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Who spread this verdure o'er the fields, who bade
These violets spring, and lighted up the sun,
Be mine with silence of the heart to praise
His mercies, and adore his name of love.

Hail, scene of beauty! scene of Sabbath calm!
Thou greenest earth! thou blue and boundless heaven !
Thou sea, reposing like a stilly lake!

Hail, ye, that blend your silence with the soul !
Around, the unimaginable God

Moves visible to faith: but unconfus'd

With these, the works and wonders of his hand :
These intercept his presence, not reveal ;
He sojourns not in clouds, nor is the light
His essence: mingled with the common mass
Of elements, as ancient sages dream'd;
God and his creatures one. Beyond the scope
Of sense the incommunicable mind
Dwelleth; and they who with corporeal eye
Adoring nature's beauteous forms, discern
Intelligence in colours and in shades;

In sunlight, and the glimmer of the moon ;
Who deem their worship holy, when they hear
A God in empty winds, and in the sounds
Of waters- they have bow'd th'idolatrous knee
Before material atoms! these are his,

But not HIMSELF: suspended by his breath
They are, and at his voice may cease to be.
Away from us these mystic vanities,

This heathen's wisdom, and this poet's creed:

Away from us the morbid sympathy

That blends itself with rocks and trees; that stoops.

To fellowship with brutes; that finds a soul

In every bird that flits along the sky,

A life in every leaf and every flower,

Be thine the adoration; thine the praise,

And love, and wonder, THOU, WHOSE NAME IS ONE !
And be thy Sabbath holy to thyself.' pp. 67. 69.

It is impossible, however, not to be disgusted with the sneer at public worship. The pretence of reprobating superstition and fanaticism, is too poor, and too stale a trick, to protect Mr. Elton against the charge of irreligion. We are persuaded that among ten thousand who neglect public worship, there is not one that ever resorts to scenes of romantic privacy to indulge a spirit of devotion. And how can Mr. Elton, as a professed friend at least to some kind of piety, and a well-wisher to the interests of human nature, debase and prostitute his talents to so unworthy a task, as that of discouraging those exercises of religion, which are at once most consonant with the habits and

tastes of our species, and which alone' can retain in their minds the impression of an All-seeing Spirit, and an Invisible World?

There are two or three other passages in the volume which in our opinion lower its value, and will very probably obstruct its circulation. The Monodrama of Chioma ra, a Gaulish woman, who, with a far nobler vengeance than Lucretia's, had slain the Roman by whom she had been taken captive and offered violence, is not exactly the kind of poem for female readers and a still stronger objection applies to the glowing description of a dream.

We will conclude these strictures with an elegant passage from one of the 'Musings.'

And now at length the bliss of certain hope
Preys on my thought like some unquiet thing:
Yes, were I pent in murkiest walls were mine
To hear no music but the clash of wheels;
Saw I no moonshine silvering the deep blue
Of yonder arching heavens, but the dim light
Of lamps that glimmer'd through the smoky mist
Were it my home, I there should centre all
Of peace, of beauty, of content, of joy.
Not that I lightly deem of nature's scenes,
Which on the painter's eye, the poet's mind,
Beam inspiration. He in whom I live

A second life, child of my youth, shall know
The scenes of nature; and his foot shall climb
The mountain, and shall print the ocean-shore :
His ear shall drink the melody of birds,

;

And flocks; of winds, and rills, and whispering boughs;
His eye shall gaze the sunset's ruddy light,
And grow enamour'd of the gliding moon;
And thus to him shall solitude become
A season of all pleasantness; and thoughts
Of virtue steal through beauty on his heart:
And he shall bear within himself a spell
To soothe each grief, and every bliss refine,
A nameless and inseparable charm

Of lonely joy.

But never shall he find
The cot a cloister; nor the flowery field
A wilderness. From them he shall return
With keener zest to scenes of varied life,
And mingle with his kind. His reason thus
Shall kindle, and his faculties discern

Vice in its naked horror. Wisdom thus
Shall be his guard; and in the walks of men

The lessons of experience shall be found,

That midst the woods and fields are sought in vain.' pp. 77, 78.

The translations from Propertius are respectably executed, but are after all scarcely worth reading. Mr. Elton has only given us the substance of originals which had no value except the workmanship.

Art. VIII. Sermons by the late Rev. Richard De Courcy, Vicar of St. Alkmond, Shrewsbury. To which is prefixed, an Essay on the Nature of pure and undefiled Religion. Second Edition. 8vo. [p. 420. Matthews and Leigh. 1810.

WHEN we take up a second edition of this volume of Sermons, it can hardly be supposed we design to enter very minutely into its merits or defects;-although the circumstance of its having hitherto been confined to a limited circulation, seems to indicate the propriety of our giving some general notice of the nature of its contents.

Besides an essay on pure and undefiled religion, (supposed to have been originally intended for the pulpit,) the volume before us includes ten Sermons on the following subjects evangelical truths stated, and the charge of novelty as a ground of prejudice against the gospel refuted: the nature and necessity of giving the heart to God, considered and enforced: an invitation to the gospel feast: the contrast (i. e. between the fruits of righteousness and of sin): an alarming view of God's desolating judgments: the nature and distinguishing marks of true conversion: the right knowledge of doctrine the fruit of obedience: Belshazzar's doom: the preparation requisite for the day of judgment: on the death of Mr. T. A.

After this enuineration of titles, it is hardly necessary to say in express terms, that but little originality is to be expected from these Sermons in point of matter: nor will it be understood as implying any severe censure, when we add that but little novelty can be discovered in the mode in which the doctrines and precepts of religion are stated, the arguments by which they are enforced, the allusions by which they are illustrated, or the imagery with which they are adorned. To those who consider the number and the variety of works which occupy every department of theology, and particularly in what a multitude of volumes every article of sacred truth has been separately and minutely discussed,branched into a thousand ramifications, and improved in innumerable ways under the denomination of Sermons—it will probably appear, that a discourse, in which under a subject properly chosen, we meet with just views of evan

gelical truth, correctness of division and arrangement, propriety in the choice of ornament, and a style possessing a competent degree of elegance and simplicity-is entitled to attention and approbation at least from its hearers ; and may, indeed, without greatly trespassing on the dignity of the public, prefer a claim to notice beyond the circle of the author's immediate friends and admirers.

Of the sermons before us it is rather difficult to give a discriminating character, for they have no very unusual faults nor peculiar, excellences. Religious truth is for the most part clearly stated and enforced by just and cogent reasoning but in the subordinate particular of style wed have more to tolerate than admire. Though not uniformly un-? graceful, it is frequently obscured by affectation, and vitiated by false ornament; and these faults are unfortunately most prominent, in those parts in which the author attempts to rise by a display of his oratorical powers, where poverty of sentiment is sometimes, veiled by pomp of words, and a studied structure of sentences.-We select a specimen of these sermons from the sixth, on the nature and distinguishi ing marks of true conversion.

02

Conversion doth not consist in those things, which the blindness of some, the pride of others, and the pharisaical zeal of rot a few, would substitute in its stead. For instance; baptism is not conversion. - Iť is only the outward sign of it. And, to mistake the sign for the thing itself, is as absurd as to make a shadow equal to the substance. The thing signified in baptism is," a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness" and this is conversion. But how many content themselves with having partaken of the outward ordinance; who do not understand the significancy of the institution, and know nothing of the blessings symbolically represented in it!" He is not a Jew who is one outwardly," (nor is he a Christian who is one no farther ;) "but he is a Jew," (and a Christian,) "who is one inwardly and circumcision," (or baptism) is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter'; "whose praise is not of men, but of God." Rom. ii. 28, 29. Neither does the great change consist in a transient effect on the passions. These may often be mechanically wrought upon, and violent emotions excited in them, without, the least concomitant influence from the spirit of God. One man may be affected under a sermon, and another weep at a tragedy, and both be in the same predicament as to their state of heart towards God. When the passions are moved, because the affections are engaged, and the understanding enlightened in the subject, then the work is produced not by the pathos of eloquence, or the violent mechanism of bawling and unmeaning vociferation, but by the finger of God. A change of the latter kind will be permanent and abiding. But conversions, such as spring from a transient gust of passion, will always evaporate "like the morning cloud or the early dew, that passeth away." Hos. vi. 4. It would be equally absurd and dangerous to place true re

:

-a name

ligion in an outward and partial reformation, often accompanied with
a s'ew of zeal, which at the bottom is nothing but emptiness and
ostentation. When a man all of a sudden cuts off some superfluities of
Daughtiness in dress and outward indulgence; when he prunes off some
excrescences, while the root of corruption remains untouched; when
to day he acts the part of a novice, and to-morrow like a fungus that
shoots up in a night, he raises his head as a reformer, without wisdom
or materials for beginning or conducting a reformation in such cases,
the conversion is often from bad to worse; it is as if a harmless statue
should be transformed into a venomous reptile; or folly. stealing the
venerable garb of truth, should commence tyrant, and like Solomon's
madman, with the hand of outrageous zeal, scatter about arrows, fire-
brands, and death. Prov. xxvi. 19. From such conversions, and such
converts as these, may the Lord at all times defend and save his church!
To change a denomination, or to adhere to that in which one may
happen to have been born and educated, is not conversion. A man may
turn protestant, then turn calvinist, then turn arminian, then turn metho-
dist, then turn quaker or quietist, (an usual transition,) then turn dissenter,
and last of all turn churchman, and yet, through all these revolutions,
which have been more than once exemplified in a single character, he
may not once have thought seriously of turning Christian
infinitely more honorable than all the empty titles that men assume to
themselves, to distract the minds of their brethren, and to rear their own
consequence often upon the ruins of peace and union. Some are no doubt
very sincere and highly to be commended, for changing a denomination,
when the interests of truth and the prosperity of their souls, or the dic-
tates of conscience are the objects in view. But there is not a greater
delusion under the heavens, than for a man to infer the safety of his state,
merely from an idea of the purity of the communion to which accident or
bigotry may have induced him to join himself. To turn to a party, and
to turn to God, are as different as light and darkness.
- As for those, who
plead for their continuance in the old beaten track of formality, because as
they say, "they will not change their religion," a discourse upon the na-
ture of true conversion is intended to convince such, that they have in
fact, no religion to change. And as for those, under the influence of a
more refined delusion, who place religion in the espousal of orthodox
opinions, which have no renovating influence on their hearts and lives,
and often take a false refuge in doctrines, of which, alas! they never ex-
perienced the power; it is necessary to tell these, and their partners in
self-deception, that religion is principally a temper; and that to be
really changed, is to have "the mind that was in Christ Jesus," to be
governed by that love, which St Paul describes in 1st Cor. 13, and to
be influenced by the humble temper of a little child. Without this, party
is an insignificant badge, doctrines but chaff, zeal but wild-fire, and con-
version but a name. pp. 273, 277.

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