power of nature,' independent of the effects produced by the will of God. "Dugald Stewart has adopted and illustrated the same opinion. Finally we may add, that the same opinions still obtain the assent of the best philosophers and divines of our time. Sir John Herschel says, (Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 37,) We would no way be understood to deny the constant exercise of His direct power in maintaining the system of nature; or the ultimate emanation of every energy which material agents exert, from his immediate will, acting in conformity with his own laws.' And the Bishop of London, in a note to his 'Sermon on the Duty of combining Religious Instruction with Intellectual Culture,' observes, 'The student in natural philosophy will find rest from all those perplexities which are occasioned by the obscurity of causation, in the supposition which, although it was discredited by the patronage of Malebranche and the Cartesians, has been adopted by Clarke and Dugald Stewart, and which is by far the most simple and sublime account of the matter, that all the events which are continually taking place in the different parts of the material universe, are the immediate effects of the divine agency.'' 2'9 To this most worthy testimony, original and quoted, of Mr. Whewell's Treatise, might be added the similar opinion of Paley, as expressed in his "Natural Theology," particularly in the chapter on the "Personality of the Deity." ART. IV. 1. The Life, Times, and Correspondence of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D. D. By the Rev. THOMAS MILNER, M. A., Author of "The Seven Churches of Asia." London, 1834. 8vo. pp. 734. 2. The Sacred Classics. Vol. IX. Hora Lyrica. By ISAAC WATTS, D. D.; with a Memoir of the Author, by ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq., LL. D. London. 1834. 12mo. pp. 298. We should hardly have expected, at this late day when nearly a century has passed since his death, another "Life and Times" of good old Dr. Watts. Not that we should have been slow to welcome any fresh intelligence, any last or yet inedited works of that great man. For his name is still fra grant with us. It awakens some of our most agreeable associations of early childhood and of maturer years. The sight and the sound of it are grateful. We were ready to rejoice in any new light that might be afforded upon his character or opinions; and knowing, as in the memoirs recently published of Locke, of Calamy and Doddridge,* of Pepys, and others, that there has been of late much successful industry in bringing to view authentic documents of interesting events and persons of past generations, both here and in England, we supposed that this work by Mr. Milner was of the same description. And, when we saw with our own eyes a portly octavo purporting to be "The Life, Times, and Correspondence" of this eminent divine, we anticipated a feast of good things, of which, though it were reasonable to expect that many would be old, we thought some at least must be new. It was only natural to suppose that additional materials had been discovered; that some worthy descendant, for example, of Sir John Hartopp, Baronet, who was first the pupil and then the intimate friend of Watts, on taking possession of the ancient house, had found some correspondence of the Doctor; or, that some old trunks in the garrets of Sir Thomas Abney's spacious and hospitable mansion, where Watts, on an invitation for a fortnight, was an honored and welcomed guest for full thirty-six years, had been examined; and possibly some curious papers, of which Dr. Lardner intimated the existence, recording the matured views of their author on the Trinity, or other questions of moment touching the interests or prospects of nonconformity, &c., were at length to be given to the world. But we are sorry to inform our readers, that nothing of all this is true; so that, if they have partaken at all of our reasonable expectations, they must partake with us also in our disappointment. For a more unsatisfactory book of its size we have seldom met with. Excepting in the mere narrative, most of which is old, it is strangely dull. In truth, we are left to marvel what could have tempted Mr. Milner to such an enterprise, who, if he knew, as he should have known, what had been already printed, must have been conscious how little he had to add. Or, admitting that a new memoir was desirable, we no less wonder that he should have been unconscious of *See Christian Examiner, New Series, Vol. VII. what he has so well succeeded in demonstrating to his readers, -his utter incompetency to the task. The learned Jortin has somewhere in his "Remarks on Ecclesiastical History" bestowed, not forgetting his usual candor, a sort of fame on a certain pedant and biographer, whom he designates "as a stupid blockhead by the name of Ben-Gorion." We should be tempted, except for some modest distrust in the efficacy of our pages to confer a like glory, to designate in the same way this last of the biographers of the immortal Watts. For, we must repeat it, a poorer book with so rich a subject we are seldom called to read. The only additions of any moment, distinguishing this from former "Lives," relate not so much to Dr. Watts himself, as to his family and some of his friends. Of a few of these, namely, the first Lord Barrington, author of "Miscellanea Sacra," and other excellent books; Richard Cromwell, eldest son of the Protector, who in his old age, which was vigorous and cheerful, was often visited by Watts; * and, lastly, Mrs. Bendish, a granddaughter of the Protector, being daughter of General Ireton by Bridget Cromwell, a most masculine and eccentric personage; - of all of whom within the compass of two or three pages, some curious incidents are related. For the rest, whoever wishes to know what can be said of Watts, will find it better said in the notices of Jennings and Gibbon, Dr. Johnson and Palmer; and particularly in a judicious summary of all these by the late Dr. Belknap of this city, enriched with the remarks of that accomplished historian, as well as with manuscript letters of Watts, still in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The compiler did not set his name to this pleasant volume; but it was published in 1793, five years before his death, and includes the Memoirs, by Kippis, of Dr. Doddridge. *This son of the Protector and successor to his power, after several years of perplexity and pecuniary embarrassments on the Continent, returned to England, and resided in the village of Cheshunt, where the pew in which he used to sit in the meeting-house, is still preserved as a relic worthy of notice. He courted privacy; and always avoided speaking of the time of his elevation. Watts, who must have been young at that time, was admitted among his few visitors, and asserted, that "he never knew him glance but once at his former station, and that in a very distant manner. Nature clearly intended him for a private station. 43 VOL. XVIII. N. But though the Rev. Mr. Milner has furnished us so little we had not known before of Dr. Watts, he has given us a great deal of one, concerning whom but for this volume we had known nothing, namely, himself. In this he has accomplished one at least of his purposes, though less, we fear, to the satisfaction of his readers than his own; serving them as would he, who, undertaking to introduce an eminent man to a company eager to see and to hear his wisdom, should silence him and grievously annoy them by taking the whole conversation to himself. Mr. Milner seldom adverts to any marked incident in the life of his subject, to the date of any of his greater publications, or to any controversy in which he was engaged, without prefacing the whole with some prosing dissertation of his own. When, for example, he is about to announce the fact of Mr. Watts's preparation for the ministry, he speaks at no small length of what he thinks that preparation demands. When Mr. Watts enters upon his ministry, it gives Mr. Milner occasion to "advert to the state of religion and of religious parties in the nation at that era." And here he fails not to tell us, in a strain which some might call cant, but we will call lamentation, remarking only how like it is the strain which we have been accustomed to hear from religionists of like stamp at the present day," that there was no period since the Reformation, when the ministry of religion in the establishment exercised so little beneficial influence upon the people, as at that period; and, as if he had borrowed from some complaining spirits among ourselves, or they from him, the very language, he says in reference to some eminent divines of that day, of whom others of competent judgment have pronounced, "that they had never been surpassed in erudition, in eloquence, or in strength and subtilty of mind," "that instead of advocating the truth as it is in Jesus, they were engaged in reducing Christianity to a lifeless system, and converting religion into a mere moral scheme. With all their Ciceronish or Attic eloquence, they knew not the first principles of the doctrine of Christ; they were the merest novices of religion, apostles of natural religion rather than preachers of the revealed word, more familiar with Plato than Paul, with the ethics of Seneca than with the glories of the cross." In the same connexion, and with like charity, he reprehends the "cold philosophy of Lardner, the moral lections of Kippis, the stiff and starched critical essays of Benson, and the dry effusions of a Socinian ized ministry," by which the devotion of the heart evaporated into an intellectual principle, and the conversion of the soul was frittered down into a mere natural process of mental enlightenment and cultivation. With equal felicity in the choice of terms, he speaks for the same purpose of the "apathetic soul” of Dr. George Benson; he laments an opposite extreme of "ambitious pietism, which asserted extravagant claims to high supernal illumination;" and then, among other critical remarks on Watts's "Guide to Prayer," he speaks of the Divine Being as gladding his people with the exuberant profusions of his grace and the sempiternal efflux of his glory!" In these and such like passages of frequent occurrence, our worthy author sometimes leaves us, we must confess, in no little loss as to his meaning. But we suppose he was not equally at a loss himself. When, again, he comes to the notice of Watts's "Hymns" and "Lyric Poems," Mr. Milner, premising, according to his custom, a copious discussion of his own on devotional poetry, in which he formally addresses himself to the refutation of that unfortunate sentence of Dr. Johnson as to "the paucity of its topics,' &c. &c., proceeds to vindicate for Dr. Watts "the highest place among the hymnists of our land." With great expense of learning, he shows that "uninspired productions were introduced into the hymnology of the church at an early period; he shows how several of the Fathers sought to edify their flocks by supplying them with devotional poetry; how Hilary of Poictiers, in the fourth century, made a collection of hymns; how Prudentius of Saragossa, in the fifth, increased but did not enrich, even with his Hymnus Epiphania, the sacred songs of Christendorn; how the Arians of Constantinople sung hymns. strongly tinctured with the peculiarities of their creed; and how an orthodox bishop, fearing the propagation of so pestilent a heresy, furnished his choir with some safer hymns of his own. Then passing to the "hymnology of Catholicism," he kindly informs us, that Hildebert, bishop of Anomanum (Mans), sung in the twelfth century some verses in his cathedral, which Usher designates" rhythmos elegantissimos"; but rapidly coming to the times of the Reformation, and celebrating Luther as a poet and musician as well as a reformer, he remarks, that in his verse "he comes before us strong in his righteous cause, impetuous as his own wild and voiceful Rhine;" and then, after a cursory survey of more recent "composuists," in which |