error, and perceived that it was but a pretext (and that a very flimsy one) for serving the purposes of ecclesiastical avarice. And yet, at the present enlightened period of society, the Bishop of Chester has lent his name to countenance the very hypothesis on which the grossest superstitions of Popery were built; and this, too, in a diocese abounding with persons of that persuasion, and many of whom are employed, in every possible way, in spreading their opinions! From the Bishop of Chester's sermon we turn to Dr. Chalmers's, which he has published in consequence of some remarks made upon a passage in it in several of the daily journals. The text is from Isaiah xxvi. 9: For when thy judgments are abroad in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness: and in discussing it, the author laments that he should not be able, in the space of a single discourse, to clear his way to those topics which are most specifically appropriated to a sermon, and must therefore be obliged to restric: himself to that more partial application of the text which relates to "the matters of public Christianity." We proceed to give one or two extracts. "I cannot open my Bible, without learning that loyalty is one branch of the righteousness of practical Christianity. I am not seeking to please men bat God, when I repeat his words in your hearing-that you should honour the king-that you should obey magistrates-that you should meddle not with those who are given to changethat you should be subject to principalities and powers-that you should lead a quiet and a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. This, then, is a part of the righteousness which it is our business to teach; and sure I am that it is a part of righteousness which the judgment now dealt out to us should, of all others, dispose you to learn. I know not a virtue more in harmony with the present feelings, and afflictions, and circumstances of the CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 193. country, than that of a stedfast and determined loyalty. The time has been when such an event as the one that we are now assembled to deplore, would tion, and set a guilty ambition upon its have put every restless spirit into momurderous devices, and brought pow erful pretenders with their opposing hosts of vassalage into the field, and enlisted towns and families under the rival banners of a most destructive fray of contention, and thus have broken up the whole peace and confidence of society. Let us bless God that these days of barbarism are now gone by. But the vessel of the state is still exposed to is a sea of storms, on which the gale of many agitations. The sea of politics human passions would make her founder, were it not for the guidance of human principle; and, therefore, the truest policy of a nation is to Christianize her subjects, and to disseminate among them the influence of religion. The most skilful arrangement for rightly governing a state, is, to scatter among the governed, not the terrors of power - not the threats of jealous and alarmed anthority-not the demonstrations of sure and ready vengeance held forth by the rigour of an offended law. These may, at times, be imperiously called for. But a permanent security against the wild outbreakings of turbulence and disaster, is only to be at tained by diffusing the lessons of the Gospel throughout the great mass of our population-even those lessons which are utterly and diametrically at antipodes with all that is criminal and wrong in the spirit of political disaffection. The only radical counteraction to this evil is to be found in the spirit of Christianity; and though animated by such a spirit, a man may put on the intrepidity of one of the old prophets, and denounce even in the ear of royalty, the profligacies which may disgrace or deform it-though animated by such a spirit, he may lift his protesting voice in the face of an un-. christian magistracy, and tell them of their errors-though animated by such a spirit, he, to avoid every appearance of evil, will neither stoop to the flattery of power nor to the solicitations of patronage-and though all this may bear, to the superficial eye, a hard, and repulsive, and hostile aspect towards the established dignities of the land-yct forget not, that if a real and I honest principle of Christianity lie at the root of this spirit, there exists within the bosom of such a man, a foundation of principle, on which all the lessons of Christianity will rise into visible and consistent exemplification. And it is he, and such as he, who will turn out to be the salvation of the country, when the hour of her threatened danger is approaching—and it is just in proportion as you spread and multiply such a character that you raise within the bosom of the nation the best security against all her fluctuations and, as in every other department of human concerns, so will it be found, that, in this particular department, Christians are the salt of the earth, and Christianity the most copious and emanating fountain of all the guardian virtues of peace, and order, and patriotism." Chalmers, pp. 10-12. The following passage was that which excited the animadversions to which we have alluded: how little it justified them, especially when taken in connexion with the foregoing, in which the duty of loyalty is so earnestly inculcated, our readers will judge for them. selves. "Under my first head, I restricted myself exclusively to the virtue of loyalty, which is one of the special, but I most willingly admit, uay, and most earnestly contend, is also one of the essential attributes of righteousness. But there is a point ou which I profess myself to be altogether at issue with a set of men who composed, at one time, whatever they do now, a very numerous class of society. I mean those men, who, with all the ostentation and all the intolerance of loyalty, evinced an utter indifference either to their own personal religion or to the religion of the people who were around themwho were satisfied with the single object of keeping the neighbourhood in a state of political tranquility-who, if they could only get the population to be quiet, cared not for the extent of profaneness or of profligacy that was amongst them-and who, while they thought to signalise themselves in the favour of their earthly king, by keeping down every turbulent or rebellious movement among his subjects, did, in fact, by their own conspicuous example, lead them and cheer them on in their rebellion against the King of heaven-and, as far as the mischief could be wrought by the contagion of their personal influence, these men of loyalty did what in them lay to spread a practical contempt for Christianity, and for all its ordinances, throughout the land. "Now, I would have such men to understand, if any snch there be within the sphere of my voice, that it is not with their loyalty that I am quarreling. I am only telling them, that this single attribute of righteousness will never obtain a steady footing in the hearts of the people, except on the ground of a general principle of righteousness. I am telling them how egregiously they are out of their own politics, in ever thinking that they can prop the virtue of loyalty in a nation, while they are busily employed, by the whole instrumentality of their example and of their doings, in sapping the very foundation upon which it is reared. I am telling them, that if they wish to see loyalty in perfection, and such loyalty, too, as requires not any scowling vigilance of theirs to uphold it, they must look to the most moral, and orderly, and Christianized districts of the country. I am merely teaching them a lesson, of which they seem to be ignorant, that if you loosen the hold of Christianity over the hearts of the population, you pull down from their ascendency all the virtues of Christianity, of which loyalty is one. Yes, and I will come yet a little closer, and take a look of that loyalty which exists in the shape of an isolated principle in their own bosoms. I should like to guage the dimensions of this loyalty of theirs, in its state of disjunction from the general principle of Christianity. I wish to know the kind of loyalty which characterizes the pretenders to whom I am alluding-the men who have no value for preaching, but as it stands associated with the pageantry of state-the men who would reckon it the most grievous of all he resies, to be away from church on some yearly day of the king's appointment, but are seldom within its walls on the weekly day of God's appointment-the men who, if ministers were away from their post of loyalty, on an occasion like the present, would, without mercy, and without investigation, denounce them as suspicious characters; but who, when we are at the post of piety, dispensing the more solemn ordinances of Christianity, openly lead the way in that crowded and eager emigration, which carries half the rank and opu lence of the town from us. What, oh! what is the length, and the breadth, and the height, and the depth of this vapouring, swaggering, high-sounding loyalty? It is nothing better than the loyalty of political subalterns, in the low game of partizanship, or of whippers-in to an existing administration: it is not the loyalty which will avail ns in the day of danger: it is not to them that we need to look, in the evil hour of a country's visitation; but to those right-hearted, sound-thinking Christian men, who, without one interest to serve, or one hope to forward, honour their king because they fear their God. "Let me assure such a man, if such a man there is within the limits of this assembly-that, keen as his scent may be after political heresies, the deadliest of all such heresies lies at his own door-that there is not to be found, within the city of our habitation, a rottener member of the community than kimself—that, withering as he does by his example the principle which lies at the Foot of all national prosperity, it is he, and such as he, who stand opposed to the best and the dearest objects of loyalty; -and, if ever that shall happen, which it is my most delightful confidence that God will avert from us, and from our children's children to the latest posterity-if ever the wild phrenzy of revolution shall run through the ranks of Britain's population, these are the men who will be the most deeply responsible for all its atrocities, and for all its horrors." Chalmers, pp. 20–21. The remainder of Dr. Chalmers's sermon is employed in pointing out the necessity, and urging the build ing, of new churches. We need not dwell upon a topic which has so often occupied our own pages, and to which all who value the morals, or comfort, or loyalty, or religion of the community, must attach the very highest importance. There is but one discourse more (Mr. Hall's) which we shall mention, and which is so decidedly su perior to any thing else that we have seen on the late melancholy occasion, that we cannot feel justified in dismissing it without one or two further quotations. We wish neral argument, which is conducted we had space to abridge the gedour of eloquence which it would be with a force of reasoning and a splendifficult to parallel, except perhaps in the pages of the same author. "While we look at this event with the eyes of flesh, and survey it in the aspect it bears towards our national prospects, it appears a most singular and affecting catastrophe. But considered in itself, or more properly in its relation to a certain, though invisible futurity, its consequences are but commensurate to those which result from the removal of the meanest individual. He whose death is as little regarded as the fall of a leaf in the forest, and he whose departure involves a nation in despair, are in this view of the subject (by far the most important one) upon a level. Before the presence of the Great I AM, into which they both immediately enter, these distinctions vanish, and the true statement of the fact on either supposition is, that an immortal spirit has finished its earthly career; has passed the barriers of the invisible world, to appear before its Maker, in order to receive that sentence which will fix its irrevocable doom, according to the deeds done in the body.' On either supposition, an event has taken place which has no parallel in the revolutions of time, the consequences of which have not room to expand themselves within a narrower sphere, than an endless duration. An event has occurred, the issues of which must ever baffle and elude all finite comprehension, by concealing themselves in the depths of that abyss, of that eternity, which is the dwellingplace of Deity, where there is sufficient space for the destiny of each among the innumerable millions of the human race to develop itself, and, without interference or confusion, to sustain and carry forwards its separate infinity of interest." "Man is naturally a prospective creature, endowed not only with a capacity of comparing the present with the past, but also of anticipating the future, and dwelling with anxious rumination on scenes which are yet remote. He is capable of carrying his views, of attachdistant than that which measures the ing his anxieties, to a period much more limits of his present existence; capa ble, we distinctly perceive, of plunging into the depths of future duration, of identifying himself with the sentiments and opinions of a distant age, and of enjoying by anticipation, the fame of which he is aware, he shall never be conscious, and the praises he shall never hear. So strongly is he disposed to link his feelings with futurity, that shadows become realities when contemplated as subsisting there; and the phantom of posthumous celebrity, the faint image of his being, impressed on future generations, is often preferred to the whole of his present existence, with all its warm and vivid realities. The complexion of the day that is passing over him, is determined by the anticipations of the morrow: the present borrows its brightness and its gloom from the future, which, presenting itself to his contemplation as in a mirror, incessantly agitates him with apparitions of terror or delight. In the calculations of interest, the mind is affected in the same manmer: it is perpetuity which stamps its value on whatever we possess, so that the lowest epicure would prefer a small accession to his property, to the most exquisite repast; and none are found so careless of futurity as not to prefer the inheritance he may bequeath, to one of equal value, the title to which expires with his life. "How is it, then, that we find it so difficult to prevail upon men to fix their attention firmly on another world, that real future existence which reason assures us is probable, which Revelation teaches us is certain, which is separated from us by so narrow a boundary, and into which thousands of our fellowcreatures are passing every moment? How is it that the professed followers of Him especially, who descended from heaven, who came forth from the Father to conduct us thither, are so indisposed to turn their thoughts and contemplations to that unchanging state of being, into which they are so shortly to enter? It is not, we perceive, that to move for ward is not congenial with our mental constitution: it is not because we are so enchanted with the present scene, as to be incapable of diverting our attention from it; for we are continually disquieted by a restless desire of something future: it is not because we are seldom warned, or reminded of another state of existence; for every funeral bell, every opening grave, every symp. tom of decay within, and of change without us, is a separate warning; to say nothing of the present most affecting dispensation which has filled this nation with such consternation and distress. "Were any other event, of far inferior moment, ascertained by evidence which made but a distant approach to that which attests the certainty of a life to come; had we equal assurance that, after a very limited though uncertain period, we should be called to migrate into a distant land, whence we were never to return, the intelligence would fill every breast with solicitude; it would become the theme of every tongue; and we should avail ourselves with the utmost eagerness of all the means of information respecting the prospects which awaited us in that unknown country. Much of our attention would be occupied in preparing for our departure; we should cease to consider the place we now inhabit as our home; and nothing would be considered as of moment, but as it bore upon our future destination. How strange is it, then, that with the certainty we all possess of shortly entering into another world, we avert our eyes as much as possible from the prospect; that we seldom permit it to penetrate us; and that the moment the recollection recurs, we hasten to dismiss it, as an unwelcome intrusion? Is it not surprising that the volume we profess to recognise as the record of immortality, and the sole depository of whatever information it is possible to obtain respecting the portion which awaits ns, should be consigned to neglect, and rarely, if ever, consulted with the serious intention of ascertaining our future condition? "That a creature formed for an endless duration should be disposed to turn his attention from that object, and to contract his views and prospects within a circle which, compared to eternity, is but a mathematical point, is truly astonishing; and as it is impossible to account for it from the natural constitution of the mind, it must originate in some great moral cause. It shews that some strange catastrophe has befallen the species; that some deep and radi cal malady is inherent in the moral system. Though philosophers of a certain description may attempt to explain and justify it on some ingenious hypothesis, yet in spite of metaphysical subtleties, the alarming inquiry will still returnHow is it that the disposition of man kind is so much at variance with their prospects; that no train of reflections is more unwelcome than that which is connected with their eternal home? If the change is considered as a happy one; if the final abode to which we are hastening, is supposed to be an improve ment on the present, why shrink back from it with aversion? If it is contemplated as a state of suffering, it is natural to inquire what it is, that has invested it with so dark and sombre a eharacter. What is it which has enveloped that species of futurities in a gloom which pervades no other? If the indisposition to realize a life to come, arises in any measure from a vague presentiment that it will bring ns, so to speak, into a closer contact with the Deity, by presenting clearer manifestations of his character and perfections, (and who can doubt that this is a principal cause), the proof it affords of a great deterioration in our moral condition is complete. For who will suppose it possible, a disposition to hide himself from his Creator should be an original part of the constitution of a reasonable creature? or what more portentous and unnatural than for him that is formed, to shun the presence of his Maker, and to place his felicity in the forgetfulness of him in whom he lives, and moves, and has his being? If he is pained and disquieted whenever he is forcibly reminded of Him whose power sustains, and whose bounty replenishes, the universe with whatever is good and fair; if the Source of being and of happiness is the object of terror, instead of confidence and love, it is not easy to conceive what can afford a stronger conviction of guilt, or a more certain presage of danger. "The conclusion to which we are conducted, is confirmed by inspiration, which assures us that a great revolution has actually befallen the species, and that, in consequence of the entrance of sin into the world, we have incurred the forfeiture of the Divine favour, and the loss of the Divine image. In this situation, it is not difficult to perceive, that the economy adapted to our relief must include two things-the means of expiating guilt, and the means of moral renovation: in other words, an atoning Sacrifice, and a sanctifying Spirit. Both these objects are accomplished in the advent of the Saviour, who, by presenting himself as a sin-offering, has made ample satisfaction to offended justice, and purchased by his merits the renovating Spirit, which is freely offered to as many as sincerely seek it. By the former, the obstructions to our happiness arising from the Divine nature are removed; by the latter, the disqualifi cation springing from our own." Hall, pp. 32-40. With this lengthened extract we dismiss a subject unequalled, perhaps in interest by any thing similar in our own annals, or those of any other nation. We can only wish, what we fear we cannot predict, that the subjects of practical improvement suggested by these as well as by various other writers may be found to have produced the results which their authors intended, and which the mournful event is so well calculated to effect. LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL INTELLIGENCE, &c. &c. GREAT BRITAIN. PREPARING for publication:-Travels in Syria, by J. L. Burckhardt;-Picturesque Tour in Italy, by J. H. Arch;Letters and Memoirs of the Abbe Edgeworth ;-Memoirs and Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton;-Voyage to Gorea, by Lient. Clifford;-in one vol. 4to., a Narrative of a Tour in South Africa, together with some Account of the State of the Missions of the United Brethren in that interesting Country; by the Rev. C. I. Latrobe. In the press-A History of the Civil Wars in England, by G. Arnauld ;The Fourth Canto of Childe Harold ;Lessons on Mineralogy, by Mr. Mawe; Observations made during a Tour through the Pyrennees, France, Switzerland, &c. by J. Milford, Jun. ;-Travels from Vienna, through Hungary; by Richard Bright, M.D.;-Poems, by Mr. Montgomery; Travels through Germany, Poland, &c.; by A. Neale, M. D. The Case of the Salt Duties, by Sir Thomas Bernard ;-The Child's Ma |