rest, cause him to bend the knee in secret homage and devotion to his Redeemer, when at the same time, as Lord High Chancellor of England, he had as much of the wealth of this world as he could wish for, and all the honor which the British Constitution could confer upon a subject? No! no!~ again—will be the loud acclaim of every man who knows the history of Bacon; for it must be recollected, that his prosperous days were his praying days, as well as the days of his adversity. He did not wait, as many penitents have done, till the arrows of the Almighty pierced him, till the chastening hand of his Creator cast him down from his exalted station, before he became a Christian; but in the morning of his life, and in the proudest days of his prosperity, he was not ashamed to take up the cross, bow the knee to Jesus, and confess his faith to God. Verily, my dear sir, an example so illustrious ought not to be lost sight of even by the superior mind of Thomas Herttell. Surely you may safely drink at the same religious fount, whence the Father of Philosophy drew refreshing draughts of faith and piety. Perhaps you wait the coming of the Angel to stir the waters. If so, wait in faith, and he will not fail to come; pray for the dews of Hermon, and the wings of that Angel shall scatter them upon you, for the health of your understanding, and the salvation of your immortal soul. It is not, however, because I believe the opinions of great men infallible, that I have thus introduced Bacon and others; for one of the great est among them, writing under the influence of inspiration, I mean the inimitable Job, has admonished us, that great men are not always wise: They do not, however, depend upon it, exhibit a lapse of wisdom, when they pray and confess their faith to God: which Joв knew, and so did BACON, by precious and soul-reviving experience and as the stand which you occupy at present among the Representatives of a great state, will give a corresponding extent of circulation, as well as importance, to your speech; and as you have taken pains to proclaim your belief, that confession of faith to God is unnecessary, which may be the means, I fear, of leading young and uncultivated or inexperienced minds, to a heedlessness that will tend to the corruption of their hearts, and their eternal ruin, I have thought it best to inform those of them, who shall read these letters, that the greatest and the best of men-men far above my friend Hertell, and myself, in genius and acquirements have deemed such confession, such pure and refreshing communion with their Creator, both proper and salutary, both necessary and delightful. It appears to me indeed, that as God is the source, the sole and eternal fountain of intellect; so those of his creatures to whom for his own wise purposes, he has imparted the most of it, must naturally be the most desirous to seek intercourse with him by private as well as public devotion, by communing with him in the silent watches of the night, and meditating, both by day and by night, on the vast variety and unspeakable splendor and magnificence of his wonderful works, and on his goodness, wisdom, power and glory. It was in this spirit of the truly great and good, that David exclaimed:-"My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up." Psal. v. 3. And again-"I meditate on all thy works: I muse on the works of thy hands. I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee." Psal. 143, 5, 6. [G.] Vain, witty and sarcastic men, like Shaftsbury and Voltaire; dissolute, dissipated and heedless men, like Lord Bolingbroke and Wilmot, Earl of Rochester; cold and heartless philosophers, like Hobbes, Tindall and Hume-(the last, the calm, cold-hearted apologist of the profligate, tyrannical and bloody STUARTS)-and their satellites, such as TOULMIN and others, not worth naming, partake not of this pure spirit. The divine and all-beautiful breathings of David's lyre; the plain, simple and unaffected, but grand and majestic, pure and generous, just and merciful precepts and principles, commands and exhortations, that flowed from the lips of the Saviour, do not affect the minds or the hearts of such men; for they are callous to every consideration, but such as connects itself with their heartless speculations-their heedless wanderings in the regions of scepticism; or their still more heedless, if not heartless and criminal pursuits in the walks of sensuality and corruption; their mis tresses, their bottles and their bowls, with their sports on the turf, and at the gaming table, on the one hand; or their impious, if not blasphemous volumes, and their quills spreading sophistry and falsehood upon the unsullied page, on the other. What did Voltaire or Hume care for the happiness of mankind, or the good order of society, when assailing by their sneers and sarcasms the mysteries of religion? Evidently nothing. Whoever will ob serve carefully how much pains the one takes to show off his splendid and pungent wit, in his correspondence with that Arch Infidel, commonly, but not with strict justice, I think, called Frederic the Great, and the other to spin out or weave cold and heartless sophisms, in his Essay on Miracles, which by the bye, Campbell has entirely refuted; will be satisfied of the truth of what I now advance. But wit is not wisdom, nor is sophistry truth; much less the wisdom and the truth that descend from above, which have God for their author, and which shine in all the splendor of HIS Divinity on the page of revelation. The pride of learning, the self-conceit, the vanity, (and perhaps, in some of them, the malignity,) of these men, were gratified; but if these, their weak and wicked passions, were gratified at the expense of their eternal salvation, and led them at last to those gloomy shades, where, instead of the mistress, the bottle and the bowl, the turf and the billiard table, they have found nought but "weeping, and wailing and gnashing of teeth," amid the tormenting fires of perdition; then I ask, who can envy them in this awful termination of their guilty pleasures, and their impious and heaven-daring labors? I do not believe my friend. Herttell to be one of these men. I think I can account for his scepticism, or Infidelity, on different ground; on ground more honorable both to his head and his heart, affecting only his want of zeal and inclination to study the subject thoroughly, which I do not despair he will yet do to his own honor and the glory of his Redeemer. I cannot readily believe-I will not indeed believe-that a man of his endowments of mind, and heart, will go down to the grave, unregenerated by the holy spirit, unconsoled by the promises of the gospel! No-I hope to see the day, when his mind, instead of ruminating or resting on the cheerless system of the sceptic and the infidel, will turn its thoughts into a purer channel, which will lead him sincerely to exclaim, in the language of Campbell: "Ah me! the laurell'd wreathe that murder rears, Doom'd o'er the world's precarious scene to sweep, But to return to your creed :-The second, third |