sioned by their sense of moral turpitude, independently of any peculiar religious tenets newly embraced; and they should also recollect, that our public hospitals and mad-houses are filled with patients of every class and character, with but comparatively few individuals oppressed by hypochondriacal delusions.

Evan. Mag.

DEATH OF HUME.

on

THE following admirable remarks on the death of the cele brated infidel, David Hume, are extracted from a critique Ritchie's Life of Hume in the Eclectic Review. His death,' as the Reviewer observes, will probably be admitted, and even cited, by infidels, as an example of the noblest and most magnan. imous deportment in the pros. pect of death, that it is possible for any of their class to maintain an example, indeed, which very few of them ever, in their serious moments, dare promise themselves to equal, though they may deem it in the highest degree enviable. It may be taken as quite their apostolic specimen, standing parallel in their history to the instance of St. Paul in the records of the Christians, I have fought a good fight,'

&c.

"For a short time previous to his death, he amused himself with playing at cards, making whim. sical legacies, and other trifling occupations. As an instance of his sportive disposition,'notwithstanding the prospect of speedy dissolution,' his biographer relates, that, when reading

Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, he diverted himself with invent. ing several jocular excuses which he supposed he might make to Charon, and in imagining the very surly answers which it might suit the character of Charon to return to them :-" Upon fur. ther consideration,” said he, “I thought I might say to him, 'Good Charon, I have been cor recting my works for a new edi. tion, Allow me a little time, that I may see how the public receive the alterations ?" But Charon would answer, 66 When you see the effect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no end of such excuses; so honest friend, please to step into the boat." But I might still urge, Have a little patience, good Charon: I have been endeavoring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfal of some of the prevailing systems of superstition.' But Charon would then lose all temper and decency. "You loiter. ing rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years. you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy, loitering rogue."

Do

This anecdote is accompanied with the following just and striking reflections on the part of the Reviewer: 1st. Supposing a certainty of the final cessation of conscious existence at death, this indifference to life, if it was not affected (which indeed we suspect it to have been in part) was an absurd undervaluation of a possession which almost all rational creatures, that have not been extremely miserable, hare

its own nature, most precious. To be a conscious agent, exert. ing a rich combination of won. derful faculties,-to feel an infinite variety of pleasurable sensations and emotions,-to contemplate all nature,-to extend an intellectual presence to indefinite ages of the past and future, to possess a perennial spring of ideas,—to run infinite lengths of inquiry, with the delight of exercise and fleetness, even when not with the satisfaction of full attainment, and to be a lord over inanimate matter, compelling it to an action and an use al. together foreign to its nature, to be all this, is a state so stupendously different from that of being simply a piece of clay, that to be quite easy and complacent in the immediate prospect of passing from the one to the other, is a total inversion of all reasonable estimates of things; it is a renunciation, we do not say of sound philosophy, but of common sense. The certainty that the loss will not be felt after it has taken place, will but little sooth a man of unperverted mind, in considering what it is that he is going to lose.

2. The jocularity of the philosopher was contrary to good taste. Supposing that the expected loss were not, according to a grand law of nature, a cause for melancholy and desperation, but that the contentment were rational; yet the approaching transformation was, at all events, to be regarded as a very grave and very strange event; and therefore jocularity was totally incongruous with the anticipation of such an event :-a grave and solemn feeling was the only

the contemplation of such a change. There was, in this in.

stance, the same incongruity which we should impute to a writer who should mingle buffoonery in a solemn crisis of the drama, or with the most momentous event of a history. To be in harmony with his situation, ia his own view of that situation, the expressions of the dying phi losopher were required to be dig. nified; and if they were in any degree vivacious, the vivacity ought to have been rendered graceful, by being accompanied with the noblest effort of the intellect, of which the efforts were going to cease for ever. The low vivacity of which we have been reading, seems but like the quickening corruption of a mind whose faculty of perception is putrifying and dissolving, even before the body. It is true, that good men, of a high order, have been known to utter pleasantries in their last hours;-but these have been pleasantries of a fine, ethereal quality,--the scintillations of animated hope,— the high pulsations of mental health, the involuntary movements of a spirit feeling itself free even in the grasp of death, the natural springs and boundings of faculties on the point of obtaining a still much greater and a boundless liberty. These had no resemblance to the low and labored jokes of our philosopher, jokes so labored as to give strong cause for suspicion, after all, that they were of the same nature, and for the same purpose, as the expedient of a boy on passing through some gloomy place in the night, who whistles to lessen his fear,

or to persuade his companion that he does not feel it.

3. Such a manner of meeting death was inconsistent with the skepticism to which Hume was always found to avow his adherence; for that skepticism necessarily acknowledged a possibility and a chance that the religion which he had scorned might notwithstanding, be found true, and might, in the moment after his death, glare upon him with all its terrors. But how dreadful to a reflecting mind would have been the smallest chance of meeting such a vision! Yet the philosopher could be cracking his heavy jokes; and Dr. Smith could be much diverted at the sport!

4. To a man who solemnly believes the truth of revelation, and therefore the threatenings of divine vengeance against the despisers of it, this scene will present as mournful a spectacle as perhaps the sun ever shone upon. We have beheld a man of great talents and invincible persever. ance, entering on his career with the profession of an impartial inquiry after truth, met at every stage and step by the evidences and expostulations of religion and the claims of his Creator, but devoting his labors to the pursuit of fame and the promotion of impiety, at length acquiring and accomplishing, as he declared himself, all he had intended and desired, and descending toward the close of life amidst tranquillity, widely-extending reputation, and the homage of the great and the learned. We behold him appointed soon to appear before that Judge to whom he had never alluded but

preserving to appearance an entire self-complacency, idly jest ing about his approaching disso. lution, and mingling with the in. sane sport his references to the fall of superstition :'—a term of which the meaning is hardly ever dubious when expressed by such men. We behold him at last carried off, and we seem to hear, the following moment, from the darkness in which he vanishes, the shriek of surprise and terror, and the overpowering accents of the messenger of ven. geance! On the whole globe there probably was not acting, at the time, so mournful a trage dy as that of which the friends of Hume were the spectators, without being aware that it was any tragedy at all.'

EXTRACTS FROM BISHOP HOR>

LEY'S CHARGE TO THE CLER
GY OF THE DIOCESE OF ST.
DAVID'S AT HIS PRIMARY
VISITATION IN 1790.

THAT faith and practice are separable things is a gross mistake, or rather a manifest contradiction. Practical holiness is the end; faith is the means; and to suppose faith and prac tice separable is to suppose the end attainable without the use of means. The direct contrary is the truth. The practice of religion will always thrive in pro portion as its doctrines are gen. erally understood and firmly received; and the practice will degenerate and decay in proportion as the doctrine is misunderstood and neglected.

RELIGION and science are very

of different faculties. Science is the object of natural reason; religious truth of faith. Faith, like the natural faculties, may be improved by exercise; but in its beginning it is unquestionably a distinct gift of God.

Religion and morality differ not only in the extent of the duty they prescribe, but in the part, in which they are the same in the external work, they differ in the motive. They are just as far asunder as heaven is from the earth. Morality finds all her motives here below; religion fetches all her motives from above. The highest principle in morals is a just regard to the rights of each other in civil so. ciety. The first principle in re. ligion is the love of God; or, in other words, a regard to the relation, which we bear to him, as it is made known to us by revelation. Hence, although religion can never be immoral, because moral works are a part of the works of religion, yet morality may be irreligious. For any moral work may proceed from mere moral motives apart from all religious considerations. History records, I think, of SERVETUS, SPINOZA, and HовBES, that they were men of the strictest morals. The memory of the living witnesses the same of HUME. And history, in some future day, may have to record the same of PRIESTLEY and LINDSAY. But let not the morality of their lives be mistaken for an instance of a righteous practice, resulting from a perverse faith; or admitted as an argument of the indifference of

VOL. II. New Series.

error. Their moral works, if they be not done as God hath willed and commanded such works to be done, have the nature of sin; and their religion, consisting in private opinion and will-worship, is sin, for it is heresy.

THAT man is justified by FAITH, without the works of the law, was the uniform doctrine of the first reformers. It is a far more ancient doctrine; it was the doctrine of the whole college of apostles. It is more ancient still; it was the doctrine of the prophets. It is older than the prophets; it was the religion of the patriarchs. And no one, who hath the least acquaintance with the writings of the first reformers, will impute to them more than to the patriarchs, the prophets, or apostles, the absurd opinion, that any man, leading an impenitent, wick. ed life will finally upon the mere pretence of faith (and faith connected with an impenitent life. must always be a mere pretence) obtain admission into heaven. It is not by the merit of our faith, more than by the merit of our works, that we are justified.

THE peculiar doctrines of revelation are the trinity of persons in the undivided Godhead, the incarnation of the second person, the expiation of sin by the Redeemer's sufferings and death, the efficacy of his intercession, the mysterious commerce of the believer's soul with the divine

Spirit.

3 I

A Letter to a Friend, who received his theological education under the instruction of Dr. EMMONS, concerning the doctrine, which teaches, that impenitent sinners have natural power to make themselves new hearts. By NATHANIEL NILES, A. M. Windsor, Vt. A. Spooner,

1809.

SINCE the days of Jonathan Edwards, New England has been considered as the peculiar abode of metaphysical theology. Here, if we may believe some men, she has erected her throne upon the chaos of intellect, and reigns over a multitude of subjects, who think themselves in the regions of light while they grope in darkness. We are not inclined to defend the New England divines from the charge of metaphysical ingenuity, though we cannot so readily acquiesce in the supposed inutility of their speculations. So far as our acquaintance has extended, we have not found, that those who think the deepest are in consequence the less plain, and pun. gent, and successful in preach. ing. The pride of party may sometimes have attached an undue importance to certain abstruse notions; but we think that several important benefits frequently arise from metaphysical researches. First, the large class of general or abstract words, which are used in very differ. ent senses by different persons become invested with a definition,

and assume for a time a fixed and perceptible shape. This advan. tage will be duly estimated by those, who have labored through tedious arguments, rendered unintelligible from inability to discover the precise meaning of the terms, used in it. The next benefit, resulting from metaphysical inquiries, is the habit of close and discriminating thought, which is produced. Thus the mind is rendered more keen and active, and the instruments of its labor become known and are conven. ient for use. In the last place many truths of the highest importance are discovered, and the delusions of sinful men are in this way more completely searched out. While the heart is deceitful above all things, while it winds

itself into a thousand forms, and hides itself in a thousand labyrinths, the acute and persevering metaphysician, who will not relax from his researches till he can bring forth the hidden motive to the light, may effectually promote even the interests of practical religion.

With these views we are not grieved at seeing the pamphlet, now to be examined, though we should have been more gratified if it had been both written and printed in a better style. It is a direct assault upon a principle which has long been embraced by many of the New England divines, and as the author promises, that a larger work shall follow in the same cause, this treatise is the more deserving of consideration, as the public may