full determination to find in it those doctrines, and those only, which Dr. Wardlaw propounds as essential to salvation. “ A Chapter of the work contains some good remarks in proof of the identity of morality and religion. We joyfully agree with the greater part of what is set forth in it; and it gives us no small gratification to find something common to us, with a writer who is zealous for the truth as it seems to him, and an able and assiduous labourer in the vineyard of Jesus. The treating of ethics apart from the Gospel, has done much to encourage the prevailing notion that the two are distinct, that the divine and the moral philospher have each a distinct province. There can,' says he, be no morality without religion, because every moral duty resolves itself into a dictate of divine authority; and it is only from regard to that authority that it can be duly performed; so much enters into human action besides its immediate and remote consequences, our connection with God is so intimate, our love of him, for what he is and what he has done for us, must enter so largely as a motive into our conduct, the origination of all things from him and their return to him connect whatever belongs to us so essentially with him, that he who does not often refer to God, resembles the man who refuses to go to the fountain head when it is accessible, and is content to draw from the polluted stream. Some of the noblest and most refined incentives to duty are lost to all, but the devotional man: none but the pious can yield a disinterested obedience, an habitual attention to the calls and the claims upon him; can be moderate in prosperity, resigned in adversity, prepared to live, and ready to die. On these accounts we join with the writer on whom we have animadverted, in deploring the existing divorce between religion and morality: we cordially respond to his sentiments that morality is religion in practice; religion is morality in principle'. We would have every preacher of the Gospel an ethical philosopher; and every ethical philosopher a religious teacher. The investigation of this work has inspired us with a livelier conviction than we ever before felt, that what is called orthodoxy is any thing but the spirit of power and of a sound mind.' If the conclusions to which we have followed the principles of this Master in Israel' be legitimate, can any thing be more chilling to all the best faculties and affections of the soul? more calculated to produce a complete prostration of the understanding, and to leave men wholly at the mercy of their spiritual advisers? All that light is shut out which revelation and nature reflect upon each other-all those bright views of heaven which, as if by way of favour, are vouchsafed to the contemplative man, when he retires into the private recesses of thought, 6 and considers his nature and condition in the world—and which he would not exchange for kingdoms-are denounced as light 'which leads to bewilder and dazzles to blind.' Is it not deplorable that our mental and our moral progress should be thus curtailed; that philosophical and theological researches should be thus set at variance; that a man, if he would be reputed to be a good Christian, should be interdicted from examining the wonderful works of God, and deriving rapture, and fresh love, and renewed faith, and increased determinations of obedience from the examination? We repeat that our grief at reading this publication has been extreme; our grief for the deprivation under which our fellow-creatures labour in being denied access to so many sources of moral improvement, and also at the injury done to the faith delivered to the saints.' Nor is our grief lessened, by the reflection that all these doctrines are promulgated ex cathedra; for though a disclaimer of implied sanction by the Congregational Body of every doctrine and statement put forth in the lecture is prefixed to the volume, it is impossible not to believe that the tenets of Dr. Wardlaw, in the main, have the hearty concurrence of that denomination of Christians. The diversities of sentiment hinted at between him and some of his fellow-believers are not vital; they do not reach to the spirit and main scope of this work. But we will not despair: truth is mighty, and, in God's due time, will prevail. Meanwhile, it is the duty of those who feel assured that they hold it, to bear their hearty testimony in its favour on all occasions, and to use the best endeavours that a good God puts into their power to bring to pass this glorious consummation. G. L. ONCE MORE SING TO ME, SISTER. THE daylight to my eyes is dimming fast, The rainbow, with its many-coloured dyes, And the sweet-scented flower. Still on me peals the ocean's mighty roar, I shall be with them ere the sun's last ray Unto the Sabbath-shore. When we two dwelt beside our father's hearth Thou and the lark were mates in minstrelsy- Like silver bells ringing athwart the air, Took up a happy part. And when thy song-fellow was in his nest, Fain would I bear the memory of thy song, Oh! wake those slumbering echoes once again— G. QUAKERISM IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. It is with no small regret that we record our conviction that the Quakers of this country have now for a long time been declining from their primitive simplicity. In saying this, we do not allude to a certain approximation, which the wise in these matters profess to have seen, to the modes of other people's apparel and to other observances of ordinary life;-and we know not how far the assertion we have heard may be true, that even the most rigid adherent to the cut and colour of the olden time is found to surpass others in scrupulosity as to texture and quality, making up, by a sort of compensation, the want of conformity in figure by the richness of the material. It is also reported, and we hope truly, that Quakers no longer eschew as carnal the accomplishments afforded by social and intellectual cultivation, and are in these things fast progressing towards an equality, if not a rivalry, with society around them. It can be nothing but a pleasure to us to witness the disappearance of all external badges of distinction between Christians; and though we are very far from interfering with the conscientious observances of any, yet we claim the right of expressing the wonder we have long felt that persons who profess to attach peculiar importance to spirituality in religion, should ever have imagined that the colour or the shape of a garment had any thing to do with a Christian's duty. As inconsequential is the reasoning involved in their practice, that because Fox and Nayler, some centuries ago, dressed in drab and collarless coats, after the fashion of their day, therefore all posterity must be faithful to a stiff cut and a dreary hue. We do not deny that it is a Christian's duty to avoid expensive and silly fashions; but we question if our Friends' avoid either in their broad-cloth attachments, and we think they actually break a law of Christianity when they affect any outward appearance which recalls, however undesignedly, the practices of those who were condemned of old for enlarging their phylacteries and other things, the language of which went to say, Stand by, I am holier than thou.' If, therefore, the allegation is true, that Quakers love what is superior in quality as much as others, for ourselves, barring excess, we should have no sorrow for the fact, as it would bring them within the verge, and thereby within the sympathies, of ordinary life. And the greater the progress they make in what is solid and refined in intellectual pursuits, the more should we think they ought to be at once praised and congratulated, holding, as we do, that a cultivated mind is in harmony with the purposes of the Gospel. The loss of simplicity to which we have alluded, and by which they are rapidly parting with their only valid ground of distinction-their only worthy characteristic-consists in a growing conformity with some of the worst features in what is termed the religious world. In their better days, one of their most distinguished men, Penn, was authorised in making the following appeal on their behalf-an appeal which would prevail more in their favour than the most rigid formalities or the severest mortifications: This is a noted mark in the mouth of all sorts of people concerning them they will meet, they will help, and stick one to another. Whence it is common to hear some say, "Look how the Quakers love and take care one of another!" And if loving one another and having an intimate connexion in religion, and constant care to meet to worship God and help one another, be any mark of primitive Christianity, they had it, blessed be the Lord, in an ample manner.' The actual state of the body, however, both in England and the United States, is but too ample a proof that the spirit of Antichrist has extensively leavened the lump with those passions which lead to dissensions, uncharitableness and divisions. It is with much pain that a conviction of this depravation has forced itself on our mind, but recent circumstances, and the publication of a work to which we shall allude more particularly in a short time, leave no room to doubt that they are fast parting with the power of the Gospel, to take up with a form, and lending themselves to increase the unclean mass of evil feelings that agitate the Christian world. There was also a time when the same writer was warranted in the boast he made of him and his being free from the shackles of humanly-devised creeds, and much do we desire that his appeal in favour of religious liberty could come home with power not only to those who, like the author of 'The Beacon,'t condemn every one who cannot read the Scriptures with their spectacles, but to all those of the body who, in imitation of one of the worst features of other Christian denominations, have given their sanction to the issuing of an authoritative creed; and thus, while the more enlightened throughout Christendom are emancipating themselves from the bonds in which they were held, and by which Christianity itself was made to halt and lag in the rear of advancing civilization, should assume, of their own accord, shackles of which others had grown ashamed, and place themselves in the rear of Christian improvement and in the van of religious corruption. The last may be thought a strong phrase, but it is no stronger than some of their own patriarchs have used on the same subject; and it is not so strong, we verily believe, as, could these departed worthies see their sons' sons putting on bonds of their own fabrication, they would now utter from the poignancy of their grief. Let those who think we are wrong in this, peruse Penn's remarks in his Address to Protestants. A third great cause of persecution,' he says, 'is, that men make too many things necessary to be believed to salvation and communion; persecution entered with creed-making; this I think to be a temptation upon men to fall into dispute and division; and then we are taught, by long experience, that he that has most power will oppress his opinion that is weaker; whence comes persecution; this certainly puts unity and peace too much upon the hazard. The "one thing needful" was Mary's choice and blessing may it be our's, and I should hope a quick end to con * Penn's Works, vol. i. p. 868, edition 1726. A Beacon to the Society of Friends, by Isaac Crewdson.' |