deed, into grace and into beauty, but its masculine character will be lost. From such an unfortunate preponderance of imagination, we doubt not, many a mind, gifted by nature with all the requisites for successful and honourable advances in the path of science, has derived that volatile and unstable character which has for ever hindered its success. Fancy's visions have absorbed the attention due to sober reason, and fiction has engrossed that time which ought to have been em. ployed in the investigation of truth. Another lamentable effect of an improperly indulged imagination is disappointment. This consequence is so natural, and has been so often traced in our own history, that little needs be said in order to establish its truth. Fancy, under the direction of a sanguine mind, paints her brightest scenes of future good-Hope fixes here her wishful gaze-until sober reason herself becomes the dupe of the illusion, forgets that it is an empty vision, gives it a place in her real calculations, and feels, when the phanton has vanished, all the regrets of rational disappointment. Nor must our estimate of the evils of such a consequence be formed alone on the temporary feeling of pain which is thus occasioned. Disappointment, in whatever way it is produced, is the bane of mental exertion. We have said that the imagination, when properly controlled by the judgment, may be of the most important service in our early advances in the path of knowledge, by the power it possesses of adorning what is in itself uninviting. And, with the same truth, we may add, that the imagination, undisciplined by a sound judgment, may produce the very opposite results. If the youthful mind is so far led astray by the representations of its fancy, as really to believe that the advances it shall make will be free from toil, and that its success is as certain as its advances will be easy; then, indeed, is the danger great, that the first palpable proof of the fatuity of its hopes will paralize its efforts, and induce a despondency even more to be deprecated than its unwarranted hopes. Those, whose circumstances and situation have made them familiar with the laborious efforts of intellect, cannot but be in possession of facts which supply a practical comment on these remarks. Such facts have taught us that, if there be one modification of human suffering more severe and more worthy of our sympathy than another, it is that which is inflicted by disappointed ambition. How often have we seen it prey, like some cankerworm, on the root of enjoyment, robbing the heart of its peace and its gladness, the spirits of their buoyancy, the eye of its life and its loveliness, the cheek of its beauty, and the whole frame of its freshness and vigour! Disappointment which has been incurred only by extravagant expectations-vanished hopes, which have vanished only because they have been too bright to be real-have sunk into despondency that heart which no future success could inspire with confidence, and which no meed of praise could awaken into hope. Again we remark, that an improperly governed imagination weakens the sympathies which are necessary to active benevolence. Sympathy with suffering is an original feeling of our nature, and is a source of exquisite pleasure. The number of fictitious works which embody in their descriptions scenes of distress, and the avidity with which such works are read, clearly prove this fact. Agreeably with this appointment, in which both the wisdom and the goodness of Him who formed us are strikingly conspicuous, the mind will instinctively seek objects of distress to engage its sympathies. In proportion to the power of the imagination, will ideal scenes of suffering be frequently and vividly presented, and the correspondent feelings of sympathy become intense. Now, it must necessarily follow that a mind, which is frequently accustomed to make such efforts, and to receive such gratification, will lose its susceptibility for real benevolent feeling, and be but ill disposed for the exercise of active philanthropy. Among the numberless victims of suffering which intercourse with society would bring before the view of such an individual, how few would he find whose character and history conspire to present a picture of distress half so interesting as those which fiction has often presented. What sympathies would such an one feel with the wants of yonder suppliant, whose tattered garb and emaciated frame bespeak him misery's child" indeed, but in whose uncourtly mien, and broken tale of common-place woe, there is nothing which will permit him to be identified with the hero of romance? There are few persons, we think, who have imbibed an excessive fondness for fiction, who would not be prepared to acknowledge that the necessary tendency of such a taste is to a morbid sensibility, which lamentably disqualifies for the active duties of benevolence. Sympathies of the most exquisite kind, it is true, have been awakened, but only by such objects as have awakened them uselessly. Benevolent feeling has flowed, but not through the cultivated soil, where thousands would benefit by the stream, but through the barren waste, where freshness and verdure cannot ap cr pear, nor flowers unfold their beauty, nor shed abroad their fragrance to reward its munificence. How often has it happened that, while the young and amiable heart has been wrought up to tenderness over a tale of fictitious woe, the neighbouring abode of real distress has remained unvisited, and poverty and sickness been unsought, as worthy neither of sympathy nor aid: and even when that poverty and sickness, embodied in some suffering form of humanity, have presented themselves for pity and for succour, has that very heart, amid all the refinement of its tenderness, felt no emotion, save that of disgust, and, like the too sensitive "priest," has "passed by on the other side,' leaving to grosser feelings the task of the good "Samaritan," to "bind up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine." But there is another tendency of an ill-regulated imagination, which bears yet more fatally on moral character. Hitherto we have considered the effects of an undue influence of this faculty on the social affections-effects which, injurious as they are, have been found for the most part negative; depriving the mind of good qualities, rather than communicating to it bad ones. Improperly directed by a virtuous mind, imagination renders that mind less virtuous; but, where a character otherwise than virtuous has been formed, where vicious propensity exists, this faculty, to an alarming extent, may produce moral injury. To what degree the man of revenge, of cruelty, of guilty ambition, and of general malevolence, will become, under the influence of a powerful and ill-regulated imagination, more revengeful, more cruel, more ambitious, and more malevolent, it may be perhaps difficult for us to determine: but that, to a very great extent, this is the case, there can be no doubt. The prescribed limits of the present essay will not allow us to attempt an extended illustration of this truth. We will refer, for a moment, to that class of passions to which imagination, in proportion as it has been cultivated, has, in every age, and in every country, lent her most powerful and most baneful aid-passions to which the pencil, the chisel, the song, and the lyre, have been made tributary—which have been bid to glow on the canvass, to breathe in the statue, to burn in poetry, and to melt in melody, and thus to receive an exquisiteness, and consequently a destructiveness, otherwise unknown. It mingles with the surrounding elements of corruption. Thus the soul, polluted in every thought, and debased in every faculty, is bound down to sense, and made the slave of lust, never more to be unloosed, until that sense and that lust shall themselves be bound in the stronger bonds of death and the grave; and then, defiled with all its pollution, "the spirit shall return to the God who gave it, and learn, in the purity of his nature, the turpitude of its guilt, and in the frown of his anger, the consummation of its misery. Birmingham. A. P. T. REV. RICHARD BAXTER TO June 14, 1665. is not too much to say, that to the AN ORIGINAL LETTER OF THE power of an imagination, as lawless as ingenious, we are to ascribe their worst modifications, their wildest excesses, and their guiltiest crimes. By the efforts of this faculty it is that a fascination is given to guilty pleasure, and a power to invite and to seduce, when reason and conscience have united to speak their loudest warnings of peril and death. It is this that gives a zest when sense had else been long satiated and palled that "decks with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt, and perfumes with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon," the place where "many wounded have been cast down, and many strong men have been slain." Of all that constitutes the bane of virtue, of happiness, and of peace, an imagination thus employed is most to be dreaded. The incentives to unhallowed passion are multiplied to an infinite degree; new and ever-varied forms of allurement are produced in endless succession, ever to attract, and ever to seduce; solitude forms no safeguard; virtuous love withers beneath the infection; every association is contaminated, and Most dear and truly honoured Sir, I WILL not accuse you for tempting me to be proud, by the favour of so worthy a person as yourself, expressed in your visit, and the gift of your many excellent books. For it is no dishonour to good, that omni malum est ex bono, nor to God himself, that none giveth so many occasions of sin, whilst none is so far from being the cause. But I will rather look back to one of my old lessons, that our greatest benefits must be received in the most timorous, watchful posture. The recreation which I have oft taken in your experimental philosophy, and other such writings, are not like those which some men seek in cards and stage plays, and other murderers of precious time, whose fruit is some unwholesome, sensual delight, and, finally, the sting of sorrow, when irrevocable time is gone. But they have been a profitable pleasure, which prepares not for repentance. I was naturally as much inclined as others, to play with the gilded leaves and outsides of my books, and handsomely decypher the letters before I understood the sense to take up my time in the search of creatures, and words, and' circumstances, and to abuse all these by separating them from God! And it was not soon enough that I reduced all my learning to the doctrines, de fine ultimo et de mediis practically, and that I studied and estimated all the means according to their places and value in their tendency to the end. But when God removed my dwelling into a church-yard, and set me to study bones and dust, and by a prospect into another world, awakened my soul from the learning of a child, and shewed me, that my studies must not be play, but effective, practical, serious works; I then began to be conducted by necessity, and to search after truth, but as a means to goodness, and to perceive the difference betwixt a pleasant, easy dream, and a waking, working knowledge. I thank you for all your books, but most for those, which have most for God: and as to the subjects, that which stands next to heaven is best: there are my hopes, and that way be all my businesses and concernments. What a puppet play is the life of sensuality, worldliness, and pride! And how low a game is it, which Emperors and Commanders play, who seek no higher things, in comparison of (the business) a humble Christian, who, by the conduct of the word and Spirit of God, is seeking immortal pleasures! If these be not my happiness I shall consent to have no other, much more if they be. Let me have more than this malignant, distracted world affords, or let me have nothing. Let me be happy longer than seventy years, or let me never be happy. How I am esteemed, or called, or used here, for so short a time, I desire to make it but little of my care, nor much to regard, whether so short a dream be sad or pleasant. He loseth nothing that loseth but this shadow: and in the end he will confess, he hath got nothing, who hath got no more. If the possi bility of endless joy or misery prevail not with me against all that the world can offer, I will be judge against myself, and freely confess that by sinning against reason, I forfeit all pretensions to felicity, and that hell is my due. It is become a controversy, whether a contemplative or an active life be the more excellent ? and whether it be the more advantageous to holiness, to shut up our senses against the creature, and retire to an abstracted communion with God; or to make so much more use of creatures, as we would attain to more of the knowledge of the Creator, because it is but in a glass that here he can be known. Doubtless, in our innocency, this was the book which man was made to learn and read. And it is so far from the intention of the Redeemer to cloud the glory of the Creator, or to diminish our highest respects to him, that it is indeed his office to redeem and save, and restore the creatures to their Maker's favour, love, and service, and so to their primitive use and end. In innocency God appeared to man sufficiently amiable in his worship; but to a guilty, cursed, condemned sinner, bound over to everlasting punishment, it became impossible to love the God who stood engaged to condemn and punish him; but we love him as our Redeemer, that we may love him again as our Creator: and thus Christ is the way to the Father, and faith is the way to love, and the Gospel is far from abrogating nature's law; and on the Lord's day, we commemorate the wonders of redemp tion, in order to our just admiring the creation; and the seventh day's work is not abolished, but inclusively to be performed on the first. So that, indeed, as far as we are yet corrupt and weak, it is safest to retire as far from the creature as we can; for experience assureth us, that the objects of sense, though they may and must be used to our helps, are such powerful diverters and deceivers of the mind, and clogs in our highest contemplations, that ordinarily they are the most terrene and sensual men, who are most busied in terrene and sensual things. But so far as we are restored, sanctified persons, we are above the snare, and may see and love God in his creatures, and serve him by them, and make them all the ladder of our contemplations, and utensils in our Father's work. And thus the world is no worse to us, than a good horse, and a fair way, and a good inn, and company, and weather to a traveller; or as a : improve opportunities of contemplation, (ascending from creatures to the most abstracted apprehensions that I can reach!) and for the serving of my Lord, and the good of others, I will be as glad of the opportunities of profitable actions, believing I shall lose nothing by it in the end, but that the doing good is the surest way to receive good: and when God restraineth me from these, (as now he doth from the latter) I shall be glad that I may be employed in the other. The sum is, though a contemplative life may be more predominant with some, and an active with others, yet there are none but the utterly impotent, who are not obliged to use them both: but it is contemplation which fitteth both for action and fruition. I remain, Honourable and worthy Sir, your very much obliged servant, RICHARD BAXTER. DIENCY. ship, in which we must sail to the PALEY'S PRINCIPLE OF EXPEharbour of endless rest. And thus indeed we have nothing to know but God, and the significant sanctified creature; and nothing to do but to see and love him in himself and his works, and serve him by them. But a man must know himself that will know his duty and if all men, then the weak especially, have need to "watch and pray, lead us not into temptation.' Nor yet will I so retire from the creature, as to shut my book, and regret the glass in which the image of God appeareth; or to hide my talents for fear of the austerity of my Lord! But for the direct illumination, sanctification, and comfort of my own soul, I will desire to "" For some time past it has been fashionable to revile what is called Paley's Principle of Expediency. Your correspondent Quidam joins in this outcry; but amongst the many persons who have thus declaimed, scarcely any have condescended either fairly to state Paley's sentiments, or to adduce any reasons for condemning him. The manner in which Mr. Gisborne has treated Paley, is quite unworthy an author of Mr. G.'s celebrity. I shall feel greatly obliged to any of your correspondents, who will favour us with a brief, but distinct statement of the principal objections to Paley's position. A. B. |