it was considered as no more than equitable to make them some compensation for ii, and this was done by dubbing them Saints! Surely it is high time for Protestants, who love their doctrine, to lay aside this badge of Antichrist. But we now return to Mrs. More. In the following extract the reader will see how successfully she conbats some of our modern systems of moral philosophy.

them was, that others might be animated by them. This anxiety for the proficiency of his converts, in preference to his own safety; his disposition to regard every object in due subjection to the great design of his ministry; his humble, vigilant care, while exulting in the hope of an eternal crown, that he might not himself be cast away;-form, in combination with the rest of his conduct, a character which we must allow has not only no superior, but no parallel." p. 125–128.

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But it is time that we bring our review of Mrs. More's work towards a close; which we certainly find it no easy thing to do. We must not, however, forego the pleasure of laying before our readers the following remarks on the apostle's philanthropy,

or tenderness of heart."

"If ever man had a pre-eminent claim the title of philanthropist, that man is the Apostle Paul. The warmth of his affections, as exhibited in a more general view in the narrative of Luke, and the tenderness of his feelings as they appear more detailed throughout his own Epistles, constitute a most interesting part of his very diversified character.

"Paul did not rank, on the one hand, with those liberal modern philosophers, who assert that virtue is its own reward; nor on the other, with those abstracted mystics, who profess an unnatural disinterestedness, and a superhuman disdain of any recompence but that which they find in the pure love of God. He was not above accepting heaven, not for any works of righteousness which he had done, but as the free gift of God through the righteous-to ness that had been wrought for him. He was not too proud and independent to confess, that the nearness of heavenly glory was with him a most animating principle. "This hope cheered his fainting spirit; this prospect not only regulated, but almost annihilated his sense of suffering. Invisible things were made so clear to the "There are persons, not a few, who, eye of faith; remote things were brought though truly pious, defeat much of the so near to one, who always kept up in his good they intend to do, not always by a mind a comparative estimate of the bre-natural severity of temper, but by a repulvity of this afflicted life and the duration of eternal happiness; faith so made the future present; love so made the labour light; the earnest of the Spirit was given him in such a measure;-that mortality seemed, even here, to be swallowed up of life. His full belief in the immediate presence of God in that world in which he was assured that light, purity, holiness, and happiness would be enjoyed in their most consummate perfection, not only sustained his hope, but exhilarated his -heart.

"But though Paul was no disciple of that metaphysical theology, which makes such untaught distinctions, as to separate our love of God from any regard to our own beatitude; though he might have been considered a selfish man, by either of the classes to whom allusion has been made, yet true disinterestedness was eminently his characteristic. Another instance of a human being so entirely devoid of selfishness, one who never took his own ease, or advantage, or safety, or credit into the account, cannot be found. If he considered his own sufferings, he considered them for the sake of his friends. Whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation.' The only joy he seemed to derive, when he was pressed out of measure, above strength,' was, that others might be comforted and encouraged by his sufferings. So also of his consolations; the principal joy which he derived from

siveness of manner, by not cultivating habits of courtesy, by a neglect of the smaller lenient arts of kindness. They will indeed confer the obligation, but they confer it in such a manner as grieves and humbles him who receives it. In fulfilling the letter of charity, they violate its spirit.

History presents us with numberless instances in which the success or the failure of great enterprizes has depended, not altogether on the ability, but partly on the temper of him who conducted it.

"Paul's consummate knowledge of human nature, no less than his tenderness of heart, led him to encourage in his young converts every opening promise of goodness. He carefully cultivates every favourable symptom. He is "gentle among them as a nurse cherisheth her children." He does not expect every thing at once; he does not expect that a beginner in the ways of religion should start into instantaneous perfection. He does not think all is lost if an error is committed; he does not abandon hope, if some less happy converts are slow in their progress. He protects their budding graces, he fences his young plants till they have time to take root; as they become strong he exposes them to the blast. If he rejoices that the hardy are more flourishing, he is glad that the less vigorous are nevertheless alive.

"Characters which are great are not always amiable; the converse is equally true; in Paul there is an union of both

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final separation, could call on all present to testify that whatever might have been the negligence of the hearer, the preach er was pure from the blood of all men;" that he had never been guilty of that false tenderness, of not declaring to theu the whole counsel of God! He appeals to his disinterestedness, that, so far from be ing influenced by any lucrative motive, he had laboured with his own hands, not only to support himself, but to assist the poor. How touching, no doubt, to his hearers, was the intimation, that the same

qualities. He condescends to the inferior distresses, and consults the natural feelings of his friends, as much as if no weigh tier cares pressed on his mind. There is scarcely a more lovely part of his character, though it be less striking to common eyes, as being more tender than great, than the gentleness exhibited to his Corinthian converts; while he is anxious, before he appears among them again, that any breach might be healed, and every painful feeling done away, which his sharp reproof of an offending individual might have excited. He would not have the joy-hands which had been raised for them in fulness of their meeting overshadowed by prayer, had been employed for their support! any remaining cloud.

"His sorrows and his joys, both of which were intense, never seem to have arisen from any thing which related merely to himself. His own happiness or distress were little influenced by personal considerations; the varying condition, the alternate improvement or declension of his converts alone, could sensibly raise or depress his feelings. With what anguish of spirit does he mourn over some," of whom I have told you often, and now tell you weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ." Mark again his self-renouncing joy-" We are glad when we are weak and ye are strong." Again, “Let me rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured

in vain."

"When he expressed such a feeling sense of distress, upon the interesting occasion of taking his departure for Jersalem, "the Holy Ghost witnessing in every city that bonds and imprisonment

awaited him," still he felt no concern for

his own safety. No: he anticipated without terror his probable reception there. With a noble disregard of all personal considerations, he exclaims "but none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear, so that I may finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God."

"There is something singularly beautiful in the dignity, simplicity, and godly sincerity of this apostolic charge. With humble confidence, he refers his audience to their own acknowledgement of his con

duct. He assures them, that neither any fears of the insidious Jews, always on the watch to circumvent him, nor the hostility of the idolatrous Gentiles, always ready to oppose him, had ever driven him to withhold any important truth, any salutary admonition.

"With what a holy satisfaction did the conscience of the apostle further testify that no desire of pleasing, no fear of offending, had prevented him from delivering wholesome truths, because they might be unpalatable! What an awful intimation to every minister of Christ, that this indefatigable apostle, at the moment of

VOL. I.

elders of Ephesus combines every beauty "This whole valedictory address to the of composition: it exhibits an energy, a devotion, a resignation, an integrity, a tenderness which cannot be sufficiently admired. And the more intimately to touch their hearts by mixing the remembrance of the friend with the injunctions he had delivered, he not only refers them to the doctrines which he had taught, but to the tears which he had shed.

"There is nothing like stoical indifference, nothing like contempt of the sensibilities of nature, in his whole conduct; and it furnishes a proof how happily magnanimity and tenderness blend together, that as there is probably no character in history which exhibits a more undaunted heroism than that of Paul, so there is perhaps not one whose tears are so frequently recorded.

"What mean ye to

weep and to break my heart?" is an interrogatory as intelligible to us in the cha racter of Paul, as the heroic declaration, "I am ready not to be bound only, but

also to die for the name of the Lord Jesus." What ground, then, is there for that charge so frequently brought against persons of eminent piety, that they are destitute of natural feeling.

"His benevolence was not confined to the narrow bounds of friends or country. He was a man, and nothing that involved the best interests of man was indifferent to him. A most beautiful comparison has béen drawn by as fine a genius as has adorned this or any age, between the learned and not illaudable curiosity which

has led so many ingenious travellers to visit distant and dangerous climes, in order " to contemplate mutilated statues and defaced coins, to collate manuscripts, and take the height of pyramids," with the zeal which carried the late martyr of humanity (Mr. Howard) on a more noble pilgrimage, "to search out infected hospi tals, to explore the depth of dungeons, and to take the guage of human misery" in order to relieve it.

"Without the unworthy desire to rob this eminent philanthropist of his well earned palm, may we not be allowed to wish, that the exquisite eulogist of How

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pathos of Jeremiah, the vehemence of Ezekiel, the didactic gravity of Moses, the elevated morality of James; the sub

apostle John; the noble energies and burning zeal of Peter. To all these, he added his own strong argumentative powers, depth of thought, and intensity of feeling. In every single department he was eminently gifted; so that what Livy said of Cato might with far greater truth have been asserted of Paul,-that you would think him born for the single thing in which he was engaged." vol. i. p. 254, 255.

MESSIAH; a Poem, in twenty-eight books. By Joseph Cottle. Bristol, printed; and sold in London by Button and Son. Pp. 520. royal octavo. Price £1. 1s. boards.

ard had also instituted a comparison which would have opened so vast a field to his eloquent pen, between the adventurous expeditions of the conqueror, the circum-lime conceptions and deep views of the navigator, the discoverer, the naturalist, with those of Paul, the martyr of the Gospel Paul, who, renouncing ease and security, sacrificing fame and glory, encountered weariness and painfulness, watching, hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness; was beaten with rods, frequent in prisons, in deaths oft, was once stoned, thrice suffered shipwreck, was a day and a night in the deep," went from shore to shore, and from city to city, knowing that bonds and imprisonment awaited him; and for what purpose? He, too, was a discoverer, and in one sense a naturalist. He explored not indeed the treasures of the mineral, nor the varieties of the vegetable world. His business was with man; his object the discovery of man's moral wants; his study to apply a It seems to be a point on which proportionate remedy; his work, to break the critics are generally agreed, that up the barren ground of the human soil; no species of poetry is so difficult of his aim to promote the culture of the un-execution as the religious. And indisciplined heart; his end, the salvation deed if we consider the natural subof those for whom Christ died. He did not limity of the subject, which cannot be heightened but by very superior powers, we must be aware that the writer who can hope to succeed in it must possess an imagination plastie in the extreme; vast and gigantic on the one hand-tender and luxuriant on the other; he should be blessed with a genius which can enable him to select and vividly delineate objects the most contrasted, the graceful inhabitant of heaven, or the appalling possessor of hell!

bring away one poor native to graft the vices of a polished country on the savage ignorance of his own; but he carried to the natives themselves the news, and the means, of eternal life.

"He was also a conqueror, but he visited new regions, not to depopulate, but to enlighten them. He sought triumphs, but they were over sin and ignorance. He achieved conquests; but it was over the prince of darkness. He gained trophies, but they were not military banners, but rescued souls. He erected monuments, but they were to the glory of God. He did not carve his own name on the rocky shore, but he engraved that of his Lord on the hearts of the people. While conficting with want, and struggling with misery, he planted churches; while sinking under reproach and obloquy, he erected the standard of the Cross among barbarians, and (far more hopeless enterprise!) among philosophers; and, having escaped with life from the most uncivilized nations, was reserved for martyr dom in the Imperial queen of cities!"

The following short paragraph must close our account of Mrs. More's publication, of which, notwithstanding our extracts have been so copious, we have been compelled to leave much unexplored.

"Paul's manner of writing will be found in every way worthy of the greatess of his subject. His powerful and diversified character of mind seems to have combined the separate excellencies of all the other sacred authors-the loftiness of Isaiah, the devotion of David, the

The highest praise which an eminent critic allows to the poetic writ, ings of Dr. Watts is, that the author has done better than others what no man has done well." For, though he admits that his ear was well tuned and his diction elegant and copious, his devotional poetry is said to be, like that of others, unsatisfactory the paucity of its topics necessarily enforcing perpetual repetition, while the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornament of figurative diction.

Of poetry that is strictly devotional, no doubt much of this is true; but were we to apply these remarks to such poetry as we find in the writings of the Hebrew prophets, they would as certainly be untrue. Besides, that poetry may be successfully enlisted in the service of religion, and that subjects may be selected which shall give scope to the exercise of the most transcendant talents, requires no other proof than the mention of

It ap

*Paradise Lost," nor any higher au- "The plan presented," says he," to my thority to attest its truth than the own mind, in its first anticipation, an imsame profound critic, who thus re-pressive and edifying character. marks concerning the author and the poem

peared to call up one vast scene, this world the theatre, where successive eras past in review, and where the Spectator "Milton had considered creation seemed (with an illusion not immediately in its whole extent, and his descrip- corrected) to behold, with a privileged tions are therefore learned. He had eye, the generations of man to arise and accustomed his imagination to un-retire, whilst a momentary acquaintance restrained indulgence, and his con- was formed with the venerable actors of ceptions therefore were extensive. past ages, who enforced the reality of a The characteristic quality of his superintending Providence; a future state; poem is sublimity. He sometimes and combinedly taught, the perishable descends to the elegant, but his ele-nature of all earthly things. A view was proposed to be taken (with trembling ment is the great. He can occasion- hesitation), of some events of a celestial ally invest himself with grace, but nature: of the Fall: the subsequent corhis natural port is gigantic loftiness. ruption of the world: the selection of a He can please when pleasure is re- particular people to become the deposiquired, but it is his peculiar power tories of divine truth; together with the to astonish. He seems to have been gradual irradiation of the human mind by well acquainted with his own genius, Guardian of the infant church of God, the perpetual influence of that Guide and and to know what it was that nature who was ultimately to become incarnate, had bestowed upon him more bounti- and, in the loftiest sense, bring Life and fully than upon others; the power of Immortality to light. A Poem which displaying the vast, illuminating the aimed to inculcate such principles, and to splendid, enforcing the awful, dark- exhibit, from the Bible, such actions, in a ening the gloomy, and aggravating metrical form, appeared not unconnected the dreadful; he therefore chose a with utility. Pref. p. 5. subject on which too much could not Though the volume before us may, be said, on which he might tire his in one view, be considered as a comfancy without the censure of extrava-plete poem, it is, nevertheless, only

gance.

Milton was indeed the first of our countrymen, who with true dignity supported the weight of his stupendous theme. Gifted with a mind pre-eminently sublime, and richly stored with all the various branches of learning and science, with an ear attuned to harmony, and a taste chastised by cultivation, he projected and completed a poem, which has engaged the admiration of each succeeding age, and is, without doubt, the noblest monument of human greatness.

a part of the author's whole plan. The poem opens with the Creation of the world, and terminates with the life of “ David, the sweet singer of Israel;" and Mr. Cottle has intimated that "should the remainder eventually appear, it will exclusively refer to the New Testament." As, however, the present work includes a reference to all the leading events of the Mosaic history, and of the subsequent period to the death of David, the father of the Messiah according to the flesh, it will not be necessary for us to occupy our columns with giving the contents of the different books. The poem opens with the following beautiful exordium,

The subject which Mr. Cottle has selected for the theme of his muse, can scarely, in point of dignity and interest be reckoned inferior to that of "our greatest bard," as Mr. C.« Of Earth, uprising at JEHOVAH's call, handsomely terms him. It professes Of Man, from dust created, lord of all: to relate, in a poetical form, a series How God, on his beloved Son, bestow'd of the principal incidents recorded in This world, at first untainted, where there the Old Testament history; and the flow'd agency of MESSIAH, through the whole of these events, gives an entire unity to the action. But it is proper the reader should hear his own account of the rise, and of the object proposed in the poem before us.

* Dr. Johnson's Criticism on Paradise Lost.

A living stream of joy, till sin arose,
And with a wintry blast the fountain

froze:

Of that peculiar race, to whom was given
The law divine, the will reveal'd of

heaven:

How, when all hope had filed, all refuge fail'd,

For man MESSIAH pleaded and prevail'd,