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THE 
 
 PORTRAITURE 
 
 CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
1 
 

 PORTRAITURE 
 
 CHRISTIAN GEXTLEIttAtf. 
 
 BY W. ROBERTS, ESQ. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. 
 
 Verum atque deceus. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY T. AND J. SWORDS, 
 No. 127 Broadway. 
 
 1831. 
 
» t 
 
 NEW- YORK : 
 
 TRIN'TED BY EDWARD J. SWORDS, 
 No. 8 Tluuno-itreet. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The strong expressions of approbation with which 
 the " Portraiture of a Christian Gentleman" has been 
 received both in England and in this country, have 
 determined the subscribers, with the advice of some of 
 their friends, to offer it to the American public. They do 
 so, in the confidence that it will exert a strong influence 
 in behalf of the great principles of practical religion, and 
 afford instruction, in an interesting form, to many who 
 might not so readily receive it from a different source. 
 
 In its original state, the work preserved a very close 
 adherence to the peculiar circumstances of an English 
 gentleman — -more particularly in frequent references to 
 the connexion of such an individual with the church 
 establishment and civil polity of Great-Britain. Know- 
 ing the difficulty with which readers, especially careless 
 readers, abstract remarks of general importance from 
 such circumstantial allusions, and the hinderance to 
 usefulness which they consequently present, the pub- 
 lishers have deemed it expedient to omit a few sentences. 
 
VI ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 and short passages of this description, and to curtail 
 three entire sections, wholly relative to matters inap- 
 plicable to the citizen of the United States. They 
 believe that this measure has deprived the work of little, 
 if any, of its interest, and tends materially to increase 
 its utility. 
 
 T. & J. SWORDS. 
 New-York, July, 1831. 
 
TO 
 
 MRS. HANNAH MORE, 
 
 My dear Madam, 
 
 Having recently perused your important 
 work on the Spirit of Prayer with some 
 advantage, I hope, to my own principles 
 and practice, it came into my head to con- 
 sider, with more than ordinary attention, 
 the actual state of the believing world, as 
 to the conduct and method of this essential 
 duty in Christian families. When one's 
 thoughts are stirred into strong action on 
 an interesting and favourite subject, they 
 soon ripen into projects ; and we often find 
 a difficulty in restraining these projects 
 within practicable limits. My first inten- 
 tions were to write something for publica- 
 tion on the " practice of prayer," as a 
 supplement to your valuable performance ; 
 
Vlll DEDICATION. 
 
 but those intentions soon expanded into 
 various larger undertakings, till, at length, 
 they settled down into a resolution to 
 obtrude upon the public the sketch of a 
 " Christian Gentleman," as he presents 
 himself under the various aspects of duty 
 and demeanour proper to the purest con- 
 ception of that character. Whether I have 
 or have not drawn and coloured the picture 
 correctly, no one is more competent to 
 judge than yourself. I have endeavoured 
 to portray a man worthy of being intro- 
 duced to the honour of your acquaintance, 
 and have, therefore, kept as close as I 
 could to your own views of spiritual and 
 moral excellence. 
 
 So far as my humble purpose shall ap- 
 pear to have been usefully executed, I am 
 sure it will have the advantage of your 
 countenance and approbation, and I desire 
 no success for it on any other grounds. 
 Jf, by the favour of Almighty God, I shall 
 be accepted as an instrument in his hands 
 of conveying profitable counsel to some 
 
DEDICATION. ix 
 
 of my countrymen, who contemplate the 
 qualifications of a gentleman through the 
 medium of perverted sentiment, and the 
 prejudices which naturally and almost 
 necessarily result from a prevalent system 
 of false education — if I shall be successful 
 in bringing over a few to better judgment, 
 in a matter which so greatly concerns the 
 well-being of society, I shall consider my 
 slight performance as superabundantly re- 
 warded. 
 
 I am, my dear Madam, with the highest 
 sense of what I owe to you, as one of a 
 community so benefited by your labours, 
 and for long-continued personal kindness, 
 
 Your affectionate friend and servant, 
 
 W. R. 
 
 Clapham, Feb. 1829. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Section Ttge 
 
 I. — Introduction 9 
 
 II. — Family Devotion. — Prayer 16 
 
 III.— . . . . Thanksgiving 29 
 
 IV. — . . . . Poetry and Music 33 
 
 V. — . . . . Preparation for Prayer 36 
 
 VI. — Unscriptural Religion 43 
 
 VII.— The Mechanic Philosophy 50 
 
 VIII. — Philanthropic Excesses 61 
 
 IX. — The Politics of the Christian Gentleman - - 65 
 X. — The Literature of the Christian Gentleman - - 73 
 XI. — Family Government of the Christian Gentleman - 85 
 XII. — The exterior Intercourse of the Christian Gentleman 87 
 XIII.— Familiar Talk of the Christian Gentleman - - 91 
 XIV.— Worldly Dealings of the Christian Gentleman - 99 
 XV. — Education of the Christian Gentleman ... 103 
 XVI.— The Scriptural Model of a Christian Gentleman - 119 
 XVIL— The Sabbath of the Christian Gentleman - - 126 
 XVIII. — The same Subject, under the Christian Dispensa- 
 tion 135 
 
 XIX.— The National Consecration of the Sabbath - - 144 
 XX. — The Deportment of the Christian Gentleman in the 
 
 Worship of God on the Lord's Day - - - 148 
 XXI. — Postures appropriate to the several Parts of the 
 
 Service 159 
 
 XXII.— The Duty of joining in the Psalmody - - - 161 
 XXIIL— The Subject of the Christian Gentleman's Sabbath 
 
 continued. — General Conclusion ... 166 
 
THE 
 
 PORTRAITURE 
 
 OF A 
 
 CHRISTIAN GEXTLEMAX. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 The physical state of the globe of our earth 
 is not more diversified by climate, soil, and 
 cultivation, than the aspect and temperature of 
 religion is affected by the circumstances, habits, 
 and prejudices of mankind. Truth is immuta- 
 ble, determinate, and single ; error is fluctuating, 
 variable, and multifold. Some truths are abstract, 
 and stand in separation from man's infirmity; 
 but others sustain the gross admixture of human 
 passions, ignorances, and perversities; and of 
 this latter class is religion, which, even in its 
 Christian form, and founded on the oracles of 
 God,, has its perfect and unerring essence ob- 
 scured in various degrees, and falsified in a 
 thousand ways by its connexion with corrupt 
 natures, and its passage through a medium of 
 contagious defilement. To draw from this pre- 
 cious gift its real virtue and profit, the nearer 
 
 2 
 
j INTRODUCTION. 
 
 we get to its source the better. It is a most 
 beneficial exercise to the faculties of man to 
 pierce through the subtleties which his own 
 presumptuous understanding and vain curiosity 
 have interposed to the pure emanation of the 
 word of Jehovah reposited in the sacred Scrip- 
 tures. To escape out of the intricacies of human 
 invention to the clear element in which truth 
 resides, is the privilege of humble inquiry ; and 
 to promote and assist this inquiry, our religious 
 literature abounds in valuable directories and 
 expositions. With respect, also, to Christian 
 practice generally, we are in no want of guides 
 and counsellors. But how in these days of 
 intellectual activity, when so much is busily 
 wrong, partially right, and essentially good, and 
 so many incongruous characters are crowded 
 on the same stage, amidst so much stirring and 
 strife of opinion, boldness of speculation, and 
 contest for distinction, a pious individual is to 
 comport himself in all his relations and transac- 
 tions, so as to reconcile and unite in one vocation 
 and system of behaviour the duties and habits 
 proper to the Christian Gentleman, it is the 
 object of this little manual to explain. It is not 
 Christianity in ordinary life, but Christianity in 
 a special relation and connexion, that will be the 
 subject of its inquiry. Neglecting the plains 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 and valleys, it will confine its views to the garden 
 border, where the lily on its graceful stalk ex- 
 poses its petals to the sun, and to the hills, 
 where the cedar throws around its lofty shade. 
 That the Christian loses nothing by being a 
 gentleman, and that the gentleman gains greatly 
 by being a Christian, may be gathered from 
 the history of our own country. In various 
 proportions, and in various degrees, the union 
 has probably subsisted in the lives of many 
 eminent persons who have flourished in remote 
 periods ; but time has cast into the shade the 
 delicate traces of character in which this coa- 
 lescence of the Christian with the gentleman is 
 principally manifested. We catch eagerly at 
 every anecdote which can bring us into famili- 
 arity with those distant characters, of whom 
 every domestic record affects us with a sort of 
 picturesque interest, and are delighted with any 
 partial or petty occurrence in their biography 
 which can help the fancy in its efforts to com- 
 plete the model. But it is often the fate of 
 researches into the characters of our ancient 
 ancestry, to find that the nearer we approach the 
 reality, the less we perceive of that union in 
 which our fancies have indulged, of Christian 
 graces with chivalrous breeding. As the light 
 of the Reformation increased, the characters of 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 English story acquired greater distinctness, by 
 exhibiting more of their domestic lineaments, 
 and presenting themselves in scenes of greater 
 moral interest and importance. The province 
 of history at this period became graver and more 
 careful to record the share of each personage in 
 the changes produced in society. From the 
 commencement of Elizabeth's reign, many con- 
 siderable men came forward to view in vivacious 
 relief ; and it may do no harm to hold them out 
 as objects of general praise and partial imitation : 
 but with the Gospel before us, understood as 
 it happily is by our church and all orthodox 
 Christians, it would be impossible, apart from 
 enthusiasm, to admit that the age of Elizabeth, 
 or of her immediate successor, presents us with 
 a model of a Christian gentleman, composed of 
 the constituents which really belong to that 
 character. Two men indeed there were of 
 Elizabeth's court, Sir Philip Sidney and the 
 Earl of Sussex, in whom Englishmen delight 
 to trace the lineaments of this graceful confor- 
 mity and happy combination. But in Sir Philip 
 Sidney the ingredients were disproportionately 
 mixed. The flavour of the gentleman pre- 
 dominated : he was a gentleman rather after the 
 prescription of the world than after the Christian 
 exemplar. Yet such was the beauty of his life, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 and the heroism of his death, that, if the gentle- 
 manly half of him was not sufficiently under the 
 control of his other and better half, yet the grand 
 total and sum of his perfections were such that 
 the heart fondly declines to dwell upon the 
 corrections and distinctions which the judgment 
 suggests. 
 
 The Earl of Sussex was still nearer the ful- 
 filment of the true requisites of the Christian 
 gentleman. History records nothing of him that 
 is not in agreement with that character : and 
 such we might probably have pronounced him 
 to have been had he stood nearer to our own 
 times, so as to exhibit himself under a greater 
 variety of aspects, and especially in one more 
 natural and ordinary; but we see him only 
 through the vaporous atmosphere of a court, 
 and know him only in his great concerns. In 
 all that we do see of him, the gentleman and 
 Christian appear to have been combined ; and 
 upon the whole it may be said with some as- 
 surance, upon the strength both of what he did 
 and what he did not in the midst of intrigue, 
 detraction, adulation, and ambition, that English 
 history has hardly proposed to imitation a better 
 man. 
 
 Our frame of polity, which has been moulded, 
 with a singular suitableness to the nature, wants, 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and passions of the beings to whose use it is 
 devoted — the product not of convention or con- 
 trivance, but of causes beyond human forecast 
 or control, and balanced like nature herself on 
 a grand economy of compensations, interior 
 springs of action, reciprocal checks, and silent 
 securities — is indented with the marks and im- 
 pressions of the virtuous and vigorous minds 
 which in the various periods of its development 
 have modified its character or accelerated its 
 progress. After the reign of Elizabeth com- 
 menced what may be called the formative 
 periods of our history; during which, by a suc- 
 cession of crises and struggles, our destiny has 
 been matured. The order of things has been 
 driven onwards by an irregular impulse and 
 vacillating progression, actuated by vigorous 
 intelligences and a manly aspiration towards 
 moral and equitable freedom ; nor can we won- 
 der that a country proceeding in such a career 
 of advancement, should have produced a suc- 
 cession of great and accomplished persons. But 
 such times and circumstances were not the best 
 for the production of that harmonious assem- 
 blage of qualities which must meet in the struc- 
 ture of the Christian gentleman. We shall 
 borrow, therefore, but little illustration from 
 examples ; and the few that will be cited will 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 be taken from recent times. Historical examples 
 are variously appreciated ; and as it is the design 
 of this little book to maintain a consistent and 
 uniform tenor in its conception and exhibition 
 of the character it delineates, it will be better 
 to trust to the authority of Scripture and the 
 suggestions of experience than to circumscribe 
 the character within the bounds of any particular 
 specimen. 
 
 We will forthwith, therefore, present the pic- 
 ture of the Christian gentleman as it has been 
 traced in the thoughts of one who has frequently 
 amused a pensive hour with this sober exercise 
 of his fancy : sober, indeed, will the reader ex- 
 claim, when he finds it begin with a scene of 
 family worship. But we see not where we can 
 assume a more regular and rational commence- 
 ment. 
 
16 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 PRAYER. 
 
 We seem, at length, by God's peculiar bless- 
 ing, to have arrived in this country at a period 
 in its religious advancement, when family wor- 
 ship at the beginning and end of each day is 
 quite of course among all professing Christians 
 who have any right apprehension of what that 
 name imports. Very few that entertain any 
 serious prospects beyond the present world are 
 now deterred by the silly dread of profane ridi- 
 cule from instituting in their families the decent, 
 daily recognition of man's dependence upon the 
 Author of his being; and even among those 
 with whom that feeling of dependence is never 
 present with its becoming influence, the dispo- 
 sition to ridicule what is in itself so reasonable, 
 and so manifestly belongs to the creed to 
 which they nominally subscribe, grows gadually 
 weaker as common sense advances with the 
 progress of experience. 
 
 It is, however, too true that many masters and 
 fathers, decorous in their lives, omit the practice 
 of family prayer. Some seem to imagine that 
 their decorous lives render unnecessary either 
 
PRAYER. 17 
 
 prayer or intercession. Some revolt at the 
 humiliating posture and character of suppliants; 
 some appear to be unconcerned at the inconsis- 
 tencies they display before the Creator, so long 
 as they stand before his criminal creatures ac- 
 quitted of hypocrisy. 
 
 On the class of the self-satisfied, it is not 
 within my purpose to employ many words. 
 They have taken religion by the wrong handle, 
 and have turned it upside down. They begin 
 with pretension, instead of confession; with 
 claim, instead of renunciation; with security, 
 instead of alarm; and it is impossible, while the 
 man continues thus estranged from himself, for 
 any just notion to be felt by him of his relation 
 to God. With such a person, it is necessary, 
 as a preliminary to prayer, that the whole order 
 of his religious ideas should be inverted, and a 
 new basis of thought and reflection set up in his 
 mind. Till the worshipper of God shall have 
 attained to this right view of himself and of his 
 doings, in comparison with the holy law of him 
 whom he addresses, and of the fearful exigence 
 of his perfect justice, he can have no proper 
 subjects of prayer, which are all suggested by 
 the abject state of the soul of man, apart from 
 the hope of forgiveness through the Saviour. 
 
 With respect to that class whom a false shame 
 
18 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 and an ill-directed fear deters from this essential 
 duty, who may, doubtless, often be wrong, 
 rather from the perversion of sentiment than 
 from the corruption of principle, a hope may be 
 cherished that in the progress of religious know- 
 ledge their understandings may come to adjust 
 the case between man and his Maker with better 
 discernment, and to settle their proportionate dues 
 with more correctness of comparison. When 
 sanity of sentiment is thus restored, and shame 
 and glory settle upon their proper objects, order 
 and arrangement will succeed to disturbance 
 and confusion, and the lights and shadows will 
 be distinctly and beautifully disposed throughout 
 the moral picture. 
 
 Where prayer is a novel exercise, it may, 
 perhaps, exhibit itself in a family with a certain 
 degree of awkwardness. On our first essay to 
 proceed in untried armour, our gait may be un- 
 graceful and constrained ; and a consciousness 
 or apprehension of this will be apt to embarrass 
 the beginner. This ineptitude may remain for 
 some time after the false shame above alluded 
 to has ceased to operate ; but none can have 
 passed the first month of initiation in this good 
 work with his family, without experiencing an 
 internal sense of security that invigorates his 
 hopes and cheers his prospects; his house seems 
 
PRAYER. 19 
 
 ■ 
 
 more his castle ; and an invisible guard encamps 
 about his bed. 
 
 Prayer flourishes and grows in beauty like a 
 flower in a state of domestic culture. It lias a 
 small beginning, but a bright consummation : 
 it is cradled in the clod, but crowned in the sun- 
 beam. To accomplish it well, we have often 
 to begin it ill, that is, as we can, in the midst of 
 retardments and avocations; if not holily, yet 
 humbly ; if not with the unction of divine grace, 
 at least with a full feeling of human depravity : 
 if not with assurance of success, at least with 
 the conviction of need; finding the strongest 
 motive to prayer in the weakness of our efforts 
 to pray. Prayer thrives with repetition. All 
 can try; all can ask; all can kneel; and most 
 idle and dangerous it is to trust to anticipating 
 grace, or to wait in expectation of gratuitous 
 mercy, without putting forth such natural strength 
 as we possess, in confessing inability and im- 
 ploring succour. The holy will, the sanctified 
 wish, the steady purpose, are of the free bounty 
 of God to impart ; but to do the act of prayer 
 with humble endeavour ; to do it with exem- 
 plary frequency; to avow a sinner's concern Tor 
 his soul, and to supplicate forgiveness, are simple 
 doings within the competency of miserable flesh ; 
 duties which humanity is a debtor to perform, 
 
20 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 • 
 
 and from which beginnings we may mount on 
 the promises of Scripture to that high and 
 " holy hill," where our Maker will shed the 
 dew of his blessings on all sincere suppliants. 
 
 In the exhibition of domestic worship the 
 Christian head ot a family has a charge of great 
 importance, and a task which calls for discretion. 
 His primary object should be, as I reason from 
 personal experience, to keep his own mind in an 
 honest state, really occupied with that in which 
 he professes to be engaged. In the style of our 
 prayers, public and private, our language is 
 usually suited to the urgency and solemnity of 
 their objects ; but often, while the lips are im- 
 portunate, the heart is cold and unconscious ; 
 while the organs are busy, the thoughts are 
 rambling over the fields of illusory hope and 
 turbid anxiety. To keep the thoughts at home, 
 and the sympathies alert; to sustain in the little 
 circle assembled around him, an attention to the 
 thing they are doing and the Majesty they are 
 addressing, is the difficult task of the domestic 
 officiator. Prayer should, on these considera- 
 tions, have the precedence in the day's arrange- 
 ments. The sacred duty should open freshly 
 with the dawn, and drink in the dewy ray of the 
 morning ; it should meet the orient sun when 
 he comes as a bridegroom out of his chamber, 
 
PRAYER. 21 
 
 to refresh all things (and why not man's heart?) 
 with new life and motion. Every day opens a 
 scene of cares which surcharge and secularize 
 the soul ; so that, if the daily duties or pleasures, 
 or even the first meal is begun before prayer, 
 God takes only a share with the idols of the 
 world in the mixed service of the heart. 
 
 The great effort of the Christian master of a 
 family should be, to bring his little congregation 
 together with minds so far vacant from business 
 and other disturbing influences, as to be the 
 proper recipients of scriptural impressions, and 
 sufficiently disencumbered for spiritual exercise. 
 
 To preface prayer with a chapter of the Bible, 
 or a psalm, judiciously selected, is much to be 
 recommended, as the mind is thereby settled 
 into a frame suited to the office which is to fol- 
 low, of addressing the Divine Majesty through 
 the Saviour ; which is, of course, a duty to be 
 performed on the knees ; but which, for its vital 
 quality, must depend, in no small measure, upon 
 the devout carriage of him who, as the priest of 
 the family, impresses his own character upon 
 the performance. 
 
 As to the time to be allotted to the service, 
 reason and prudence demand that it should be 
 restricted within the compass imposed by the 
 necessary and daily avocations of the members 
 
22 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 of the family, and prescribed, in part, perhaps* 
 by the infirmities of our frail bodies, which 
 render it difficult, even for the devout, to sup- 
 port, without lassitude, a state of tension and 
 abstraction beyond a moderate time. The ex- 
 pense of mind is considerable in earnest prayer ; 
 and far better does it seem to give to our Maker 
 an undivided homage for a short period, than to 
 extend our orisons till the weariness of the flesh 
 raises up a rival in the very weakness of our 
 mortal nature. 
 
 While we are upon the exhibition of family 
 prayer, we may be allowed to lay a stress upon 
 minute particulars, as acquiring value from the 
 supreme worth of the object, and conferring 
 beauty and impressiveness upon a solemnity, 
 the benefit of which depends so much upon the 
 attitude of the soul in performing it, and the 
 manner of its procedure. Family prayer should 
 be preceded and succeeded by some moments 
 of silence. It should have a character of dis- 
 tinction and separation; it should dissolve the 
 continuity of earthly interests and engagements, 
 and elevate the thoughts into a higher element. 
 That confluence so apt to take place between 
 the interests of the different worlds should be 
 avoided as much as may be: let prayer then 
 have its proper and exclusive course — its own 
 
PRAYER. 23 
 
 deep bed and gentle current, bearing on its 
 bosom the commerce of mind with eternity, 
 and carrying refreshment to those whose souls 
 are " athirst for God." 
 
 The utterance of prayer is also a matter of 
 great practical importance. It is not the less a 
 rational, because it is a spiritual act : neither 
 inflated nor familiar; neither rapid nor creeping; 
 neither vapouring nor hallucinating ; neither de- 
 clamatory nor dull, it should indicate the pre- 
 dicament of a being in abject need before the 
 throne of Omnipotent Goodness ; of a being, 
 however, who comes accredited by invitation, 
 assured by promise, and having a privilege of 
 access purchased for him by blood — the blood 
 of incarnate Deity. 
 
 The prayers of our church service are in 
 general admirably adapted to the wants of the 
 soul and body ; and there are few of them that 
 may not by slight additions, omissions, and 
 alterations, be rendered sufficiently pointed and 
 appropriate to suit the temporary and accidental 
 circumstances of every family. They have, 
 besides, the advantage of being familiar to the 
 hearers, and consequently of being easily fol- 
 lowed and participated by those in attendance. 
 But a prayer selected from a spiritual collection 
 is sometimes more profitably impressive, not 
 
'24 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 only from its infrequency and freshness, but 
 from a certain character of affinity which it holds 
 with present feelings and things. They give a 
 sort of spiritual poignancy to what might other- 
 wise lose somewhat of its awakening influence 
 by repetition ; they open, as it were, fresh 
 avenues of persuasion, captivate by a gentle 
 surprise, and besiege the heart with a new and 
 effectual artillery. 
 
 But among the unauthorized forms of family 
 prayer, it will be prudent in the main to trust 
 only to those which adhere to the phraseology 
 of Scripture. Modern refinement is disposed 
 to cast disreputation on the use of biblical terms 
 and phrases, either in prayer or religious con- 
 versation ; and it is possible, no doubt, too pro- 
 fusely to adopt and too familiarly to apply the 
 language of Scripture ; it is possible to merge 
 intelligence in technicality, and to give to re- 
 ligious intercourse the mystery of a craft ; but 
 so long as we are clear of excess and abuse, 
 consecrated expressions are safest. To the im- 
 port of these phrases the most unlettered student 
 of the Bible has attained, and it must be the 
 earnest wish of the devout leader of the family 
 worship to be understood and followed by the 
 humblest and simplest of his domestic auditory. 
 
 With respect to the attendance on this great 
 
PRAYER. 25 
 
 family transaction, I doubt not that every good 
 householder and amiable Christian must desire 
 to make the circle as wide as convenience and 
 opportunity will permit ; for prayer is that trans- 
 action in which all have an equal concern. 
 Nothing is so social, because nothing is of such 
 common interest : it is the right of all, but it is 
 the privilege of the poor. The servants, there- 
 fore, within the house should be expected, and 
 the servants out of the house, whether their 
 service be occasional or constant, should be 
 invited to attend. It is not a complete congre- 
 gation without them. When accompanied by 
 them, we are united in a common bond of 
 spiritual equality, courtesy, and charity, without 
 the smallest disturbance of the principle of sub- 
 ordination by which society is organized and 
 sustained. 
 
 Blessed equality ! Not that contentious sort 
 to which the murmurs of the envious, or the 
 arts of the ambitious are directed ; not the 
 colourless confusion of natural disparities or 
 politic distinctions, but an equality grounded 
 on the feeling of our measureless distance from 
 the centre of all true greatness ; on the experi- 
 ence and recognition of our common nature and 
 need of support ; on our comparative nothing- 
 nees and conscious depravity ; on our partner* 
 3* 
 
26 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 ship in the promises of the Gospel ; our joint 
 inheritance of pardoning grace, our identity of 
 interest in the death of the Redeemer, our equal 
 dependence on the power of the Intercessor. 
 
 Blessed courtesy ! Not that ambiguous and 
 calculating sort which purchases homage by 
 condescension, and barters smiles for applause, 
 but such as a Christian gentleman acknowledges 
 to be due to those who minister to his comforts, 
 and are the essential parts of his family, whose 
 situation consigns them to an atmosphere of 
 dense ignorance, where intelligence is merged 
 in prejudice, as light is lost in vapour, and the 
 low details of animal existence leave little leisure 
 from busy vacancy for profitable thinking. 
 
 Blessed charity ! Not that promiscuous and 
 indolent sort which blends the deserving and 
 undeserving in its degrees of universal amnesty, 
 or which perpetuates suffering by injudicious 
 bounty, scattering rather than distributing ; but 
 that right and rational principle which conbiders 
 spiritual comfort and Christian communion as 
 the heritage and birth-right of man in every 
 station ; which delights in the fellowship of 
 prayer, in the extension of Gospel privileges, in 
 the increase of petitioners before the throne of 
 mercy, anl in peopling and crowding the great 
 scene and area of «race, mercv, and thanks- 
 
PRAYER. 27 
 
 giving. Courtesy and charity thus scrip- 
 turally understood, resting on an eojjality 
 thus spiritually acknowledged, harmonize all 
 diversities of estate in the same act of self- 
 abasement. The master, kneeling before his 
 servant, is on the same floor with him as a 
 sinner ; the servant, kneeling with his master, is 
 on the same eminence with him as a Christian. 
 There are those who laugh at all this, as there 
 are those in lunatic hospitals who laugh at their 
 own wretchedness ; but the life of those prayer- 
 less buffoons so soon passes from madness to 
 sadness, from farce to tragedy, that their ridicule 
 is only an appeal to the compassion of the real 
 Christian. Unawed by such weak enemies, and 
 without inquiring who laughs or who approves, 
 he prays, and still prays at the accustomed sea- 
 sons with his family. Whatever may be the 
 dispositions or doubts of his household or his 
 visitors ; though some may lounge, and some 
 refuse to listen, he will summon all within his 
 gates to the family altar as a matter of course. 
 Whether they will hear or forbear, ridicule or 
 respect, his practice varies not. Nothing inter- 
 rupts him; through good and evil report his 
 righteous resolution flows on continuously and 
 tranquilly. Like the stream from the sanctuary 
 in the vision of the prophet, it increases in depth 
 
28 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 and abundance till it issues in the great and 
 wide receptacle of living waters, leaving behind 
 it whatever drift or defilement may have floated 
 on its surface. 
 
 In a good man's house prayer is the product 
 of every event of the family out of the ordinary 
 course. A journey accomplished; a danger 
 escaped ; a birth, a death, a marriage; every in- 
 fliction, every blessing, every providence, every 
 visitation, every instance in the family history 
 in which God has made known his power by 
 ministering to man's helplessness, or the way- 
 ward heart has been recovered by his grace ; all 
 these vicissitudes are subjects of commemora- 
 tion and prayer in the house of one who faith- 
 fully follows up his baptismal dedication in a 
 consistent course of practical loyalty and devoted 
 service. The posterns of such a house have 
 the sprinkling of the sacrifice, which denotes its 
 privileges, and preserves it from surrounding 
 contagion. In such a house, the secret is found 
 out of combining seriousness with cheerfulness, 
 service with freedom, duty with delight. Happy 
 home ! where prayers are victorious over tears, 
 and trust- is too strong for despair ; where God 
 is a daily guest, and his angels a nightly guard* 
 
THANKSGIVING. 29 
 
 .SECTION III. 
 THANKSGIVING. 
 
 Prayer, in its general sense, includes 
 " thanksgiving." A feeling of thankfulness is 
 always present to the mind of a genuine Chris- 
 tian. Thankfulness, as a commutative sentiment 
 between man and man, is occasional, brief, and 
 fugitive ; but between man and his God it im- 
 plies the state and character of the mind. So 
 sweet and so happy is this frame, that to pray to 
 be thankful is a most reasonable act of the 
 Christian worshipper. To pray for a thanks- 
 giving heart is to pray for a great distinction and 
 precious privilege: for it is, indeed, " a joyful 
 and pleasant thing to be thankful." It is to be 
 in a constant jubilee in those deep retreats of 
 the bosom where the soul sits in sequestered 
 communion with Goch This happy privilege 
 must come, however, in its order; it must suc- 
 ceed to various precursory attainments. It is 
 not of the genuine sort as it displays itself upon 
 the surface of conversation, making a part of the 
 expletives of religion. Some men have a pleasant 
 way of adverting to providential mercies that 
 may be serviceable in seasoning their remarks ; 
 while by the light and airy manner in which the 
 
30 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 topic is touched, the imputation of over-righte- 
 ousness is tastefully avoided. Spiritual thank- 
 fulness is a pervasive principle, refreshed from 
 the fountains of feeling, and living in constant 
 efflorescence and verdure. It joins the general 
 song of nature; and like that, is perpetual ; re- 
 joicing with " the little hills," and with the 
 '* firmament declaring his handy-work." 
 
 It is pleasant to associate with persons thus 
 uniformly thankful to God. There is peace, 
 sweet peace in their borders: peace within, and 
 peace all around. No one can witness it with- 
 out wishing for it. How then is it to be attained ? 
 By imitation, by adoption, by assuming its lan- 
 guage and, tones ? Certainly not by any such 
 compendious methods. It is among the fruits 
 of the Spirit, and belongs to the renewed and 
 sanctified heart : it is to be arrived at by a pro- 
 cess and by steps. To estimate the mercies of 
 Jehovah, and to feel all our grounds of thankful- 
 ness, we must begin with duly " regarding the 
 power of his wrath." Our lost estate, our utter 
 helplessness, our natural destitution, the exigence 
 of God's most holy law, the perfection and sym- 
 metry of his immutable justice, the worm that 
 dieth never, and the fire that for ever burns, 
 must all come in vision to the prostrate soul, 
 before it can know how properly to appreciate 
 
THANKSGIVING. 31 
 
 what has been done for its. deliverance. When 
 every particle of fancied desert is eradicated, and 
 our forfeiture and danger stand fully revealed to 
 view, then comes the greatness of the rescue 
 with home appeal to our bosoms. All nature 
 then teems with benefits. God's hand is every 
 where seen: his munificence is every where 
 felt. When the value of his gifts is thus mea- 
 sured by our indeserts, the very breath that he 
 has given returns in vital homage. Our de- 
 merits thus acknowledged and felt, supply a sort 
 of grammar to the language of our petitions and 
 thanksgivings. They afford the elements, with- 
 out which we cannot express our gratitude 
 suitably or our wants effectually. 
 
 It may seem strange to the ears of some to 
 talk of the language of thanksgiving as of a 
 language to be learned ; but it is in truth a lan- 
 guage which none speak correctly or fluently 
 but those who have felt the deep conviction of 
 their own sinful estate. It is observable that 
 one who feels this conviction, and one who feels 
 it not, express their thanks in very different dia- 
 lects. There is even a way of giving thanks, 
 by which the absence of gratitude may be plainly, 
 I had almost said emphatically, indicated. Let 
 the mode in which those whose gratitude is only 
 skin deep say grace, as it is termed, before or 
 
32 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 after meals, be attended to, and the pertinency 
 of this observation may be understood by ex- 
 ample. The lowest favour in the scale of bene- 
 ficence which man receives at the hand of his 
 fellow, is acknowledged by thanks more feel- 
 ingly expressed than those which are given to 
 God for the daily sustenance by which we are 
 continued in existence, and of which he is the 
 author and dispenser. The reluctant rising, the 
 stifled utterance, the despatchful haste, the frigid 
 levity, the heartless indifference, the alacrity in 
 sinking back into the half-relinquished seat, the 
 anxiety to avoid the suspicion of being in earnest, 
 are all sure to characterize this ceremony when 
 performed by the mere man of the world, eccle- 
 siastic or laic. The bounties of the Great Giver 
 are to him fa%* afagcc, giftless gifts, and his re- 
 turns are thankless thanks. Let the Christian 
 gentleman well consider that Jehovah is insulted 
 by unmeaning compliment ; that his titles are 
 not words of course ; and that to mention him, 
 much more to address him, without real hom- 
 age, is constructively to blaspheme. 
 
POETRY AND MUSIC. 33 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 POETRY AND MUSIC. 
 
 That poetry and music may properly be 
 adopted into family worship as the vehicles of 
 praise and thanksgiving cannot be doubted, when 
 the influence of these arts on the affections and 
 sentiments is considered. The hymning voices 
 of children, gathered about their parents on these 
 solemn occasions, are beautiful appendages to 
 prayer. Our sacred literature is opulent in de- 
 votional poetry ; and the application of it to the 
 expression of pious gratitude has the warrant of 
 high and holy example. The Bible is replete 
 with poetry and song. The plan of redemption, 
 in all its depth, breadth, and altitude; the Man 
 of Sorrows, the King of Glory, stricken, pierced, 
 exalted; the Bridegroom of the Church; the 
 Warrior of salvation ; the Conqueror of the last 
 enemy; appear in their genuine colours and 
 characters in the poetry of inspiration. 
 
 Wherever genius and piety join their force 
 to raise our imagination and affections above 
 earthly things, the verse, though uninspired, has 
 the models of inspiration to guide and consecrate 
 its efforts. If holy things appear with less 
 
84 family devotion. 
 
 grandeur through this secondary medium, it 
 presents them to us under new and familiar as- 
 pects, and with a certain freshness and variety of 
 adaptation. Its very inferiority touches us with 
 a milder influence, and generates closer and more 
 soothing sympathies of want, dependence, ex- 
 pectation, and trust. But sacred songs are sacred 
 things, nor is every muse to be trusted on this 
 hallowed ground. 
 
 Cowper and Watts, and Newton and Heber, 
 and others of that class, may be trusted. They 
 are the classics in this walk of literature : they 
 became religious poets by first becoming religi- 
 ous men. Their productions are, therefore, 
 without affectation ; piety was their proper ele- 
 ment ; a holy tact, a vital heat, a conscious prin- 
 ciple, a central feeling, gave the first impulse to 
 their exertions, and a character of legitimacy to 
 the results. But where writers essay to try 
 their skill on this topic for the sake only of its 
 poetical resources, leaving for a season their 
 amatory themes, and all the trickery of their 
 worn-out pathos, their specious but spurious 
 performances should never find their way into 
 the family of the religious parent, under what- 
 ever title they announce themselves, of hymns, 
 or serious melodies, or sacred songs. From 
 Eastern scenes of degrading pleasure, from ex- 
 
POETRY AND MUSIC. 35 
 
 aggerated descriptions of painted bliss, from fas- 
 cinating lies and medicated debauchery, the 
 poet cannot, at least he gracefully cannot, on the 
 sudden, turn himself towards Sion. With the 
 feverish dreams of carnal riot still cleaving to his 
 fancy, he cannot join harmoniously with the holy 
 and humble of heart, in hallelujahs to Him who 
 " is exalted above the heavens, and whose glory 
 is above the clouds.'' 
 
 With respect to music and poetry as aids to 
 piety, the Christian mind will readily acknow- 
 ledge and appreciate their influence ; but consis- 
 tency and proper feeling condemn the intermix- 
 ture, which is sometimes permitted in decorous 
 families, of profane with sacred melodies. By 
 such a combination the heart is not merely 
 neutralized, but mis- directed and perverted ; re- 
 ligion is lowered, sense is exalted ; a compromise 
 takes place, in which passion exults in the mim- 
 icry of devotion. The stability of right sentiment 
 is shaken by such quick transitions and contrary 
 emotions ; the affections neither settle upon earth 
 nor rise towards heaven : but while the Creator 
 and his creatures are thus mixed in equal hom- 
 age, the realities of life are falsified, and the 
 quality of spiritual things debased. 
 
^6 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 PREPARATION FOR PRAYER. 
 
 After all, it is impossible that the practice 
 of devotion can be in a right train in any family-, 
 when it is not secured and regulated by sound 
 instruction. " If any man teach otherwise, and 
 consent not to wholesome words, even the words 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine 
 which is according to godliness, he is proud, 
 knowing nothing." The right apprehension of 
 our predicament under the Gospel, is the ground 
 of all real devotion and unctional prayer. That 
 we are delinquents before God; that divine 
 justice is perfect, and therefore incapable of 
 falling short of its accomplishment ; that it must 
 have satisfaction ; that to give scope to his mercy, 
 without impairing his justice, was an achieve- 
 ment only within the compass of his own wis- 
 dom ; that to reconcile these attributes in their 
 application to man, it seemed good to the 
 supreme Arbiter of all things to make the stu- 
 pendous sacrifice recorded in the Gospel : these 
 are the views of our humanity in its relation to 
 God, which bring us to the knowledge of the 
 only medium by which prayer can ascend to 
 
PREPARATION FOR PRAYER. 37 
 
 the throne of mercy. Deep and penitent con- 
 viction of sin, faith and hope in the great sacri- 
 fice, and consequent love and obedience, make 
 up the sum and substance of the Christian's 
 state and profession : they are the stamina of 
 vital prayer. 
 
 Prayer delights in a cordial intimacy with 
 divine truth ; it ventures beyond that ceremonial 
 barrier, where so many rest in an unholy self- 
 satisfaction. It is but half alive in the cold so- 
 journ about the precincts of Christianity ; it is 
 only within its comfortable interior that it is in 
 vigour and vivacity. From its evidences, its 
 formalities, and its moralities, prayer, importu- 
 nate prayer presses on to the inner circle of grace 
 and mercy, of pardon and sanctifi cation. What 
 the man of prayer wants, is to come so near the 
 seraphic centre as to catch the cheering glimpse 
 of God's infinite plan of reconciliation, its mys- 
 terious operation, its mighty work of love, its 
 singularity of contrivance, its specific holiness. 
 These are the characteristics of divine truth, 
 which the man of prayer must incorporate in his 
 petitions, or he does not pray to Christianity's 
 God. If he prays not through the great Pro- 
 pitiator and Intercessor, he prays to an unknown 
 god, to the phantom of a vain imagination, or 
 Xo the spectre of a terrified conscience. Never. 
 4* 
 
38 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 for a moment, can the Christian, with safety, 
 depart in his devotional exercises from the great 
 lines of Gospel divinity. The holy exigence 
 of the divine law, the d( solation of a criminal 
 world, the prevailing virtue of a vicarious atone- 
 ment, in opening a new access to God, these 
 teach us how to pray ; the riches of divine 
 mercy, the renewing power of divine grace, the 
 privileges of the divine communion, and the 
 promises of the divine covenant, these teach us 
 for what to pray ; but these are not to the taste 
 of an unspiritual nature : the intellect refuses 
 the yoke of these disparaging thoughts, proud 
 morality prefers a claim to what is freely prof- 
 fered to conscious indesert. Man, the relick of 
 a ruined world ; man, under sentence from the 
 decree of infallible justice, claims to judge him- 
 self and others by his own variable and vicious 
 standard. With the collar and decorations which 
 beiong to v the fraternity of the good, so called 
 upon earth, he challenges an equal distinction 
 in heaven. He strengthens himself in a corpo- 
 rate resistance of opinion to the humbling de- 
 crees of Omnipotence. Our unhappy propensity 
 to weigh our own actions without regard to the 
 balance of the sanctuary, extends itself through 
 every grade of social life; its rank luxuriance 
 i;asts an unholy shade between man and his 
 
PREPARATION FOR PRAYER. 39 
 
 Maker, deeper indeed and darker as moral 
 character descends, but more or less hiding 
 from some of the best and wisest, the pure 
 irradiations of divine goodness. 
 
 The great end and aim of the pious father 
 should be, to set up the standard of religion in 
 his family, for each to measure thereby the 
 worth of his own attainments. I say of the 
 father, not only because the mother is rarely 
 opposed to such a scheme, but because it is the 
 peculiar work of the father to settle the principle 
 of family government. All rule is at an end, 
 where the individuals of a family are admitted 
 to justify themselves by a comparison with 
 others. From such a licence, nothing but con- 
 fusion can result — a fatal and lying security. 
 The treacherous privilege speaks peace, where 
 there can be no peace, and reconciles man to 
 his ruin: the very outcasts can build upon it 
 a title to reward. It sets up a scale of value 
 where no value is, and fabricates the forms and 
 images of goodness out of the quarry of our 
 corrupted nature. 
 
 Where men thus take into their own hands 
 the adjustment of their claims to pardon or 
 reward, prayer is inappropriate and out of place. 
 The first business, therefore, of him who wishes 
 to have a praying family around him, should 
 
40 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 be to destroy this error at its root ; and, if pos- 
 sible, by directing the views of his children and 
 domestics to the perfection of the divine law, 
 to convince them of their lost estate, and their 
 incapacity of self-restoration. 
 
 This conviction places the soul between grace 
 and despair. It turns it to the one only practi- 
 cable method of reconciliation ; darkness may 
 intervene, but the shadows gradually retire, to 
 make way for a scene in which every thing lies 
 disposed in a new order ; a moral constitution, 
 in which the decrees of this lower judicature 
 appear reversed. All that has so long intercepted 
 the divine glory — the shrines and monuments of 
 earthly homage and consecrated delusion are 
 swept away, and in their place, the " holy 
 mountain where God has made himself an 
 everlasting name," " the treasures of darkness," 
 and " a day for the ransomed," all burst upon 
 the view. 
 
 This right estimation of ourselves is at the 
 bottom of all religious discipline and saving 
 knowledge. We cannot love God until we 
 know what he has done for us, and we cannot 
 know what he has done for us until we know 
 what we are, and what we have forfeited. It 
 is thus that faith lays the foundation of love, . 
 When we see the Deity only in his power and 
 
PREPARATION FOR PRAYER. 41 
 
 holiness, and clothed in majesty and honour, 
 the terrors of his righteous anger overwhelm us, 
 and fear casteth out love — the fear of the Judge 
 and Castigator. But when we see the door of 
 heaven opened, and the stupendous miracle of 
 his mercy administering to his justice by a 
 sacrifice as costly as even that justice could 
 exact, and ponder that act of unutterable tender- 
 ness by which our ransom has been effected, 
 love finds its argument in our nature, in so far 
 at least as gratitude is a part of our nature. By 
 this process, and to this extent, we may proceed 
 somewhat in the work of spiritual improvement, 
 and render ourselves, so to speak, more genial 
 recipients of divine grace. But the love that 
 casteth out fear, that re-acts upon our faith, and 
 gives us peace in believing, is the proper con- 
 quest of prayer, and the gift only of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 But it is of main importance to know and to 
 feel, that the faith which is evidenced by love 
 is not a single act, or a principle that stays at a 
 point ; it retrogrades when it does not advance ; 
 it must be sustained as our worldly friendships 
 are sustained, by keeping the benefits and kind- 
 nesses which first created it alive in the memory 
 and the heart, by frequent recurrences of thought 
 and meditation. 
 
42 FAMILY DEVOTION. 
 
 Man is never safe out of the bounds of ex- 
 press Scripture. There is a spurious religion 
 which assumes these titles of love, and of which 
 we should say to the Christian householder, 
 Give it no hospitality, nor let it domicile with 
 thee a day. It smiles and flatters to betray. 
 Reject its fabulous and facile deity, nor trust 
 his gratuitous pity and unpurchased pardon. It 
 proposes to us a will- worship of sentiment, 
 pathos, and emotion, without seal or authority, 
 or statute or ordinance. It settles the balance 
 of divine justice and mercy, by abridging each 
 of its perfection. " But thou continuest hoty, 
 O thou Worship of Israel ;" while thy crea- 
 tures pretend to lower the requisitions of thy 
 law to their own standard of goodness, and to 
 contract to their own proportions the measureless 
 dimensions of thy godhead. 
 
THE GERMAN SCHOOL. 43 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 UNSCRIPTURAL RELIGION. 
 
 These framers of their own religion will not 
 receive Christianity as a system of positive 
 enunciation — as the statute law of God. They 
 must have a religion made in consultation with 
 the moral dictates of right reason ; or if given 
 us by God only, still by God borrowing the 
 suggestions of human counsel. I should say 
 to the spirits of these inquiring times, Come 
 manfully to this contest with Scripture : prove 
 it false ; but do not, in place of its positive 
 declarations, affect to build upon it a structure 
 " daubed with untempered mortar," and which 
 can have no foundation but the corrupt sugges- 
 tions of a wandering fancy and a misguided 
 will. What does the philosophy of these times 
 give us in the place of the letter of scriptural 
 religion? Observe it in the German school, 
 unfolding itself in all its vagueness and vanity. 
 Instead of the grace of God and his teaching 
 Spirit, it proposes to us, in the words of one 
 of their liveliest interpreters, the " poesie de 
 Fame ;" an internal life, which the privileged 
 only live; an inner apartment in the bosom, 
 
44 UNSCRIPTURAL RELIGION. 
 
 " sanctos recessus mentis," where the spirits 
 enjoy a constant feast, and dance to a music of 
 their own. 
 
 The religion of revelation tells us that the 
 heart is deceitful above all things, and desper- 
 ately wicked; but the theology of this school 
 talks to us of the religion of the heart — of this 
 same heart so low in scriptural repute. In the 
 place to which revelation points as the seat of 
 corruption, philosophy has enshrined her oracles. 
 
 Admire as we will these soldiers of the parade, 
 the plume, and the fluttering' field-day, they 
 belong not to the militant church, nor are to 
 be classed among those violent ones that take 
 heaven by storm. We cannot trust their pio- 
 neers for the route to that place where the 
 Supreme sits intrenched in his holiness ; where 
 the flaming sword of his justice turns every 
 way but one — the one only way of access. Let 
 not the Christian householder join in the march 
 of this philosophy. The Christianity which it 
 proposes is a Christianity without Christ. It is 
 an unsanctified system of maxims, seemingly 
 of a very social aspect, but in truth nothing but 
 the phantasy of inflated feeling ; a creed of im- 
 pressions, requiring its votaries to believe mys- 
 teries without meaning and without authority. 
 Let him be aware of those German apostles, 
 
THE GERMAN SCHOOL. 45 
 
 and this ideal world of abstractions. Let him 
 turn from the metaphysics, the ethics, and the 
 poetry of these independent theologians, to 
 follow the Saviour's footsteps into the press of 
 mortal misery, through scenes of actual conflict 
 and the realities of faith working by love. They 
 may be challenged to show in our nature those 
 deep-seated principles to which we are referred 
 — that inborn purity, or that silent suffrage of 
 the heart in unison with the voice of heaven. 
 It is in the power of education to educe religion 
 from our nature, just as much as it is in the 
 power of philosophy to bring the sunbeams out 
 of cucumbers. 
 
 The maxims of these metaphysical moralists 
 are in nothing more defective than in that for 
 which they take to themselves the greatest credit 
 — systematic reasoning. They picture to them- 
 selves an interior nature in the constitution of 
 things that prompts and determines the soul to 
 what is virtuous and pure, while yet the vanity 
 and misery of human life are the favourite themes 
 of their declamation. According to them, it is 
 to the perverse dispositions of artificial society, 
 and the want of a right education, that the fre- 
 quent interruptions, or rather the general disap- 
 pointment of these natural tendencies towards 
 moral perfection is to be attributed. According 
 5 
 
4(5 UNSCRIPTURAL RELIGION. 
 
 to them, the work of man's perfectibility is in 
 his own hands : he has the materials and means 
 within himself of his own spiritual exaltation ; 
 whether it be destiny or divinity, or what else 
 they say not ; but a seminal something inherent 
 in our nature, waiting only to be developed by 
 human cultivation. 
 
 In some of the expositions of Pestalozzi's 
 system of education, amidst much good, is 
 found much of the quackery and cabalism of 
 these German ethics. It is one of the vehicles 
 for the nostrums of that empyrical shop, whose 
 opiates make our heads swim with the dignity 
 of human nature. In what recess of the mind 
 the new philosophy has found the " vie interi- 
 eure," the " sens interieur," and the comfortable 
 truth " que Phomme est bon par nature," he 
 only can tell who is able to follow these sage 
 explorers of our moral constitution in their de- 
 velopment of these " primitive dispositions." 
 They have sunk their shafts too low for ordinary 
 intellect to venture : they are to be distrusted 
 as much as the other mining speculations of the 
 day. Unable, even with the help of these 
 gentlemen, to settle whether " on fait le bien 
 par instinct ou par besoin," we turn to the 
 humbling doctrines of the faith of our ancestors., 
 and make the best of our way out of the circuit 
 
THE GERMAN SCHOOL. 47 
 
 of an enthusiastic morality, within which every 
 sciolist may take his seat and deliver his lectures. 
 Turning a deaf ear to this authoritative an- 
 nouncement of the dignity of our nature, this 
 vocation to the proper use of our constitutional 
 resources and native capacities, let us repair to 
 that Gospel which, while it places before us our 
 own pravity and perversity, gives usa " com- 
 mandment which is exceeding broad," and 
 offers " a lantern to our feet and a light to our 
 paths." 
 
 It is to be lamented that Madame de Stael 
 has afforded the aid of her powerful and pre- 
 vailing talents towards exalting an unmeaning 
 enthusiasm into the place of religion ; an en- 
 thusiasm which, however pure in its elements, 
 terminates by a natural proclivity of the heart in 
 sentimental profligacy. The consequence of this 
 enthusiasm has, of late years, much increased 
 throughout the moral and intellectual world. 
 Whence this principle, so specious and so false, 
 may have derived its birth it would be tedious 
 to inquire ; but we may affirm that in Germany 
 it has been most active and influencing. It has 
 grown with the literature of that country, which 
 has been remarkably adapted to give it operation 
 and expansion ; — that people had advanced far 
 in their intellectual career, before they could be 
 
48 UNSCRIPTURAL RELIGION. 
 
 said to possess a iiterature of their own, A 
 strong determination of the intellect towards 
 philosophy, and particularly the abstract and 
 metaphysical, was always a distinguishing fea- 
 ture of their character. An infant literature is 
 very impressible ; and when poetry and polite 
 learning began in Germany to be the objects 
 of home cultivation, they were mixed with the 
 refinements of a philosophy which had become 
 mistress of the mind of this ardent people. A 
 wilderness of anomalous thoughts and roving 
 fancies caught and fixed in wonder the first 
 glances of their infant poesy. And the most 
 impassioned species of composition, the drama, 
 soon reflected the taste of the nation in scenes 
 of moral extravagance, mystical invention, un- 
 disciplined impulses, and all the intricacies and 
 excesses of sentimental sensuality. 
 
 Thus Germany, if not the source, has been 
 the great patron and promulgator of an order of 
 ideas, loosened and at large from the control of 
 testimony and authority, and only to be called 
 an order or class, as meeting, under all their 
 varieties, in the one common and fatal folly of 
 looking within ourselves, and into the constitu- 
 tion of things, for the principles of our belief and 
 practice. Sentiment, detached from its proper 
 basis, has become a servile minister of the pas- 
 
THE GERMAN SCHOOL. 49 
 
 si&ns, giving a deceptious interest to the mis- 
 chievous aberrations of the heart and the pro- 
 pensities of mere animal nature. Nothing better 
 than this unhallowed product can come of an 
 education, of which real scriptural religion does 
 not constitute the prevailing ingredient ; no sys- 
 tem of education can prosper which leaves out 
 that which is the great and proper business of 
 man. A principle of culture is proposed to us 
 which has no reference to the end for which we 
 were born : its maxims and dogmas are flux 
 and evanescent, like the particles, whatever they 
 are, which carry abroad the virus of disease. 
 Down from the lofty, but unsound reveries of 
 Madame de Stael, through all the deepening 
 grades of German story, domestic or dramatic, 
 to the pestilent pen of that unhappy lord, whose 
 genius has thrown lasting reproach upon the 
 literature of his country ; through every disguise 
 and everv modification, the lurking disease 
 betrays itself, amidst paint and perfumes, by 
 the invincible scent of its native quarry. 
 
 !Z* 
 
50 THE MECHANIC PHILOSOFHl 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 So much for the religion of the heart, and the 
 metaphysics of sentiment, of which the principal 
 doctors are of the German school, from which 
 our Christian householder should be warned to 
 insulate his family. But it is the fate of religion 
 to be placed in the midst of dangers. She is 
 only safe in her own element — humility ; out of 
 this peaceful harbour she becomes the sport of 
 winds. She is in danger on the side of abstraction ; 
 she is in danger on the side of induction. At 
 the present time, and in our own country, she is 
 in some danger from the progress of the physical 
 sciences, and a strong determination towards 
 inquiries, experimental and material. The ideal 
 philosophy, it is true, is well exchanged for a 
 more substantial and experimental course of 
 inquiry; but scepticism may germinate upon 
 either of these stocks. Contraries are seldom 
 good correctives of each other ; they are apt to 
 coalesce in a common extravagance : they may 
 be " reconciled in ruin." We have reason to 
 be afraid of a mechanical philosophy pushed to 
 excess, as it now seems to be by some of our 
 
THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY. 51 
 
 leading men of the present time; and as it 
 assuredly was by most of the leading men of the 
 revolutionary times, which have hardly gone 
 by in a neighbouring country. The French 
 physiologists have exported to this country their 
 fashions of thinking and disputing. An exclusive 
 contemplation of physical causes, an over-reliance 
 on experimental deduction, a depreciation of 
 moral evidence, an abusive extension of Lord 
 Bacon's principles, a study of nature that leaves 
 out nature's God, appears to characterize too 
 strongly the course of study to which the general 
 mind is at present industriously directed and 
 impelled. The " march of intellect" is a stun- 
 ning phrase, that hardly permits the voice of 
 pious foreboding to be heard. A study and 
 instruction which terminate in extending our 
 acquaintance with the capacities and properties 
 of matter, and find their principal inducement 
 and reward in the increase of corporeal gratifica- 
 tion, or which, at least, are entirely terrestrial 
 and temporary in their objects, do not only not 
 lead to the consummation devoutly to be wished 
 by every true patriot and lover of the soul, but 
 afford a very dubious pledge and promise of real 
 intellectual advancement among the mass of our 
 population. If the value of mental attainments 
 is to be estimated with reference to their proper 
 
52 THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 end and purpose, the knowledge of Scripture 
 divinity, and of the duties which flow from that 
 knowledge, are surely to be preferred to a pro- 
 ficiency in sciences, which only prqpose to lay 
 nature more widely under contribution to sense 
 and appetite. By which observations it is far 
 from being intended to treat with disrespect in- 
 quiries into nature's operations, but to insist upon 
 the danger of giving them an engrossing in- 
 fluence, to the exclusion of better things. Take 
 two persons of ordinary average capacity from 
 the humbler path of life ; put the one under the 
 exclusive process of instruction in physical phi- 
 losophy, according to the improved modern 
 method of accelerating knowledge among what 
 are called the operative classes ; and let the other 
 be taught from the Bible to judge of himself, 
 in his relations to God and his fellows ; let him 
 be taught duly to feel the worth of his soul, the 
 extent of his accountability, his natural corrup- 
 tion, and the true spiritual grounds of his hope 
 and trust ; and let this be all he learns, or, at 
 least, his great and engrossing study, and it will 
 be soon manifested which of these two persons, 
 by the enlargement of his understanding and the 
 general invigoration of his reasoning powers, 
 reflects the greater credit on the means taken to 
 improve him — in a word, which turns out the 
 
THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY. 53 
 
 more sensible man, in the general and popular 
 view of that character. 
 
 The subject is not an agreeable one. It is 
 painful to stand in opposition to any scheme 
 ostensibly formed for the promotion of general 
 intelligence ; but still, in delineating the charac- 
 teristics of any of the great operations now in 
 action for the improvement of our fellow-beings, 
 it is difficult to avoid dwelling a little longer 
 upon certain tendencies, which naturally arise 
 out of arrangements as captivating in their sound 
 as they are comprehensive in their consequences. 
 As in the natural body, particular determinations, 
 strong impulses, and a partial distribution of 
 organic action, are the occasions of disease ; so 
 in the social system certain morbid phenomena 
 indicate the presence of disturbing influences, 
 and a disproportionate direction of its energies. 
 Society seems to shake either with fever or fear, 
 while the whole faculty are assembled about her 
 in clamorous consultation, with their formidable 
 apparatus of laxatives, alteratives, and restora- 
 tives, so as to render it altogether doubtful 
 whether she is to die of disease or the curative 
 process. Where matter is held up as the great 
 object and end of inquiry, and sense and experi- 
 ment arrogate an ascendency so prevailing as to 
 throw into disrepute all other tests of truth, or 
 
54 THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 guides to knowledge, sober men rationally take 
 alarm. They cannot, perhaps, distinctly desig- 
 nate, or decisively demonstrate, the danger which 
 they apprehend ; but they feel an inquietude in 
 the contemplation of the new aspect of popular 
 instruction, akin to that which the expression of 
 certain countenances usually excites. Something, 
 too, there is in particular physiognomies which 
 alarm only by their similitude to those which 
 have been observed to belong to certain authors 
 of mischief and misery ; and these are often safer 
 documents to go upon than inferences grounded 
 on more legitimate reasoning. 
 
 From the general tone of conversation and 
 style of expression on this subject, it does not 
 appear as if the heart were the soil in which the 
 seeds of these new products were to be sown, 
 or that truth, as it has been revealed to us, were 
 to have its ascendency acknowledged in this 
 catholic scheme of refinement. And yet, with- 
 out this ascendancy fully acknowledged, it may 
 be doubted whether all the teaching in the world 
 will do any thing but stuff the minds of the la- 
 bouring classes with the beggarly refuse of athe- 
 istical philosophy and revolutionary politics, 
 warp them out of their proper places, propagate 
 conceit and discontent, inflame the presumptu- 
 ousness of pride, and arm the powers of male- 
 
THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY. 55 
 
 volence. There is a blessed condition annexed 
 by divine promise to holy teaching, and to holy 
 teaching only, — " all thy children shall be taught 
 of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy 
 children.' ' 
 
 The expedients now in operation, or in pre- 
 paration, may be variously viewed. To some 
 they afford a subject of calculation, in what ratio 
 the brain may be made productive, under a 
 given stimulus ; others are satisfied with a vague 
 impression, that any impulse given to the human 
 mind must necessarily propel it in a course of 
 advancement: and that it is only to create a 
 talking, reading, and disputing population, to 
 secure the progress of the cause of truth. Some 
 look with complacency upon a state of mental 
 fermentation, as involving the elements of politi- 
 cal change, the seeds of a new produce of ideas, 
 and the generation of a new strength in the 
 country ; while others anticipate moral perplexity 
 and mischief from this plebeian philosophy, 
 deeming it safer that those who subsist by 
 manual labour should take at least their spiritual 
 learning from authorized instructors, than that 
 they should be left to rove at large in a region 
 overspread with contagious error. 
 
 Whatever ground there may be for any of 
 
56 THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 these apprehensions or expectations of positive 
 evil or good, from the character and tendency oi 
 any of our new institutions, the Christian phi- 
 lanthropist can prognosticate success from no 
 plan of public instruction which cannot claim 
 God for its patron. To him it will seem to be 
 a sound principle, that man must be dealt with, 
 not merely as a religious being, but as belonging 
 to a peculiar dispensation, from which must flow 
 all his maxims of moral truth : that the purposes 
 of universal education can never be accomplished 
 without a specific and perpetual reference to the 
 one, supreme, authentic model : that as the best 
 learning for the rich, is that which best qualifies 
 them to be guides to the poor ; so for the poor, 
 that which soonest carries them to the sources of 
 comfort and contentment, duty and peace ; which 
 asks for few intermissions of labour, but makes 
 its pauses refreshing and improving; in short, 
 that the wisdom for the multitude is not the wis- 
 dom of the porch or the academy, but that which 
 " uttereth her voice in the streets," and opens her 
 school to every variety of condition, without 
 interruption, without disturbance, without ex- 
 cess; that the only proper impelling power for 
 giving motion and effect to all the new machinery 
 of public instruction must be, if any good is to 
 
THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY. 57 
 
 come from it, the genuine purpose of educating 
 the soul for another state, and widening the foun- 
 dations of human hope. 
 
 The crude materials of an inapplicable know- 
 ledge lie in the mind only to ferment, perhaps to 
 mount in noxious exhalation, or perhaps to vege- 
 tate in poisonous luxuriance. 
 
 That these consequences may not reward the 
 spurious philanthropy of the times in which we 
 live, is the earnest hope of the writer of these 
 pages; but the only certain way of obviating 
 such consequences, is to promote a direct in- 
 struction in scriptural and vital knowledge among 
 those who are to live by the labour of their hands, 
 in opposition to that unholy dogma which dic- 
 tates a general and secular education as a prepa- 
 rative to the introduction of Christian doctrines. 
 With the poorer classes, the Gospel is the end 
 and means of instruction. Practical religion is 
 the alpha and omega of their proper discipline ; 
 it is the most rapid way of generating an intel- 
 lectual character among them : if it prompt to 
 other inquiries and attainments, as it will often 
 do, the great point is at the same time secured, 
 of bringing those attainments into subserviency 
 to a godly conscience : it keeps the heart whole, 
 the affections chaste, and the practice steady ; it 
 may not excite genius, but it exercises wisdom ; 
 6 
 
58 THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and if it do not multiply the possibilities of even- 
 tual excellence, it secures the realities of actual 
 good. 
 
 It is among God's plain appointments, that 
 popular ignorance is not to be dispelled by a 
 secular, or even a philosophical education. By 
 throwing in certain ingredients, which general 
 education may furnish, it may be made to boil 
 and bubble, to fume and roar — but it will be ig- 
 norance still, in a more turbid and noxious state. 
 None of that knowledge which lays the founda- 
 tion of good neighbourhood, kind habits, political 
 contentedness, and moral obedience, will be the 
 result; while numbers will be added to the dupes 
 of inflammatory falsehoods, and the victims of a 
 debauching press. No good can come of any 
 discipline for the common people, but that which 
 may open their eyes to their awful predicament 
 as accountable creatures. 
 
 But to come a little more to points. Has not 
 the prevailing disposition towards physical in* 
 quiries produced an inordinate and contumacious 
 spirit of research, under the pretext of an un- 
 limited love of truth ? Has it not, in some degree, 
 perplexed the great landmarks by which the 
 provinces of mathematical and moral evidence 
 are authentically divided? Has it not tended to 
 make man himself too unreservedly a subject of 
 
THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY. 59 
 
 experiment ? Has it not led many to regard their 
 species as an object of natural history, an aggre- 
 gation of functions, and mind as the mere result 
 of structure and organization? 
 
 These intimations are thrown out by way of 
 general caution against the dangerous inroads 
 of science on that sacred ground, into which 
 modern philosophy is beginning to introduce the 
 " dry bones of her diagrams, and the smoke of 
 her furnaces." 
 
 Let the Christian householder be warned to 
 trench around some of his indigenous convic- 
 tions ; and to let it be one among the number, 
 that " man was formed out of the dust of the 
 ground;" that his Maker "breathed into his 
 nostrils the breath of life," and that thus " he 
 became a living soul." 
 
 If God is a thinking Being, what necessary 
 dependence can intelligence have upon organized 
 matter or animal substance? 
 
 There are other notions hovering about this 
 focus of philosophical intensity, which are hardly 
 of dignity enough to be dangerous. Folly fer- 
 ments in the neighbourhood of mischief, as flies 
 swarm in the atmosphere of infection. Little 
 more, perhaps, is necessary to protect the mind 
 from the fever of phrenology, than to keep its 
 chambers clean and ventilated. 
 
60 THE MECHANIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 But if this will not do, it may be worth a 
 greater exertion to keep this mockery of science 
 am of the family. Young minds and low capa- 
 cities are captivated by easy methods of acquir- 
 ing distinction. To conjure is shorter than to 
 calculate; to decide than to inquire. Life is brief 
 and study wearisome; many feel the greater 
 practicability of being overwise than wise, and 
 that it is more easy to run before the judicious 
 than to rank with them ; to go where they daf e 
 not follow, than to submit to their guidance* 
 
PHILANTHROPIC EXCESSES. 61 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 PHILANTHROPIC EXCESSES. 
 
 In tracing the proper path of the Christian 
 gentleman, the subjects last alluded to have inci- 
 dentally crossed our way. It requires a cautious 
 tread to be safe in these times. Many misleading 
 lights glimmer on the right hand and on the left, 
 to betray us into swamps and quagmires. The 
 atmosphere of religion itself is full of vapours and 
 false fires. However strong and steady its proper 
 light, many meteors gather round it and disturb 
 its influence. In the midst of much activity. 
 much moral ebullition, a singleness and integrity 
 of purpose may be wanting. The mass and 
 momentum of the public mind may be parcelled 
 out till its force is frittered away. Societies, 
 schemes, and institutions, committees and sub- 
 committees, may teem and swarm upon the floor 
 of the religious world ; charities may jostle and 
 cross each other; there may be the dust, and 
 smoke, and din of philanthropy; school may 
 rival school, and teachers canvass for scholars - 
 there may be the bazaar and the ball; much 
 female commotion and fair impertinence; the 
 daughters of Zion, in all their bravery of attire , 
 6* 
 
62 PHILANTHROPIC EXCESSES. 
 
 sitting at their stands and stalls, and forgetting to 
 blush in their pious work of traffic and exposure : 
 but still the crowning end and proper design of 
 all this stir and agitation may be lost sight of, or 
 scarcely mentioned, or faintly avowed. Talk of 
 the soul's concern and God's glory ; of making 
 the Saviour known ; of sending through a world 
 of sin the healing proclamation of the Gospel ; 
 of giving to the poor the learning that belongs to 
 them by the charter of their spiritual destination, 
 and you may find that you have touched upon a 
 theme to which all this loquacious activity has 
 little distinct reference : a theme it is that com- 
 prises all that is valuable and sound in any reli- 
 gious or charitable undertaking ; but it leaves 
 out the picturesque and captivating part, and 
 administers nothing to a mere negotiating and 
 intermeddling egotism. 
 
 To distinguish the specious and the sparkling 
 from the solid and useful, is an exercise of dis- 
 crimination of great importance to the Christian 
 gentleman in his family. Home is, after all, his 
 nearest concern, and should be the main concern 
 ©f her on whom the dignity of home depends. A 
 vagrant charity but ill compensates for a deserted 
 hearth, a distracted economy, and a loose do- 
 mestic government. The moral landscape is 
 imperfect without a good foreground : it is that 
 
PH[LANTHROPIC EXCESSES. 63 
 
 which gives value to the distant scenery. Home 
 is the nucleus of national morality. Popular 
 meetings, and the bustle of management, are apt 
 to usurp upon those duties which, if defectively 
 performed, leave society in want of that primary 
 nourishment which is not to be superseded by 
 artificial substitutes. The mother should be the 
 moon of her little world, and recruit her horn 
 from the source of genuine illumination: her 
 light, so borrowed and so dispensed, is soft, 
 serene, and holy ; and her influence flows out 
 from a centre of interior loveliness, till it fills the 
 circle with which she is surrounded. But while 
 all are for educating all, specific culture may lie 
 neglected ; and the simple, tender task of maternal 
 management is ill exchanged for the ambulatory 
 and ambitious range of distant objects. 
 
 It is true, that sometimes the outer verge of 
 that rampart which separates the provinces of 
 moral duty has been trod by the gentler -sex with 
 a singularity of usefulness: but in general the 
 Christian mother carries in her bosom the sense 
 of an accumulating arrear, which increases with 
 every step in the path that leads her from her 
 home and its warm precincts. The Christian 
 gentleman's family should be a concentrated 
 family, always acting in combination, and with a 
 steady union of purpose in the work of practical 
 
64 PHILANTHROPIC EXCESSES. 
 
 piety; it then acts upon society with a collective 
 force, which gives it an influence hard to be re- 
 sisted. But if its integrality be broken into parts, 
 however separately sound, yet not harmoniously 
 composed, its movements are vacillating, and its 
 effects feeble and fugitive. A Christian gentle- 
 man should be the Coryphaeus of his household ; 
 to whose example all about him should respond 
 in happy religious concord. This is the perfect 
 tion of domestic felicity. 
 
THE POLITICS., &c. 65 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 THE POLITICS OF THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN, 
 
 We hear, occasionally, of a distinction be- 
 tween public and private character, grounded 
 on no real difference. It may be, that some 
 may use the term in a looser sense than others ; 
 but to affirm that Christian principle can be 
 modified by circumstances, can be active m 
 one situation and quiescent in another, is to 
 forget the nobility of its origin. The Christian 
 gentleman's character is independent of place 
 or time. In every part of his course he main- 
 tains his parallelism. The security and comfort 
 which the simplicity of bis moral plan conveys 
 to his bosom, are as remarkable as the dignity 
 and grace which it lends to his example. There 
 may be occasions produced by public life too 
 strong and prevailing for the virtue that has 
 approved itself within the circle of private in- 
 tercourse; but then the entire man is depressed 
 by every such instance to a lower grade in the 
 scale of moral dignity ; the sum of his value is 
 reduced ; and no solecism could be more dan- 
 gerous to Christian ethics than to treat such 
 failures as terminating in themselves, or as in* 
 
t>6 THE POLITICS OF THE 
 
 volving character no farther than the sphere of 
 action in which they have occurred. 
 
 In political life, it is among the baser charac- 
 teristics of party feeling that it begins with 
 vitiating the moral relish of what is great or 
 laudable, just or true, in itself, as far, at least, 
 as the vortex of servile associations and predi- 
 lections extends, and ends with sapping the 
 solid foundations of justice, and enervating the 
 springs of virtuous utility. The school of party 
 may form the public man, in the vulgar view of 
 that character, who takes up the profession of 
 politics, not as a field of duty or usefulness, but 
 as the road to eminence, profit, or power ; but 
 the man of honour — and such in the highest 
 sense of that phrase must any Christian gentle- 
 man be — can form no attachments but on the 
 basis of legitimate esteem ; nor can suffer the 
 interests of a nation to be confounded with the 
 fortunes of a particular body. Where the tongue 
 is suborned to advocate what the conscience 
 condemns, and the mind receives the first ele- 
 ments of politics in conjunction with the ambi- 
 tious views of faction, the jurisdiction of private 
 judgment is merged in a cowardly compromise; 
 the franchise of intellectual freedom is bartered 
 for a mean, shifting, and gaudy servitude. If 
 there may be good in political confederacies, 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 67 
 
 their value must depend upon the necessity out 
 of which they spring, and the spirit by which 
 they are animated. Let the edifice of factious 
 power exult in its proper supports, but let the 
 Christian patriot stand alone, or, at least, let 
 nothing associate him with party, but virtuous 
 ends to be accomplished by social means. In 
 party so influenced and so limited, there may 
 be security against individual presumption and 
 temerity. Where men are to act together for 
 the common good, the foundation of their per- 
 manence must be laid in the acknowledgment 
 of those verities of which none can deny the 
 obligation. There is nothing which can hold 
 men together long, but that which stands with 
 their relation to God. 
 
 There may be public conjunctures which 
 may justify systematic opposition ; and there 
 may be a prevalence of public virtue sufficient 
 to control the fiercest contentions of party, and 
 bend them into subservience to the great inter- 
 ests of the state; but these are rare and special 
 predicaments. The ordinary tendency of party 
 spirit is to confound the distinctions of virtue 
 and vice, under names and designations deter- 
 mined by the ill-concocted friendships and hos- 
 tilities of the hour; to warp the mind out of an 
 honest position, and to degrade it to that last 
 
68 THE POLITICS OF THE 
 
 condition of mischievous meanness, the hypo^ 
 critical use of the idiom of patriotism, to cover 
 a canting ambition and selfish assaults on power., 
 The Christian gentleman carries his high 
 bearing and courageous consistency into every 
 vocation and connexion. Bright honour attends 
 his course, and preserves his very trcadings un- 
 soiled by the slough of party : he brings into 
 great office or grave debate the high-mind edness 
 which belongs to conscious elevation ; while, 
 in the intercourse of social life, that gentleness 
 so mild and manly — that tenderness which so 
 charms and warms, loses nothing of its character 
 or colouring. Congruous habits are the results 
 and tests of permanent principle ; and what we 
 should say is the great mark of the Christian 
 gentleman, is a certain harmony of deportment, 
 which shows him the same under all varieties 
 of action and relation : he holds in abhorrence 
 the hypocritical abuse of the language of virtue 
 in the mouths of party men, by which Virtue 
 herself becomes suspected, and ceases at length 
 to be felt or understood : he considers a factious, 
 indiscriminate opposition as a mean and dis- 
 honest confederacy; and while he admits the 
 benefit of a wholesome parliamentary jealousy, 
 he cannot treat his country as a secondary object ; 
 he cannot falsify measures, inflame discontent, 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 69 
 
 Foster delusion, echo groundless complaints, 
 propose the removal of inevitable burdens, pro- 
 mise remedies for imaginary wrongs, hold up 
 magistracies to contempt; he cannot practise 
 any arts of cajolement, to cheat the multitude ; 
 or borrow their physical strength, to endanger 
 the edifice of public happiness and moral free- 
 dom ; he cannot agree that falsehood or exag- 
 geration in the mouth of an election orator lose 
 their inherent baseness. Truth is with him of 
 universal obligation, and will suffer no pause or 
 suspension ; and with him there is a sort of 
 reverence due to surrounding ignorance, which 
 calls upon the chastity of virtue for something 
 more than its ordinary forbearance : he thinks 
 with Phocion, that the shouts of the multitude 
 imply that something wrong must have escaped 
 his lips ; and, with that noble heathen, he abhors 
 tyranny, whether it be the tyranny of abused 
 authority, the tyranny of usurpation, or the 
 tyranny of tumultuous force : his love of his 
 country is the love of its mind, at least as much 
 as of its conquests or its exterior glory : he 
 therefore views his own example in all the ex- 
 tension of its consequences i his politics are 
 among the guards of his private conduct ; and 
 his private worth is the surety and pledge of his 
 public honour. 
 
 7 
 
70 THE POLITICS OF THE 
 
 The lives, and principles, and speeches of 
 political men, more perhaps than any other ex- 
 amples, display the influence of genuine Christi- 
 anity in forming and finishing what is great 
 and excellent in character. The statesman or 
 senator cannot be truly great in separation from 
 Christian piety. 
 
 In the progress of our national polity, a reci- 
 procity of action has moulded our institutions. 
 Led on by an invisible hand and an occult dis- 
 pensation, through a course of crises and emer- 
 gencies above man's contrivance, and beyond 
 his forethought, the constitution of England has 
 progressively awakened and unfolded the facul- 
 ties of her sons ; and in return, the character of 
 our ancestors has stamped upon every great 
 occurrence which has operated in the formation 
 of our liberties, its vivacious impression. It was 
 Christianity in an imperfect form, which raised 
 the tone of our early habits and character above 
 the average mind of contemporary periods. A 
 serious courage, a manly heart, a consecrated 
 allegiance, were the distinguishing qualities of 
 those patriots, whose worth, under severe assays, 
 came out from the furnace pure and resplendent. 
 A chivalrous attachment to the prince ; generous 
 and religious, and therefore consistent with the 
 largest love of legitimate freedom ; a high spirited 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 71 
 
 sentiment of duty, grounded on a certain sanctity 
 of principle, as deeply carved as the quarterings 
 on the field of his escutcheon, were wont in our 
 early days to be the characteristics of the noble- 
 man and gentleman of England. 
 
 This character, indeed, was not strictly Chris- 
 tian, but it displayed the power of Christian 
 principles, which, even by their secondary oper- 
 ation, modified ferocity into courage, licentious- 
 ness into freedom, sense into sensibility, appetite 
 into love. Cradled in the forest, the British 
 character grew, under the rough discipline of 
 stormy conjunctures, to a singular hardihood of 
 moral texture, and Christianity completed its 
 stature, and filled out its proportions. This was 
 the source of the magnaivmous self-devotion 
 which displayed itself so often in war and in 
 council; and not seldom in the dungeon and 
 on the scaffold. It was seen in that peculiar 
 gravity and composure which distinguished the 
 dying moments of some of our great progenitors, 
 whose decorous deaths have sealed our chartered 
 rights, and purchased the inheritance of our 
 liberties. 
 
 Travelling through the land with the scales 
 of justice in her hands, Christianity, imperfect 
 as it was, familiarized to the people the maxims 
 of equity and equality, and maintained in the 
 
?2 the politics., &c. 
 
 public mind an elasticity against the pressure of 
 unjust rule, ready to profit by every opportunity 
 of expansion. Her action was constant, while 
 that of oppression was irregular and vacillating ; 
 and such was the virtue of the constitution under 
 her ascendancy, that as intelligence proceeded, 
 and enlarged its boundary, the polity of England 
 kept on a par with this progression. Struggles 
 and conflicting tendencies were natural and un- 
 avoidable ; superstition and tyranny fought for 
 their lives, and in military language, sold their 
 lives dear. They had their victims on the 
 scaffold and at the stake ; innocence and loyalty 
 were immolated, but the perfume of the sacrifice 
 diffused a fragrance through the land ; and the 
 stream of those pure libations quickened every 
 seed of patriotism, with which the soil of Eng- 
 land had been early sown, into vigorous vege- 
 tation and life. 
 
THE LITERATURE, &C. 75 
 
 SECTION X. 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 The Christian gentleman is by supposition a 
 man of letters. Liberal learning is a constituent 
 of his character. Indolence and sensuality are 
 twin sisters. If our baser nature assumes the 
 command, the understanding puts on its livery ; 
 and it accords with all practical observation, that 
 knowledge and superstition are in an inverse 
 proportion. It is because truth challenges in- 
 quiry, that Christianity is the religion of research, 
 the assertor of intellectual freedom, and the 
 partner of philosophy in its highest acquisitions. 
 
 It says to the inquirer after truth, examine 
 my pretensions ; investigate my muniments and 
 my documents » trace my course from my first 
 commencement ; apply to me every fair test of 
 moral evidence ; try me by the soundest canons 
 of critical learning ; ask what history records of 
 that paradoxical power, by which passions, pre- 
 judices, and propensities have been overruled, 
 and nature bent into subserviency to an invisible 
 vocation, and a glory beyond the grave; and; 
 t^Jl me whether you do not find me to possess 
 
 7* 
 
74 THE LITERATURE OF THE 
 
 incentives to stimulate the finest capacities of 
 man's intelligence and genius. 
 
 These are the invitations and challenges of 
 Christianity ; and it is among its properties and 
 peculiarities that it equally addresses itself to 
 all degrees of intelligence : it descends into the 
 vales of ignorance, and crowns the summits of 
 knowledge ; it ministers to man wherever it 
 finds him, in his elevations and in his depres- 
 sions ; it is milk to the suckling, and meat to 
 the wise; it is confirmation to the strong, and 
 a staff to the feeble : where learning is not, it 
 supplies the vacancy ; where it is, it secures its 
 advantages : by the divine efficacy of its perfect 
 principles, it carries society forward, consolidates 
 the powers of the intellect, and makes its accu- 
 mulations at once permanent and productive. 
 
 Thus the Christian gentleman graduates fast 
 in the best school of learning. The more he 
 knows of his Saviour and the Bible, the more 
 correct and chastised is his general knowledge ; 
 the more the exercise of his faculties is secured 
 from disturbance, and the more amenable he 
 becomes to the discipline of truth and the 
 delights of genuine taste. 
 
 Learned society and literary habits are often 
 the friends of presumptuous error, and act a 
 plausible but treacherous part in their influence 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 75 
 
 on principles. But the Christian gentleman is 
 in no danger from these distracting tendencies ; 
 his security lies no less in the subordination of 
 his faculties than in his right estimate of things 
 without. Where the values of objects are com- 
 puted in their relation to eternity, and the in- 
 terests of the soul stand in their due priority, 
 there is neither contradiction nor vacillation in 
 the movements within, and the powers of the 
 intellect are sustained in an equable progression. 
 There is a silliness characteristic of the wisest 
 in their generation where the religious mind is 
 wanting ; an interest in trifles, a mean standard 
 of worth, and a littleness of pursuit. Sound 
 religion, by engaging the whole mind on the 
 side of truth, adjusts these discordances ; there 
 is in it a rectifying influence, that puts all the 
 capacities on a right poise and position for 
 effective operations. 
 
 There is in evangelical religion an expansive 
 principle, that seems to spread out the soul and 
 enlarge its border. Learning in the service of 
 religion is essentially liberal. What charter is 
 so complete as that which opens to the capacities 
 a celestial range — a range commensurate with 
 man in the most extended relations of his being? 
 Unsanctified science loses itself in a labyrinth 
 of second causes, fritters down knowledge into 
 
76 INTELLECTUAL ADVANTAGES 
 
 vain disputations, and involves itself in the folds 
 of circular reasoning; but the learning of the 
 devout Christian always looks to an end and a 
 consummation. He sees God expressed in all 
 his works ; and where mystery stops his pro- 
 gress, he turns to the great magazine of original 
 power; the solitary source to which all mys- 
 teries are traceable, wherein the solution of all 
 problems resides, and all conflicting realities are 
 at peace. 
 
 It is further the privilege of the Christian 
 mind, that all its learning issues in self-know- 
 ledge ; in that knowledge which lights the way 
 to the inmost area of the bosom, where the spirit 
 of truth carries on its controversy with our in- 
 herent unfaithfulness, and the victory of prayer 
 is achieved. As the Christian advances in this 
 intellectual progress, he grows in inward and 
 outward grace, and his deportment attests the 
 alliance of interior peace with exterior compo- 
 sure : all is harmony, proportion, and order ; 
 the composition of the man is complete, accord- 
 ing to the measure of his capacities. 
 
 Life is replete with examples of the dilating 
 influence of religion on the powers of the un- 
 derstanding. The experience of every observ- 
 ing man attests this interesting truth. Tlie 
 pious mind perceives in it the traces of a holy 
 
OF SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 11 
 
 dispensation ; and that in this, as in every other 
 providential appointment, " Wisdom is justified 
 of all her children." It is in fact the only effec- 
 tual ripener of the understanding : other stimu- 
 lants may produce precocity or exuberance ; 
 but that which bestows the mellow softening of 
 mature grace, which unfolds the principle of 
 vital growth, which makes progress proficiency, 
 acquisition gain, and knowledge wisdom, is 
 religion — sound, saving, authentic religion, the 
 religion of Christianity, as it stands evangelically 
 recorded. 
 
 Is an instance required of the simultaneous 
 course which religion holds with the progress 
 and development of intelligence? look at the 
 career of that sage and sober servant of Christ, 
 the late Reverend Thomas Scott ; think of him 
 struggling with the prejudices and depravities 
 of nature and education ; an heroic assertor of 
 the purest liberty of research, with no auxiliary 
 but truth, marching from conquest to conquest, 
 and pushing forwards, by honest effort, the 
 bounds of his acquisitions, till the whole field 
 was won. What but the " force of truth' * 
 could have led him from the sheep-fold, where 
 " he was following his father's ewes," to the 
 sources of divine intelligence? and what but 
 the learning he there found c ould have led him 
 
73 INTELLECTUAL ADVANTAGES 
 
 on in a course so remote from all his habits — 
 habits arrived at their full strength — to those 
 profound attainments which have given him a 
 place among the luminaries of his age and 
 nation? We see in him a specimen of biblical 
 culture, and of the force of sacred truth in 
 drawing out the best part of man into its 
 amplest and fairest proportions : a product of 
 pure religious growth, a creature of Christianity, 
 made for its glory ; a solitary, protesting, honest 
 man, taking his stand on God's word, and pro- 
 claiming his convictions with fearless integrity. 
 No founder of an ancient school, no insiitutor 
 of a modern sect, no reformer, no discoverer, 
 has at any time put forth more independent 
 thinking, or assumed a freer range of inquiry ; 
 but in the exercise of his privileges, his first 
 resort was to that teaching which had a just 
 right to his first attention, and it rewarded him 
 by an improvement that might seem miraculous 
 to those who have not been observant of the 
 league subsisting between reason and religion. 
 
 If from this venerable sage of the Gospel, 
 whose life has illustrated the force of religion 
 in abbreviating study, and rescuing the under- 
 standing from the perversions of habitual error, 
 we turn to the early maturity of Henry Kirke 
 White, we see on the other hand the power of 
 
OF SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 79 
 
 religion in endowing the tenderness of youth 
 with the vigour of ripe age, and anticipating 
 the teaching of experience. It may be admitted 
 that his natural capacity made him a quick 
 recipient of the truth ; but his great felicity was 
 his bent towards religious exercises and objects ; 
 and the early introduction of religious know- 
 ledge into his mind repaid him by such an 
 infusion of intellectual vigour, that at an age 
 when others scarcely begin to learn, he was 
 invested by his attainments with the privileges 
 of a teacher. And so it will ever be, that when- 
 ever pure evangelical religion finds an entrance 
 into the mind, however dark or uninstructed 
 that mind may previously have been, an ex- 
 pansion of its general powers is the speedy 
 consequence ; the judgment is preternaturally 
 ripened, a better taste and feeling respecting all 
 social duties and moral proprieties are rapidly 
 developed, and the faculties and perceptions, 
 whether called forth on men, or books, or things, 
 receive from an unseen source an increment of 
 vital strength, that soon appears in all their 
 operations. It is an invigoration of the capacity, 
 not unlike the refreshment which nature feels 
 from the silent and invisible drops which in the 
 still summer night moisten and impregnate her 
 
80 INTELLECTUAL ADVANTAGES 
 
 teeming surface, enabling her to greet the dawn 
 with a countless increase of vegetable births. 
 
 It were easy enough to find contrasts to the 
 above specimens in the history of our country's 
 literature ; proofs of the injury done to the best 
 intellects by the neglect of religious culture ; 
 instances of the abortive births of genius under 
 the deteriorating influence of profane and pro- 
 fligate sentiments. Turn to that great orator 
 and wit of his day. The few years which have 
 elapsed since his departure have sufficed for the 
 recovery of a cool consideration of his intellec- 
 tual powers, and of the real value and merit of 
 his performances. Observe how short his genius 
 came of fulfilling its proper ends and answering 
 its great capabilities, and compute how much 
 was lost to the energies and qualities of that 
 extraordinary mind from the absence of sound 
 religious principles, with their correcting, ele- 
 vating, and systematizing influence. Nature 
 had furnished him with all the elements of 
 greatness, and fitted him to be the ornament 
 and blessing of these eventful times; but the 
 absence of every thing restraining and regulating 
 in the first formation of his habits, left him at 
 large, the creature of accidental impressions — 
 the pupil of his own passions, and vanities, and 
 
OF SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 81 
 
 wants. Some wild flowers grew upon this moral 
 wilderness, which threw around them a faint 
 evanescent glory, and seem in some degree to 
 decorate his grave ; but they only served while 
 he lived to cover the path of his errors, and to 
 promote the fascinations of a ruinous example. 
 For want of the harmonizing effects of a religious 
 ground, his moral eloquence was unnatural, im- 
 posing, inflated, and lalse ; full of tawdry anti- 
 theses and tricking artifice, mimicking princi- 
 ples to which his heart was a stranger, and 
 glittering in the pageantry of borrowed feelings. 
 His most celebrated attempts at moral elevation 
 exhibit only the intimations of meanings which 
 played about his fancy, without touching his 
 bosom; and amidst the misdirected resources 
 of his genius, his fine intellect prematurely fell 
 into decay, leaving only the monuments of a 
 grand capacity in ruins. Had he possessed 
 those right and persevering dispositions which 
 are the results of religious principles, instead 
 of a few mischievous efforts to make virtue 
 ridiculous and vice attractive, his genius would 
 have multiplied our means of extending the 
 boundaries of real knowledge, and our securities 
 against hollow and presumptuons systems of 
 empirical instruction. As it was, Mr. Sheridan 
 could never attain in his lifetime to dignity, 
 8 
 
82 INTELLECTUAL ADVANTAGES 
 
 opulence, or trust, or raise to himself a monu- 
 ment among his country's benefactors. The 
 sincere portion of his existence was miserably 
 vain and sensual ; and never, perhaps, did the 
 entire man sink so altogether, and at once, into 
 the shade and frost of penury and neglect. 
 
 Is another instance required ? Look at that 
 void and dreary space, so recently filled by the 
 greatest genius of these latter times : see the 
 print of his unholy tread, where every noxious 
 plant still grows in rank luxuriance. Of what 
 was he not capable, if religion had guided his 
 efforts and inspired his song ? Who can estimate 
 the amount of damage done by him to mind 
 and its treasures? the waste committed upon 
 the fairest domains of imagination by his abuse 
 of his great capacities ? In him the clearest 
 moral perceptions, the control of all that belongs 
 to the bright ideal world of poetic invention and 
 combination, a magnificent store of language, 
 pathos, and sentiment, were all dissipated, in- 
 tercepted, degraded, and spoiled by a heartless 
 principle of impiety and an atheistical buf- 
 foonery of manner. That the infidel puts a 
 cheat upon his own understanding and starves 
 his genius by refusing the bread of life, is no 
 where better exemplified than in the poems of 
 the writer here alluded to. Whatever idol claims 
 
OF SPIRITUAL RELIGION. 83 
 
 the honour of the sacrifice, a more costly homage 
 was never offered at any shrine of prostitute 
 worship. That intelligence which stood upon 
 a level with the most glittering elevations of 
 human character, surrendered itself to the tram- 
 mels of a vicious vulgarity. 
 
 Good sense and good taste sicken at the repe- 
 tition of apologies for sin in the disguise of sen- 
 timent — sensuality without relief wearies even 
 the sensual. It may be reasonably doubted 
 whether moral pollution, by whatever power of 
 song it may be celebrated, can confer immor- 
 tality, or even rescue poetry from the putrefying 
 neglect by which the muse is revenged upon 
 those who abuse her gifts. The perversion of 
 natural feeling, the perpetual stench of the sty 
 of Epicurus ; infidel banter for ever withering 
 the fairest forms of virtue and holiness ; beauty 
 and bravery, in the constant uniform of lust and 
 cruelty, are surfeiting things, even to the lewdest 
 ear, when novelty has ceased to recommend 
 them. In a few more years, men, women, and 
 children will grow tired of a mannerist in versi- 
 fying, who, in contempt of his own capabilities, 
 has been pleased to luxuriate in a slovenly laxity 
 of composition, and a reprobate rhyming facility, 
 adopted as a suitable vehicle for jests upon the 
 marriage tie, and the profane treatment of truths 
 
#4 INTELLECTUAL ADVANTAGES, &C. 
 
 unutterably solemn; for exhibiting lust as a 
 harmless recreation, and the world as a wilder- 
 ness intended only for the wide and predatory 
 range of the passions. 
 
FAMILY GOVERNMENT, &C. 85 
 
 SECTION XL 
 
 FAMILY GOVERNMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 GENTLEMAN. 
 
 The Christian gentleman is in his best estate 
 and properest attitude as a family man : his deal- 
 ing with his children, with his domestics, and 
 with his tradespeople, manifests the operation of 
 that central principle which radiates in every 
 direction. But the sure sign and note of Chris- 
 tianity is a humbled heart ; not the mere dispo- 
 sition of humility, which may be allied to mean- 
 ness and servility, but that product of Christian 
 grace which comports with true dignity of cha- 
 racter. The order of society, and every relation 
 comprehended under it, discipline and degrees, 
 homage and honour, control and respect, all the 
 correlative duties of life, are in perfect corres- 
 pondence with spiritual humility ; they belong to 
 the same harmonious system. Christian temper 
 must not be confounded with temperament. It 
 is known from that which belongs to fibre and 
 contexture, by its moral sway and the constancy 
 of its action. By humility the Christian is made 
 involuntarily ^reat : his moderation is power : his 
 8* 
 
86 FAMILY GOVERNMENT, &C. 
 
 gentleness is force: his empire is that of com- 
 placency, consistency, and love. 
 
 To treat humility as the source of authority, 
 may have the air of paradox ; but it is a fact re- 
 markably evidenced in the government of a Chris- 
 tian family. If the Christian father must ground 
 his jurisdiction on the Gospel, and decide parlour 
 controversies by an appeal to that standard, his 
 personal veneration for it must be first attested 
 by a profound and practical submission to its 
 ordinances. The humility of the parent, when 
 exhibited as a Christian grace, is a constraining 
 pattern, the tendency of which is to keep up a 
 perpetual recognition of the engagements of our 
 religious professsion, to establish a family com- 
 pact of reciprocal forbearance, and to purify the 
 whole atmosphere of home by the fire of the altar; 
 his talk, his walk, all his communication will 
 combine to enunciate his Christian character. 
 Before his children he will move with a special 
 awe of the consequences of each word and act. 
 It will be his great care 
 
 Ut sanctam filius omni 
 Aspiciat sine labe domura, vitioque carentenk 
 
THE EXTERIOR INTERCOURSE, &C. 87 
 
 SECTION XII. 
 
 THE EXTERIOR INTERCOURSE OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 GENTLEMAN. 
 
 There is a distinct society among men which 
 we designate by the name of " the Religious 
 World;" and to this community the Christian 
 gentleman does necessarily belong. But within 
 this line of circumscription there are many classes 
 and grades of Christians, more or less imbued 
 with the proper evangelical spirit. To impute 
 insincerity to any within this circle would be 
 inconsistent with candour or Christian charity. 
 It may be allowable, however, to remark, that 
 there is in some men a tendency to shut up reli- 
 gion within their own arbitrary enclosure; to 
 surround it with technicalities and interdicts 
 which do not belong to it ; to make it speak a 
 language of peculiar and private dictation, and 
 to hold in virtual excommunication a very large 
 portion of sound and serious Christians. None 
 without the shibboleth can enter the sacred bar- 
 riers; and with it, men of little understanding and 
 narrow sentiment are easily admitted. To be 
 spiritually separated from the world is the sacri- 
 fice required by Christianity from its true pro- 
 
88 THE EXTERIOR INTERCOURSE 
 
 fessors; but it is from the world that lieth in 
 wickedness, from the god of this world that 
 blindeth the mind, from the rulers of the darkness 
 of this world, from the lust of the eye and the 
 pride of life, that we are to be separated; not 
 from those who in manners and opinions differ 
 by some shades from ourselves, or who, though 
 equally anxious for the soul's safety and for the 
 extension of Gospel truths, are less often than 
 themselves at religious meetings, having families, 
 perhaps, to provide for or instruct, or being, 
 perhaps, less conversant with a certain phrase- 
 ology by which these exceptious persons mea- 
 sure the progress of Christian attainments. 
 
 The Christian gentleman would, probably, be 
 soonest found on the outside of this exclusive 
 and mystic circle; his charities and affections 
 delight in a clear horizon and extensive ken ; in 
 the substances of things rather than their cir- 
 cumstances; in the genuine expression of feeling 
 and the rectitude of the heart, rather than in the 
 trammels of an unvaried phraseology and an 
 exclusive medium of religious communication : 
 he loves wisdom, and virtue, and goodness, and 
 beneficence, wherever he finds them, and all 
 " the impresses of God on the spirits of brave 
 men;" he sees also that the Father of Heaven 
 sendeth rain upon the just and the unjust; and;, 
 
OF THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 89 
 
 imitating the pattern of this great Mercy, he 
 embraces all men within the scope of his chanty, 
 and carries his Christian regards to all that aim 
 at pleasing God by obedience to the Son of his 
 love and the Word of his power. This is that 
 friendship which has been christened charity by 
 the Gospel, and this is that charity which is 
 friendship to all the world. It is a friendship 
 and charity which separate those who possess 
 them from all commerce with impiety, but give 
 the widest influence to Christian counsel and 
 holy practice. In the religion of the Christian 
 gentleman there is something frank, natural, and 
 simple, — shall we say manly? not so, certainly, 
 in the sense of that word as it comes from the 
 mouth of a worldly person, but as it indicates 
 the cordial and resolute adoption and profession 
 of the truth, abstracted from party feelings, 
 corporate distinction, or silent self-adulation. 
 Neither is it meant, by animadverting on the 
 language in which the religion of a peculiar class 
 is apt to express itself, to narrow the free and 
 frequent exercise of pious conversation, or to 
 reduce the space it occupies in religious com- 
 panies. If this is a life of preparation for another 
 which is to last for ever; if our Almighty 
 Father has reconciled us to himself by a way of 
 stupenduous grace and mercy ; if he has scat- 
 
 ? 
 
90 THE EXTERIOR INTERCOURSE, &C. 
 
 tered his beneficence over the whole face of his 
 creation, it is but a consequence of natural 
 gratitude to pass much of our time in talking of 
 his power, his glory, and his goodness; but 
 there is nothing in all this to justify a principle 
 of sequestration or exclusion, or to warrant the 
 pretensions of a privileged order. 
 
 The Christian gentleman, though of no reli- 
 gious corps, has generally the fate of being 
 assigned over by each class to some other. 
 However fervent in spirit, his professions range 
 within the limits of a strict moderation: his 
 views are singly directed to the glory of God 
 and the good of man ; he carries his religion, 
 or rather the spirit of his religion, into all his 
 intercourse and converse with society ; but he 
 carries no banner or motto before him, his creed 
 is written in his practice, and blazoned in his 
 victories over pride, passion, and temper, 
 
FAMILIAR TALK, &c. 91 
 
 SECTION XIII. 
 
 FAMILIAR TALK OF THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 The table-talk of the Christian gentleman is 
 that part of his conduct in which he particularly 
 declares himself. It is in the competency only 
 of considerable minds to season social inter- 
 course with wit, or to enrich it with the tributary 
 products of ready wisdom: but there is a com- 
 placent turn of thought and morality character- 
 istic of the well-educated and well-furnished 
 Christian, which, with little advantage from ex- 
 perience, conciliates and fixes attention. It ean 
 hardly happen, but by a very cross combination 
 of circumstances, that a father can fail of being 
 the centre of attraction to his family, where reli* 
 gion joins its voice to that of nature to enforce 
 his claims. To guide domestic conversation, 
 and to give to it its proper tone; to make it 
 profitable and irreproachable, the multiplier of 
 thoughts, the medium of a spiritual commerce, 
 a mutual provocation to virtuous resolves and 
 manly purposes, is the province which the 
 Christian father must fill in his family, or he 
 does not reach the level of his station. 
 
92 FAMILIAR TALK OF THE 
 
 There are other besides his children to whom 
 the domestic and familiar talk of a Christian 
 belongs. His servants have a property in it: 
 they have a claim upon it in virtue of their 
 ignorance. An awful accountability waits upon 
 the accents of a parent in the midst of children 
 and domestics, whenever he approaches what 
 belongs to their peace, touches the consecrated 
 lines which distinguish truth from error, right 
 from wrong, reason from prejudice, or affects in 
 whatever degree the principles by which we live 
 to God, to ourselves, and to society. 
 
 There is a garniture with which Christian 
 morality decorates common discourse, for which 
 no other gifts or graces can be adequately sub- 
 stituted. A natural dignity, a composure of 
 manner, a quiet eye, a complacent regard, are 
 among the exterior advantages which it confers: 
 they denote its specific presence, its peaceful 
 domicile in the bosom. When the passions 
 and principles are not under its control, the 
 countenance betrays an inward riot. Something 
 unrectified, tumultuous, alarmed, suspicious, or 
 fierce — something that carries the mark of Cain, 
 that tells of inborn corruption, that discovers the 
 alienated mind — gathers about the brow of a 
 godless person, speaks in his gestures, and 
 breaks through the disguise of artificial breeding. 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 93 
 
 Thus it is that a real Christian heart is funda- 
 mental to that graceful composition of the social 
 man, emphatically called the gentleman. The 
 religious gentleman is such in his countenance; 
 he carries in his forehead his credentials from 
 above, and the seal of his designation and calling. 
 He comes with a sort of diplomacy into the 
 world, bearing the badge and collar of his great 
 Master, whose willing agents are not only in his 
 holy service, but in his holier similitude. 
 
 In a peculiar sense, the Christian gentleman 
 must be absent from the world : not, indeed, 
 from the intercourse of business with the world ; 
 such an abstraction may not be consistent with 
 his duties and engagements ; neither does it 
 comport with his general character and necessarv 
 relations to withhold himself from the commerce 
 of good offices and cheerful hospitality : but he 
 must separate himself by a decided line from 
 the loose practices and careless demeanour of 
 worldly men. He who sets God always before 
 him, cannot " sit among the ungodly," without 
 a depression of spirit. The communication with 
 the godless he cannot altogether avoid : he cannot 
 avoid the contact, but he may avoid the inter- 
 mixture. As he has his delights, with which 
 they cannot intermeddle, so does the nature of 
 their pleasures exclude his participation. There 
 9 
 
^4 CONVERSATION OF THE 
 
 is, however, a neutral ground on which they 
 may stand together ; common interests, by which 
 they may be temporarily associated ; reciproci- 
 ties, which hold them in occasional correspon- 
 dence ; but the Christian gentleman looks below 
 him on the crowd of pleasure's votaries. While 
 " he meditates in the fields, at eventide," or 
 converses with God in his chamber, or sits in 
 his watch-tower, to " muse upon his works," 
 he sees through dust and smoke the plain beneath 
 him, the " dwellings of Mesech," and the " tents 
 of Kedar," or perhaps the turrets of the distant 
 city, 
 
 " Where the noise 
 Of riot ascends above her loftiest towers, 
 And injury and outrage." 
 
 The Christian gentleman is not required to 
 declare war against what he must disapprove; 
 his object must be simple separation, and that 
 will be effected for him, without trouble on his 
 part. He has only to declare for God, and the 
 sentence of outlawry will follow : his imputed 
 leprosy will send him from the camp to his own 
 world of pure and rational delights. 
 
 After all, however, let Christian piety be fairly 
 judged, as to its real effects on social happiness. 
 Has it no merry moods? The way to do it 
 justice will be to bring under a fair comparison 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 95 
 
 with each other its renunciations and its acquisi- 
 tions. This is to settle on an accurate footing 
 its secular account with man. In adjusting this 
 balance, it is too true that the Bible must be 
 delivered over to the unevangelized mind, or 
 the worldly professor of Christianity, as a field 
 of witty allusion, sportive contrast, and ludicrous 
 comparison : that which was written by inspira- 
 tion, and intended for instruction, for reproof, 
 and for exhortation, he forces into the service of 
 folly and impiety. His humour is emancipated; 
 against the interdicts of Heaven, he avails him- 
 self of the toleration of man and the sufferance 
 of human laws; he roves at large a lawless 
 buccanneer, making booty of all that comes in 
 his way : but his wit loses by its prodigality as 
 much as it gains by its hardihood ; frequency 
 and facility cheapen its merchandize; its sallies 
 are remembered in heaven, and echoed in hell : 
 he is playing with thunder, and kissing the 
 mouth of a cannon. All this the profane hu- 
 morist is aware of; it checks his efforts, and 
 damps his self-complacence; he inwardly feels 
 that of every such experiment the success is 
 precarious, the penalty sure. He is conscious 
 that the odds of this desperate game are cruelly 
 against him : and when men laugh against their 
 own convictions, there is always in their merri- 
 
96 CARRIAGE OF THE 
 
 ment something of a contradictory emotion, that 
 trembles on the lip, and transpires in the manner : 
 the heart that is true to the devil is false to itself. 
 But the pious, too, have their own province 
 of humour. It may be of a sober sort ; but it 
 has an extensive range; and were it not restrained 
 by the proximity of the peril, the partnership of 
 a fallen nature, and the checks of conscious 
 infirmity, the vanities and vagaries of boasting 
 unbelief would be the fairest objects of ridicule 
 to the well-instructed Christian. As it is, his 
 mature and meditative mind finds appropriate 
 amusement in the exposure of the shifts and 
 sophistries of the disputers of this world. He 
 sees them, in the midst of their false security, 
 " set in slippery places:" he deplores the danger; 
 he derides the folly. Cowper, Newton, Home, 
 and, in a more sarcastic vein, the Dean of St. 
 Patrick, have shown that infidelity and impiety 
 might give perpetual employment to wit, if 
 charity were not in the way. The sorrows to 
 which humanity is heir, will not allow them to 
 make ridicule and banter the staple of conversa- 
 tion ; but the pious mind most correctly feels, 
 and can best expose the elaborate impertinencies 
 and follies of artificial life. It is in the table-talk 
 of the right-minded Christian that a pure and 
 delicate humour is oftenest found ; that humour 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 97 
 
 which is the seasoner and corrector of familiar 
 discourse, the source at once of discipline and 
 delight, the medium in which virtue and vivacity 
 unite and co-operate. 
 
 Those who attempt the definition of a gentle- 
 man, are apt to lay stress on a certain dignified 
 ease in his composure and address. Ease is 
 not assurance ; if it were, the Christian would 
 have no advantage in this respect. The ease 
 which belongs to a quieted temper and a trusting 
 heart is his — permanently his. The awe and 
 awkwardness which arise from false grounds of 
 appreciation, he must necessarily feel in a less 
 degree than others; first, because he feels in a 
 stronger degree than others the humiliating truth 
 of our common debasement ; and secondly, be- 
 cause the value of adventitious elevation has 
 with him no more than the respect which ration- 
 ally belongs to it : human pretensions are in his 
 mind compared with a standard, which greatly 
 lessens their substantial disparity. The man 
 whose thoughts are most in heaven, walks the 
 earth with the greatest composure : the service 
 of mammon is a service of toil and trepidation ; 
 the service of God is a " service of perfect 
 freedom ;" and the character of the service will 
 appear in the manners. It is in the Christian 
 mind that a generous ease finds the best soil for 
 9* 
 
98 CARRIAGE, &€. 
 
 its spontaneous growth. He is shame-faced 
 only before those by whose nearer resemblance 
 to the evangelical pattern he feels himself dis- 
 credited. A strong faith weakens the hold of 
 human opinion; it gives an air of conscious 
 liberty to the countenance. The Christian so- 
 journs among men, as the citizen of another 
 state, franchised from their jurisdiction by the 
 high privilege of his acceptance with God, in 
 all matters which can affect his soul's estate, or 
 the real dignity of his nature; and thus he moves 
 with a serene confidence among those from 
 whose judgment he has an instantaneous appeal , 
 and from whose wrongs he can fly to an invisible 
 Sanctuary. 
 
WORLDLY DEALINGS, &C. 99 
 
 SECTION XIV. 
 
 WORLDLY DEALINGS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 GENTLEMAN. 
 
 What pure religion forms, it finishes; the 
 totality of its principle is marked in the smallest 
 lineaments of the Christian gentleman. Like 
 the blood which dispenses the living energy 
 through the whole corporeal frame, Christian 
 morality runs through the whole contexture of 
 conduct, giving to every part a similar basis 
 and consistence. In the veritable Christian we 
 see an entire scheme of behaviour, agreeing with 
 itself under ail diversities of circumstances : all 
 his dealings and negotiations are under the 
 guarantee of this pervasive and coercing princi- 
 ple ; in his traffic with men he remembers his 
 compact with Heaven, and the federal vow that 
 is upon him. 
 
 The mere gentleman, perhaps, in the best 
 worldly conception of the character, rejects the 
 soil and slough of a bargain. If it be true that 
 the little arts of deceptious dexterity are thrown 
 off from the generous mind by a simple effort of 
 its nature, it is equally true that in the same 
 fiature where this generosity prevails, are found 
 
100 WORLDLY DEALINGS OF THE 
 
 the dangerous excesses and spurious qualities 
 which belong to that sentiment of honour which 
 is bred out of the habits of society ; but where 
 the feelings and associations of the gentleman 
 are regulated and confirmed by the permanent 
 influence of Christian motives and sanctions, the 
 moral of life is simplified and assimilated in all 
 its possible predicaments, and the whole of the 
 social man is brought under one rule of decisive 
 application — the rule of righteous reciprocity, 
 1 which the glorious Gospel has pronounced. 
 One might expect that the gentleman, as such, 
 independently of the Christian obligation, would 
 be secured by his worldly honour, if he hold 
 that principle in its extended sense, from every 
 thing that has the odour or colour of fraud ; yet 
 the gentleman, so called, is often little scrupulous 
 of evading the payment of a tax, or of dealing 
 in prohibited or uncustomed goods, to the injury 
 of the revenue and the fair trader, however dis- 
 graceful to his port and breeding such a practice 
 should be deemed, taking his standard no higher 
 than his chivalrous origin and the legend and 
 device of his escutcheon. But the Christian 
 gentleman lives under a law which is explicit 
 and decisive on the subject; which requires him 
 to render unto all their dues; tribute to whom 
 tribute, custom to whom custom. If a Christian 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 101 
 
 professor commit or countenance an act so 
 pregnant with meanness, falsehood, and violence, 
 he brings the stigma of hypocrisy upon himself, 
 and a scandal upon the service of his Master. 
 
 Among men, the proper test of the presence 
 and influence of religion is its visible occupation 
 of the conscience. If it be real, it runs through 
 the character in its whole length and breadth. 
 Then it is that the entire conduct is restricted 
 within those lines of circumscription, of which 
 the clear written declaration of the divine will 
 has furnished the directory rule. Speculative 
 religion, or that which plays about the heart, or 
 that which glows in the fancy, or that which 
 enshrines itself in human eloquence, leaves a 
 large area about the centre of busy life free from 
 its intermeddling; but the religion of the con- 
 science is every where intrusive, crossing our 
 common paths, meeting us at every turn, and 
 dispersing over all the concerns of active exist- 
 ence luminous indications of the divine will. 
 It is an oracle which requires no formal consul- 
 tation, no journeys to its shrines ; it is ever in 
 ministerial attendance, coming at every call, at 
 hand in every exigence, anticipating the casuistry 
 of the passions, those false prophets within us, 
 and showing, in fiery traces, all the interceptive 
 lines bv which God has restricted the path of his 
 
102 WORLDLY DEALINGS, &C. 
 
 faithful servants. The true Christian is known 
 as much in the little as in the great things of life : 
 he sees the transgression in the principle. " The 
 fear of the Lord is clean," and therefore every 
 unclean practice, whether in his contracts, his 
 engagements, his money transactions, his com- 
 mon intercourse, his manners, or his conversa- 
 tion, is under the control of an incessant monitor. 
 It is true, we are contemplating a rare specimen ; 
 but the Gospel of Jesus has settled the standard, 
 and placed it above human interference. It is 
 in a graceful symmetry, or an union of the parts 
 into one consistent and refulgent whole, that the 
 perfection of the Christian gentleman resides. 
 As there may be a greatness known to the 
 sculptor, which owes something to the neglect 
 of proportion ; so what to man's perceptions is 
 heroic, is often the result of a colossal grandeur : 
 but the character of gentleman rejoices in the 
 combination and consent of its parts ; and when 
 the character of Christian accedes to it, its 
 dimensions are enlarged, while its proportions 
 are maintained ; and this is the state of man to 
 which the epithet of great does in truth belong, 
 though the multitude allow nothing to be great 
 but that by which society is convulsed, or a 
 domineering spirit is let loose upon the world. 
 
EDUCATION, &C. 1 OS 
 
 SECTION XV. 
 
 EDUCATION OF THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 There is a strange want of adaptation in our 
 scholastic institutions to the production of a 
 character at all answering to the Christian model : 
 none of our methods lead up to it. To keep 
 the proper destiny of man in the view of a child; 
 to present life as a whole to his contemplation, 
 and as a gift bestowed for a certain end ; to in- 
 culcate a principle of steady direction ; to fill 
 the soul with a consciousness of the claims upon 
 it, and of its essential relations and affinities ; to 
 set in their right order the first impelling powers; 
 to institute a determinate progression ; to place 
 before each his personal vocation, and to open 
 in clear perspective the lines of specific duty 
 comprehended in the great practical plan of 
 God's moral government, are things unthought 
 of in our schools of highest reputation for the 
 formation of gentlemen. If Christianity be true, 
 and if it do really involve all that is most worthy 
 of attainment, the education of the country is 
 rotten at the core. It has no prospective or final 
 connexion with the Christian scheme of com- 
 mutative forbearance and love, nor is any one 
 
104 EDUCATION OF THE 
 
 of the constituents of St. Paul's definition of 
 charity included in its scope or contemplation. 
 In many of our great schools it is even forgotten 
 that life is a functional gift ; that we breathe to 
 think, and think to act in a prescribed course of 
 duty and charity ; that it is our great business 
 to know and practise the will of Him who made 
 us, and to start in the career of life as candidates 
 for his forgiveness ; that each of us has a post 
 to maintain, a station to fill, a part to act, a 
 fearful responsibility to encounter. Warped by 
 these errors of discipline from the true line of 
 dignity and modesty, a juvenile throng is suc- 
 cessively mixing at random with our bearded 
 population, bringing with them fresh importa- 
 tions of anti-christian habits, the natural product 
 of a fighting, fagging, flogging system, alternat- 
 ing between slavery and tyranny ; where, if a 
 knowledge of the world is gained by anticipation, 
 precocity in vice maintains at least a parallel pro- 
 gress. They come forth to the world Christians 
 in name, but Heathens in prejudice, furnished 
 with an estimate of life and its blessings, alike 
 inconsistent with their proper relation to man, 
 and their baptismal covenant with God. 
 
 The amusements of our gentlemen are the 
 mirror in which the state of education in the 
 country is reflected. Some of them may be of 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 105 
 
 a virtuous, some of an innocent character, and 
 some of no character at all, but by far the 
 greater part of them are steeped in the depravity 
 of our nature, and of a crimson colour. The 
 persecution of inferior animals, a ruthless enter- 
 tainment furnished by their forced exertions, 
 brawling festivities, and impure spectacles, still 
 form the prevailing portion of man's delights 
 in this largely educated country. In mass and 
 quantity no nation upon earth can boast such 
 provisions for the moral and literary education 
 both of the rich and poor : our established re- 
 ligion is the religion of the Gospel; and our 
 great seminaries of learning are in theoretical 
 union with its principles; but the country 
 contains few instances of schools wherein the 
 precepts and injunctions of our religion are 
 explictly, consistently, and systematically re- 
 cognised and acted upon. Can it be affirmed 
 of any of our public schools, that any system 
 exists in them for placing virtue, reason, and 
 religion, above force, and tyranny, and passion ? 
 Fine things may be said of them at anniversary 
 dinners, or where there may be an interest or 
 pride in complimenting the scenes of our boyish 
 achievements and unworn sensibilities ; but it is 
 nevertheless lamentably true, that, except some 
 stated exterior observances of religion, vestige.? 
 10 
 
106 EDUCATION OF THE 
 
 of their primitive designation, (with what languor 
 performed !) no plan is in practical operation, in 
 any of our national seminaries, for adjusting the 
 behaviour of the youths to their vocation as 
 Christians, or even teaching them to live together 
 conformably to the standard of the best Heathen 
 morality. The whole plan and character of these 
 establishments are opposed to any such views. 
 Their machinery may be good for the promo- 
 tion of classic literature, but to the formation of 
 habits, the inculcation of principles, and the 
 government of the heart and conduct after the 
 model of that system which in our creeds and 
 sacred offices is held forth as the only sure and 
 saving system, there is not in our British semi- 
 naries any adequate, or indeed any considerable 
 dedication of time or assiduity. So far from it, 
 that it is among the excellences usually attributed 
 to public schools, that the boys are left, in their 
 commerce with each other, to the guidance of 
 their own wills and feelings, out of the conflicts 
 and agitations of which is expected to arise a 
 commonwealth of worthies, full of equity in 
 their principles, honour in their sentiments, and 
 kindness in their intercourse. But what is the 
 simple truth? what is the real state of boys 
 committed to their own moral legislation ? Is 
 k a society of mutual justice and equal law; or 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 107 
 
 is it one in which gentleness is despised, inno- 
 cence derided, and authority assailed ? 
 
 In the system derived from M. Pestalozzi, 
 as it has been exhibited at Stanz, at Hofwyl, 
 and at Yverdun, there are faults and defects 
 leading to some practical, perhaps dangerous 
 errors ; but it proceeds, upon the whole, in a 
 virtuous spirit; and has, at least, exhibited a 
 polity in which bone and muscle have no pre- 
 rogative — a polity in which a law of liberty and 
 the maxims of a wise beneficence are realized 
 to the conceptions and sensibilities of the young 
 bosom, as the preparations for the part which, 
 by their Christian profession, they stand engaged 
 to act in the scenes which await their maturity. 
 
 Inquire into the social or moral condition of 
 any of our public or chartered schools, and 
 observe which prevails, the Christian or the 
 Heathen character; that of which the Founder of 
 our faith is the author and the pattern, or that 
 of which the foundation was laid in sin and 
 sensuality. Then go to their anniversaries, and 
 observe in what parents and teachers place their 
 pride and importance ; dull declamations ill re- 
 cited, the cant of Heathen moralists, addressed 
 to ears for the most part incapable of under- 
 standing them ; or exhibitions of Latin plays, in 
 which boys are prepared for the great stage of 
 
108 EDUCATION OF THE 
 
 life by personating miserly old men, profligate 
 sons, imperious courtesans, and lying valets. 
 From these scenes retire to the peaceful vale, 
 where Pestalozzi walks with his youthful reti- 
 nue ; see them, in their affectionate relation to 
 their master and to each other, living under the 
 yoke of equal fellowship, in the practice of 
 mutual kindness, and cultivating their talents 
 of mind and body from a principle of duty to 
 themselves and others, without strife, or envy, 
 or clamour. See there the reason cultivated, 
 the affections directed, and the spirits softened; 
 see there the benefits of an unremitting superin- 
 tendence, constant occupation, gentle treatment, 
 firm distributive justice; see there the sacred 
 links by which virtue is married to happiness. 
 These comparisons may lead us to comprehend 
 and feel the value of a real substantial process, 
 where every thing fosters and enforces the sen- 
 timent of duty and the glowing charities of the 
 heart, and to understand with a bosom* intelli- 
 gence how far such a system rises above a grand 
 officious scene of endowed and chartered edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Surely that is the wise system of instruction 
 which superinduces a better nature, rather than 
 that which leaves nature to itself; that which 
 holds the appetites in willing subjection, rather 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 109 
 
 than that which leaves them to their own acci- 
 dental counterpoise ; that by which children are 
 affiliated to their preceptor, rather than that 
 which consigns them to their own crude and 
 barbarous legislation. But in our great public 
 schools the master stands aloof from all sympa- 
 thy with the scholar ; and that which is properly 
 an affair of the soul and a labour of love, is 
 made the business of official detail and frigid 
 authority. 
 
 It is true that the enterprise of M. Pestalozzi 
 may have something of too complexional a cast, 
 too much of dependence upon the extraordinary 
 qualities of the instructor. It may be better 
 calculated for the valleys of Switzerland than 
 for the vortex of British society ; but the moral 
 interests and obligations of man are every where 
 the same, and sometimes opportunities and sea- 
 sons may be forced into existence by the plastic 
 vigour of invincible perseverance. Manly en- 
 terprise will sometimes create its own means of 
 success ; and the world is always better for 
 every provocation to good thoughts and designs, 
 by which its intelligence may be shaken and its 
 aims exalted. Institutions not very dissimilar 
 to these Swiss establishments have found a place 
 amongst us, and their increase may be hoped 
 for in proportion as they unfold their advantages* 
 10* 
 

 110 EDUCATION OF THE 
 
 The good sense and feeling of a large part of 
 our countrymen gives us ground for expecting 
 that by a more paternal and religious culture of 
 our youth, in imitation of the general genius of 
 M. Pestalozzi's establishments, debarrassed of 
 some of its details, and in a more vital connexion 
 with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, something may- 
 be effectually done towards laying the foundation 
 of a happier society among men. 
 
 The great point to be contended for is this — ■ 
 that projects for the education of the lower orders 
 can never be successful unless they are com- 
 bined with an improvement of our institutions 
 for the education of the higher. The community 
 must all move on together. A greater anomaly 
 can scarcely be imagined, than an improved 
 education for the poor, while the education of the 
 upper classes is suffered to continue stationary 
 at the point at which it now stands, in respect of 
 religious culture. There is a natural order in 
 the providential arrangements of society to which 
 human institutions cannot oppose themselves 
 without a jar that must throw every thing out of 
 its place; and this order requires that teachers — 
 and such are virtually all those who support 
 or conduct institutions for popular education— 
 .should be well taught themselves. It is so 
 natural for the poorer part of the people to look 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. Ill 
 
 up to the wealthier for examples, that, could 
 this state of things, by a strong countervailing 
 influence, be inverted, society must reel under 
 such a disturbance of its balance, and a convul- 
 sive change in its relations and dispositions 
 would become inevitable. But a proper edu- 
 cation of the rich must lead to a just education 
 of the poor ; such a beginning would not only 
 be the pledge of sincerity, but an integral part 
 of the plan : in a word, it may with safety be 
 affirmed, that all systems for the instruction of 
 the poor are mere delusions, unless an education 
 in the same spirit, however different in the sub- 
 ject and the form, be given to the children of 
 all conditions. We should either cease to call 
 Christianity our established religion, or our 
 chartered schools and general institutions should 
 be essentially Christian. 
 
 If the education which our church supposes 
 her members to receive, and to the successive 
 stages of which she has adapted her formularies, 
 were really in harmony with our professions and 
 sacred institutions, we might expect a race of 
 Christian gentlemen, who would be the educa- 
 tors of their country by their very position in it. 
 Then would the dissemination of religious truths^ 
 for which the superior orders of society are 
 combining and subscribing, be the result of a 
 
112 EDUCATION OP THE 
 
 veracious adoption of them, and a sincere per- 
 suasion of their intrinsic value. Then would 
 spiritual reform assume a simultaneous start 
 and progression, and the great purposes of pious 
 edification be illustrated in the lives of its pro- 
 moters. Then would wise teaching be placed 
 under the best security — under a covenant, to 
 which the Holy Ghost would be a party, to 
 dispense among the poor one only sort of in- 
 struction — that authentic unambiguous instruc- 
 tion which lays the foundation of moral conduct 
 in Christian belief, and deduces all the duties, 
 obligations, charities, and claims of social and 
 domestic intercourse, from the will of God, 
 scripturally revealed. Under this honest, simple, 
 palpable teaching, spreading before the multi- 
 tude their proper ethics and their proper litera- 
 ture, we should soon discern the beginnings of 
 a progressive enlargement of popular feeling, the 
 increase of industrious and independent habits, 
 and a melting away of that stubborn mass of 
 ignorance of which our speculative writers so 
 philanthropically complain, and which, in the 
 view of our political regenerators, is to be dis- 
 persed only by their grand catholicon — cheap 
 and plebeian philosophy, with a liberal and neu- 
 tral religion. 
 It is. to this new race of Christian gentlemen., 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 113 
 
 the creatures of this better education, that we 
 are to look for that successful moral culture by 
 which the character of the people may be essen- 
 tially raised. No mechanical arrangement will 
 bring this about : it must be the work of living 
 agency. It is in things, not in words, that the 
 essence of teaching resides ; in those vital speci- 
 mens of practice and example, which write their 
 lessons on the heart, in characters of efficient 
 holiness. Eminent example must beckon the 
 people to come forth, from a region of perpetual 
 shade, to the bright borders of that luminous 
 disk, where man may walk by the light of 
 heaven, and breathe with conscious delight a 
 kindling atmosphere of newly recognised duties, 
 relations, and privileges. 
 
 From such a race of gentlemen, the product 
 of a Christian education, we may hope to see the 
 present gloom of juvenile delinquency brighten 
 into promise; and upon the extended floor of 
 Christian worship, vouchsafed of late to the 
 spiritual exigence of the poor, a holier observ- 
 ance of the Sabbath spring up, the great and 
 sure criterion of national improvement. It is 
 then that we may expect to see religion vitally 
 impressed, rather than technically taught, and 
 displaying its proper transforming influence, by 
 exchanging that sour, unblessed state of society, 
 
114 - EDUCATION OF THE 
 
 wherein the spirits of the poor press incessantly 
 against coercion, and order leans upon a militant 
 support, for the harmony of reciprocal protection 
 and obedience — the poisons of the press, and 
 the prurience of licentious curiosity, for that 
 appropriate learning and compendious wisdom 
 which inculcate duty, peace, and order, and 
 unfold to the humblest student the great art and 
 mystery of holy living and happy dying. But 
 only then can these things be, when the statutes 
 of an all-wise God shall control the teaching of 
 moral self-righteousness, and the lords of that 
 secular darkness shall cast their crowns at the 
 foot of the cross. 
 
 We are arrived at a period of high expectation 
 and pretension, if not of moral commotion. Art 
 is triumphing over nature, and reason is shaking 
 off the yoke of authority ; former things are fast 
 dropping into discredit, and the aspect of the 
 times is perplexed with indications of change. 
 But what throws " ominous conjecture" over 
 all these movements, is a certain character of 
 conceit which accompanies them. England 
 seems to grow less English ; the very counten- 
 ances of men are becoming strange ; the streets 
 of the capital teem and swarm with novelties 
 and exotic affections. Precocious attainments, 
 the forced products of our new system of mental 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 115 
 
 culture, have inverted the order of families, and 
 laid the honours of reverend age at the feet of 
 talkative and prejudging inexperience: autho- 
 rity, usage, prescription, and precedent, have 
 no longer the prejudices of men in their favour. 
 
 Before the preponderancy of good or evil in 
 this new order of things can be determined, we 
 must wait for the final balance of the results. 
 It may be a mighty development, it may be a 
 magnificent cheat. One thing we may maintain 
 with confidence — the great value of sober exam- 
 ple in eminent station, at a moment so pregnant 
 with consequences, in a time when example is 
 every thing, because opinion is every thing; 
 when the moral principle which pervades the 
 public, and determines the tendency and quality 
 of opinion, as to laws, and measures, and men, 
 is the source of all substantial security — the 
 vital spring of government itself; and, according 
 to the character it assumes, the aliment of dis- 
 order or the pledge of perpetuity and peace. 
 The whole system rests upon this fulcrum. 
 
 It is the natural effect of the numerous insti- 
 tutious now on foot throughout the land, to 
 make us a reasoning, intermeddling people ; and 
 it is awful to think of the consequences, if all 
 this movement in the moral state of society is 
 treated as bringing with it no new motives to 
 
116 EDUCATION OF THE 
 
 vigilance and preparation. The fortune of the 
 state is involved in the character of its rulers ; 
 neither monarchy nor magistracy can stand with- 
 out it: there is no repose upon the couch of 
 prefi rment, no dignity in the staff of office, no 
 terror in the sword of justice, no sanctity in the 
 crosier, no majesty in the diadem, unless opinion, 
 rightly constituted opinidh, administer to them 
 its unseen and gratuitous support. 
 
 Every day, and all day long, a mighty moral 
 inquest upon all that is distinguished and great 
 in rule and station, is sitting on the floor of the 
 nation. By the rapid publicity given to every 
 movement of exalted persons, and by those arts 
 of discovery to which no privacy is inaccessible, 
 all public men are brought before the forum of 
 the multitude, and virtually put upon their 
 country. There is, therefore, no stability in 
 the system of our polity, but what consists in 
 the sterling worth of our men of station and 
 fortune. We may almost count the years of 
 our probable duration by the number of our 
 Christian gentlemen ; and, furthermore, it is the 
 Christian portion of the Christian gentleman's 
 character which gives it all its strength and 
 potency ; it is this which contracts the distance 
 between the high and low, by bringing elevated 
 station within the reach of all the sympathies 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 117 
 
 which belong to our common nature ; it shows 
 us to ourselves, as in a faithful mirror, associated 
 under a similar allotment of misery and mor- 
 tality ; and in the midst of our artificial distinc- 
 tions makes us feel and recognise that affiliating 
 cord which draws us together under a common 
 dispensation of sin and sorrow, hope and for- 
 giveness, grace and correction. 
 
 The ascendancy of the Christian principle in 
 the bosom of the British gentleman, is just now 
 the single principle on which the solid frame of 
 our polity reposes. Let our universities look 
 to this, if they love their own existence, and 
 " would fain see good days." Their own towers 
 will tumble upon them, unless they so order 
 their institutions as to supply the demand which 
 the times make upon them for loyal gentlemen 
 and Christian legislators. Above all, let them 
 consider that they are the great seminaries of 
 the church — of a church surrounded by enemies, 
 and on all sides vigorously assailed. Let the 
 Christian gentleman come forth a son of this 
 church ; an inheritor and transmitter of its bless- 
 ings and its graces — a son of the true church, 
 that is, of the busy church, the ministering 
 church of Christ ; of her who in spirit recognises 
 only her real and effective agents — her bold ex- 
 postulated with the high — her faithful teachers 
 11 
 
118 EDUCATION, &C. 
 
 of the low ; her iirrn promulgators of evangelical 
 truth, full of the awful immensity of the obliga- 
 tion which, as trustees of deathless souls, they 
 have incurred both towards God and towards 
 man : of that church which, rightly understood, 
 is the depository of the faith once delivered to 
 the saints, warranted by inspiration, illustrated 
 by wisdom, and attested by blood ; which stands, 
 in stature, stability, and beauty, pre-eminent in 
 Christendom, purest among the congregations 
 of the devout on earth, most in the spiritual 
 likeness of the temple not made with hands, 
 and most fit to resound with the hallelujahs of 
 the faithful 
 
THE SCRIPTURAL MODEL, &C. 119 
 
 SECTION XVI. 
 
 THE SCRIPTURAL MODEL OF A CHRISTIAN 
 GENTLEMAN. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that the qualities 
 of the Christian and the gentleman are in paral- 
 lelism with each other, and that each draws its 
 existence and perfection from a distinct source, 
 — that the one taking its origin from the world 
 and its school of manners, and the other derived 
 from its proper author, work together as co- 
 efficients in fashioning the character of the Chris- 
 tian gentleman. The case is far otherwise. 
 The whole composition is fundamentally Chris- 
 tian ; the result of that formative grace which 
 renovates the heart, and which, as a refiner's fire 
 or as fuller's soap, purges the thoughts and 
 temper from the dross and scum of their gross 
 adhesions. 
 
 If we turn our attention to the mere exterior 
 manners, to the modes and habitudes of familiar 
 life, and to those accidents of time and place 
 which are as diversified as the relations of man 
 to man, and which assume all the varieties of 
 physical and moral predicament, it may be that 
 upon them religion has no specific or necessary 
 
120 THE SCRIPTURAL MODEL OF A 
 
 influence ; but if we regard the basis of polite- 
 ness, urbanity of temper, suavity of disposition, 
 and charity of heart, we acknowledge the true 
 gentleman to be the proper product of Christian 
 discipline, and that Scriptural holiness is the 
 mirror before which his character must be 
 dressed, to come forth to the world in the dignity 
 of its appropriate adornment. 
 
 In looking to this origin of the Christian gen- 
 tleman, we see how necessary, to the right con- 
 stitution of his character, is the purity of the 
 source from which it springs; — the dew of its 
 birth is of the womb of the morning, fresh and 
 sparkling with spiritual graces. The dignity of 
 iiis descent declares itself in his aspect ; and his 
 bearine shows him to be of the family of Christ ; 
 the tokens of his brotherhood are joy and peace, 
 and all that lights up the believer's countenance : 
 he moves a king and a priest by divine right and 
 celestial ordination : the fashions of the world 
 are at his feet, as mists at the base of Lebanon ; 
 they come and go, gather and disappear, while 
 the Christian's heart standeth fast and believeth 
 in the Lord: every movement expresses the 
 beauty of holiness, and gives form and body to 
 virtue: his exterior tells of inward order: he 
 speaks before he utters his voice, and every tone 
 and gesture borrows a grace from a deep and 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 121 
 
 never-failing interior supply : the charm of his 
 deportment depends upon a principle coeval 
 with our being and co- extensive with our nature. 
 
 While Christianity existed only in promise, 
 Abraham felt its influence, and in his reception 
 of the heavenly visitors anticipated the Gospel 
 in the elegance of its morality. With the same 
 gracefulness he negotiated for the cave of Mach- 
 peiah with the children of Heth. Boaz with 
 equal delicacy threw his protection around the 
 helpless Ruth. But in Paul the perfection of 
 Christian refinement was developed. Christ 
 had indeed come, and given us a new command- 
 ment; and the same was illustrated by the 
 apostle in the purest spirit of its practical import. 
 
 Paul, before his conversion, was a man of 
 blood and a persecutor; after his conversion his 
 mind was the tabernacle of holy love and hea- 
 venly joy; he became a Christian gentleman, 
 formed entirely out of Christian materials; he 
 retained all his characteristic perseverance, but 
 he dropped all his characteristic violence. Had 
 his walk been in the path of domestic endear- 
 ment, he would have strewed that path with 
 flowers ; had he lived in the married state, his 
 breast would have beaten with its tenderest 
 anxieties ; had he been a parent, his children 
 would have felt the blessings of his nurture j 
 11* 
 
122 THE SCRIPTURAL MODEL OF A 
 
 had he mixed in familiar life, he would have 
 largely shared and dispensed the privileged 
 pleasures of affectionate intercourse. These 
 possibilities of earthly felicity expanded with his 
 Christian perfections; but his lofty vocation to 
 glory held all his capabilities and endowments 
 in sacred captivity ; bound to the chariot of all- 
 conquering grace, they served to decorate the 
 triumphant career of his duty, as the trophies 
 and spoils of a crucified world and a subjugated 
 nature. In this subordinate condition, how 
 they wrought in his bosom ; how they softened 
 his intercourse with his converts; how they 
 tempered his sanguine character; how they 
 disposed him to patience under persecution ; to 
 contentment with his condition ; to consideration 
 for the infirmities of the fiesh ; to compliance 
 with things indifferent ; to a modest appreciation 
 of himself; to delicacy towards others ; to charity 
 of judgment, modesty of opinion, respect for 
 authority, and numberless other graces of senti- 
 ment and conduct, is seen in the only book 
 which was worthy to register the acts and cor- 
 respondence of this surprising person. In that 
 faithful repository, contemplate his gentleness to 
 his Corinthian converts ; his godly sorrow for 
 their transgressions ; his joy in their penitence : 
 observe his touching farewell to his Ephesian 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN, 123 
 
 friends: hear him addressing his converts of 
 Philippi, as his dearly beloved and longed for, 
 and exhorting them to stand fast in the Lord ; 
 and beseeching the Christians in Rome by the 
 mercies of God, and by the meekness and gen- 
 tleness of Christ : attend to his comforting and 
 gracious manner towards the Thessalonians and 
 the converts at Rome : consider his tender in- 
 tercession for Onesimus : remark his injunctions 
 to obey authorities : see, throughout his corres- 
 pondence, his love of order, his peaceful indus- 
 try, and his loyal submission to constituted 
 authority : and see also the practice of his own 
 lessons in his conduct towards Ananias, and 
 before Agrippa, and before the Roman magis- 
 tracy : forget not his holy courage and magna- 
 nimity in the face of danger — and then say, O 
 say, in whom have the properties of a gentleman 
 been more fully displayed? where have " bright 
 thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, and 
 generous honesty, the gems of noble minds," 
 more illustriously shone forth? in whose mind 
 has the beauty of regulated affections more 
 amiably manifested itself? in whose manners 
 has dignity been so combined with humility, 
 greatness with condescension, learning with 
 simplicity ? 
 Never were circumstances accumulated around 
 
124 THE SCRIPTURAL MODEL OF A 
 
 the mind of a man so calculated of themselves to 
 beget enthusiasm, and to disturb the balance of 
 the understanding; and yet never has there 
 lived the man in whom sobriety was more con- 
 spicuous. Never has there lived a man whose 
 natural temperament was so easy to be excited, 
 or whose warmth of feeling subjected him to 
 more violent emotions; but what man has been 
 more distinguished for moderation? Shining 
 with graces and gifts, he saw in himself little 
 else than the infirmities of nature and the need 
 of pardon. In others, it was his joy and his 
 consolation to discern the beginnings of that 
 holiness of which his modest spirit prevented 
 him from seeing the accomplishment in himself: 
 his distrust of his own sufficiency was in the 
 same degree with his trust in the mercy of God ; 
 and by bringing his own title in continual com- 
 parison with the merits of the Saviour, he drew 
 from his conscious weakness perpetual supplies 
 of strength ; from the renunciation of his own 
 deserts a foretaste of his great reward; from 
 present crosses an earnest of triumphant bliss; 
 and from bonds, imprisonment, and the loss of 
 all things, the expectation of an eternal weight of 
 gloFy. So chastened, so exercised, so endowed, 
 so in harmony with man, so in communion with 
 God, the character of St. Paul lias realized the 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 125 
 
 conception of that bright exemplar which has 
 been rather desiderated than described in the 
 foregoing pages. In him, the union of Christian 
 soundness with essential politeness has com- 
 pleted the lineaments and furnished the model 
 of that humble and heaven-taught grace of de- 
 portment, which awes while it delights, purifies 
 while it pleases, and is at once in favour with 
 God and man. 
 
126 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 SECTION XVII. 
 
 THE SABBATH OF THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN 
 
 Hitherto the view taken of the Christian 
 gentleman has related only to his conduct on 
 ordinary days, or the days in which his own 
 "work is in progress : there is yet a day not 
 touched upon, in which his own works are to 
 be suspended, in order that the work of grace, 
 or God's peculiar work, may be going forward 
 in his heart. Happy day for the body and soul 
 of man ! The world's birthday ; sign of an 
 everlasting covenant between God and his faith- 
 ful worshippers ; day of Jehovah and his crea- 
 tion : and more honourable still our Christian 
 Sabbath — the birthday of the spiritual world ; 
 earnest of perpetual rest ; day of the Lord, and 
 the redemption completed. But, happy and 
 honourable as is this hallowed day, man has not 
 been wanting in endeavours to dash the cup of 
 blessedness from his lips. He has been solici- 
 tous and ingenious to discover grounds for dis- 
 puting the import and obligation of one of the 
 plainest passages in the Bible, and to furnish 
 himself with a pretext for renouncing a gift of 
 God so full of grace and mercy, that none, save 
 
• CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 127 
 
 the gift of himself in his mysterious work of 
 redemption, may be compared with it. Man 
 has been studious to dissever a ligament de- 
 signed to hold him in communion with heaven, 
 and to let in the torrents of a polluted world 
 upon that little spot where our Shepherd calls 
 us to lie down in green pastures, and repose 
 beside the still waters. 
 
 " On the seventh day God ended his work 
 which he had made, and rested the seventh day 
 from all his work which he had made; and 
 God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it ; 
 because that in it he had rested from all his 
 work which he had made." Thus the Sabbath 
 was instituted at the close of the creation, and 
 enjoined upon all the families and posterities of 
 the earth in words as plain as language affords. 
 It was blessed, and appointed to be kept holy, 
 or set apart (as the Hebrew may be read ;) and 
 is it possible for an unprejudiced understanding 
 to doubt of the perpetuity of the obligation ? 
 How can a boon be blessed but by being made 
 a lasting source of good to follow upon the 
 distinction bestowed ? and how can it be sanc- 
 tified or set apart but by a continued observance 
 and separation ? and when was an observance 
 to end which equally appertained and appertains 
 to man^ in every generation ? Is it a natural 
 
128 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 inference, that a solemnity ordained by God to 
 lead his creatures to consider the excellency of 
 his works, and his goodness towards them, was 
 intended to be less durable than the relation 
 between the creature and his Creator? If the 
 Sabbath was made for man, as Christ himself 
 has declared, for whom, or for what period was 
 it not made ? 
 
 When we find such a man as Dr. Paley, in 
 his anxiety to avoid the plain and palpable 
 meaning of the second and third verses of the 
 second chapter of Genesis, maintaining that, as 
 the passage does not say that Jehovah then 
 'blessed and sanctified the seventh day, but only 
 that he blessed and sanctified it because he 
 rested from all his work, the Hebrew historian 
 alluded by anticipation to the Jewish Sabbath, 
 we can no longer wonder at any triumph of 
 subtlety over sense, or of vanity over judgment. 
 
 But the. Pentateuch is silent on the subject 
 of the sabbatical observance by the patriarchs ; 
 " wherefore," says Dr. Paley, '* it is to be in- 
 ferred that no such observance existed ; and we 
 are led to the presumption that, previous to the 
 departure of the Israelites out of Egypt, the 
 Sabbath was not an appointed solemnity.' ' He 
 admits that the institution was in existence before 
 the promulgation of the tables ; being expressly 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 129 
 
 mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, 
 in relation to the manna, which was not found 
 on the seventh day : but then he says the men- 
 tion of the Sabbath in that place does not imply 
 the revival of an ancient institution. Strange 
 argument! Was it of course to advert, by 
 express mention, to the ancient institution ? and 
 does not the manner in which the mention of 
 the Sabbath is there introduced, almost con- 
 clusively show that the institution was recog- 
 nised as previously existing? or would not the 
 words of Moses, instead of being simply " To- 
 morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath of the 
 Lord," have been such as to import a new 
 command, accompanied by reasons for the ap- 
 pointment of the solemnity ? 
 
 In the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth verses 
 of the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, we also read 
 that the Lord said unto Moses, " How long 
 refuse ye to keep my commandments and my 
 laws ? See, for that the Lord hath given you 
 the Sabbath." From which expressions Dr. 
 Paley infers, that the Sabbath was first instituted 
 in the wilderness; and it seems unaccountable 
 to him, that if it had been instituted immediately 
 at the close of the creation, and had been ob- 
 served from that time to the departure of the 
 Israelites out of Egypt, it should not have been 
 12 
 
ISO THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 mentioned or alluded to during the whole bib- 
 lical account of that period. But could Dr. 
 Paley doubt that circumcision, the sign of 
 God's covenant with Abraham, was in perpetual 
 observance during the patriarchal period ? and 
 yet where is there any express mention thereof, 
 from the settlement of the Israelites in the Pro- 
 mised Land to the coming of the Lord Christ? 
 Nor is the Sabbath itself once mentioned in the 
 books' of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, and 
 first of Kings, though its existence as an insti- 
 tution, in full observance, during the period 
 comprised in that portion of sacred story, will, 
 it is presumed, be undisputed. 
 
 These few arguments are here noticed, as 
 affording a specimen of the manner in which, 
 by some unaccountable obliquity of the will, 
 even great and estimable persons have been led 
 to bring obvious passages into controversy and 
 doubt, which, in their natural sense, are the 
 vehicles of blessings and privileges, and gracious 
 testimonies of divine favour. 
 
 The Sabbath was blessed and set apart, when 
 man, the object of it, was formed ; and the an- 
 cient decree was repeated and confirmed, when 
 the voice of Jehovah established the polity of 
 his people Israel. The command, coeval with 
 the world's origin, and for the abridgment of 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 131 
 
 which no reason can be assigned, was emphati- 
 cally enjoined upon that peculiar people, for 
 'whose use, and for separating whom to himself, 
 the Lord was pleased to construct an exclusive 
 system of government. It was the great pri- 
 meval purpose of the institution that God should 
 be specially remembered, and his goodness 
 towards his creatures recorded by the dedication 
 to him and his worship of one day in seven. It 
 was meant to be a treasury of sacred recollec- 
 tions, receiving fresh accessions as the gracious 
 dispensations of divine benevolence advanced 
 in the sequel of his providence, the first in order 
 being the wonders of creation. The people of 
 Israel being distinguished by special acts of 
 favour, had subjects of grateful reminiscence 
 peculiar to themselves : they were commanded, 
 therefore, to remember the Sabbath day, to 
 keep it holy ; for such, according to Dr. Ken- 
 nicot, is the proper translation : they were to 
 make it commemorative of their deliverance 
 from Egyptian tyranny, by revolving in their 
 minds on that day the goodness of their God, 
 " who had redeemed them out of the land of 
 Egypt, and out of the house of bondage." 
 (Deut. v. 15.) Our motives to gratitude, stili 
 accumulating with time, have at length attained 
 the measure of their fulness in the mystery of 
 
132 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 our redemption by the Son of God in the flesh : 
 and as by this sacrifice an eternal Sabbath has 
 been prepared for the people of God, the day 
 which has been made illustrious by that achieve- 
 ment has been, with the sanction of him who 
 is Lord of the Sabbath, put in the place of the 
 Jewish Sabbath, whereby the primitive and 
 substantial obligation to keep one day in seven 
 especially holy was confirmed, and its moral 
 perpetuity established. 
 
 The argument for the observance of the Sab- 
 bath is happily not a long one ; and most happy 
 is it for the human race, that God has proclaimed 
 his will, in this respect, in terms not to be mis- 
 taken. He has sanctified it, or, in other words, 
 commanded it to be kept holy by the eldest of 
 all his mundane institutions; but man, by a 
 gratuitous construction, has sought to bring 
 down the ordinance from that lofty position 
 from which it overlooks the world, to the date 
 and level of the Hebrew economy, and to cir- 
 cumscribe it within the scope and limit of a 
 defunct dispensation. This he does by a con- 
 struction depending upon the assumption tha t 
 the book of Genesis was not composed until 
 after the promulgation of the law ; for if Moses 
 used the words, " and God blessed the seventh 
 day, and sanctified it," by a prolepsis, the law 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 133 
 
 enjoining the observance on the Israelites must 
 have been given them before those words were 
 written ; a point no where established or coun- 
 tenanced, and therefore, wholly a gratuitous as- 
 sumption. And why assumed ? On the ground 
 only that the inference drawn from the silence 
 of the Pentateuch respecting the fact of the 
 sabbatical observance in the patriarchal ages 
 must otherwise be abandoned ; but the infer- 
 ence is unsound, and therefore the proleptical 
 construction has neither necessity to excuse it, 
 nor fact to support it. 
 
 But let the original sanction of the Sabbath 
 be taken away, in compliment to this reasoning, 
 infirm as it is, and let it date no higher than 
 the tables of the law. It there stands in the 
 midst of a code, entirely distinguished from the 
 perishable ritual of the people to whom it was 
 propounded ; a code grounded deep in nature 
 and necessity ; a code of moral universality, 
 proceeding immediately from the mouth of 
 Jehovah, amidst an awful scene of magnificence 
 and terror, and recognised as subsisting in per- 
 petual obligation by Christ himself; and by an 
 apostle, who quotes the commandment next in 
 order, as the first commandment with promise ; 
 thus adverting to their arrangement in the deca- 
 logue; and by another apostle, who declares^ 
 12* 
 
134 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 " that whosoever shall keep the whole law, and 
 yet offend in one point, is guilty of all ; for he 
 that said, do not commit adultery, said also, do 
 not kill." 
 
 Is the decalogue then, which has been so 
 carefully kept by itself through the whole period 
 of the Jewish history, to be regarded as a part 
 of the ceremonial law ? Is a system of ordin- 
 ances, having all the characters of immutability, 
 and twice written by the finger of Almighty 
 God on tables of stone, to be regarded as in the 
 same predicament with a temporary compilation 
 of institutes, intended only to preserve God's 
 people from idolatrous communication and in- 
 termixture, and to shadow forth the mysteries 
 of future grace and glory ? and if not, was the 
 totality and integrity of that great record, con- 
 secrated, by its position within the ark, in the 
 holy of holies, to be mutilated and defaced by 
 rhe obliteration of one of its commandments ? 
 Who shall profane that sacred enclosure, but 
 he enemy of God and man ? 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 135 
 
 SECTION XVIII. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT, UNDER THE CHRISTIAN 
 DISPENSATION. 
 
 One day in seven, as a day of sacred rest, 
 and as a day of commemoration, was given to 
 the first man and his posterities ; was given to 
 the children of Israel ; and was given in promise 
 to the Gentile world, to celebrate therein the 
 successive wonders of Jehovah's love, the crea- 
 tion of a glorious world, and the restoration of 
 its fallen inhabitants, with all the intermediate 
 preparatives and disclosures of Divine Mercy. 
 Christ's resurrection and return to glory com- 
 pleted the stupendous work of grace, and opened 
 the prospect of an eternal Sabbath, wrought by 
 a work of love ineffable ; whereby it was reveal- 
 ed, that " there remaineth a rest for the people 
 of God, into which he that is entered hath 
 ceased from his works, as God did from his." 
 Thus the Christian Sabbath hath not abrogated 
 the Sabbath of the Jews, but taken it into itself, 
 as a law of immutable obligation ; not indeed 
 by an express recorded appointment, but by the 
 sanction of our Lord's own blessed example, 
 by apostolical practice, and by a continued 
 
136 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 stream of observance, which has flowed through 
 all ages of the church to the present time. 
 
 Christ came not " to destroy, but to fulfil," 
 and hath declared, that " till heaven and earth 
 pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass 
 from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever 
 therefore shall break one of these least com- 
 mandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be 
 called the least in the kingdom of heaven." 
 (Matt. v. 17—19.) And if the Sabbath be con- 
 sidered as a type of the heavenly rest of the 
 people of God, as long as the anti-type is de- 
 ferred, or in progress to its accomplishment, the 
 type must necessarily continue. The Sabbath 
 has been circumstantially changed — changed as 
 to the day, and changed as to some of those 
 rigid observances which belonged to the Jewish 
 ritual ; but adopted and confirmed in substance, 
 as the day indicative of that consummate rest 
 which Christ has purchased for his redeemed, 
 and to which he, led the way by his own triumph 
 over tribulation and death. It was in Christ 
 Jesus that every commandment of the decalogue 
 was first spiritualized, and then fulfilled; and, 
 therefore, all wait upon him and his righteous 
 dominion : they belong to his kingdom of grace, 
 to which they look for their perfection and 
 judicial satisfaction. In his person all holiness 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 137 
 
 has been completed, and to him, therefore, the 
 Sabbath of the Lord is most appropriately con- 
 secrated and devoted. It was on the Sunday 
 that the disciples first assembled after our Lord's 
 crucifixion, when Christ appeared in the midst 
 of them ; and again, on the firsjt day of the suc- 
 ceeding week, " came Jesus, the doors being 
 shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace 
 be unto you."* On this day the Holy Ghost 
 descended with his commission from the risen 
 Redeemer. On this day, " being the first day 
 of the week, the disciples came together to break 
 bread, and Paul preached unto them, and con- 
 tinued his speech until midnight." (Acts xx. 7.) 
 St. John was in the spirit on the " Lord's day," 
 (Rev. i. 10.) and this day was familiar to the 
 primitive followers of the Lord Jesus, as his 
 day ; a day for social prayer, for the celebration 
 of the holy communion, and for assembling 
 
 * The Jews, in computing time from one day to another, reckoned 
 the days inclusively ; therefore, eight days from the first day of the 
 week, would be again the first day of the week following; and 
 " after eight days," according to the common phraseology of the 
 Old and New Testament, is to be taken in the same sense as in 
 eight days, or on the eighth day. Thus, " after three days, I will 
 rise again/' Matthew xxvii. 63. And, " after three days they found 
 him in the temple," Luke ii. 46. " Come again unto me after three 
 days," 2 Chron. x, 5; " and the people came to Rehoboam on tho 
 third day, as the king bade," ib 12. In all which instances the 
 phrase imports, " on the third day," including the day from which 
 *he reckoning dates, 
 
138 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 together in religious conference ; a day alto- 
 gether holy unto the Lord. 
 
 The title then of this first day of the week is 
 established, on the virtual authority of Christ 
 and his apostles. It is furthermore confirmed 
 by the constant* usage of Christians from the 
 earliest times. The voice of antiquity has de- 
 clared for it; the trumpet of time has proclaimed 
 it ; it has been the subject of positive enactment, 
 and the offering of solemn dedication. It is the 
 clay of the Lord by right of acquisition ; and 
 admitting it only to be set apart by the Church 
 and human ordinance, is it for man to resume 
 the gift, and cancel the surrender ? If the first 
 converts of the Gospel, with whom the faith and 
 practice of the Church were in their purest ex- 
 ercise, observed the first day of the week as a 
 day separated and hallowed, and if, in all suc- 
 ceeding times, this day has been recognised as 
 the resurrection-day of the Lord Christ, what 
 want we more to fix the duty of keeping it holy 
 upon our reason, our gratitude, and our con- 
 science ? All Christian antiquity rings with the 
 sacred sound of the Lord's day. The celebrated 
 letter of Pliny to Trajan remarks the assembling 
 of the Christian converts on a stated day, to 
 sing hymns to Christ as God. Ignatius, Justin 
 Martvr, Irenaeus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Ter» 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 139 
 
 tullian, Origen, St, Cyprian, Eusebius, Atha- 
 nasius, Epiphanius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, 
 Chrysostom, Hilary, * Ambrose, Jerome, and 
 Augustin, have record d the dedication of the 
 Sunday among Christians to the Great Captain 
 of our Salvation, who, on that day, conquered 
 death and the grave. It is the Lord's day by 
 right of prescription and long possession ; for if 
 these are the foundations of the titles of men, in 
 respect of their enjoyments and privileges, shall 
 we dispute with Christ the dominion of a day, 
 which, from the oldest period of recorded usage, 
 has had his name and seal upon it ? Let it be 
 that we have given it to him, and that his right 
 rests only on the vow of a human offering ; it is 
 an offering, and not to be recalled, but by pro- 
 fanation and sacrilege. 
 
 But it has been consecrated by Christ and 
 his Church as our Christian Sabbath ; a season 
 of seclusion from secular cares, employments, 
 and pleasures. It has been substituted in the 
 place of the Jewish Sabbath, and cannot be less 
 holy in all substantial solemnities. With less 
 of ritual rigour, it has more of vital sanctity. If 
 it was expected of the Jew, that he should " call 
 the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, 
 honourable ; that he should honour-it, not doing 
 his own ways, nor finding his own pleasure, nor 
 
140 THE. SABBATH OP TI^E 
 
 speaking his own words ;'* is not the claim of 
 the Christian Sabbath to the Christian's devo- 
 tion, if possible, more urgent and imperative ? or 
 is its holy integrity of service and employment 
 less pledged and bespoken ? The whole day 
 is the Lord's ; and he who approaches it and 
 honours it as such, shall be more than " fed 
 with the heritage of Jacob ;*' he shall inherit the 
 promises of the spiritual Israel. 
 
 The Lord's day is not only sanctified but 
 blessed : it is abounding with benefits to man. 
 To have one day in seven set apart and seques- 
 tered from the travail and tumult of the week, 
 allotted for a closer communion with God and 
 the record of his revealed will, is a privilege 
 which every pious soul knows how to value; 
 and is it not obvious, if we regard the bulk of 
 mankind, that without a returning season of 
 religious service and the stated recurrence of 
 sacred administrations, multitudes would be 
 wholly destitute of religious habits and impres- 
 sions ? As no habit can be formed, so neither 
 can the religious habit be formed, without stated 
 periods of renewal. What may be done on any 
 day, if it is to be done with effort, will soon be 
 done on no day, at least by the larger portion 
 of mankind. 
 
 Such is eminently the case with respect to 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 141 
 
 national habits. Such is their flux and migra- 
 tory character, that they require to be fixed and 
 embodied in our permanent institutions, or they 
 speedily vanish. But even the stated services 
 can effect but little towards perpetuating a re- 
 ligious habit, if the tone of mind, instead of 
 being sustained throughout the day, is to be 
 subjected to the counterworking influence of 
 secular employments, whether of business or 
 recreation. If the day be divided between re- 
 ligious duties, and the thoughts, and cares, and 
 pleasures of the world, it is evident to the least 
 penetrating, that the Lord's day will soon be- 
 come a merely nominal title. In essence and 
 effect the total day will soon belong to our un- 
 renewed nature, and pass under the dominion 
 of a devouring depravity. When an inroad is 
 made upon the Sabbath, no barrier line can stop 
 the progress of desecration. One practice of 
 disrespect gives birth to another, encroachment 
 follows encroachment, till the queen of days is 
 stripped of her diadem, and mingled with the 
 crowd and riot of the week. 
 
 Still there are those who think, or affect to 
 think, that neither the Lord of heaven and earth, 
 nor the Saviour of the world, has any thing more 
 to do with the Sunday than* to receive the hom- 
 age of a periodical service. According to them, 
 13 
 
142 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 the scriptural injunction, to keep holy the Sab* 
 bath day, is to be taken with reference to that 
 part only which is allotted to be spent in church. 
 The rest of the day belongs, as they think, to 
 man's dominion, whether for gain or gaiety, 
 business or pastime, pomp or dissipation. They 
 see neither profit in pious discourse," nor beauty 
 in family instruction. In the interval between 
 the morning and evening solemnities, when the 
 public orisons have ceased, the voice from the 
 sanctuary invites them in vain to continue in 
 holy exercise ; the silent summons is disregard- 
 ed, that calls them to converse with God ; no 
 whisper in the stillness of the Sabbath evening 
 refreshes their souls with intimations of mercy 
 from above ; no duty of self-inquiry shuts the 
 door of their minds upon a carnal world, till the 
 day is closed in peace. God has a stint allowed 
 him for appointed service ; the residue of the 
 day is challenged by his creatures as their own, 
 to use or abuse. 
 
 Many and various are the causes, proximate 
 and remote, which involve the destinies of states 
 and empires. Many operate unobserved, by a 
 train of silent consequences ; some by decided, 
 some by ambiguous influence ; some by slow 
 results, some by rapid development, some 
 through the passions, some through the under- 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. ] 43 
 
 standing, some by physical, some by moral 
 agency ; but in the history of every nation, some 
 ascendant cause usually takes the lead, and 
 works with a preponderating influence, control- 
 ling the issues of events in a course of aggran- 
 dizement or depression. In the great career of 
 this nation, the consecration of the Sabbath has 
 been the basis of our peculiar glory. Here only, 
 and principally within the pale of our national 
 church, the day of the Lord has been proclaimed 
 a day of thorough sanctity, in its entire length. 
 Throughout the continent of Europe, and chiefly 
 where the Roman superstition has relaxed the 
 hold of vital faith, the Sunday has been divided 
 between God and man ; — a brief ceremonial part 
 being given to Jehovah ; the total remainder — 
 alas ! how much the larger portion ! — being 
 covered by the claims of this present world and 
 its importunate interests. 
 
144 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 SECTION XIX. 
 
 THE NATIONAL CONSECRATION OF THE SABBATH. 
 
 Of all our privileges, the distinction of this 
 sacred day is the most important in a political 
 view. It involves not merely our character, 
 but our existence, as a great nation. On this 
 day the soul is recruited from the fountain of 
 spiritual life; all things appear to disclose their 
 beginnings, and remount to the First Great 
 Cause; the poor are lifted out of the mire, to 
 be set among princes; the Lord reigneth in 
 special majesty, and, to the multitude of the 
 Isles, it is a day of gladness; righteousness 
 looketh down from heaven, and on this blessed 
 day Jehovah speaketh peace unto his people, 
 and to his saints. Great day of gifts and graces ! 
 in which the wanderer is invited back to his 
 paternal home; and the child of disobedience is 
 reminded of his debt of love; his roving heart 
 is silently reclaimed, and with gentle force ar- 
 rested and constrained ; his hopes and fears are 
 directed to their proper centre; wrath and emu- 
 lation, and the strife of tongues, are commanded 
 to be still; with the returns of sacred service 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 145 
 
 fresh impulses of gratitude are imparted; new 
 channels of thought are opened; men come 
 before each other with improved appearance, 
 and an increase of mutual respect; the noise of 
 rustic labour and the din of the anvil are sus- 
 pended; the shops and marts pour forth a 
 comparatively peaceful population; cleanliness 
 brightens the countenance, and the sweat is 
 wiped from the brow; such, in short, is the 
 value of this day to man, that his great spiritual 
 enemy has no shorter way of compassing his 
 ends against his soul and body, than by per- 
 suading him to give ear to those unsanctified 
 arguments, which would diminish ought of the 
 sacred rest, and solemn dedication of the Sabbath 
 of the Lord. 
 
 This day is the nursling of the Church of 
 England ; she hides it in her bosom, and hushes 
 it to repose. She will give it into the hands, 
 neither of the Jew, the Papist, nor the Puritan, 
 still less will she cast it upon the world, to be 
 baptized and nurtured in its temporizing princi- 
 ples and lax observances. The ordinance of 
 the Sabbath is with her as fixed as the firmament, 
 She enjoins on this day the " mirth of the tabret 
 to cease," and the roll of idle vehicles, and all 
 commotion, whether of business or pleasure, to 
 be suspended, that wearied nature may have lei 
 13* 
 
146 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 sure to listen to its great Author. While she 
 throws aside all burdensome rites, she tells us 
 in her Homilies, that " whatsoever is found in 
 this commandment (to keep the Sabbath day- 
 holy,) appertaining to the law of nature, as a 
 thing most godly, most just, and needful to 
 God's glory, ought to be retained and kept of 
 all good Christian people. Therefore, by this 
 commandment, we ought to have a time, as one 
 day in the week, wherein we ought to rest, yea, 
 from our lawful and needful works;" and again, 
 " God's obedient children should use the Sun- 
 day holily, and rest from their common and 
 daily business, and also give themselves wholly 
 to heavenly exercises of God's true religion and 
 service." 
 
 Thus our excellent Church dictates to her 
 congregations the lessons of conservative wis- 
 dom. After the public offices of religion are 
 ended, she makes each private house a sanctuary, 
 placing the children and servants around their 
 natural instructors in devout communion; or 
 suggests to the exercised Christian the subjects 
 of devout meditation. We trust, that though 
 the tides of business and amusement sometimes 
 threaten her with destruction, her sanctuary, with 
 its awful precinct, will stand till the Bridegroom 
 comes; and that her faithful worshippers will, 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 147 
 
 in the mean time, continue to keep their morn- 
 ing and evening watch, and to claim with un- 
 ceasing earnestness the privileges of the Sabbath, 
 as the earliest spiritual gift to man, and the 
 great primeval pledge of his affiliation and 
 obedience. 
 
148 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 SECTION XX. 
 
 THE DEPORTMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN GENTLE- 
 MAN IN THE WORSHIP OF GOD ON THE LORD'S 
 DAY. 
 
 If what has been said be true of the Lord's 
 day, great must be its claims upon the Christian 
 gentleman. It must needs be the day which 
 he delights to honour. It is a day so precious 
 to him, that he rises early to enjoy it ; he is 
 desirous of losing no part of it ; his intercourse 
 with God may have been often interrupted, 
 during the week past, by care, or business, or 
 anxiety ; limited to morning and evening prayer, 
 and occasional aspirations. But on the Sunday 
 his Christianity is concentrated. 'Krt y*g averts 
 
 rov vow ctTTctyei (tiro rm a,v6^u7rtvav ct<r^oXijf^ccruv rcvfo 
 
 ovtus vow Tfexei *-f«s rev &eiov. The chambers of 
 his mind are swept and garnished, to give recep- 
 tion to visitors from above — heavenly thoughts 
 and blessed communications I Sunday is the 
 Christian gentleman's court-day ; the day of 
 the levy of the King of kings; he meets it with 
 his freshest looks, and greets it with the homage 
 of a holy courtesy : not only do worldly occu- 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 149 
 
 pations cease with him, but worldly cares also ; 
 he feels like a prisoner coming forth from his 
 confinement into the pure untainted atmosphere, 
 with the whole earth for his floor, and the sky 
 for his canopy. It is to him a day of deliver- 
 ance, release, and privilege, in which his feet 
 are " set in a large room," and his spirit " re- 
 freshed in the multitude of peace.' , His de- 
 meanour, therefore, on this day, more than on 
 others, is chastised and subdued. If, on other 
 days, God has had much of his thoughts, on 
 this day they are wholly God's. The time 
 before church on the Sunday morning is, in a 
 Christian gentleman's family, where things are 
 ordered as they should be, a time of tranquil 
 and cheerful preparation for the holy business 
 of the day ; tranquil, because the thoughts re- 
 pose upon God; cheerful, because the heart 
 responds to the invitations of the Gospel; and 
 yet it is a time of godly fear, for the sinner is 
 about to enter into the sanctuary of the Lord, 
 to confess upon his knees, and with prostration 
 of soul, his entire un worthiness. 
 
 With such sentiments and impressions, he 
 feels it a sacred duty to be in church some time 
 before the beginning of the service, to recall 
 those " dispersed and ungathered" thoughts, 
 which have been roving abroad upon their tern- 
 
150 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 poral errands through the regions of sin, within 
 the doors and vestibule of the sanctuary. The 
 proper prelude to prayer is silence ; and of all 
 practices out of place and season, that of talking 
 in church is the most egregious. This propriety 
 the heathen worshipper was sensible of. When 
 Telernachus observed to his father that some 
 god was within, the wise Ulysses imposed on 
 the youth a reverential silence. 
 
 Styx, K&t actTei cov ioov le-^etvtt f*n£* ipntnt. 
 
 O/. t. 42. 
 
 And surely when the Lord is in his holy 
 temple, all within should keep silence until the 
 appointed time of prayer and praise. But in 
 our Christian churches that appointed time is 
 just the time when silence begins. The voice 
 of the primitive church, which was wont to 
 break forth into responses that shook its pillars, 
 has sunk into feeble whispers, or inarticulate 
 sounds, or unconcerned and fashionable silence. 
 This ought not to be the case with the Christian 
 gentleman : he has a part in the service assigned 
 him in the rubric, and dare not stand out in 
 sacrilegious silence against the demand so so- 
 lemnly made upon him : he judges it also to 
 be a mutilation of the service, and a spoiling of 
 its sense and significance, to withhold his audible 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 151 
 
 responses.* Take, for example, that most holy 
 and ineffably beautiful hymn, called the Te 
 Deum, the materials of which are divine, and 
 only the structure human, and mark how the 
 materials are marred and the structure decom- 
 posed by the omission of the responses ; or in 
 other words, see how the catenation of the con- 
 text is broken, and its links scattered, if those 
 passages which should come from the mouth of 
 the congregation are suppressed ; unless it can 
 be considered as enough to preserve this essen- 
 tial continuity that the clerk, after his manner, 
 responds to the minister. This beautiful com- 
 position, as an act of praise, a confession of 
 faith, and a supplication for mercy, belongs to 
 the people at least as much as to the minister ; 
 and yet in many churches nothing of it is audibly 
 uttered but what the necessity of official engage- 
 
 * Besides the grateful variety which- is given to the devotion of 
 our church by this interchange between the minister and his con- 
 gregation, the part which the people have to sustain keeps their 
 attention profitably engaged. To do their duty, they must watch 
 and observe their minister, in order to be ready with their part of 
 the duty. They must be upon the alert, and in a state of mind in- 
 compatible with weariness or inattention. " Our pious ancestors," 
 says Dean Comber, " may make our devotion blush, when we see 
 them all the time of prayer in procinctu, with their knees bended, 
 their hands uplifted, and their eyes fixed on their minister. If ever 
 this devotion is to be restored in the church, it must be by the people 
 zealously and conscientiously joining in these pious ejaculations 
 allotted to them." 
 
152 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 ment compels. Thus says the hymn, M The 
 holy church throughout all the world doth ac- 
 knowledge thee;" but the congregation does 
 not appear to acquiesce in the declaration, nor 
 are the subjects of this acknowledgment, except 
 in so far as the clergyman and clerk are con- 
 cerned, distinctly and intelligibly proclaimed. 
 
 How touchingly does the minister exclaim, 
 " When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of 
 death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven 
 to all believers." And shall the prayer which 
 follows by inference from that beautiful declara- 
 tion be kept within the lips, or indistinctly 
 muttered ? " We therefore pray thee, help thy 
 servants, whom thou hast redeemed with thy 
 precious blood.^ 
 
 Observe also the structure and composition 
 of the psalms. Have not many of them been 
 considered by great authority to be dramatic 
 odes, consisting of dialogues between persons 
 sustaining certain characters? Are they not 
 often alternations of song between the psalmist 
 and the chorus, or Levitical band? or sometimes 
 between Jehovah himself and Christ in his in- 
 carnate state, both before and after his resurrec- 
 tion, as a priest, a king, and a conqueror? And 
 if so, will the sense be supplied ; or will the 
 composition be intelligible, or the beauty, or 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 153 
 
 sublimity, or devotion apparent, when the part 
 which is to be said by the people is not said 
 out, if said at all, the lips, perhaps, giving sign 
 of something which they dare not or care not 
 to pronounce? 
 
 The ninety-fifth psalm, that beautiful intro- 
 ductory part of the service, thus begins : " Oh 
 come, let us sing unto the Lord, let us heartily 
 rejoice in the strength of our salvation :" to 
 which the people respond, or should respond, 
 " Let us come before his presence with thanks- 
 giving, and show ourselves glad in him with 
 psalms." Can this second verse be suitably 
 pronounced in a whisper? Is its sense only 
 personal to the individual, or is it the language 
 of general accord and holy acclamation ? 
 
 Consider the texture of the twenty-fourth 
 psalm. Does the priest inquire, " Who shall 
 ascend unto the hill of the Lord ? or who shall 
 rise up in his holy place ?" And shall not the 
 people answer aloud, " Even he that hath clean 
 hands, and a pure heart ; and that hath not lift 
 up his mind unto vanity, nor sworn to deceive 
 his neighbour?" Can a devout congregation 
 be dumb, when it is their province to announce 
 the King of Glory with his angelic attendants ? 
 And yet all this is usually so ; and will continue 
 to be so until Christian gentlemen will collec- 
 14 
 
1 54 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 tively resolve to rouse by their example out 
 Christian congregations from this torpid indif- 
 ference to an animated execution of their part 
 in the worship of our church. Without these 
 audible responses on the part of the congrega- 
 tion, the spirit and order of our liturgy are lost. 
 Without them, the sequence and affinity of 
 related passages are severed and suppressed. 
 " O Lord, open thou our lips." (Resp.) " And 
 (then) our mouth shall show forth thy praise." 
 " O Lord, make speed to save us." (Resp.) 
 " O Lord, make haste to help us." " Praise 
 ye the Lord."* (Resp.) " The Lord's name 
 be praised." " O God, make clean our hearts 
 within us." (Resp.) " And take not thy Holy 
 Spirit from us." Again, when the minister 
 
 * The sense of the Hebrew Hallelujah was so sacred in the 
 original, that the church anciently adhered to the Hebrew term; 
 and still it stands in many of our Christian hymns. It was in daily 
 use in the temple service, and designated the Great Hymn, sung 
 after the Passover, composed of the six psalms, from the 1] 3th to 
 the 118th inclusively. Early in every morning was the Hallelujah 
 sung in the primitive church of Christ; and from Easter to Whit- 
 sunday the Christian assemblies of old resounded with the same 
 note of praise. It is a song of victory, and was sung by the saints 
 of the Apocalypse in celebration of their triumph. (Rev. xix. 1, 3, 
 4, 6.) "I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as 
 the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, say- 
 ing, Alleluiah: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." And can 
 an English congregation of Christians, assembled for the worship o*' 
 God, when their minister calls to them, " Praise ye the Lord," refuse 
 »"* echo back the strain, " The Lord's name be praised?" 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 155 
 
 having, in the words of St. Paul, (2 Thess. iii. 
 16.) invoked a blessing on his hearers, saving, 
 " The Lord be with you :" the answer to which, 
 in the words of the liturgy, (from the 2 Tim. 
 iv. 22.) is, " And with thy spirit :" can it be 
 doubted that it is an imperative duty on the 
 people to speak out audibly and distinctly what 
 the church has thus put into their mouths? 
 
 The confession with which the service on the 
 people's part begins, is the great motive to 
 prayer — the foundation-stone of the edifice of a 
 sinner's hope. It is of little importance that we 
 should tell God that we are sinners : he knows 
 we are sinners, and we must feel ourselves to 
 be such, or we shall pray in vain; but it is 
 expedient in social prayer that our supplications 
 to Heaven should stand upon the general cor- 
 ruption of our nature, and the fellowship of sin 
 and contrition; and if a general acknowledgment 
 is to be made, accompanied by a general humi- 
 liation, it is not easy to perceive how this can 
 be done but by a community of heart and voice, 
 and an open avowal and publication by each 
 before others of his own sinful estate and abject 
 want of forgiveness. But if confession of a 
 common corruption should be thus ostensible 
 and public, profession of a common faith should 
 be no less declared and avowed. The harmony 
 
156 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 and sympathy of worship require it to be so ; 
 and there is something always interesting and 
 instructive in the spectacle of a Christian gentle- 
 man, with erect and decided aspect, testifying 
 aloud the great articles of his belief, and the 
 grounded convictions of a trusting heart. 
 
 As our liturgy is so framed as to call imperi- 
 ously upon the people to give audible utterance 
 to their part in the service, so does it call upon 
 the minister to give time for the congregation 
 to finish what the rubric has appointed to be 
 answered or repeated by them before he proceeds 
 with the service. It is scarcely consistent with 
 the decorum of good manners, much less with 
 the dignity and efficacy of our forms of worship, 
 so to tread upon the heels of those who are 
 endeavouring to respond according to the rubric, 
 as to force them to sacrifice a moiety of what 
 they had to say, or hurry to the conclusion. 
 There is an impatience in this proceeding, which 
 does not surprise us in a clergyman who treats 
 his function as a task to be dryly and technically 
 performed; but it is a perfect solecism in the 
 practice of a spiritual minister ; it is a blemish 
 in the beauty of holiness; a fraud upon the 
 liturgy ; a robbery of God, who has a right to 
 every part of the service, whether it appertains 
 to the minister or to the congregation ; and if 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 157 
 
 the contumacious silence of a congregation is 
 dangerous on their part, it is still more dangerous 
 in the minister of God's word to throw any 
 difficulty in the way of their return to their 
 duty. 
 
 It is sometimes in defence of this sullen 
 taciturnity affirmed, that to recite aloud any part 
 of the service is an interruption to the devotion 
 of others. Fastidious, unfounded objection! 
 fallaciously set up in opposition to the spirit 
 and intention of all social worship. No true 
 Christian is ever disturbed by surrounding de- 
 votion; he loves to breathe the atmosphere of 
 piety ; nothing is more delightful to him than 
 the sympathy of sacred sounds ; the companion- 
 ship of godly affections ; the collective strength 
 of prayer ; the chorus of praise ; the echoes of 
 inward joy ; the music of disburdened bosoms ; 
 the songs of secret deliverance ; to feel himself 
 part of a circumference of love gathered round 
 a common centre ; and to be placed where the 
 magazines of private sorrow, comfort, joy, and 
 hope, are all emptied into the common stock 
 of the blessed company of all faithful people. 
 Though not for ostentation, yet for profit and 
 edification, Christians should let their light shine 
 before others. Within the camp of Christ's 
 soldiers there may be allowed to be some stir ; 
 14* 
 
158 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 some notes of preparation ; some noise of arms. 
 The public worship of God was never meant to 
 be cold, or mute, or sad, or dull; it should 
 imitate rather the angels of the Apocalypse, 
 falling before the throne on their faces, saying, 
 (and surely with united voices and loud acclaim,) 
 " Amen. Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, 
 and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and 
 might, be unto our God, for ever and ever." 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 159 
 
 SECTION XXI. 
 
 POSTURES APPROPRIATE TO THE SEVERAL 
 PARTS OF THE SERVICE. 
 
 The postures prescribed by the rubric, the 
 Christian gentleman will be scrupulous to main- 
 tain. He does not say, with the psalmist, " Oh 
 come, let us worship, and fall down, and kneel 
 before the Lord our Maker; let us fall down 
 low on our knees before his footstool," without 
 honestly intending to give to God the homage 
 of his obedience. And yet how many act as if 
 by " Let us pray," were meant only, as far as 
 regards themselves, " Let us all sit at our ease." 
 Like sacks of meal in a row, each drops into his 
 place, with a look of indifference to the business 
 that should engage all the interest of his mind, 
 and most actively stir his affections. No Chris- 
 tian gentleman, unless infirmity compel him, 
 can maintain a sitting posture during the praying 
 part of the church service. Can sinful man at 
 such a moment sit unconcerned, or sit at all, in 
 the courts of his palace, to whom sin is so hateful 
 that he spared not to make his Son a sacrifice 
 to his offended holiness for the sake of his guilty 
 
160 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 creatures? Did Job abhor himself in dust and 
 ashes in the presence of Him whom he had but 
 little offended? Did Christ pray to his Father, 
 with agony and bloody sweat? Do the angels 
 fall down, and hide their faces before God, and 
 tremble at his presence ? And shall the son of 
 pollution and the heir of vengeance sit at ease, 
 and look carelessly about him, when the Church 
 of his crucified Saviour is calling upon him to 
 present himself as a suppliant sinner ? Is it safe 
 to sit in secular composure, neither hot nor cold, 
 while God is expecting prayer, and proffering 
 grace? Is it a time to sit in complacent security, 
 while a double death and a single way of escape 
 are before us ? Can we be so insensible to the 
 soul's jeopardy, and all the frightful possibilities 
 of a dark futurity ; can we be so untouched by 
 the long-suffering of our compassionate Father, 
 who still holds open the door to repentance, as 
 to sit unmoved amidst all these challenges, vo- 
 cations, and alarms, disdaining the attitude of 
 subjection, and the homage of a humbled spirit? 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 161 
 
 SECTION XXII. 
 
 THE DUTY OF JOINING IN THE PSALMODY. 
 
 The general conduct of a Christian gentle- 
 man in respect to the church service is inex- 
 pressibly important in the way of edification. 
 His early attendance ; his composed demeanour ; 
 his respectful observance of order and propriety ; 
 his devotional postures ; his reverential fear ; his 
 religious abstraction ; his solemn and distinct 
 responses ; his athletic prayers of faith ; his 
 pious breathings of confession ; and the various 
 indescribable indications which attest the sin- 
 cerity of his worship, and give to his whole ex- 
 terior the attraction of godliness — how gracefully 
 do these lead and animate the feelings and de- 
 portment of all around him ! 
 
 It may be, the Christian gentleman has not 
 the faculty of singing ; if so, it is his wisdom to 
 forbear. If he cannot be an auxiliary, he had 
 better withhold his interference; but if he is 
 competent to join in this awakening and beautiful 
 part of the church service, he dares not refuse 
 his contribution ; the whole sanctuary rings with 
 invitations to sacred song ; it is the exercise of 
 
162 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 adoring angels, and the delight of saints ; it has 
 the warrant of divine authority; it has been 
 consecrated by the example of the Redeemer ; 
 it is one of the greatest glories of evangelical 
 worship. How much better is it than with the 
 cloud of incense, or the smoke of sacrifice, to 
 visit Heaven with the voice of melody, and send 
 forth hallelujahs to the throne of Omnipotence [ 
 It has been the proper employment of the socie- 
 ties of the blessed through all time — of the 
 general assembly and church of the first-born. 
 Songs of triumph celebrated the creation com- 
 pleted : songs of deliverance recorded the rescue 
 of the chosen seed ; hymns accompanied the 
 work of salvation, and conveyed to Heaven the 
 holy joy of the first Christians ; throughout the 
 records of inspiration, throughout the annals of 
 the church, throughout the scene of the material 
 world, innumerable calls of mercy, grace, and 
 pardon, lay the voice and organs of man under 
 contribution to his dying, redeeming, reconcil- 
 ing, life-giving God, the builder of the universe, 
 the conqueror of death, the king of saints. 
 
 The Bible is full of poetry and the materials 
 of music. Infidels have stolen largely from that 
 treasury of song. And shall the service of the 
 Christian church be tame and tuneless under so 
 much holy provocation? or shall it leave the 
 
Christian gentleman. 163 
 
 singing to persons no otherwise qualified than 
 by their alacrity to sing, or to vulgar combina- 
 tions of rustic professors? The minstrelsy of 
 the temple was David's supreme delight, who 
 has bequeathed to that church, which the Holy 
 Ghost presented to him in prospect, an exhaust- 
 less store of melodious worship. The psalms 
 are full of encouragement to sing the praises of 
 Jehovah, and they supply the sublimest subjects 
 on which the faculty of singing can be employed. 
 They were adapted by David to the music of 
 the temple ; and in a variety of versions they 
 offer themselves to the pious Christian as the 
 best medium through which his love can be 
 declared of his dear Redeemer, so beautifully 
 therein announced and prefigured in his suffer- 
 ings and his glory. What is there of hope, 
 peace, or consolation, which is not conveyed by 
 these songs of Sion to the necessitous soul of 
 man ? Below the shining surface of their poetical 
 beauties they hide the treasures of spiritual wis- 
 dom : beyond the scope of their tangible boun- 
 dary they transport us to the border of the 
 invisible world; by the instructive events of 
 Jewish history they alarm the wicked, revive 
 the penitent, console the afflicted, and confirm 
 the faithful. They magnify the Lord in his 
 doings, and lay open the spiritual history of the. 
 
164 THE SABBATH OP THE 
 
 world, presenting a path of discovery continually 
 opening before us, refulgent with the footsteps 
 of the Messiah, and resounding with the pro- 
 mises of the Gospel. It is there that, in allu- 
 sions to the natural Israel, we see adumbrated 
 the fortunes of the spiritual Israel — the Christian 
 Church; it is there the kingdom of grace, the 
 glory of the saints, the passage of Jehovah 
 through the wonders of his creation, travelling in 
 the greatness of his strength, the victories of 
 faith, the accomplishment of the promises, the 
 doom of sinners, and the consummation of all 
 things, are set forth with the utmost majesty of 
 diction, vivacity of truth, and beauty and variety 
 of allusion and comparison. It is there that, in 
 the private life of holy David, we see personified 
 the holier Son of David, the Lord of all things, 
 both in heaven and earth : it is there that, in the 
 form of allegory, we trace a continued series of 
 prophecy : in Egypt, in the wilderness, in the 
 fortunes of the chosen people, in the fruitful 
 Canaan, we see in figure the bondage of sin, the 
 Christian warfare, the happiness of the redeemed. 
 In the ritual sacrifices, the services of the law, 
 and the oifices of the priesthood, are shadowed 
 forth the great sacrifice for all men, the spiritual 
 temple, and " the High Priest for ever, after 
 the order of Melchisedec." In the pictures of 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 165 
 
 David's sufferings, we see the Man of Sorrows ; 
 in Solomon's magnificence, the more than mortal 
 majesty of the King of Glory. It is there that 
 we see depicted the Great Captain of our salva- 
 tion, girding his sword upon his thigh, and sur- 
 rounded with the trophies of his victorious grace; 
 or anointed with the oil of gladness above his 
 fellows, the bridegroom of his church, that comes 
 forth to meet him, in her odoriferous vesture of 
 gold and embroidery. 
 
 Who, when these Psalms are chanted, sung, 
 or said, can sit or stand unconcerned, with va- 
 grant thoughts or vacant gaze? Not the Chris- 
 tian gentleman ; if he ever sings, he sings upon 
 this occasion. What singer can refuse the 
 tribute of his voice to subjects so enchanting? 
 Only he or she whose voice has been dedicated 
 to mischievous or unmeaning sing-song, or made 
 the vehicle of senseless sound and vapid senti- 
 ment. 
 
 15 
 
166 THE SAUBATH OF THE 
 
 SECTION XXIII. 
 
 THE SUBJECT OF THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN* 
 SABBATH CONTINUED.— GENERAL CONCLUSION, 
 
 The Christian gentleman does nothing for 
 display — nothing with affectation; and yet he 
 carries to all things a sort of sacred tact, and an 
 unconscious propriety of behaviour. His walk 
 into church, and his walk out of it, are like his 
 walk in life, decorous, simple, and sedate. 
 
 Full of the honesty of real meaning, his 
 carriage comports with his situation and object; 
 he neither courts nor shuns observation; he 
 has a direct and professed purpose in going to 
 church, and to that he addresses himself, with- 
 out regard to the eye or comment of man ; it 
 is his commerce with eternity — his earnest ne- 
 gotiation with his God ; his heart is in it ; there 
 is nothing foreign to it in his look or manner ; 
 neither gesticulations, nor salutations, nor whis- 
 perings, nor greetings, divide his attention; 
 nothing disturbs the polarity of his mind. On 
 leaving the house of prayer, he walks quietly 
 and uncovered, till he ceases to tread on holy 
 ground. While others are impatient to resume 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. lfrT 
 
 their worldly topics, his thoughts still linger 
 within the sanctuary ; while others are employed 
 in remarks on the preacher or his sermon, he 
 tacitly examines and criticises himself; while 
 others are satisfied, he still thirsts ; while others 
 fall back within the world's enclosures, he con- 
 tinues his pilgrimage onwards, with the* land of 
 rest before him ; while the loose devotion of 
 others drops from them at the church porch, his 
 habitual religion takes faster hold upon him, with 
 every renewed exposure ; its analogies follow 
 him into life and society ; his soul, which has 
 dressed itself before the mirror of the Gospel, 
 still wears its white investiture, attracting the 
 homage of gentle spirits, and forbidding the 
 touch of unhallowed communication. 
 
 The heart of the Christian gentleman is in a 
 tender state when he comes new from the house 
 of God ; a tenderness which becomes soreness, 
 when he contemplates the state of things around 
 him. Scarcely has he come into the open air, 
 when the sound of wheels, and silly talk, and 
 insane laughter, assails his ears ; scarcely is he 
 out of the hearing of God's awful dealings with 
 his creatures, the records of his might, the 
 mysteries of his grace, and the visitations of 
 his wrath ; hardly has the organ ceased, or the 
 church-yard been crossed, when a world bursts 
 
168 THE SABBATH OF THE 
 
 upon him, wherein an open indifference to all 
 these things prevails; wherein the Sabbath is 
 employed, as if the Lord's brief term in it had 
 run out, and the inheritance, with a full right of 
 disposition, had reverted to man, to devote it as 
 interest or humour may suggest — to traffic, toil, 
 or diversion ; to the office, the counter, or the 
 festive board ; to gossiping visits ; to the gather- 
 ing and propagation of news ; or to the fluttering 
 tumult of parks and promenades. 
 
 From such unlovely scenes the Christian 
 gentleman is glad to escape into the bosom of 
 his family; happy if the domestic scene present 
 a contrast to what he has witnessed abroad. 
 And it generally mu^t so do ; for the wise ex- 
 ample and admonitions of a parent have our 
 better nature on their side ; and, what is better 
 still, the earnest of that new nature which is the 
 great conqueror of the will and the reclaimer of 
 our wild humanity. 
 
 The ways of God are unsearchable. A 
 Christian is not always allowed to see the con- 
 summation of his pious wishes in respect of his 
 children's dispositions and principles; such a 
 case, however, is an anomaly in life, and a mys- 
 tery in the divine administration. A stubborn 
 heart is sometimes made more stubborn by 
 caresses, and is in a manner congealed in the 
 
CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN. 169 
 
 temperature of a father's embrace, or a mother's 
 bosom; but it is the ordinary course of Provi- 
 dence to bless the endeavours of a Christian in 
 his parental rule. When such is the constitution 
 of a family, the Christian father has a tranquillity 
 about his hearth which cheers him in the midst 
 of a misjudging world. It is his delight on the 
 evening of the Lord's day, to draw the curtain 
 between the scene of home and the great theatre 
 of Sabbath profanation ; to read and meditate 
 upon the Scriptures of truth; to vindicate with- 
 in the circle of his children and dependents 
 Jehovah's claim to the total Sunday ; to make 
 it a day of deep interior delight ; and to give it 
 a refuge from the storm without, in the retire* 
 ment of his peaceful domicile. 
 
 So much for the " Portraiture of a Christian 
 Gentleman," who has not in these pages been 
 designated as a member of any particular church 
 or community of Christians. It would be un- 
 just and presumptuous to say, that the exemplar 
 is not to be found in any congregation of sincere 
 worshippers of the triune Jehovah ; but it may* 
 without offence, be said, that he is not in his 
 worst attitude, on the floor of our national 
 Church; that church, so mild and charitable, 
 
170 GENERAL CONCLUSION. 
 
 so conformed to the earliest and purest standard ; 
 resting on Holy Scripture and apostolical foun- 
 dations, simple in its worship, pure in its creed, 
 modest in its pretensions, pastoral in its care ; 
 with a liturgy full of life and beauty, a discipline 
 of sound ordinances, and a doctrine of peace 
 and salvation ; within whose scriptural pale the 
 Christian gentleman may freely exercise his high 
 and honourable commission. 
 
 THE ENB. 
 

 
 
 i 
 
 . MM