ed as controversial, the writer has confined herself to endeavour, though it must be confessed, imperfectly and superficially, to bring forward St. Paul's character as a model for our general imitation, and his practical writings as a store-house for our general instruction; avoiding whatever might be considered as a ground for the discussion of any point not immediately tending to practical utility.

It may be objected to her plan, that it is not reasonable to propose for general imitation, a character so highly gifted, so peculiarly circumstanced,- --an inspired Apostle,-a devoted Martyr. But it is the principal design of these pages,-a design which it may be thought is too frequently avowed in them,-to show that our common actions are to be performed, and our common trials sustained, in somewhat of the same spirit and temper with those high duties and those unparalleled sufferings to which Saint Paul was called out; and that every Christian in his measure and degree, should exhibit somewhat of the dispositions inculcated by that religion, of which the Apostle Paul was the brightest human example, as well as the most illustrious human teacher. The writer is persuaded, that many read the Epistles of Saint Paul with deep reverence for the station they hold in the Inspired Oracles, without considering that they are at the same time supremely excellent for their unequalled applicableness to life and manners; that many, while they highly respect the writer, think him too high for ordinary use. It has, therefore, been her particular object, in the present work, not indeed to diminish the dignity of the Apostle, but to diminish, in one sense, the distance at which we are apt to hold so exalted a model; to draw him into a more intimate connection with ourselves; to let him down, as it were, not to our level, but to our familiarity. To induce us to resort to him, not only on the great demands and trying oc currences of life, but to bring both the writings and the conduct of this distinguished Saint to mix with our common concerns; to incorporate the doctrines which he teaches, the principles which he exhibits, and the precepts which he enjoins, into our ordinary habits, into our every day practice; to consider him not only as the writer who has the most ably and successfully unfolded the sublime truths of our Divine religion, and as the instructor who has supplied us with the noblest system of the higher ethics, but who has even condescended to extend his code to the more minute exigences and relations of familiar life.

It will, perhaps, be objected to the writer of these pages, that she has shown too little method in her distribution of the parts of her subject, and too little system in her arrangement of the whole; that she has expatiated too largely on some points, passed over others too slightly, and left many unnoticed; that she has exhibited no history of the life, and observed no regular order in her reference to the actions of the Apostle. She can return no answer to these anticipated charges, but that, as she never aspired to the dignity of an expositor, so she never meant to enter into the details of the biographer.

Formed, as they are, upon the most extensive views of the nature of man, it is no wonder that the writings of St. Paul have been read with the same degree of interest, by Christians of every name, age, and nation. The principles they contain are, in good truth, absolute and universal: and whilst this circumstance renders them of general obligation, it enables us, even in the remotest generation, to judge of the skilfulness of his addresses to the understanding, and to feel the aptitude of his appeals to the heart.

To the candour of the reader,-a candour which, though perhaps she has too frequently tried, and too long solicited, she has, however, never yet failed to experience,-she commits this little work. If it should set one human being on the consideration of objects hitherto neglected, she will account that single circumstance, success;-nay, she will be reconciled even to failure, if that failure should stimulate some more enlightened mind, some more powerful pen, to supply, in a future work on the same subject, the deficiencies of which she has been guilty; to rectify the errors which she may have committed; to rescue the cause which she may have injured. Barley-Wood, January 20, 1815.

AN ESSAY

ON THE CHARACTER AND PRACTICAL WRITINGS OF

CHAP. I.

SAINT PAUL.

Introductory remarks on the morality of Paganism, showing the necessity of the Christian Revelation.

THE morality of a people necessarily partakes of the nature of their theology; and in proportion as it is founded on the knowledge of the true God, in such proportion it tends to improve the conduct of man. The meanest Christian believer has here an advantage over the most VOL. II.

enlightened heathen philosopher; for what he knows of the nature of God, arising chiefly from what he knows of Christ, and entirely from what is revealed in Scripture, he gains from those divine sources more clear and distinct views of the Deity, than unassisted reason could ever attain; and of consequence, more correct ideas of what is required of himself, both with respect to God and man. His ideas may be mean in their expression, compared with the splendid language of the sages of antiquity; but the cause of the superiority of his conceptions is obvious.

him who excels in original composition. In like manner the lives of their great men abound in splendid sayings, as well as heroic virtues, to such a degree as to exalt our idea of the human intellect, and, in single instances, of the human character. We say, in single instances, for their

While they go about to establish their own wisdom,' he submits to the wisdom of God, as he finds it in his word. What inadequate views must the wisest pagans, though they felt after him,' have entertained of Deity, who could at best only contemplate him in his attributes of power and beneficence, whilst their highest unas-idea of a perfect character wanted consistency, sisted flights could never reach the remotest conception of that incomprehensible blessing, the union of his justice and his mercy in the redemption of the world by his Son-a blessing familiar and intelligible to the most illiterate Christian. The religion of the heathens was so deplorably bad in its principle, that it is no wonder their practice was proportionably corrupt. Those just measures of right and wrong,' says Locke, which necessity had introduced, which the civil laws prescribed, or philosophy recommend. ed stood not on their true foundation.' They served indeed to tie society together, and by these bands and ligaments promoted order and convenience but there was no divine command to make them respected, and there will natural. ly be little reverence for a law, where the legis. lator is not reverenced, much less where he is not recognized. There will also be little obedience to a law without sanctions where neither penalty is feared, nor reward expected.

Previous to the establishment of Christianity, philosophy had attained to its utmost perfection, and had shown how low was its highest standard. It had completely betrayed its inability to effect a revolution in the minds of men. Human reason,' says the same great authority above quoted,never yet, from unquestionable principles or clear deductions, made out an entire body of the law of nature. If a collection could be made of all the moral precepts in the pagan world, many of which may be found in the Christian religion, that would not at all hinder, but that the world still stood as much in need of our Saviour, and of the morality he taught.' The law of the New Testament recommends itself to our regard by its excellence, and to our obedience by the authority of the Lawgiver. Christianity, therefore, presents not only the highest perfections, but the surest standard of morals.

In a multitude of the noble sentences and beautiful aphorisms of many of the heathen writers, there was indeed a strong tone of morality. But these fine sentiments, not flowing from any perennial source, had seldom any powerful effect on conduct. Our great poet has noticed this discordance between principle and practice in his dialogue between two great and virtuous Romans.-Cassius, who disbelieved a future state, reproves Brutus for the inconsis. tency between his desponding temper and the doctrines of his own Stoic school:

You make no use of your philosophy,
If you give way to accidental evils.

wanted completeness. It had many constituent parts, but there was no whole which comprised them. The moral fractions made up no integral. The virtuous man thought it no derogation from his virtue to be selfish, the conqueror to be revengeful, the philosopher to be arrogant, the injured to be unforgiving: forbearance was cowardice, humility was baseness, meekness was pusillanimity. Not only their justice was stained with cruelty, but the most cruel acts of injustice were the road to popularity which im. mortalized the perpetrator.-The good man was his own centre. Their virtues wanted to be drawn out of themselves, and this could not be the case. As their goodness did not arise from any knowledge, so it could not spring from any imitation of the Divine perfections. That inspiring principle, the love of God, the vital spark of all religion, was a motive of which they had not so much as heard; and if they had, it was a feeling which it would have been impossible for them to cherish, since some of the best of their deities were as bad as the worst of themselves.

When the history of their own religion contained little more than the quarrels and the intrigues of these deities, could we expect that the practice of the people would be much better, or more consistent than their belief? If the divinities were at once holy and profligate, shall we wonder if the adoration was at once devout and impure? The worshipper could not commit a crime but he might vindicate it by the example of some deity; he could not gratify a single appetite of which his religion did not furnish a justification.

Besides this, all their scattered documents of virtue could never make up a body of morals. They wanted a connecting tie. The doctrines of one school were at variance with those of another. Even if they could have clubbed their opinions and picked out the best from each sect, so as to have patched up a code, still the disciples of one sect would not have submitted to the leader of another; the system would have wanted a head, or the head would have wanted authority, and the code would have wanted sanctions.

And as there was no governing system, so there was no universal rule of morals, for mora lity was different in different places.-In some countries people thought it no more a crime to expose their own children than in others to adopt those of their neighbour.-The Persians were not looked upon as the worst moralists for mar. rying their mothers, nor the Hyrcanians for not marrying at all, nor the Sogdians for murdering their parents, nor the Scythians for eating their dead.*

Many of their works, in almost every species of literature, exhibit such perfection as to stretch the capacity of the reader, while they kindle his admiration, and invest with no inconsider. able reputation, him who is able to seize their meaning, and to taste their beauties; so that an Plutarch relates, that Alexander, after conquering able critic of their writings almost ranks with these countries, had reformed some of their evil habits.

The best writers seldom made use of argu

ments drawn from future blessedness to inforce, say nothing of religion, made in the first metrotheir moral instruction. Excellently as they polis in the world, when a nail or a play was discoursed on the beauty of virtue, their dis- thought a rational expedient for pacifying the quisitions generally seemed to want a motive gods and stopping the pestilence. Nor does and an end. Did not such a state of comfort- reason, mere human reason, seem to have grown less ignorance, of spiritual degradation, of moral wiser in her age. During the late attempt to depravity, emphatically call for a religion which establish heathenism in a neighbouring country, should bring life and immortality to light?' does it not look as if the thirty theatres which Did it not imperatively require that Spirit which were opened every night in its capital in the should reprove the world of sin, of righteous- early part of the revolution had been intended, ness, and of judgment? Did it not pant for that in imitation of the Romans, whose religion, blood of Christ which cleanseth from all sin. titles, and offices, the French affected to adopt, as a nightly expiation to the Goddess of Reason for the cruelties and carnage of the day?

Even those fine theorists who have left us beautiful reflections on the Divine nature, have bequeathed no rule for his worship, no direction for his service, no injunctions to obey him; they have given us little encouragement to virtue, and no alleviation to sorrow but the impracticable injunction, not to feel it. The eight short beatitudes in the 5th of Saint Matthew convey not only more promises to virtue, and more consolation to sufferers, but more appropriate promise to the individual grace, more specific comfort to the specific suffering, than are to be found in all the ancient tomes of moral discipline.

warning nor encouragement, neither cheerful hope, nor salutary fear. They might amuse the mind, but never could influence the conduct. They might gratify the imagination, but could not communicate a hope full of immortality.' They neither animated the pious, nor succoured the tempted, nor supported the afflicted, nor cheered the dying.

Whatever conjectural notions some of the wise might entertain of a future state, the people at large could only acquire the vague and comfortless ideas of it, which might be picked up from the poets. This indefinite belief, immersed in fable, and degraded by the grossest superstition, added as little to the piety as to the happiness of mankind. The intimations of their Tartarus, and their Elysian fields, were so connected with fictions, as to convey to the mind no other impression, but that they were fictions themselves. Such uncertain glimmer. Those who were invested with a sacred cha-ings of such a futurity could afford neither racter, and who delivered the pretended sense of the Oracles, talked much of the gods, but said little of goodness; while the philosophers who, though they were professors of wisdom, were, not generally to the vulgar, teachers of morals, seldom gave the Deity a place in their ethics. Between these conflicting instructors the people stood little chance of acquiring any just notions of moral rectitude. They were indeed under a necessity of attending the worship of the temples, they believed that the neglect of this duty would offend the gods; but in their attendance they were neither taught that purity of heart, nor that practical virtue, which might have been supposed likely to please them. The philosophers, if they were disposed to give the people some rules of duty, were overmatched by the priests, who knew they should gratify them more by omitting what they so little relished. As to the people themselves, they did not de. sire to be better than the priests wished to make them. They found processions pleasanter than prayers, ceremonies cheaper than duties, and sacrifices easier than self-denials, with the additional recommendation, that the one made amends for the want of the other.*

The study of their mythology could carry with it nothing but corruption. It neither intended to bring glory to God, nor peace and good will, much less salvation, to men. It was invented to embellish the fabulous periods of their history, to flatter the illustrious families, by celebrating the human exploits of their deified progenitors: and thus to give an additional and national interest to their bewitching fables. What a system did those countries uphold, when the more probable way to make the people virtuous, was to keep them ignorant of religion !—when the best way to teach them their duty to man, was to keep their duties out of sight.

It is indeed but justice to acknowledge, the most of the different schools of philosophy held some one great truth. Aristotle maintained the existence of a First Cause; Cicero, in opposition When a violent plague raged in Rome, the to the disciples of Epicurus, acknowledged a method they took for appeasing the deities, and superintending Providence. Many of the Stoics putting a stop to the distemper, was the estab were of opinion, that the consummation of all lishment of a theatre and the introduction of things would be effected by fire. Yet every plays. The plague however, having no drama. philosopher, however rational in many parts of tic taste, continued to rage. But neither the his system, not only adopted some absurdity piety nor ingenuity of the suppliants was ex- himself, but wove it into his code. One believ hausted. A nail driven into the temple of Jupi.ed that the soul was only a vapour, which ter was found to be a more promising expedient. But the gods being as hard as the metal of which the expiation was made, were no more moved by the nail, than the plague had been by the theatrical exhibition; though the event was thought of sufficient importance for the creation of a dictator!—What progress had reason, to

* See Locke on the Reasonableness of Christianity.

was transmuted from body to body, and was to expiate, in the shape of a brute, the sins it had committed under that of a man. Another affirmed that the soul was a material substance, and that matter was endowed with the faculties of thought and reason. Others imagined every star to be a god. Some denied not only a superintending, but a creating Providence: insisting that the world was made, without any plan or

contrivance, by a fortuitous concourse of cer- | tain particles of matter; and that the members of the human body were not framed for the several purposes to which they have been accidentally applied. One affirmed the eternity of the world; another, that we can be certain of nothing, that even our own existence is doubt. ful.

A religion so absurd, which had no basis even in probability and no attraction but what it borrowed from a preposterous fancy, could not satisfy the deep thinking philosopher; a philosophy abstruse and metaphysical was not sufficiently accommodated to general use to suit the people. Lactantius, on the authority of Plato, relates, that Socrates declared there was no such thing as human wisdom. In short, all were dissatis. fied. The wise had a vague desire for religion which comprehended great objects, and had noble ends in view. The people stood in need of a religion which should bring relief to human wants, and consolation to human miseries. They wanted a simple way, proportioned to their com. prehension; a short way, proportioned to their leisure; a living way, which would give light to the conscience and support to the mind; a way founded, not on speculation, but evidence, which should carry conversion to the heart as well as conviction to the understanding. Such a religion God was preparing for them in the Gospel of his Son. Christianity was calculated to supply the exigences both of the Greeks and of the barbarians; but the former, though they more acknowledged their want, more slowly welcomed the relief; while the latter, though they less felt the one, more readily accepted the other.

Alexander, though he had the magnanimity to declare to his illustrious preceptor, that he had rather excel in knowledge than in power, yet blamed him for divulging to the world those secrets in learning, which he wished to confine exclusively to themselves. How would he have been offended with the Christian philosophy, which, though it has mysteries for all, has no secrets for any! How would he have been of fended with that bright hope of glory, which would have displayed itself in the same effulgence to his meanest soldier, as to the conqueror of Persia!

But how would both the monarch and the philosopher have looked on a religion, which after kindling their curiosity, by intimating it had greater things to bestow than learning and empire, should dash their high hopes, by making these great things consist in poverty of spirit, in being little in their own eyes, in not loving the world, nor the things of the world.

profusely scattered kingdoms among his favour. ites,-those ambiguous TEARS which he shed, because he had no more worlds to conquer; that deeply felt, but ill understood hope, those undefined and unintelligible tears, mark a profounder feeling of the vanity of this world, a more fervent panting after something better than power or knowledge, a more heart-felt longing after immortality,' than almost any express language which philosophy has recorded.

Learn of me' would have been thought a dig. nified exordium for the founder of a new religion by the masters of the Grecian schools. But when they came to the humbling motive of the injunction, for I am meek and lowly in heart,' how would their expectations have been damped? They would have thought it an abject declaration from the lips of a great teacher, unless they had understood that grand paradox of Christianity, that lowliness of heart was among the highest attainments to be made by a rational creature.

When they had heard the beginning of that animating interrogation,-Where is the wise? Where is the disputer of this world? methinks I behold the whole portico and academy emulously rush forward at an invitation so alluring, at a challenge so personal; but how instinctively would they have shrunk back at the repulsive question which succeeds;-Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Yet would not Christianity, well understood and faithfully received, have taught these exalted spirits, that, to look down upon what is humanly great, is a loftier attainment than to look up to it?

Would it not have carried a sentiment to the heart of Alexander, a system to the mind of Aristotle, which their respective, though differently pursued, careers of ambition utterly failed of furnishing to either?

Reason, even by those who possessed it in the highest perfection, as it gave no adequate view even of natural religion, so it made no adequate provision for correct morals. The attempt ap. pears to have been above the reach of human powers. God manifested in the flesh,-He who was not only true, but THE TRUTH, and who taught the truth as 'one having authority,'was alone competent to this great work. The duty of submission to Divine Power was to the multitude more intelligible, than the intricate deductions of reason. That God is, and is a rewarder of them that seek him; that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, make a compendious summary both of natural and revealed religion; they are propositions which carry their own explanation, disentangled from those trains of argument, which, as few could have been brought to comprehend, perhaps it was the greatest wisdom in the philosopher never to have proposed them.

But what would they have said to a religion which placed human intellect in an inferior degree in the scale of God's gifts; and even de. graded it from thence, when not used to his glory? What would they have thought of a re- The most skilful dialectician could only realigion, which, so far from being sent exclusively son on known principles; but without the superto the conqueror in arms, or the leaders in sci-induction of revealed religion, he could only, ence, frankly declared at its outset, that not with all his efforts, and they have been prodimany mighty, not many noble were called,' which gious, furnish rules,' but not 'arms.' Logic is professed, while it filled the hungry with good indeed a powerful weapon to fence, but not to things, to send the rich empty away? fight with; that which is a conqueror in the schools is impotent in the field. It is powerful to refute a sophism, but weak to repel a tempta.

Yet that mysterious HOPE which Alexander declared was all he kept for himself, when he

·

tion. It may defeat an opponent made up like | rials are joined with a completeness the most itself of pure intellect; but is no match for so satisfactory, with an agreement the most inconsubstantial an assailant as moral evil. It yields trovertible. to the onset, when the antagonists are furious passions and headstrong appetites. It can make a successful thrust against an opinion, but is too feeble to pull down the strong holds of sin and Satan.'

Christianity, however, is not merely a religion of authority; the soundest reason embraces most confidently what the most explicit revelation has taught, and the deepest inquirer is usually the most convinced Christian. The reason of philosophy, is a disputing reason, that of Christiani-Truth itself, must naturally and consentaneously ty, an obeying reason. The glory of the pagan religion consisted in virtuous sentiments, the glory of the Christian in the pardon and the subjugation of sin. The humble Christian may say with one of the ancient Fathers.-I will not glory because I am righteous, but because I am redeemed.