vastly superior to his antagonist. The political opinions and intolerance of the bishop were more successfully attacked by Robert Hall, in his Apology for the Freedom of the Press. friends forsake us; when sorrow, or sickness, or old GILBERT WAKEFIELD (1756-1801) enjoyed cele- [On the Effects of Religion.] When the pulse beats high, and we are flushed with youth, and health, and vigour; when all goes on prosperously, and success seems almost to anticipate our wishes, then we feel not the want of the consolations of religion: but when fortune frowns, or Another distinguished volunteer in the cause of religious instruction, and an extensive miscellaneous writer, was MRS HANNAH MORE, whose works we DR SAMUEL PARR-DR EDWARD MALTBY- DR SAMUEL PARR (1747-1825) was better known as a classical scholar than a theologian. His sermons on education are, however, marked with cogency of argument and liberality of feeling. His celebrated Spital sermon, when printed, presented the singular anomaly of fifty-one pages of text and two hundred and twelve of notes. Mr Godwin attacked some of the principles laid down in this discourse, as not sufficiently democratic for his taste; for though a stanch Whig, Parr was no revelutionist or leveller. His object was to extend education among the poor, and to ameliorate their condition by gradual and constitutional means. Dr Parr was long head master of Norwich school; and in knowledge of Greek literature was not surpassed by any scholar of his day. His uncompromising support of Whig principles, his extensive learning, and a certain pedantry and oddity of character, rendered him always conspicuous among his brother churchmen. He died at Hatton, in Warwickshire, the perpetual curacy of which he had enjoyed for above forty years, and where he had faithfully discharged his duties as a parish pastor. DR EDWARD MALTBY, the present bishop of Dur ham, was the favourite pupil of Parr at Norwich school. He is author of a work on the Christian Evidences; two volumes of sermons, 1819 and 1822; a third volume of sermons preached before the society of Lincoln's Inn, where he succeeded Dr Heber; and also of a vastly improved edition of Morell's Greek Thesaurus, which engaged his attention for about eleven years. The REV. SIDNEY SMITH, well known as a witty miscellaneous writer and critic, is a canon residentiary of St Paul's. Mr Smith published two volumes of sermons in the year 1809. They are more remarkable for plain good sense than for originality or eloquence. A few sentences from a sermon on the Love of our Country will show the homely earnestness of this author's serious style : [Difficulty of Governing a Nation.] It would seem that the science of government is an unappropriated region in the universe of knowledge. Those sciences with which the passions can never interfere, are considered to be attainable only by study and by reflection; while there are not many young men who doubt of their ability to make a constitution, or to govern a kingdom: at the same time there cannot, perhaps, be a more decided proof of a superficial understanding than the depreciation of those difficulties which are inseparable from the science of government. To know well the local and the natural man; to track the silent march of human affairs; to seize, with happy intuition, on those great laws which regulate the prosperity of empires; to reconcile principles to circumstances, and be no wiser than the times will permit; to anticipate the effects of every speculation upon the entangled relations and awkward complexity of real life; and to follow out the theorems of the senate to the daily comforts of the cottage, is a task which they will fear most who know it best-a task in which the great and the good have often failed, and which it is not only wise, but pious and just in common men to avoid. [Means of Acquiring Distinction.] It is natural to every man to wish for distinction; and the praise of those who can confer honour by their praise, in spite of all false philosophy, is sweet to every human heart; but as eminence can be but the lot of a few, patience of obscurity is a duty which we owe not more to our own happiness than to the quiet of the world at large. Give a loose, if you are young and ambitious, to that spirit which throbs within you; measure yourself with your equals; and learn, from frequent competition, the place which nature has allotted to you; make of it no mean battle, but strive hard; strengthen your soul to the search of truth, and follow that spectre of excellence which beckons you on beyond the walls of the world to something better than man has yet done. It may be you shall burst out into light and glory at the last; but if frequent failure convince you of that mediocrity of nature which is incompatible with great actions, submit wisely and cheerfully to your lot; let no mean spirit of revenge tempt you to throw off your loyalty to your country, and to prefer a vicious celebrity to obscurity crowned with piety and virtue. If you can throw new light upon moral truth, or by any exertions multiply the comforts or confirm the happiness of mankind, this fame guides you to the true ends of your nature: but, in the name of God, as you tremble at retributive justice, and, in the name of mankind, if mankind be dear to you, seek not that easy and accursed fame which is gathered in the work of revolutions; and deem it better to be for ever unknown, than to found a momentary name upon the basis of anarchy and irreligion. [The Love of our Country.] Whence does this love of our country, this universal passion, proceed? Why does the eye ever dwell with fondness upon the scenes of infant life? Why do we breathe with greater joy the breath of our youth? Why are not other soils as grateful, and other heavens as gay? Why does the soul of man ever cling to that earth where it first knew pleasure and pain, and, under the rough discipline of the passions, was roused to the dignity of moral life? Is it only that our country contains our kindred and our friends? And is it nothing but a name for our social affections? It cannot be this; the most friendless of human beings has a country which he admires and extols, and which he would, in the same circumstances, prefer to all others under heaven. Tempt him with the fairest face of nature, place him by living waters under shadowy trees of Lebanon, open to his view all the gorgeous allurements of the climates of the sun, he will love the rocks and deserts of his childhood better than all these, and thou canst not bribe his soul to forget the land of his nativity; he will sit down and weep by the waters of Babylon when he remembers thee, oh Sion! DR HERBERT MARSII. DR HERBERT MARSH, bishop of Peterborough, who died in May 1839 at an advanced age, obtained distinction as the translator and commentator of Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament,' one of the most valuable of modern works on divinity. In 1807 this divine was appointed Lady Margaret's professor of divinity in the university of Cambridge, in 1816 he was made bishop of Llandaff, and in 1819 he succeeded to the see of Peterborough. Besides his edition of Michaelis, Dr Marsh published Lectures on Divinity, and a Comparative View of the Churches of England and Rome. He was author also of some controversial tracts on the Catholic question, the Bible society, &c. in which he evinced great acuteness, tinctured with asperity. In early life, during a residence in Germany, Dr Marsh published, in the German language, various tracts in defence of the policy of his own country in the continental and more particularly a very elaborate History of the Politics of Great Britain and France, from the Time of the Conference at Pilnitz to the Declaration of War, a work which is said to have produced a marked impression on the state of public opinion in Germany, and for which he received a very considerable pension on the recommendation of Mr Pitt. wars; About the year 1833 appeared the first of the celebrated Tracts for the Times, by Members of the University of Oxford, which have originated a keen controversy among the clergy of the church of England, and caused a wide rent or schism in that ancient establishment. The peculiar doctrines or opinions of this sect are known by the term Puseyism, so called after one of their first and most intrepid supporters, DR EDWARD BOUVERIE PUSEY, second son of the late Hon. Philip Pusey, and grandson of the Earl of Radnor. This gentleman was born in 1800, and educated at Christ-church college, Oxford, where, in 1828, he became regius ¦ professor of Hebrew. In conjunction with several other members of the university of Oxford (Mr Newman, Professor Sewell, &c.), Dr Pusey established an association for spreading and advocating their views regarding church discipline and authority, and from this association sprung the Tracts for the Times.' The tenets maintained by the tract writers were chiefly as follows:-They asserted the threefold order of ministry-bishops, priests, and deacons. They claimed a personal, not a merely official de scent from the apostles; that is, they declared that stirring-possessing, indeed, the fire and energy of not only had the church ever maintained the three a martial lyric or war-song. In November 1804 orders, but that an unbroken succession of indivi- the noble intellect of Mr Hall was deranged, in conduals, canonically ordained, was enjoyed by the sequence of severe study operating on an ardent and church, and essential to her existence; in short, that susceptible temperament. His friends set on foot a without this there could be no church at all. They subscription for pecuniary assistance, and a lifeheld the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, of sacra- annuity of £100 was procured for him. He shortly mental absolution, and of a real, in contradistinc- afterwards resumed his ministerial functions, but in tion to a figurative or symbolical presence in the about twelve months he had another attack. This Eucharist. They maintained the duty of fasting, of also was speedily removed; but Mr Hall resigned his ritual obedience, and of communion with the apos- church at Cambridge. On his complete recovery, tolic church, declaring all dissenters, and, as a ne- he became pastor of a congregation at Leicester, cessary consequence, the members of the church of where he resided for about twenty years. During Scotland, and all churches not episcopal, to be mem- this time he published a few sermons and criticisms bers of no church at all. They denied the validity in the Eclectic Review. The labour of writing for of lay-baptism; they threw out hints from time to the press was opposed to his habits and feelings. time which evidenced an attachment to the theolo- He was fastidious as to style, and he suffered under gical system supported by the nonjuring divines in a disease in the spine which entailed upon him acute the days of James II.; and the grand Protestant prin- pain. A sermon on the death of the Princess Charciple, as established by Luther-the right of private lotte in 1819 was justly considered one of the most interpretation of Holy Scripture-they denied.'* The impressive, touching, and lofty of his discourses. tracts were discontinued by order of the bishop of In 1826 he removed from Leicester to Bristol, Oxford; but the same principles have been main- where he officiated in charge of the Baptist contained in various publications, as in MR GLADSTONE'S gregation till within a fortnight of his death, two works, On the Relation of the Church to the State, which took place on the 21st of February 1831. and Church Principles; MR CHRISTMAS'S Discipline The masculine intellect and extensive acquireof the Anglican Church, &c. In 1843 Dr Pusey was ments of Mr Hall have seldom been found united suspended from preaching, and censured by the to so much rhetorical and even poetical brilliancy university for what was denounced as a heretical of imagination. His taste was more refined than sermon, in which he advanced the Roman Catholic that of Burke, and his style more chaste and cordoctrine of transubstantiation. The publications on rect. His solid learning and unfeigned piety gave this memorable controversy are not remarkable for a weight and impressiveness to all he uttered and any literary merit. The tracts are dry polemical wrote, while his classic taste enabled him to clothe treatises, interesting to comparatively few but zea- his thoughts and imagery in language the most lous churchmen. appropriate, beautiful, and commanding. Those who listened to his pulpit ministrations were entranced by his fervid eloquence, which truly disclosed the 'beauty of holiness,' and melted by the awe and fervour with which he dwelt on the mysteries of death and eternity. His published writings give but a brief and inadequate picture of his varied talents; yet they are so highly finished, and display such a combination of different powers-of logical precision, metaphysical acuteness, practical sense and sagacity, with a rich and luxuriant imagination, and all the graces of composition-that they must be considered among the most valuable contributions made to modern literature. A complete edition of his works has been published, with a life, by Dr Olinthus Gregory, in six volumes. REV. ROBERT HALL. [On Wisdom.] The REV. ROBERT HALL, A. M. is justly regarded as one of the most distinguished ornaments of the body of English dissenters. He was the son of a Baptist minister, and born at Arnsby, near Leicester, on the 2d of May 1764. He studied divinity at an academy in Bristol for the education of young men preparing for the ministerial office among the Baptists, and was admitted a preacher in 1780, but next year attended King's college, Aberdeen. Sir James Mackintosh was at the same time a student of the university, and the congenial tastes and pursuits of the young men led to an intimate friendship between them. From their partiality to Greek literature, they were named by their class-fellows 'Plato and Herodotus.' Both were also attached to the study of morals and metaphysics, which they ferior to wisdom, in the same sense as the mason who Every other quality besides is subordinate and incherished through life. Hall entered the church as lays the bricks and stones in a building is inferior to assistant to a Baptist minister at Bristol, whence he the architect who drew the plan and superintends the removed in 1790 to Cambridge. He first appeared work. The former executes only what the latter conas an author by publishing a controversial pamphlet trives and directs. Now, it is the prerogative of entitled Christianity Consistent with a Love of Free- wisdom to preside over every inferior principle, to dom, which appeared in 1791; in 1793 he published regulate the exercise of every power, and limit the his eloquent and powerful treatise, An Apology for indulgence of every appetite, as shall best conduce to the Freedom of the Press; and in 1799 his sermon, one great end. It being the province of wisdom to Modern Infidelity considered with respect to its Influence preside, it sits as umpire on every difficulty, and so on Society. The latter was designed to stem the gives the final direction and control to all the powers torrent of infidelity which had set in with the French of our nature. Hence it is entitled to be considered Revolution, and is no less remarkable for profound as the top and summit of perfection. It belongs to thought than for the elegance of its style and the wisdom to determine when to act, and when to ceasesplendour of its imagery. His celebrity as a writer when to reveal, and when to conceal a matter when was further extended by his Reflections on War, a to speak, and when to keep silence when to give, and sermon published in 1802; and The Sentiments proper when to receive; in short, to regulate the measure of to the Present Crisis, another sermon preached in all things, as well as to determine the end, and proThe latter is highly eloquent and spirit-vide the means of obtaining the end pursued in every *A New Spirit of the Age. Vol. i. p. 207. 1803. deliberate course of action. Every particular faculty or skill, besides, needs to derive direction from this; 34 they are all quite incapable of directing themselves. The art of navigation, for instance, will teach us to steer a ship across the ocean, but it will never teach us on what occasions it is proper to take a voyage. The art of war will instruct us how to marshal an army, or to fight a battle to the greatest advantage, but you must learn from a higher school when it is fitting, just, and proper to wage war or to make peace. The art of the husbandman is to sow and bring to maturity the precious fruits of the earth; it belongs to another skill to regulate their consumption by a regard to our health, fortune, and other circumstances. In short, there is no faculty we can exert, no species of skill we can apply, but requires a superintending hand-but looks up, as it were, to some higher principle, as a maid to her mistress for direction, and this universal superintendent is wisdom. [From the Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte of Wales.] Born to inherit the most illustrious monarchy in the world, and united at an early period to the object of her choice, whose virtues amply justified her preference, she enjoyed (what is not always the privilege of that rank) the highest connubial felicity, and had the prospect of combining all the tranquil enjoyments of private life with the splendour of a royal station. Placed on the summit of society, to her every eye was turned, in her every hope was centred, and nothing was wanting to complete her felicity except perpetuity. To a grandeur of mind suited to her royal birth and lofty destination, she joined an exquisite taste for the beauties of nature and the charms of retirement, where, far from the gaze of the multitude, and the frivolous agitations of fashionable life, she employed her hours in visiting, with her distinguished consort, the cottages of the poor, in improving her virtues, in perfecting her reason, and acquiring the knowledge best adapted to qualify her for the possession of power and the cares of empire. One thing only was wanting to render our satisfaction complete in the prospect of the accession of such a princess; it was, that she might become the living mother of children. The long-wished-for moment at length arrived; but, alas! the event anticipated with such eagerness will form the most melancholy part of our history. It is no reflection on this amiable princess, to suppose that in her early dawn, with the dew of her youth so fresh upon her, she anticipated a long series of years, and expected to be led through successive scenes of enchantment, rising above each other in fascination and beauty. It is natural to suppose she identified herself with this great nation which she was born to govern; and that, while she contemplated its pre-eminent lustre in arts and in arms, its commerce encircling the globe, its colonies diffused through both hemispheres, and the beneficial effects of its institutions extending to the whole earth, she considered them as so many component parts of her grandeur. Her heart, we may well conceive, would often be ruffled with emotions of trembling ecstacy when she reflected that it was her province to live entirely for others, to compass the felicity of a great people, to move in a sphere which would afford scope for the exercise of philanthropy the most enlarged, of wisdom the most enlightened; and that, while others are doomed to pass through the world in obscurity, she was to supply the materials of history, and to impart that impulse to society which was to decide the destiny of future generations. Fired with the ambition of equalling or surpassing the most distinguished of her predecessors, she probably did not despair of reviving the remembrance of the brightest parts of their story, and of once more attaching the epoch of British glory to the annals of a female reign. It is needless to add that the nation went with her, and probably outstripped her in these delightful anticipations. We fondly hoped that a life so inestimable would be protracted to a distant period, and that, after diffusing the blessings of a just and enlightened administration, and being surrounded by a numerous progeny, she would gradually, in a good old age, sink under the horizon amidst the embraces of her family and the benedictions of her country. But, alas! these delightful visions are fled; and what do we behold in their room but the funeral-pall and shroud, a palace in mourning, a nation in tears, and the shadow of death settled over both like a cloud! Oh the unspeakable vanity of human hopes!-the incurable blindness of man to futurity!-ever doomed to grasp at shadows; to seize' with avidity what turns to dust and ashes in his hands; to sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind. REV. JOHN FOSTER. The REV. JOHN FOSTER (1770-1843) was author of a volume of Essays, in a Series of Letters, published in 1805, which was justly ranked among the most original and valuable works of the day. The essays are four in number on a man's writing memoirs of himself; on decision of character; on the application of the epithet romantic; and on some of the causes by which evangelical religion has been rendered less acceptable to persons of cultivated taste. Mr Foster's essays are excellent models of vigorous thought and expression, uniting metaphysical nicety and acuteness with practical sagacity and common sense. He also wrote a volume on the Evils of Popular Ignorance, several sermons, and critical contributions to the Eclectic Review. Like Hall, Mr Foster was pastor of a Baptist congregation. He died at Stapleton, near Bristol. In the essay On a Man's Writing Memoirs of Himself, Mr Foster thus speculates on a changeable character, and on the contempt which we entertain at an advanced period of life for what we were at an earlier period: Though in memoirs intended for publication a large share of incident and action would generally be necessary, yet there are some men whose mental history alone might be very interesting to reflective readers; as, for instance, that of a thinking man remarkable for a number of complete changes of his speculative system. From observing the usual tenacity of views once deliberately adopted in mature life, we regard as a curious phenomenon the man whose mind has been a kind of caravansera of opinions, entertained a while, and then sent on pilgrimage; a man who has admired and dismissed systems with the same facility with which John Buncle found, adored, married, and interred his succession of wives, each one being, for the time, not only better than all that went before, but the best in the creation. You admire the versatile aptitude of a mind sliding into successive forms of belief in this intellectual metempsychosis, by which it animates so many new bodies of doctrines in their turn. And as none of those dying pangs which hurt you in a tale of India attend the desertion of each of these speculative forms which the soul has a while inhabited, you are extremely amused by the number of transitions, and eagerly ask what is to be the next, for you never deem the present state of such a man's views to be for permanence, unless perhaps when he has terminated his course of believing everything in ultimately believing nothing. Even then, unless he is very old, or feels more pride in being a sceptic, the conqueror of all systems, than he ever felt in being the champion of one, even then it is very possible he may spring up again, like a vapour of fire from a bog, and glimmer through new mazes, or retrace his course through half of those which he trod before. You will observe that no respect attaches to this Proteus of opinion after his changes have been multiplied, as no party expect him to remain with them, nor deem him much of an acquisition if he should. One, or perhaps two, considerable changes will be regarded as signs of a liberal inquirer, and therefore the party to which his first or his second intellectual conversion may assign him will receive him gladly. But he will be deemed to have abdicated the dignity of reason when it is found that he can adopt no principles but to betray them; and it will be perhaps justly suspected that there is something extremely infirm in the structure of that mind, whatever vigour may mark some of its operations, to which a series of very different, and sometimes contrasted theories, can appear in succession demonstratively true, and which imitates sincerely the perverseness which Petruchio only affected, declaring that which was yesterday to a certainty the sun, to be to-day as certainly the moon. It would be curious to observe in a man, who should make such an exhibition of the course of his mind, the sly deceit of self-love. While he despises the system which he has rejected, he does not deem it to imply so great a want of sense in him once to have embraced it, as in the rest who were then or are now its disciples and advocates. No; in him it was no debility of reason; it was at the utmost but a merge of it; and probably he is prepared to explain to you that such peculiar circumstances, as might warp even a very strong and liberal mind, attended his consideration of the subject, and misled him to admit the belief of what others prove themselves fools by believing. quities, after having been so long beguiled, like the mariners in a story which I remember to have read, who followed the direction of their compass, infallibly right as they thought, till they arrived at an enemy's port, where they were seized and doomed to slavery. It happened that the wicked captain, in order to betray the ship, had concealed a large loadstone at a little distance on one side of the needle. On the notions and expectations of one stage of life I suppose all reflecting men look back with a kind of contempt, though it may be often with the mingling wish that some of its enthusiasm of feeling could be recovered-I mean the period between proper childhood and maturity. They will allow that their reason was then feeble, and they are prompted to exclaim, What fools we have been-while they recollect how sincerely they entertained and advanced the most ridiculous speculations on the interests of life and the questions of truth; how regretfully astonished they were to find the mature sense of some of those around them so completely wrong; yet in other instances, what veneration they felt for authorities for which they have since lost all their respect; what a fantastic importance they attached to some most trivial things; what complaints against their fate were uttered on account of disappointments which they have since recollected with gaiety or self-congratulation; what happiness of Elysium they expected from sources which would soon have failed to impart even common satisfaction; and how certain they were that the feelings and opinions then predominant would continue through life. If a reflective aged man were to find at the bottom of an old chest-where it had lain forgotten fifty years-a record which he had written of himself when he was young, simply and vividly describing his whole heart and pursuits, and reciting verbatim many passages of the language which he sincerely uttered, would he not read it with more wonder than almost Another thing apparent in a record of changed every other writing could at his age inspire? He opinions would be, what I have noticed before, that would half lose the assurance of his identity, under there is scarcely any such thing in the world as simple the impression of this immense dissimilarity. It would conviction. It would be amusing to observe how seem as if it must be the tale of the juvenile days of reason had, in one instance, been overruled into some ancestor, with whom he had no connexion but acquiescence by the admiration of a celebrated name, that of name. He would feel the young man thus or in another into opposition by the envy of it; how introduced to him separated by so wide a distance of most opportunely reason discovered the truth just at character as to render all congenial sociality imposthe time that interest could be essentially served by sible. At every sentence he would be tempted to reavowing it; how easily the impartial examiner could peat-Foolish youth, I have no sympathy with your be induced to adopt some part of another man's opi- feelings, I can hold no converse with your understandnions, after that other had zealously approved some ing. Thus, you see that in the course of a long life a favourite, especially if unpopular part of his, as the man may be several moral persons, so various from Pharisees almost became partial even to Christ at the one another, that if you could find a real individual moment that he defended one of their doctrines against that should nearly exemplify the character in one of the Sadducees. It would be curious to see how a these stages, and another that should exemplify it in professed respect for a man's character and talents, the next, and so on to the last, and then bring these and concern for his interests, might be changed, in several persons together into one society, which would consequence of some personal inattention experienced thus be a representation of the successive states of one from him, into illiberal invective against him or his man, they would feel themselves a most heterogeneous intellectual performances, and yet the railer, though party, would oppose and probably despise one another, actuated solely by petty revenge, account himself the and soon after separate, not caring if they were never model of equity and candour all the while. It might to meet again. If the dissimilarity in mind were as be seen how the patronage of power could elevate great as in person, there would in both respects be a miserable prejudices into revered wisdom, while poor most striking contrast between the extremes at least, old Experience was mocked with thanks for her in-between the youth of seventeen and the sage of seventy. struction; and how the vicinity or society of the rich, and, as they are termed, great, could perhaps melt a foul that seemed to be of the stern consistence of early Rome, into the gentlest wax on which Corruption could wish to imprint the venerable creed- The right divine of kings to govern wrong,' with the pious inference that justice was outraged when virtuous Tarquin was expelled. I am supposing the observer to perceive all these accommodating dexterities of reason; for it were probably absurd to expect that any mind should itself be able in its review to detect all its own obli The one of these contrasts an old man might contemplate if he had a true portrait for which he sat in the bloom of his life, and should hold it beside a mirror in which he looks at his present countenance; and the other would be powerfully felt if he had such a genuine and detailed memoir as I have supposed. Might it not be worth while for a self-observant person, in early life to preserve, for the inspection of the old man, if he should live so long, such a mental likeness of the young one? If it be not drawn near the time, it can never be drawn with sufficient accuracy. |