a shall it disturb you. You wish that, during all the time, no interfering, no opposing, alarming principle may abide in your mind : because you desire to enjoy fully, and in peace, the kind of happiness which you are to exclude religion in order to enjoy. You are wishing, then, in effect, that your affections and tastes may be entirely in harmony with a system of life devoid of religion, that your judgement may accommodate itself not to condemn your proceeding, and that your conscience should either be guided to acquiesce, or repose in a long, deep sleep. That is to say, while you are resolving that at some advanced period you will be religious, you are also resolving that, during the long preceding time, you will yield yourself to a process for consolidating those very habits which will fix your mind in a confirmed antipathy to religion. You are intending to enter at last on consecrated ground, and yet are surrendering yourself to a power, which will hold you back with the grasp of a fiend when you attempt to approach its border. You presume that the latter stage of your journey shall be an ascent to heaven, and yet, in this earlier one, you deliberately choose a track in which you can calculate how each downward step goes in aggravation of the arduousness of that ascent, if you shall indeed ever attempt it : as if a man who had to reach the summit of a vast mountain, and might do it on one side by a long, gradual, and comparatively gentle declivity, should prefer essaying it on that other side, where, descending first to a great depth to reach its base, he must then climb its precipices. Whatever I am now gaining, he might say to himself, in the way of pleasant indulgence, in this descent, is so much that I shall find to have been gained against me by the difficulty on yonder steep.' If we were called upon to point out the peculiar excellence of Mr. Foster, we should be inclined to place it in that singular force and vivacity with which he urges the stern, uncompromising claims of duty, and lays open the fallacy of the various pretexts by which it is evaded, together with the vanity and danger of the pursuits which are permitted to interfere with its adequate discharge. His Missionary Sermon is a noble attestation to his skill in the management of this powerful argument; and the following extract from the essay now in our hand, is not inferior in energy and truth. may be allowed to descend to still more special illustrations. We may suppose one of you to direct his look, or his walk, over a piece of ground, in which he has the rights of a proprietor-till his successor shall take them. He might reflect, that this space of earth has more occupied his thoughts and affections, has been beyond comparison a more interesting reality to him, than the author and sustainer of the whole creation. Then let him look again on the soil, exert one solemn act of thought toward him by whom, and in whom, all things exist, and judge whether this be not a horrid impiety. Another of you has gazed upon, and leaned over, the material which represents wealth, and confers the power of it'; he has stood • It by his god, delighted and absorbed, without thought or care respect ing any other, in earth or heaven. It should be possible, when he shall find himself in this situation again, to constrain himself to one effort of serious reflection; and when he has done so, let him tell whether he did not seem to hear a voice say, “ Thy money perish with thee.” Some of you may be men of a more refined taste, and may have drawn into your possession a rich collection of the works of genius, in literature and art. Let them confess to themselves whether they have not contemplated the splendid and growing accumulation with a delight, a care, and a pride, of incomparably stronger prevalence in the mind, than any sentiment regarding the Divinity. To be thus environed with the productions (even though they little, in truth, consulted them) of the most vigorous and cultivated minds of many regions and ages, constituted, perhaps, a kind of heathen elysium, in which they were insensible of any necessity of converse with the perfect Intelligence, the Source of all mental light, of all beauty and grandeur. But, shall their dwelling amidst the collected results of thinking, be itself a cause to disable them for reflection ? If not, let them consider what is the true quality of that passion by which they are rendering this abode the scene of a voluntary exile from “ the Father of lights,” raising as it were a wall constructed of the works and monuments of human intellect, to shut themselves up from his communications. And let them reflect how melancholy it must be, to go away from amidst the pomp of literary treasures, poor (and the more so for the very passion for possessing them, and the idolatry of them as possessed) in all the attainments and dispositions preparatory to an entrance on that scene where no truth, no intel. lectual glory, no ideas or realities of sublimity or beauty, can be apprehended separately from their Divine Original. Let the gratified possessor look again at the imposing array of the vehicles of all that has been the most powerful, admirable, and enchanting in human thought and fancy, but with a reflection with which he may never before have surveyed the spectacle. Here is the intellectual world concentrated, as is were, and embodied before me. It is but a small portion of it which the brevity of life, with its many employments and grievances, will permit to be of any avail to me for a valuable use ; but I find there a principle operating, which can turn the whole collectively to a pernicious effect. For, the more I delight myself in being surrounded with this affluence of the productions of mind, the less I am disposed to communication with Him whose living influence on my spirit can alone make me wise and happy. But can I be content to think that I shall, after a little while, retire from this proud temple to the honour of human intellect, actually doomed to take with me an unfitness acquired in it for the life of intelligence and felicity in the immediate presence of God! We could easily and willingly multiply extracts such as these, but we have given enough to excite a wish to possess the whole. Gratified, however, as we are with the appearance of this essay, we are not quite sure that it is the best possible a introduction to the admirable work of Doddridge. The perusal of the prefatory pages demands a very different effort of mind, from that which is required by the subsequent portion ; and its effect, though equally intense, belongs to another class of sensations, or rather is suited to a distinct state of mental cultivation. Mr. Foster is not less intelligible than the Author of the Rise and Progress, but it requires a more decided effort of mind to follow his leading; and we can easily imagine two descriptions of readers, one of which shall dwell upon rous and imaginative composition with fixed attention and strong emotion, while the other shall turn with more congenial admiration to the simpler eloquence of Doddridge. A fierce caricature of Doddridge's mild and characteristic countenance is prefixed : mustachios, a banditti beard, and a Judas wig are alone wanting to make it a very satisfactory edition of the Saracen's head. his vigo Art. VI. The Christian Psalmist, or Hymns, selected and original. By James Montgomery. 12mo. pp. 444. Price 5s. Glasgow, 1825. WE have now a tolerable variety of collections for the pur poses of religious worship, and yet, notwithstanding the acknowledged merit of some among them, there seems to be a general feeling that something in this way, both more select , and more complete, is still wanting. Some of those in use are adapted to the peculiar views of different sects; others have not been compiled with sufficient regard to the affinities between verbal articulation and musical cadence. There is much excellent poetry that would make an ill figure in the hands of a composer, or the throats of a choir. In short, whatever the origin of such a sentiment may be, there does exist a prevalent opinion that a manual of devotional poetry, adapted for congregational singing, would, if selected with knowledge and practical skill, be highly acceptable to Christian churches. There are ample materials for such a compilation, and we would lay it down, as a rule never to be departed from, that nothing of inferior or doubtful quality should, on any pretext, be admitted. The neglect of this has marred many an otherwise excellent selection. Some dull favourite, some sterile lyric by an unrefusable friend, some anxiety to please, or fear to offend, certain individuals, have interfered with the symmetry of a well-arranged plan, and given it the aspect of incoherence. There should be nothing of what is technically called balaam, nothing to fill up an awkward gap: a where completeness might be unattainable, its absence would be preferable to bad proportion. A picturesque ruin is better than an entire, if awkward, structure. A regiment is more efficient when the poltroons are sent to guard the baggage. No selection can ever be popular of which the hymns of Watts do not form the foundation. In particulars he has been surpassed, but, on the whole, he is without a rival; and if, in some of his productions, he has failed, in the large proportion he has combined more of the specific requisites for congregational psalmody, than any who have come after him: as to his predecessors, we are not aware of any, with perhaps a partial exception in favour of Bishop Ken, that can be considered as approaching him. • Next to Dr. Watts as a hymn writer, undoubtedly stands the Rev. Charles Wesley. He was probably the author of a great num. ber of compositions of this kind, with less variety of matter or manner, than any other man of genius that can be named. Excepting his “ Short Hymns on Passages of Scripture," which of course make the whole tour of Bible literature, and are of very unequal merit,Christian experience, from the days of afflictions, through all the gradations of doubt, fear, desire, faith, hope, expectation, to the transports of perfect love, in the very beams of the beatific vision,Christian experience furnishes him with everlasting and inexhaustible themes ; and it must be confessed, that he has celebrated them with an affluence of diction, and a splendour of colouring, rarely surpassed. At the same time, he has invested them with a power of truth, and endeared them both to the imagination and the affections, with a pathos which makes feeling conviction, and leaves the understanding Iittle to do but to acquiesce in the decisions of the heart. As the Poet of Methodism, he has sung the doctrines of the Gospel as they were expounded among that people, dwelling especially on the personal appropriation of the words of eternal life to the sinner, or the saint, as the test of his actual state before God, and admitting nothing less than the full assurance of faith as the privilege of be. lievers : «« Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees, Relies on that alone, And says-It shall be done. The clouds disperse, the shadows fly, And God is seen by mortal eye!” . These are glimpses of our Author's manner, broad indeed, and awful, but signally illustrative, like lightning out of darkness, revealing for a moment the whole hemisphere. Among C. Wesley's highest achievements may be recorded, “ Come, O thou traveller unknown,” &c. page 43, in which, with consummate art, he has carried on the action of a lyrical drama; every turn in the conflict with the mysterious being against whom he wrestles all night, being marked with precision by the varying language of the speaker, accompanied by intense, increasing interest, till the rapturous moment of discovery, when he prevails, and exclaims, « I know thee, Saviour, who thou art,” &c. The hymn, page 364, " Come on, my partners in distress,” &c. anticipates the strains, and is written almost in the spirit of the Church triumphant. “ Thou wretched man of sorrow," &c. and its companion-piece,“ Great Author of my being," &c. pages 278, 9, are composed with great strength and fervency of feeling, — feeling congenial, yet perfectly contrasted with that in the former instance; for here, instead of the society of saints and angels, he indulges lonely, silent anguish, desiring “ to live and die alone" with God, as if creature.communion had ceased with him for ever. “ Thou God of glorious majesty !" &c. page 158, is a sublime contemplation in another vein; solemn, collected, unimpassioned thought, but thought occupied with that which is of everlasting import to a dying man, standing on the lapse of a moment between “ iwo eternities.” The hymn on the Day of Judgement, “ Stand the omnipotent decree," begins with a note abrupt and awakening like the sound of the last trumpet. This is altogether one of the most daring and victorious flights of our Author. Such pieces prove, that if Charles Wesley's hymns are less varied than might have been desired for general purposes, it was from choice, and predilection to certain views of the Gospel in its effects upon human minds, and not from want of diversity of gifts. It is probable, that the severer taste of his brother, the Rev. John Wesley, greatly tempered the extravagance of Charles, pruned his luxuriances, and restrained his impetuosity, in those hymns of his which form a large proportion of the Methodist collection; the few which are understood to be John's in that book, being of a more intellectual character than what are known to be Charles's, while the latter are wonderfully improved by abridgement and compression, in comparison with the originals as they were first given to the public.' Doddridge, Toplady, Cowper, Beddome are names too well known to need our eulogy, and as we are not, at present, intending to frame a hymnological code, we shall not attempt a discriminative estimate of their excellencies and defects. But there are less obvious sources from which contributions may be obtained ; and one of these, which seems hitherto to have lain under a sort of ban and interdict, has furnished Mr. Montgomery with some beautiful specimens of devotional poetry. • Give to the winds thy fears ; Hope and be undismayed; God hears thy sighs, and counts thy tears, Vol. XXV. N.S. P |