We endured and pleaded with in vain? are fallen, 'tis true-we found the world fallen into ungodly customs, 'tis true-here are we full grown and mature in disaffection, most true. And what can we do to repair a ruined world, and regain a lost purity? Nothing-nothing can we do to such a task. But God hath provided for this pass of perplexity; he hath opened a door of reconciliation, and laid forth a store of help, and asks at our hand no impossibilities, only what our condition is equal to, in concert with his freely offered grace. These topics of terror, it is very much the fashion of the time to turn the ear from, as if it were unmanly to fear pain. Call it manly or unmanly, it is Nature's strongest instinct-the strongest instinct of all animated nature: and to avoid it is the chief impulse of all our actions. Punishment is that which law founds upon, and parental authority in the first instance, and every human institution from which it is painful to be dismembered. Not only is pain not to be inflicted without high cause, or endured without trouble, but not to be looked on without a pang; as ye may judge, when ye see the cold knife of the surgeon enter the patient's flesh, or the heavy wain grind onward to the neck of a fallen child. Despise pain, I wot not what it means. Bodily pain you may despise in a good cause, but let there be no motive, let it be God's simple visitation, spasms of the body for example, then how many give it license, how many send for the physician to stay it? Truly, there is not a man in being whom bodily pain, however slight, if incessant, will not turn to fury or to insensibility-embittering peace, eating out kindliness, contracting sympathy,and altogether deforming the inner man. Fits of acute suffering, which are soon to be over, any disease with death in the distance, may be borne; but take away hope, and let there be no visible escape, and he is more than mortal that can endure. A drop of water incessantly falling upon the head, is found to be the most excruciating of all torture, which proveth experimentally the truth of what is said. Hell, therefore, is not to be despised, like a sick bed, if any of you be so hardy as to despise a sick bed. There are no comforting kindred, no physician's aid, no hope of recovery, no melancholy relief of death, no sustenance of grace. It is no work of earthly torture or execution, with a good cause to suffer in, and a beholding world or posterity to look on, a good conscience to approve, perhaps scornful words to revenge cruel actions, and the constant play of resolution, or study of revenge. It is no struggle of mind against its material envelopements and worldly ills, like stoicism, which was the senti ment of virtue nobly downbearing the sense of pain. I cannot render it te fancy, but I can render it to fear. Why may it not be the agony of all diseases the body is susceptible of, with the anguish of all deranged conceptions and disordered feelings, stinging recollections, present remorses, bursting indignations, with nothing but ourselves to burst on, dismal prospects, fearful certainties, fury, folly and despair. I know it is not only the fashion of the world, but of christians, to despise the preaching of future wo; but the methods of modern schools which are content with one idea for their gospel, and one motive for their activity, we willingly renounce for the broad methods of the scripture, which bring out ever and anon, the recesses of the future to upbearduty and downbear wickedness, and assail men by their hopes and fears, as often as by their affections, by the authority of God as often as by the constraining love of Christ, by arguments of reason and of interest no less. Therefore, sustained by the frequent example of our Saviour, the most tenderhearted of all beings, and who to man hath shown the most excessive love; we return, and give men to wit, that the despisers of God's law, and of Christ's gospel, shall by no means escape the most rigorous fate. Pain, pain inexorable, tribulation and anguish, shall be their everlasting doom! The smoke of their torments ascendeth forever and ever. One frail thread snapped, and they are down to the bottomless pit. Think of him who had a sword suspended by a hair over his naked neck, while he lay and feasted,— think of yourselves suspended over the pit of perdition by the flimsy thread of life— a thread near worn, weak in a thousand places, ever threatened by the fatal shears which soon shall clip it. You believe the scriptures, then this you believe, which is true as that Christ died to save you from the same. If you call for a truce to such terrific pictures, then call for mercy against the more terrific realities; but if you be too callous and too careless to call for mercy and ensue repentance, your pastors may give you truce to the pictures, but God will give no abeyance to the realites into which they are dropping evermore, and you shall likewise presently drop, if you repent not. pp. 50-53. The last oration, in which the subject of obeying the oracles of God is continued, displays "the good fruit which will accrue to all who search and entertain and obey the scriptures after the manner set forth, under three heads: "the knowledge man might wis to find it: and when obtained; the life of heavenly enterprise begotten; and the eternal reward to be gained." For the discussion of them we refer our readers to the volume itself. Our extracts are so copious that they have the elements of judgment, and may trame their estimate without our aid. Instead of putting the author to the rack, reviewers sometimes enter the confessional themselves, and reveal the secret workings of their mind. This practice touches near upon the confines of modesty, and begets a more impartial verdict from the public. Leaving then the public as umpire, and Mr. Irving at liberty to choose the guise in which he will present his thoughts and reasonings to the world-we confess our regret that in the matter of style, he seems to have studied the pure English of our bible, less than the magniloquent sentences of Milton's prose and the latinized phraseology of Jeremy Taylor. These assumed habits hang less gracefully upon his Scottish figure than they might beseem a Southron's aspect, and are no helps to true pulpit eloquence in either Scot or Saxon. Mr. Irving may have used them till they seem second nature, but it is always second nature; and it is with a feeling not far from the vexation with which a buyer of old pictures would trace in his supposed Raphael, the almost tints of the inimitable master, that we fall every now and then upon passages, which, in their ancient and half-com-up to the most respectable viz.— prehended phraseology, call up to our mind passages, the most brilliant and eloquent and natural in the language. We know of nothing more natural as well as eloquent than Bishop Taylor's exordium in his sermon on Christ's advent to judgment: and in Milton, writing as he did when the standards of our tongue were unsettled, we never see aught else but a powerful mind laying hold of the first terms in which to clothe its conceptions. But surely Mr. Irving obtaineth not his rede where every wise the Christian Observer-show that all sorts of people think they have a right to put their hands on him. But besides the rules of taste we have a solemn objection to his style. We think that it does not suit the simple, native grandeur of his themes. We regret, if he will dive into "the wells of English undefiled"--that he should not join with his study of the two great masters named, the reading of some more ancient, such as Bishop Jewell, the martyr Bradford and others whose works are enshrined in Fox's acts and monuments. The analysis of the second part of this book is reserved for the fol lowing number-but as we would lay it by now rather as christians than critics-we add the following powerful and pathetic passages from the last oration. But if you rather prefer the fortune of the brutes that perish, to look upon the light of the sun, and eat the provision of the day, to vegetate like a plant through the stages of life, and, like a plant, to drop where ye grew, and perish from the memory of earth-having done nothing, desired nothing, and expected nothing beyond :If this you prefer to the other, then have you heard what you lose in the present; hear now what you lose through eternity: You lose God's presence, in which all creation rejoiceth. You lose God's capacity to bless you with his manifold blessings, which the cherubim and seraphim can speak of better than a fallen man. You lose the peace and perfect blessed. ness of heaven, which from this earth we can hardly catch the vision of. Have you suffered spiritual oppression, and drowning from fleshly appetites ?-freedom from this you lose. Have you groaned under the general bondage of the creature, and called for deliverance?-this deliverance you lose. Have you conceived pictures of quiet and peaceful enjoyment, amidst beautiful and refreshing scenes?-the realities of these you lose. Have you felt the ravishment of divine communion, when the conscious soul breathes its raptures, but cannot utter them?-the eternal enjoyment of these you lose. What Adam and Eve enjoyed within the unblemished Paradise of Eden with the presence of God you lose. What Peter and John felt upon the mount of transfiguration, where they would have built tabernacies and remained for ever, you lose. Can you, brethren. think of this world's fare with contentment? If you are wicked, how do your sins find you out, or overhang you with detection. If you are holy, how your desires outrun your performance, and your knowledge your power; how you fall, are faint, are backsliding, are in darkness, are in doubt, are in dismay. You are not content with this world's fare; you long after something higher and better; hence the perpetual cheering of hope, and instigation of ambition, and thirst after novelty, and restlessness to better your condition. When man cometh to wish, to expect to labor or care for nothing higher or better than his present condition, he is supremely miserable. hath left these witnesses within our God breasts, out of whose mouth to convict us. He will say, "Ye strove after something happier. 'Twas the labor of your life to reach it. I let down heaven's glory to your eager eyes. You put it away; therefore be it put away from your habitation forever. Oh, ye who labor by toil and trouble to exalt your condition, will ye not exalt it far above the level of thrones or principalities, or any name that is na med upon the earth." Would that, like St. John in the Apocalypse, I had felt, or, like Paul in the trance, I had seen the glories of heaven, that for your sakes I might unfold them. I have spoken of the removal of earthly disasters and embarrassments, which cleave to the lot of the religious in our kiud, and to the lot of the wicked in another kind. But the removal of these is nothing. I have spoken of the gratification of all Nature's hungerings and thirstings after truth, knowledge, goodness and happiness. But this is nothing; these distresses, these desires pertain to a weak and fallen creature. It behoves to speak of the enjoy ments and desires of angels-of their fervors, their loves, their communions. But who can speak of them? Yet if emblems can assist you, then do you join in your imagination the emblems and pictures of heaven. What is the condition of its people? That of crowned kings. What is their enjoyment? That of conquerors triumphant, with palms of victory in their hands. What their haunts? The green pastures, by the living waters. What their employment? Losing their spirits in the ecstacies of melody, making music upon their harps to the Lord God Almighty, and to the Lamb forever and ever. For guidance, the Lamb that is in the midst of them shall lead them by rivers of living waters, and wipe away all tears from their eyes. For knowledge, they shall be like unto God, for they shall know even as they are known. For vision and understanding, they shall see face to face, needing no intervention of language or of sign. For ordinances, through which the soul makes imperfect way to her Maker, there is no temple in the city of their habitation, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. There shall be no night there, and they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign for ever and ever, nay, the very sense hath its gratifications in the city of God. The building of the wall is of jasper, the city of pure gold, like unto clear glass; the foundation of the wall garnished with all manner of precious stones. Every one of the twelve gates a pearl. Now what means this wealth of imagery drawn from every storehouse of nature, if it be not that the choic est of all which the eye beholds, or the heart is ravished with-that all which makes matter beautiful, and the spirit happy-that all which wealth values itself on, and beauty delights in, with all the scenery which charms the taste, and all the employments which can engage the affections, every thing, in short, shall lend its influence to consummate the folicity of the saints in light. Oh, what untried forms of happy being, what cycles of revolving bliss, await the just! Conception cannot reach it, nor experience present materials for the picture of its similitude; and, though thus figured out by the choicest emblems, they do no more represent it, than the name of Shepherd does the guardianship of Christ, or the name of Father the love of Almighty God. Then, brethren, let me persuade you to make much of the volume which contains the password to the city of God, and without which it is hid both from your knowledge and your search. And if in this volume there be one truth more praiseworthy than another, it is this, that Christ hath set open to you the gates of the city, and that be alone is the way by which it is to be reached. He hath gone before to prepare its mansions for your reception, and he will come again to those who look for his appearing. For his sake be ye reconciled to God, that ye may have a right to the tree of life, and enter by the gate into the city. pp. 64—67. communion of society, of pleasure, of enterprise, this world affords; but little communion with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. They carry on commerce with all lands, the bustle and noise of their traffic fill the whole earth; they go to and fro and knowledge is increased, -but how few in the hasting crowd are hasting after the kingdom of God. Meanwhile death sweepeth on with his chilling blast, freezing up the life of generations, catching their spirits unblessed with any preparation of peace, quenching hope and binding destiny for evermore. Their graves are dressed, and their tombs are adorned. But their spirits, where are they? How oft hath this city, where I now write these lamentations over a thoughtless age, been filled and emptied of her people since first she reared her imperial head! How many generations of her revellers have gone to another kind of revelry; how many generations of her gay courtiers to a royal residence where courtier-arts are not; how many generations of her toilsome tradesmen to the place of silence, whither no gain can follow them! How time hath swept over her, age after age, with its consuming wave, swallowing every living thing, and bearing it away unto the shores of eternity! The sight and thought of all which is our assurance, that we have not in the heat of our feelings surpassed the merit of the case. The theme is fitter for an indignant prophet, than an uninspired sinful Literary and Philosophical Intelligence. It is understood that the Rev. Dr. Lee, of Colebrook, is preparing for publication a small volume of original hymns, designed to accompany a volume of "Revival Sermons," which he proposes to publish. Proposals have been issued at Philadelphia for republishing the Treatise of Archbishop Potter on Church Government. A writer in the Philadelphia Recorder earnestly recommends this work to the patronage of Episcopalians. The Trustees of the University of North Carolina have appropriated the sum of $3000 for the purchase of a philosophical apparatus for that institution, and a similar sum for the increase of the library. The Petition of the Trustees of the Amherst Collegiate Institution to the Massachusetts Legislature for a charter, has been unsuccessful; the House of Repre sentatives having refused to concur, with the Senate in granting the petition. Washington College. To the enquiries of such as have not distinctly apprehended the object or the necessity of establishing another College in this State, the following document may furnish an official and satisfactory auswer. Address in behalf of the Episcopal College in Connecticut,— "To the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the Church of England. Brethren, An occasion has arrived, when the Episcopal Church in the United States once more looks, with filial solicitude, to her parent Church in Great Britain. Planted in the midst of Dissenters from her ministry and worship, and opposed by many prejudices, numerous difficulties have heretofore retarded her progress: yet, fostered originally by the venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and prospered by the Divine blessing, she has now attained a respectable rank among the other Reformed Churches in our country. Still, she experiences a formidable obstacle to her advancement, in the necessity of educating her youth in seminaries under the influence and direction of other denominations of Christians. Within the present year, however, an Episcopal College has received a charter from the legislature of the State of Connecticut, to be called by the name of Washington College, and it is in behalf of this institution, that its trustees now beg leave to address you. Active and successful exertions in behalf of this institution, are now in operation, among the friends of the Church in this country, for its respectable endowment; but after our best efforts, we shall still need the assistance of her frieuds in Great Britain; and it is to them especially that we must look, for the supply of books to furnish a library, and for the necessary philosophical apparatus. We earnestly hope that your aid will enable us to place this Episcopal College upon an equal footing with the other literary institutions among us. You will readily conceive, that no measures could be better calculated to promote the prosperity of the Church in this country, and to oppose an effectual barrier to those spreading errors, which are dividing and destroying the other religious communions. *It was necessary that some name should be given it in the charter. Should some munificent benefactor to the institution be found, it is intended to honour it with his name. Between nations,as among individuals, a common religion is a strong bond of union. We beg leave to add that the best friends which Great Britain has in America, will be found among the members of the Episcopal Church; and to express our conviction, that every thing which conduces to the extension of this church, will be found to strengthen the bands of relationship and amity which connect the two countries. Under the influence of these considerations, we have deputed the Rev. Nathaniel S. Wheaton, A. M. rector of Christ Church, Hartford, to proceed to England, to solicit your friendly assistance; and we beg leave to commend him to your hospitable reception as a man of piety and worth, and every way worthy of confidence and esteem. By the Trustees of Washington College, THOMAS C. BROWNELL, President, and Bishop of the Diocese of Connecticut. HARRY CROSWELL, Secretary. New-Haven, Conn. August 30, 1823. It is stated in a London paper, that materials for a new Life of Columbus, the discoverer of America, have been for some time collecting by one of his descendants, who has succeeded in discovering a number of public documents hitherto unknown, in the public archives in Spain, which throw a new light on many occurrences relating to the conquest of the New World. Notwithstanding Robertson's great diligence, and the protection he enjoyed, through the medium of the British Embassy in Spain, at the time he wrote his History of America, it has been long known that the most important treasures of Simancas were never opened to him. The Canton of Argow, is perhaps of all the Swiss Cantons, that which enjoys the greatest share of liberty, industry, ease, and general extension of knowledge. This canton has now 312 primary schools, (exclusive of those which exist in manufactories,) four secondary schools or colleges, in the towns of Arau, Brugg, Lensbourg, and Zoffingen; two other schools of the second degree in the Catholic towns of Rheinfield and Baden; a superior or cantonal school in Arau, in which the history of Argow, read with interest and enthusiasm, excites in the minds of its young citizens the Amor patriæ; a normal school for forming teachers; one public, and various private schools for females; and a school for the deaf and dumb. In the town of Arau are three societies for public good, viz. One for patriotic culture, divided into sections for the different branches of agricultural and manufacturing industry. One for the assistance of poor children, and a reading |