The operation of the peculiar faculties of the soul is referred to by the Apostle, when he says, “The invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead;" and when he tells us that "when the Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness." | all. But viewed in connexion with the obligation under which we lie to Him that made us, interest and duty are found to be one, and every conceivable motive combines to urge us on in pursuit of our own highest happiness, and of society's furthest advancement. A SKETCH Of an hospitAL SCENE IN PORTUGAL. refined and permanent satisfaction, and that by listening to them, rather than to the lower propensities, the happiness of mankind generally will be promoted. There will ever be multitudes who prefer the gratification of present humour to the hope of a distant futurity, who relish more keenly the gross pleasures of appetite than the refined enjoyments of intellectual taste; and who deny that society has any right to demand such sacrifices from them. Nay, even the best of men will find the fine-spun theories of sentimental benevolence weak as When we endeavour to investigate the law which the the spider's web, when opposed to the force of appetite Creator has implanted in the heart and conscience of and passion. It is only when the heart is awed by the man, we find various circumstances concurring to em- fear of God, and when the mind is led to own its oblibarrass our progress. Man is a strangely compounded gations to Him, that we will steadily and zealously seek creature; he is actuated, on the one hand, by instine- the good of our fellow-men. Even allowing the dictates tive appetites like those given to the brutes; he is of benevolence and prudence to be agreeable to truth, directed, on the other, by those moral precepts which we must also recollect that they have only a reference are the transcript of Jehovah's character, the guide of to one-half of our duty, they are at best but a fragment angels, and the rule of the divine procedure; and it is of the law to which intelligent creatures should be exceedingly difficult to unravel the motives of a being subject, and deprived of the sanction of divine authowho has been not unaptly termed, "a worm-a god !"rity can scarcely be considered as having any force at He is, moreover, fallen and sinful; and while he remains unconverted, exhibits the anomalous condition of a creature wholly disinclined toward that which is good, yet checked and restrained in his pursuit of evil; and when he has been converted, he presents the inexplicable mixture of light and darkness, of holiness and sin. We need not wonder, then, though many contending theories have been advanced respecting the object that man should pursue as his chief end, the law that he should follow, and the motives by which he should be excited. But amid all these contending systems, reason and Scripture, if carefully regarded, alike declare, that the only authoritative rule, and the only unerring guide is the WILL OF GOD. Some are directed merely by the counsels of prudence, which may be termed an enlightened regard to our own interest; others actuated by natural benevolence, seek, at the same time the good of society; (and these motives have no doubt a legitimate influence on our minds,) but unless we have respect to the divine appointment, our conduct can neither have sanetion nor guidance. We may follow the dictates of prudence, we may relinquish present ease and pleasure in order to secure future enjoyment, we may renounce the grovelling indulgence of sensual appetite, and pursue the noble delights of intellectual retinement, but unless we listen to the counsels of heaven, we never can know wherein our chief happiness lies, and unless we own the divine authority, there is no law that requires us to pursue it. If we choose that which is good it is well; but if we prefer that which is evil, no man has a right to reprove us. In judging of the conduct of others, we always make a distinction between want of prudence and want of principle; we pity the folly of those who exhibit the first, we condeinn the sin of him who gives evidence of the second; and while we remonstrate with those that injure themselves, we punish him that is injurious to his neighbour. It is only when the precepts of God are applied to the regulation of every word and deed that the maxims of prudence have the authority and power of a law.---We may, in like manner, listen to the dictates of benevolence, but unless we are taught of God, we have no means of ascertaining the line of conduct that will most directly tend to the general good. He alone, who knows the future, can determine the means by which the destinies of our race may be advanced, and he alone, who is eternal, can point out the path to immortal bliss. Without reference, moreover, to the Sovereign of all, there is no authority by which the counsels of benevolence can be enforced. It is not enough, as some imagine, to tell us that benevolence, or desire for the general good, and conscientiousress, or love of justice, and veneration, or regard for that is venerable, are the highest and noblest of our ; that their exercise will produce the most "I WISH to give you,” said a British officer, in a letter to a friend during the Peninsular war, " some idea of a scene I witnessed at Mirando do Cervo, on the ninth day of our pursuit. Yet I fear that a sight so terrible cannot be shadowed out, except in the memory of him who beheld it. I entered the town about dusk. It had been a black, grim, and gloomy sort of a day-at one time fierce blasts of wind, and at another perfect stillness, with far-off thunder. Altogether, there was a wild adaptation of the weather and the day to the retreat of a great army. Huge masses of clouds lay motionless on the sky, and then they would break up suddenly as with a whirlwind, and roll off in the red and gloomy distance. I felt myself in a state of strange excitement. My imagination got the better of my other faculties, and I was like a man in a grand but terrific dream. Thus feeling, I passed the great cross in the principal street, and suddenly fell in with an old haggard-looking wretch-a woman, who seemed to have in her hollow eyes an unaccountable expression of cruelty-a glance like that of madness; but her deportment was quiet and rational, and she was evidently of the middle rank of society, though her dress was faded and squalid. She told me, without my asking her, in broken English, that I should find comfortable accommodations in an old convent that stood at some distance among a grove of cork trees; pointing to them at the same time with her long shrivelled hand and arm, and giving a sort of hysterical laugh, 'You will find,' said she, ‘nobody there to disturb you.' "I followed her advice with a kind of superstitious acquiescence. There was no reason to anticipate any adventure or danger at the convent; yet the wild eyes, and the wilder voice of the poor creature, powerfully affected me; and I went on, in a sort of reverie, till I had walked up a pretty long flight of steps, and was standing at the entrance to the cloisters of the convent. I then saw something that made me speedily forget the old woman, though what it was I did see, I could not, in the first moments of my amazement and horror, very distinctly comprehend. "Above a hundred dead bodies lay and sat before my eyes, all of them apparently in the very attitude or posture in which they had died. I looked at them for at least a minute before I knew that they were all corpses. Something in the mortal silence of the place | hands once press in infancy a mother's breast? Now all told me that I alone was alive in this dreadful company. was loathsome, terrible, ghost-like. Human nature A desperate courage enabled me to look stedfastly at seemed here to be debased and brutified. Will such the scene before me. The bodies were mostly clothed creatures, I thought, ever live again? Robbers, incenin mats and rugs, and tattered great-coats; some of diaries, murderers, suicides, (for a dragoon lay with a them merely wrapped about with girdles of straw, and pistol in his hand, and his skull shattered to pieces,) two or three perfectly naked. Every face had a differ-heroes? The only two powers that reigned here, were ent expression, but all painful, horrid, agonized, blood- agony and death. Whatever might have been their less; many glazed eyes were wide open, and, perhaps, characters when alive, all faces were now alike. I this was the most shocking thing in the whole spcc- could not, in those fixed contortions, tell what was tacle, so many eyes, that saw not, all seemingly fixed pain, from what was anger-misery, from wickedupon different objects, some cast up to heaven, some looking straight forwards, and some with the white orbs turned round, and deep sunk in the sockets. "It was a sort of hospital. These wretched beings were mostly all, either desperately, or mortally, wounded; and after having been stripped by their comrades, they had been left there dead and to die. Such were they, who, as the old woman said, would not 'trouble' me. "I had begun to view this ghastly sight with some composure, when I saw, at the remotest part of the hospital, a gigantic figure, sitting covered with blood, and almost naked, upon a rude bedstead, with his back leaning against the wall, and his eyes fixed directly on mine. I thought he was alive, and shuddered, but he was stone dead. In the last agonies he had bitten his under lip almost off, and his long black beard was drenched in clotted gore, that likewise lay in large blots on his shaggy bosom. I recognised the corpse. He was a sergeant in a grenadier regiment, and was, during the retreat, distinguished for acts of savage valour. One day he killed with his own hand Henry Warburton, the right-hand man of my own company, perhaps the finest made, and most powerful man in the British army. My soldiers had nicknamed him with a very coarse appellation, and I really felt, as if he and I were acquaintances. There he sat, as if frozen to death. I went up to the body, and raising up the giant's muscular arm, it fell down again, with a hollow sound, against the bloody side of the corpse. " Circumstance. My eyes unconsciously wandered along the walls. They were covered with grotesque figures, and caricatures of the English, absolutely drawn in blood. Horrid blasphemies, and the most shocking obscenities in the shape of songs, were in like manner written there; and you may guess what an effect they had upon me, when the wretches who had transcribed them, lay dead corpses around me. I saw two books lying on the floor. I lifted them up; one seemed to be full of the most hideous obscenity; the other was the Bible! It is impossible to tell you the horror produced in me by this The books fell from my hands; they fell upon the breast of one of the bodies: it was a woman's breast. A woman had lived and died in such a place as this! What had been in that heart, now still, perhaps only a few hours before, I knew not. It is possible, love strong as death-love, guilty, abandoned, depraved, and linked by vice unto misery but still love, that perished but with the last throb, and yearned in the last convulsion towards some one of these grim dead bodies. I think some such idea as this came across me at the time; or has it now only arisen? "Near this corpse lay that of a perfect boy, certainly not more than seventeen years of age. little copper figure of the Virgin Mary round his neck, suspended by a chain of hair. It was of little value, else it had not been suffered to remain there. In his hand was a letter; I saw enough to know that it was from his mother. It was a terrible place to think of mother of home-of any social human ties. Have these ghastly things, parents, brothers, sisters, lovers? Were they all once happy in peaceful homes? Did these convulsed, and bloody, and mangled bodies, once lie in undisturbed beds? Did those clutched There was a ness. "It was now growing dark, and the night was setting in stormier than the day. A strong flash of lightning suddenly illuminated this hold of death, and for a moment showed me more distinctly the terrible array. A loud squall of wind came round about the dwelling, and the old window casement gave way, and fell, with a shivering crash, in upon the floor. Something rose up with an angry growl from among the dead bodies. It was a huge dark-coloured wolf-dog, with a spiked collar round his neck; and seeing me, he leaped forwards with gaunt and bony limbs. I am confident that his jaws were bloody. I had instinctively moved backwards towards the door. The surly savage returned growling to his lair, and, in a state of stupefaction, I found myself in the open air. A bugle was playing, and the light infantry company of my own regiinent was entering the village with loud shouts and huzzas." Such are the horrors of war, and it is impossible surely to read the description of scenes like these, without breathing an earnest prayer that the reign of the Prince of Peace were established on the earth, when men shall learn the art of war no more. CHRISTIAN TREASURY. to be cast down in the view of our extreme depravity, Convictions of Sin.-If I mistake not, you are apt whereas you should not, in the least degree, be less confident of your eternal salvation for such humbling views. Flesh and blood never produce them, nor our Conviction of our evil nature enemy the wicked one. is from on high, and cometh down from above. It is peculiar to the saints in Jesus Christ, and works in them humility, and love, and adoration, and a most thankful acceptance of Christ. Before the veil is taken from our hearts, it is only from report we prize him, and for what we hope one day to get from him. But when we feel the corruption of our nature-envy and pride, impurity and unbelief, and hardness of heart and brutish stupidity, in secret prayer and in public-then we can sigh and groan, being burdened; and then we know, that we are as vile and wicked, to the full, as the word of God declares us to be. Many and great are the spiritual advantages attending this very humiliating sight of our condition: it stops our mouths from railing and evil speaking, it inclines us to take the lowest place, it makes us poor and of a contrite spirit, and to tremble at God's Word, if he were to enter into judgment with us. Now this is the very disposition and temper he declares to be well-pleasing in his sight. It is well for us he doth so; for if I may judge of others by myself, after thirty-six years attention and care, and earnest seeking after God, I have more reason than ever to say, "In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing."-VENN, Sufferings are necessary.-Alas! if we did not some. times feel the spur, what a slow pace would most of us hold towards heaven. Judge, then, whether thou dost not go more watchfully and speedily in the way to heaven in thy sufferings, than in thy more pleasing and prosperous state.-BAXTER, SACRED POETRY. TRUE HAPPINESS. TRUE happiness had no localities, CHRIST A PRESENT HELP. POLLOK. WHEN gathering clouds around I view, And, oh, when I have safely past MISCELLANEOUS. GRANT. Rev. John Newton.-The late Rev. John Newton, rector of St. Mary, Woolnoth, London, acknowledges, in his letters, how greatly he felt indebted to his kind mother for the pains she took with him, when quite a child, to instil into his mind the principles of religion; particularly her storing his memory with many valuable pieces, chapters, and portions of Scripture, catechisms, hymns, and poems. These instructions seem to have increased the impressions made by other circumstances, though his heart does not appear to have been effectually brought to God the Saviour until several years afterda. The importance of good Religious Tracts.-Extensively as the usefulness of religious tracts may be known, it is probable that comparatively few persons are aware, that to the perusal of some of these small publications, under God, we owe one of the earliest and most eminent of the reformers. A young man of an opulent and noble family in Bohemia, came over to Oxford, about the year 1389, for the prosecution of his studies. When he returned home, he took with him several tracts of Wickliff's. With this gentleman Huss was well acquainted, and obtained from him the loan of these books. They conveyed light to his mind, and so powerfully impressed him, that he embraced, and ever after maintained their doctrines. He used to speak of Wickliff as an angel sent from heaven; and would mention his meeting with that author's writings, as the happiest event of his life. George Burder.-I must never, says the late Rev. George Burder, forget my birth-day, June 5, 1762. It was on a Sabbath; and after tea, and before family worship, my father was accustomed to catechise me, and examine what I remembered of the sermons of the day. One evening he talked to me very affectionately, and reminded me that I was now ten years of age; that it was high time I began to seek the Lord, and to become truly religious. He particularly insisted upon the necessity of an interest in Christ, and showed me that, as a sinner, I must perish without it, and recommended me to begin that night to pray for it. After family worship, when my father and mother used to retire to their closets for private devotion, I also went into a chamber, the same room in which I was born, and then, I trust, sincerely and earnestly, and as far as I can recollect, for the first time, poured out my soul to God, beseeching him to give me an interest in Christ, and desiring, above all things, to be found in him. Reflecting on this evening, I have often been ready to conclude, that surely I was born of God at that time, surely I then was brought to believe in Christ, surely there was something more than nature in all this. Robert Hall.-When the late Rev. R. Hall was about six years of age, on starting from home on the Monday, it was his practice to take with him two or three books from his father's library, that he might read them in the intervals between the school hours. The books he selected were not those of mere amusement, but such as required deep and serious thought. The works of Dr Jonathan Edwards, for example, were among his favourites; and it is an ascertained fact, that, before he was nine years of age, he had perused, and reperused, with intense interest, the treatises of that profound and extraordinary thinker, on the " Affections," and on the "Will." About the same time he read, with a like interest, "Butler's Analogy." He used to ascribe his early predilection for this class of studies, in a great measure, to his intimate association, in mere childhood, with a tailor, one of his father's congregation, a very shrewd, well-informed man, and an acute metaphysician. Before he was ten years old, he had written many essays, principally on religious subjects. Published by JOHN JOHNSTONE, at the Offices of the SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD, 2, Hunter Square, Edinburgh, and 19, Glassford Street, Glasgow; JAMES NISHET & Co., HAMILTON, ADAMS & Co., and R. GROOMBRIDGE, London; W. CURRY, Junr. & Co., Dublin; and W. M COMB, Belfast, and sold by the Booksellers and Local Agents in all the Towns and Parishes of Scotland; and in the principal Towns in England and Ireland. Subscribers in Edinburgh, Leith, and Portobello, will have their copies delivered at their own residences regularly, by leaving their addresses with the Publisher.-Subscribers in Glasgow will, in like manner, have their copies delivered, by leaving their addresses at the Publishing Office there, 19, Glassford Street. Subscription (payable in advance) per quarter, of twelve weeks, 1s. 6d.-per half-year, of twenty-four weeks, 35.-per year, of fortyeight weeks, 6s.-Monthly Parts, containing four Numbers each, stitched in a printed wrapper, price Sixpence, THE SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD, CONDUCTED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF MINISTERS AND MEMBERS OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. "THE FEAR OF THE LORD, THAT IS WISDOM." No. 68. SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 1837. IS IT A VALID OBJECTION TO THE TRUTH OF REVELATION THAT IT HAS NOT BEEN PART II. BY THE REV. PETER CURROR, Minister of St. Martins. PRICE 1d. He created the plants by the hand of God. which furnish our ordinary food, and interspersed them with others fraught with peculiar juices for the cure of diseases. Here, then, are two specifics for the diseases of two portions of our nature, the one acknowledged by all to be, and the other professing to be, from the hand of God. Our WE said enough, in our former article on this sub- only business now is with the extent in which the ject, to repel the objection, in so far as it applies knowledge of these remedies have been distrito the nature of the act. We have proved that buted. If we find all, peasant as well as philosothere is nothing in it unjust, nothing unworthy of pher, in every nation, informed of the plants which the righteousness of its author. There is another are medicinal, and of the particular diseases which method of answering the objection, however, still each is fitted to heal, then should we have exmore satisfactory. The objection is, that there is pected to find the knowledge of the specific for something in the way in which this revelation has our spiritual diseases also circulating in every been made known, unworthy the character of God, country, from the palace to the cottage. If, on and that therefore it cannot have come from him. the other hand, we find the knowledge of the Now, this objection would at once be silenced, if one, long scarcely ascertained at all, long limited it appeared that God has acted in a similar way to a few nations, and narrow in its limits still, we in the distribution of other favours; or that the have no reason to expect that, if it came from knowledge of other blessings which, like this, he the same author, the knowledge of the other has placed within our reach, has been as limited should be universal. The knowledge of the meas the knowledge of revelation. It is thought dicinal virtues of plants, whether we look to its inconsistent with the character of God that a fulness or its accuracy, has all along been exceedrevelation, professing to disclose truths so impor-ingly limited. In ancient times it was but slentant to the well-being of our race, has not been made known to all. Revelation furnishes a remedy for the diseases of our souls. Now, there are diseases to which the bodies of men also have been subjected. Is there any remedy provided for them? and to what extent has the knowledge of that remedy been distributed? Here is a case quite analogous to the question in hand. If we find the knowledge of these remedies universal, then might we have expected that the knowledge of the remedy for our spiritual diseases would have been universal too. If we find the knowledge of the one limited, then may we expect the knowledge of the other to be limited too. Amid the multitude of herbs which furnish our ordinary food, there are interspersed others endowed with virtues which cure the diseases of our bodies. The knowledge of these plants, and of their properties, holds the same place in regard to our physical, as the knowledge of revelation does to spiritual, diseases. They furnish a remedy for the one, revelation furnishes a remedy for the other. The one remedy, it is agreed, is provided our VOL. II. derly acquired by the physicians of Greece and Rome. The rest of the world were suffering and dying, either under entire ignorance, or under false views, of it. It is still nearly confined to the few cultivated nations of the earth. The knowledge of medicine has all along, and is still about as limited as the knowledge of revelation. And if the want of universality in the knowledge of the one remedy is not a valid objection to its having come from God, as little is the want of universality a valid objection to the other. No one will venture to draw this conclusion in regard to the former; it is just as incompetent to draw it in regard to the latter. There are many provisions within the storehouses of Providence, which contribute very much to the comfort of human life, and are essential to the enjoyment of civilized life. These also are from the hand of God. They are wrought out of the raw materials which he has furnished for the comfort of human society. Without the knowledge of their existence, and of the process of manufacturing them, they are useless to us. To uses of cotton and flax, were not imparted to them by the hand of God. The knowledge of good government, the knowledge of true science, that education which lights up the faculties of the human soul in intelligence, feeling, and enjoyment, the knowledge of those provisions which clothe human life with outward comfort, are all more limited in their distribution than the knowledge of revelation. Yet the materials of them all have been furnished by God. This no one disputes. That they have not been universal is never held as an argument against their origin. As little, therefore, is it a competent argument against revelation, that it has not been universal. We see Him making the same limited distribution of the blessings of his providence, as he is making of the blessings of his grace. And this feature being impressed on both, can, to say the least of it, lead to no conclusion that both have not proceeded from the same hand. But the argument may be carried farther. Not only does the way in which the blessings of providence are distributed neutralise the objection against revelation, it turns that which was used as an objection against, into an argument in favour of, its heavenly origin. It not only rescues a for what extent, then, has this knowledge been communicated? It has been still more limited than the knowledge of revelation. A free and enlightened government is necessary to distribute the higher enjoyments of which our nature is susceptible. Under the iron rule of despotism, the buoyant independence of the human mind sinks into slavery, its arm of exertion is palsied, its tone of enjoyment is pitched amid low and grovelling pleasures. But free and enlightened governments have been rarely enjoyed. They have been, at least, as limited as revelation. Government, however, is an institution of God; it arises out of the elements of which he has constructed human society. But because he has left so many nations ignorant of that form of it which confers the greatest happiness, no one ventures to conclude that government is not an institution of God. An ample education is another fountain of rich and exalted enjoyments; it furnishes a store of materials for reflection; it lifts us to the capacity of taking comprehensive views of nature and society, of engaging in intelligent conversation; it places us in a higher station in the scale of intelligence, and its enjoyments are perhaps superior, both in quality and amount, to any other which this world can supply. But such an educa-tress among the out works of a city which had been tion has been the portion of few. Only a nation here and there has had it within their boundaries at all; and even there it has usually been limited to the small fraction of its population who sat on its pinnacles of wealth and rank. It has been more limited than the knowledge of revelation. Why has it not been otherwise? The structure of human society is from the hand of God. By a slight change in its composition, by a slight infusion of additional intelligence, he could have so framed it that the delights of knowledge and reflection would have circulated through all nations and all ranks. But from the savage wilderness of heathenism, or from the ignorance which hangs over the base of civilized society, no one draws the argument that the structure of human society is not from God. The same might be said of literature and science. They are fraught with a rich fund of enjoyment, but they have been the portion of few. But a very few nations have known anything of them, and in those who did, but a few individuals have drawn of their treasures. This is a fund of enjoyment, provided for us in the store-house of providence. Yet no one concludes, from its limited distribution, that it is not from God. There is a varied and important class of comforts which are possessed by the present, and which were possessed by no other age. The machinery which is impelling our manufactories, is discharging every article of clothing in an abundance, and at a price so cheap, as to cover, with comfort, alike the highest and the humblest in society. Yet the processes which accomplish this, lay unknown for nearly six thousand years; they are known but to a few nations still. But no one concludes from this that the powers of iron and steam, and the taken possession of by the enemy, out of their hands, but it converts it into a redoubt of defence to its friends. If, in the gifts which God bestows upon us, we detect a peculiar feature, then, in examining a future gift, with the view of ascertaining whether or not it came from him, if we found it wearing this feature, whatever the character of that feature may be, this certainly would not form any objection to its having come from him; would, on the contrary, be an evidence that it had. If a parent, through life, had manifested a special partiality for some of his family over others, it would furnish no evidence that his will was forged that there was there bequeathed a greater share of his property to these than to the rest; it would, on the contrary, be urged, as an argument, that it was genuine. If God is seen to bestow the gifts of his providence in various degrees, withholding them altogether from many, bestowing them partially ou some, and in fulness and maturity only on a few; and this is the way in which the benefits of medicine, of good government, of science, of education, and of outward comforts, are distributed, then, from all these we discover one feature of his general administration; and if any new branch of his administration should be developed, we surely should not be disappointed, we surely should not entertain any doubts that it proceeded from Him, on finding the same features imprinted on the latter as on the former, we should, on the contrary, reckon it a proof that it did. If a tree which has long borne a particular kind of fruit, puts forth a new branch, do we not expect the same kind of fruit on the new branch as on the old? If, then, in this new branch of his administration we find that God is bestowing the gifts of his grace, also, |