun with some earnestness to search the Scriptures, had read but a few chapters, when he became greatly perplexed with some of those passages which an inspired Apostle has declared to be "hard to be understood." In this state of mind, he repaired to a coloured preacher for instruction and help, and found him at noon, on a sultry day in summer, laboriously engaged hoeing his corn. As the man approached, the preacher, with patriarchal simplicity, leaned upon his hoe, and listened to his story. "Uncle Jack," said he, "I have discovered lately that I am a great sinner; and I commenced reading the Bible that I may learn what I must do to be saved. But I have met with a passage here," holding up his Bible, "which I know not what to do with. It is this:-'God will have |