ART. II.-JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE.

THE love of Truth is the highest form of the love of God. The religious affections may mislead, or they may arise from causes of a physical nature, but a pure devotion to Truth is the submission of all that is in Man to the eternal Source of Thought,the sublime reliance of the Soul, unbribed by interest or passion, upon whatever it believes to have proceeded from that infinite Intelligence who is the Fountain of our spirits. There is no surrender to God so complete, as that which is made by him who worships the Father in spirit and in truth,-whose God is Reality, who uses no artificial means to keep up fluctuating and fluttering feelings that have no basis in his Reason, but casts all idols out of his heart, and like Abraham, stripped of his household gods, goes forth in faith to meet the untried future, knowing only that the great God has shown him of his spirit, and that to trust in Truth is to take refuge with the Father of Lights.

The love of God in the form of the love of Truth ensures the most genuine products of the devotional Spirit;-the hope of progress, which is the root of all true humility;-the practical fidelity of the Conscience;-and, what results from these, the trusting and childlike quiet of the heart. Christ himself has connected the sentiment of Immortality, of indefinite progress for the soul, with the worship that identifies God with Truth: "whosoever shall drink of this water, it shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." Immortality necessarily suggests ideas of Progress; and to love and obey the Truth are the only means by which our feeble Reason can approach to the Thoughts of God. These too are the sources of Fidelity in temptation; of sublime peace in life and death. Who steers his course so direct towards arduous Duty as he who believes that he has no safe guide but Principle, and, when this is clear, puts away from him, as false and unfilial, all deceitful reasonings about uncertain consequences, and feels that in following a moral Truth he is committing himself to the Love of an All-wise God? Who in the hour of agitation or death is so free from alarm of soul, as he whose peace with Heaven depends not on the vehemence of his belief in abstract propositions, or the chance temperature of unstable feelings, but on the sincerity with which his inward being cleaves to a spiritual God? Our Lord Jesus Christ, whose Comforter and God was the Spirit of Truth, and who described it as his Mission in the world, "to bear witness to the Truth that he knew," is the one example of perfect fidelity

in difficult Duty, and of heavenly peace of soul in all times of trial. In the midst of a Religion of prescription, and of Authority, and of Ritual, and of Enthusiasm, and of all other substitutes for the inner communion of the Soul with God, he alone, who trusted to the Truth to make him free, was established on the Rock, and could meet every crisis of his life with the strength of one supported by God, "not my will, but thine be done," and close his martyr death with the childlike trust, "Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit."

Whosoever has not the spirit of Christ is none of his. And there is no spirit so worthy to be called "the spirit of Christ" as this practical trust, this committal of ourselves to the convictions of our Reason and the monitions of our Conscience,-identifying them with God who is their Source. There are causes connected with the individual mind, and altogether independent of the undue influences of Society that render unfailing Devotion to Truth the most arduous form of the true worship of God,causes arising out of the infirmities and even the tenderness of our nature, the surrender of the mind to the prejudices of Education; the natural sloth of the Intellect; and the lingering residency of the Affections amid the sentiments and images where Faith first found a home. And Society which, alas, is but collective Man, with all the faults of the individual reduced to system, and sanctioned by numbers,-Society lashes us in the direction of the very tendencies which it ought to restrain, and adds the whole weight of its bribes and terrors to the difficulties which our own souls present, in the spiritual work of seeking and worshipping God under the form of Truth. That tyranny of the Imagination which in spiritual things fastens upon the mature mind the images of childhood; that sloth of the Intellect which falls away from the toil of conceiving God, and forfeits its filial inheritance of growing access to the Parent Light; and that contraction of the affections which clings to the familiar and the known without inquiring whether it is the true, and the pure, and the holy, and the lovely, these, which are in reality the infirmities of our nature, Society has exalted into religious virtues of the highest order, and lent itself to the pernicious work of consecrating our weaknesses before God, by punishing as impiety, to the utmost of its power, every attempt to gain new light on the subject of Religion, to draw deeper water from the wells of Christ, and to think freshly of the Almighty. So totally has that portion of Society which deems itself eminently Christian given up all thoughts of improvement in the knowledge of Religion, that the very supposition that there is any thing to be added to their knowledge of God and of

Christ is, in their eyes, a Heresy. This is the radical evil of all dogmatic systems, that they sanctify the natural sloth and stagnation of our spiritual powers, and that they designedly excite the persecution of Society against the man who reverently lifts his soul to the infinite God, and professes a faith in the possibility of new communications from His unexhausted Truth.

It is indeed most painfully descriptive of the state of Religion in this Country that an act so simple as the honest expression of Opinion should, by artificial difficulties, be elevated into a rare virtue,—that in this respect it should still be with the servant as with his Lord,-and that fidelity to conscience, though not actually led to the cross, should yet have its more refined and lingering martyrdom. It would seem to be the most natural of moral occurrences, and certainly not marked with any extraordinary merit, that a man should speak as he felt, and having in simplicity sought the Truth, should in simplicity declare what he had found. But the sectarian spirit in Society, the spirit of Churches under every form, has subjected to the severest temptations that simple honesty which would otherwise be a matter of course, the unprompted expression of the soul; so that the reverence for Truth which meets unmoved the frowns and seductions of that spirit, and pays its single obedience to inward conviction, deserves to be signalized, for it is rare indeed. Christians, while they profess a great regard for the Truth of Christianity, have shown very little regard for the only Christian truth a man can know any thing of,-truth to himself,and while they pray that he may be led into the Truth, they surround his path with every temptation to become a deceiver. Why was that venerable Confessor, for no less he was, whose worn remains were lately committed to the peaceful grave in Liverpool, in the presence of a few, who came to honour Truth in a Christian man, and to supply, as far as may be, with silent Reverence, the place of long familiar Love,-why was he, in his own pathetic words, in feebleness, in sickness, and in sorrow, "made a beggar for kindness?" In the name of Christian humanity, what was there in the mere circumstance of his having adopted some of our opinions, to place him exclusively within the range of our personal intercourse, and to make him a dependant on our sympathies? We think these questions ought to be put, and answered by those whom they concern.*

*The writer of these notices would be doing great injustice to the friends of BLANCO WHITE who belong to the Church of England, if he produced the impression that their affections were alienated from him by his religious opinions. He has reason to know that their friendship, and love, and generous care for him, never ceased. He would be understood therefore only to speak of the necessities of system, as manifested

Why came he to Liverpool in the last stage of worn life to make his home with strangers? Why was he, with that noble heart so formed to love, and where he loved to instruct and bless, an almost solitary man, over whose head whole days and weeks passed in which he had no happiness but what he drew from Conscience, and only not alone because his Father was with him? Why should that which it was his Christian duty to do be visited with such cruel penalties? Why should a change in his views of objective Truth, necessitate a change in all the circumstances of his life, and in all the daily friendships of his heart? Is this the way in which Christians express their reverence for Truth, by cruelly punishing every honest expression of it? We speak not of individuals, but of the Spirit of Systems. But this is the retributive stab which the dogmatism of the Intellect inflicts upon the heart. Whoever erects himself into a Judge of saving truth, withers his own affections for all who refuse his Tribunal. Those who presume to know God's judgments will act accordingly. They will not love those whom God does not love. And this is the social spirit of Orthodoxy!

And that these are feelings which we do not impute to him, but which actually embittered every day and hour of the last years of his life, we can produce most affecting evidence. It appears from his Journal, that on one occasion, he attended in that humble burying ground where now some of the most honoured of the earth repose, brought there by the same desire to pay respect to humanity which lately led others to his own grave. We will extract the record of his feelings on that occasion: it will make him known better than the descriptions of another.

Liverpool, January 18, 1837.

I am just returned from seeing a Unitarian minister* who lived near me laid in his grave. This is the only funeral which I have attended, during my long residence in England: but I feared there would be few present, and I wished to show this mark of respect to the deceased, as well as to my new religious connection. I could not prevent my tears falling while the coffin was let down. There is indeed much in my sensibility which is nervous; yet a mind so stored with baffled affections and regrets as mine, may be excused for its weakness. My efforts to suppress external marks of feeling are indeed very great, but not equal to the intended object. My tear, however, was not for the deceased

in the facts of Mr. White's change of condition, and separation from former friends. These necessities individuals cannot consistently set aside, so long as they are identified with the system called Orthodoxy, which limits Salvation to those who agree in certain opinions. He rejoices however to believe that, in this case, there were individuals who would forcibly have set aside every thing but the dictates of inextinguishable love for a revered friend.

The Rev. Mr. Perry.

personally, with whom I was not at all intimate; it was for humanity— suffering, struggling, aspiring, daily perishing and renewed humanity. As to the grave, and the descent of the coffin, and the strange noise of the sliding ropes-these things raise no melancholy feelings within me. I know not how soon I shall be laid in that same ground-for I have desired in my will to be buried in Renshaw-Street Chapel-and the thought of my last home came vividly before me. No! it is not death that moves me; but the contemplation of the rough path, and the darkened mental atmosphere, which the human passions and interests, disguised as Religion, oblige us to tread and cross on our way to the grave. What uncharitable, nay, what barbarous feelings, under the name of religious fears, would the view of the good, and, I believe, long-tried man whom we committed to the ground, have raised in the bosom of many otherwise kind-hearted persons whom I know! What shock would my own presence have given to a multitude of orthodox persons, who, but for my secession from the Church, would proclaim themselves my attached friends! Is there no hope that the notion of Orthodoxy-that most deadly moral poison for the heart-shall be well subdued, if not totally conquered, in this country?"

And this was not the first time that this spirit had cast him, alone and friendless, upon the wide world, his whole life was one continued struggle for Conscience' sake, and slow and weary was the obstructed way by which he forced himself forwards from light to light,-honoured and cherished by each Party in turn, as long as they could boast themselves of his name, or make use of his reputation, but cast out, (reluctantly indeed, and only under the necessities of system, but still cast out,) as soon as, having become familiar with the ground they occupied, he saw that it was not co-extensive with the Truth of God, and attempted to enlarge its boundaries. We use his own words in the preface to his latest work:

"Convinced that it is my duty publicly to dissent from some doctrines upon which the Orthodox seem to consider themselves as incapable of mistake, (else they would not treat those that deny them as guilty of something worse than an error of judgment,) I perceived the necessity, and submitted to the pain of quitting the domestic society of a family, whose members showed me an affection seldom bestowed but upon a near relative, and whom I love with all the tenderness and warmth of a heart which nature has not made either cold or insensible to kindness.

"It is not my intention to court the sympathy of the public on the score of what I have had to endure on this occasion. I will not complain; though this is certainly the second time that ORTHODOXY has reduced me to the alternative of dissembling, or renouncing my best external means of happiness. But I humbly thank God, that the love of honesty and veracity which He implanted in my soul, has been strengthened, constantly and visibly, from the moment that, following its