creased by his intimacy with Mr Newton; whose mistaken zeal, gloomy doctrines, and severe discipline, were alleged not merely to have injured his. health, but to have affected his imagination, and sunk his spirits into irrecoverable despondency.

There can be no doubt, that religion, misapplied, may have such an effect, that instead of ministering consolation, it may plunge the mind into deeper despair. It may be questioned, however, whether the tendency of Mr Newton's ministry, and intercourse with his distinguished friend, may not in this instance have been misrepresented. It is well known that the symptoms of Cowper's morbid depression, began to discover themselves from his earliest years, and that subsequent events tended to increase this melancholy disorder, which had grown into a physical and constitutional disease, long before he knew Olney. Instead of the Scriptures or religious connections adding to this malady, the fact appears to be quite the reverse. It was from the Bible that his distempered mind received the first consolations it ever tasted. When he came to Olney, he had studied his Bible with such advantage, and was so well acquainted with its design, that he enjoyed, with the exception of short intervals, a settled tranquillity and peace, which continued for several years in succession..

the

These facts, then, would lead us to infer, that his converse with the doctrines of Scripture, and with devotional society, was the source of his greatest happiness; that in them alone he found the only sunshine he ever enjoyed, through cloudy day of his afflicted life. His malady, how ever, which was rather suppressed than subdued only required some cause of irritation, either real or imaginary, to break out afresh, with all its train

of dismal and distressing apprehensions. For such is the unaccountable nature of this morbid temperament, that any object of constant attention that shall occupy a mind so disposed, whether love or fear, science or religion, even the slightest accident, may be the instrument of exciting it. The friends of Cowper, therefore, might in this case, with as much reason, have blamed the fictions of Homer, as the gloomy truths of the Bible; for as to the mere matter of fact, the escape of a hare, or the death of a bull-finch, were as likely occasions of renewing the disorder, as a prayer or a sermon. And it is more than probable, that this melancholy relapse had a literary, and not a religious origin; for the first symptoms of it were discovered in his conversation, soon after he had engaged in some new subject of composition.

Another eminent person who acknowledged himself greatly benefited by Mr Newton's ministry and correspondence, was the Rev. Thomas Scott, then curate of Ravenstone, and Weston Underwood, in the vicinity of Olney; and since so extensively known, as the author of a Commentary on the Bible, Sermons, and various other creatises on religious subjects. This celebrated writer had at that time imbibed very erroneous noions of religion; he was a Socinian; and violently rejudiced against both the persons and principles f his more serious brethren, whom he was in the abit of ridiculing as Methodists, bigots, and enhusiasts. He had entered into an epistolary war with Mr Newton, in the hope of bringing him ver to his own sentiments; but instead of foiling is opponent in this controversy, he became himlf, in a short time, a convert to those principles e had already stigmatized as fanaticism, and la

such a state of misery and depression as I was in, upon the coast of Africa; when the unsought mercy of God wrought out my deliverance." It is certainly difficult to conceive one more deeply sunk in profligacy and impiety than he was; more hardened in moral depravity, or more irreclaimable in his moral habits. Yet he was brought, not only to be a believer in the gospel, but a faithful and zealous apostle of it, in a most prominent and honourable station.

The truths which had proved instrumental in working out his recovery, he laboured throughout his ministry to inculcate and establish; not only from the Scriptures, but from his own happy experience of their efficacy. He dwelt much on doctrines which are essential and peculiar to Christianity. His manner in the pulpit was by no means equal to his matter. It was there, perhaps, that he ap peared to least advantage; as he did not generally aim at accuracy in the composition of his sermons nor at any address in the delivery of them. His utterance was far from clear, and his attitudes mgraceful. He possessed, however, so much affeetion for his people, and zeal for their best interests: that the defect of his manner was of little conside ration with his constant hearers. The paremlike tenderness and affection which accompanie his instructions, made them prefer him to preacher who, cn other accounts, were much more ger rally popular. Others might be more admiral but all loved him; and amidst the extra notions and unscriptural positions, which sometimes disgraced the religious world, he new departed, in any instance, from soundly and riously promulgating the faith; of which his ings will remain the best evidence.

M. DE LA HARPE.

THIS elegant and voluminous writer, was one of the fraternity of literary infidels who flourished at the time of the French Revolution. The disciple and the eulogist of Voltaire, he had early imbibed the tenets of that blasphemous school; and was long one of the most distinguished members in the brilliant and fashionable circles of atheistical philosophy. Few, it appears, exceeded him as a hardened and resolute sceptic; and so firmly was he rooted in the prevailing creed of the Academy, that the improbability of his conversion was proverbial among his companions, and furnished them with a theme for the exercise of their unhallowed wit; as they were accustomed, in their satirical sheers against revelation, to pretend, that the miracle of La Harpe's becoming a Christian, would be sufficient to convince them of their own immortality. Contrary to their expectation, this miracle was accomplished; and he became not only i believer in the truth of the gospel, but one of its nost courageous assertors, maintaining its principles in the face of persecution, imprisonment, and exile.

During that dismal reign of philosophy and reaon, which confounded the distinctions of moral and social order, and overspread the face of reveatton with a total eclipse, leaving Atheism and

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anarchy to perform on a darkened theatre, their fearful and bloody tragedy, La Harpe had the misfortune to be marked out as one of the victims of revolutionary fury. It was in the dungeons of the Luxembourg, that the light of truth paid him an unsought and unexpected visit; that those Scrip- 1 tures which he had taken up, merely with the view of finding some amusement for his imagination, in the sublime beauties of their poetry-first opened his eyes to the folly and the danger of his infidel principles. The sincerity of these impressions he afterwards evinced in the most open and undaunted manner; not only defending Christianity with his pen, but, like Paul on the hill of Mars, boldly proclaiming it in the midst of death, from the public tribunals of the capital; and warning his deluded countrymen no longer to pay their superstitious adorations at the altar of an UNKNOWN GOD.

JOHN FRANCIS DE LA HARPE was born at Paris, November 20, 1739. His father was of Swiss extraction, and descended from a noble family in the Pais de Vaud. He entered early into the French service, as Captain of artillery, and was afterwards made a Knight of St Louis; but he did not live to attain distinction in his profession, or realize a fortune. He had married a lady, amiable for her virtues and good connections, by whom he had a number of children, most of whom died in infancy. The subject of this sketch was among the youngest; and the only one that survived his psrents, who left him unprovided, and an orphan, st the age of seven. Thus abandoned to the world without friends or patrimony, he had no other r source but in the charity of some of those bene lent institutions in his native city, where the inf