sonage, we knew before, acting under different circumstances, and with only a corresponding variation in his own feelings, and powers. But let our reader's judge for themselves:

"With him his noblest sons might not compare
In god-like feature, and majestic air;
Not out of weakness rose his gradual frame,
Perfect from his Creator's hand he came.
And, as in form excelling, so in mind.
The Sire of men transcended all mankind.
A soul was in his eye, and in his speech
A dialect of Heaven no art could reach;
For oft of old to him the evening breeze,
Had borne the voice of God among the trees;
Angels were wont their songs with his to blend,
And talk with him as their familiar friend.
But deep remorse for that mysterious crime,
Whose dire contagion through elapsing time
Diffused the curse of death beyond controul,
Had wrought such self-abasement in his soul,
That he, whose honours were approached by none,
Was yet the meekest man beneath the sun.
From Sin, as from the Serpent, that betray'd
Eve's early innocence, he shrunk afraid;
Vice he rebuk'd with so austere a frown,
He seem'd to bring an instant judgment down;
Yet, while he chid, compunctious tears would start,
And yearning tenderness dissolve his heart;
The guilt of all his race became his own,
He suffer'd as if he had sinn'd alone.
Within our glen to filial love endear'd,
Abroad for wisdom, truth and justice fear'd,
He walk'd so humbly in the sight of all,
The vilest ne'er reproached him with his fall.
Children were his delight-they ran to meet
His soothing hand, and clasp his honour'd feet;
While, 'midst their fearless sports supremely blest,
He grew in heart a child among the rest.
Yet as a Parent, nought beneath the sky,
Touch'd him so quickly as an infant's eye;
Joy from its smile of happiness he caught,
Its flash of rage sent horror through his thought;
His smitten conscience felt as fierce a pain,
As if he fell from innocence again." P. 76.

The burying place of the Patriarchs was a scene in perfect unison with the constitution of Mr. M's. mind: to him the idea of death presents no object either of terror or of despair; it is neither

"The

"The first dark day of nothingness," or

"The last of danger and distress."

On the contrary, he dwells on it frequently, and with humble delight. The following description accordingly is very chearful, and we believe will be felt by many of our readers to be in true taste, and every way soothing to the mind.

"A scene sequestered from the haunts of men,
The loveliest nook of all that lovely glen,
Where weary pilgrims found their last repose:
The little heaps were ranged in comely rows,
With walks between, by friends and kindred trod,
Who dress'd with duteous hands each hallow'd sod;
No sculptur'd monument was taught to breathe
His praises, whom the worm devour'd beneath;
The high, the low, the mighty, and the fair,
Equal in death were undistinguish'd there:
Yet not a hillock moulder'd near that spot
By one dishonour'd, or by all forgot:

To some warm heart the poorest dust was dear,
From some kind eye the meanest claim'd a tear,
And oft the living by affection led

Were wont to walk in spirit with their dead,
Where no dark cypress cast a doleful gloom,
No blighting yew shed poison o'er the tomb;
But white and red with intermingling flowers,
The graves look'd beautiful in sun and showers;
Green myrtles fenc'd it, and beyond their bound
Ran the clear rill with ever-murmuring sound.
'Twas not a scene for grief to nourish care;

It breath'd of hope, and mov'd the heart to prayer." P. 96. We had marked some other passages for citation, but we have already exceeded our limits. Our opinion of the poem may easily be gathered from the preceding remarks; great faults we think it has; that it has great beauties, the passages cited demonstrate without our testimony. While we thank Mr. M. for the pleasure these have afforded us, we cannot conclude without observing, that every page of this poem presents a strong confirmation of the remarks we ventured in a former number on the power of moral association in poetry. The peculiar charm of this poem is not in the incidents, for they are common; not in the delineation of character; the glowing language or harmonious flow of the measure; other poems, which please us less, might be found more highly qualified in all these points; it is to be found, we think, in the constant reference to pure, and holy images associated in the reader's mind with the expressed sentiments of the poem. Mr. M. has built his fame, we are

sure,

sure, on the firm foundation, and will be read, when others are forgotten, who now occupy every sofa in every drawing room in the metropolis. Spite of the arguments of philosophers, or the querulous invective of the satyrist, there is a constant struggle in the human heartfor amelioration; by nature we delight in the good, and the beautiful; this we hold to be an indisputable truth; and whatever presents them to our attention, whatever brings to our view the dormant ideas of them, which are laid up in our intellec'ual storehouse, will always be read and admired, and will always bprove those, who read and admire. This is the double triumph of legitimate poetry.

ART. IV. The Operations of the Holy Ghost, illustrated and confirmed in a Series of Sermons, evincing the Wisdom and Consistency of the Divine Economy; with Notes and Illustrations, exhibing the Evidence of the Truth, and the Authority of the Dourine, from the Primitive Church and the Church of England. By the Rev. Frederick Nolan, a Presbyter of the United Church. Svo. 534 pp. 129. Rivingtons. 1813.

THE importance of the subject discussed in this volume will be questioned by no man to whom the name of Christian can with propriety be applied. Its difficulty is perhaps equal to its importance. On no subject at least are opinions more various, on no theological question are the systems adopted by opposite parties maintained and controverted with greater acrimony and zeal. Much of this difficulty and opposition arises from hasty, inaccurate, and partial views, from hastily adapting insulated texts of Scripture to preconceived notions, from systematically confounding the extraordinary with the ordinary operations of the Holy Ghost, and from rashly concluding that all spiritual influence must be perceived by actual impulse, or verified by positive feeling.

That a real spiritual influence may exist without any consciousness or sensible experience on our part, it requires very little reflection to be enabled to discover. All that is created must be sustained by the creating power mediately or immediately, or it would instantly return to its original non-entity. The power which sustains that which it created must be present by some kind of influence to that which it sustains. That influence, whether mediately or immediately exercised, must in this case evidently be spiritual. We perceive not its presence. We feel not its influence. We cannot trace its nature so as to ascertain whether

ther it be immediate from God or mediate by the ministry of other beings, commissioned and empowered by him, nor can we describe its operations. But we cannot question its reality. We feel that we are unequal to our own preservation for a single moment, and we know that the agent must be present where its agency is exercised. The divine Spirit is, we Christians cannot doubt, essentially and immediately present and connected with all that exists. The connection is mysterious, but it is unquestionable. It is a truth which natural reason is not much disposed to attend to, and probably not very apt to discover; it must however feel and acknowledge it the moment that it is fully and fairly presented to the mind. As such St. Paul (Acts xvii. 27, 28.).eems certainly to have considered it, for he announced it to the Athe nians with perfect confidence, that, though their philosophy had not enabled them to make the discovery, or they had ailed to attend to it, their reason would at once perceive its force and acknowledge its truth, when it was fairly stated to hem. An ap-proximation to it he remarks in one of their on poets; and he judiciously takes advantage of this circumstance to aid his argument by engaging their attention, not to barbarous novelty, as they might at first deem it, but to a philosophic truth. "For we are also his offspring," is the expressio which he quotes, and it fully bears the intended inference. K follows necessarily that if we are the offspring of God, the elation being that of creature and Creator, we must owe the preservation of our being to the continued exercise of that power to which we owe its commencement. Creation out of nothing was a truth scarcely if at all known or acknowledged even by the most enlightened of Pagan philosophers. It was generally deemed impossible. Yet it is a truth equally sublime and impressive, and in fact it is of more. easy apprehension than the supposed eternity of matter which was generally believed and taught in the schools of antiquity. When it is once discovered that "God made (out of nothing) the world, and all things therein," the consequence will follow of course that "in him we live, move, and have our being." There are ordinary and natural means of preserving life with which we are perfectly acquainted; but every man is at once aware that they are not the efficient causes by which our being is sustained. Of these efficient causes we have no perception. Of the mode and means of their operation we have neither consciousness nor any kind of sensible knowledge. Yet sound philosophy will not allow us to question the fact. Here then we have unquestionably a spiritual influence, maintaining the being and condition of man, and of all created intelligences and things, not less mysterious than that which the Gospel teaches with respect to the commencement, growth, perfection and consequence of the Christian life.

3

If

If the revelation of the doctrine be clear, and the evidence of its being revealed sufficient, the difficulties by which it is accompa nied, and the mystery in which it is involved, will furnish no valid objections to the belief of it. For the same or similar difficulties may be urged, and the same or similar obscurities are in fact discovered in regard to our natural life. If we cannot allow them to have any weight in the latter, we ought not to allow them any force in the former.

The difficulties respecting spiritual influence among Christians, at least, refer not so much to its reality, which is generally acknowledged, as to its nature, to the means by which it is obtained, and to the evidence by which it is proved. There is in the enquiries to which this subject leads, much room for error, and often a vehement tendency to delusion. In Scripture, the distinction between the extraordinary and ordinary operations of the Spirit, though, in general, sufficiently apparent to learned, sober, and attentive readers, is not always so accurately marked as to arrest the attention of the ignorant, the enthusiastic, and the prejudiced. We read of the miraculous descent of the Holy Ghost even on ordinary Christians, and of sudden conversions followed by visible effects and sensible impulses of the Spirit. In all these, in the most remarkable cases as they are recorded in Scripture, there is order, method, and sobriety, and we may always in every case mark the important distinction which the Scriptures invariably point out, or enable us to discover, between the extraordinary and transient effects of the Spirit, and the ordinary and permanent means and effects of grace. As these are frequently understood, no such distinction is regarded, and the result is error, wildness, and enthusiasm. According to a very common system, the Spirit did every thing irresistibly and unaccountably; and what it did in the first age, excepting the power of miracles, we are taught to believe it does equally in the present, without any defined means in its commencement, or marks of gradual and progressive improvement in its consequences. Now if such were the case, we might justly ask, What need of so many ages of previous preparation for the Gospel? When all for which the Gospel was fitted was, according to this view, obtained in a moment of time, might have been so obtained at any period, is now obtained in the same manner in every instance of supposed conversion. The Scriptures speak of a fulness of time previous to which the Gospel was not to be, and in a certain sense could not be, published. Accord ing to the system referred to, every period from the fall to the present moment was equally fitted for the effusion of the Spirit and the promulgation of the sublime truths of the new law, because in the sense understood they might be arbitrarily impressed on any mind however rude, vicious, or ignorant. The long period

of