"Never,"continued Mr. M—,"was delineated, except by the pencil of inspiration, a more finished portrait of the world; and by an artist supported, like Lord Chesterfield, by its patronage, and whose transcendent genius was only detained by truth, when truth was susceptible of extrinsic grace. Dryden's estimate of life (and his estimate is substantially every body's) supposes á feverish and despondent anxiety to reach after a something not hitherto possessed, whereon to repose the soul, wearied and disappointed by fruitless travail. It is language expressive of frustration and defeat, combined with aversion towards an object once irradiated by hope. The poet merely amplifies a maxim, which, though taught by the sacred oracles, we hesitate to admit, that all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Men love the world till they utterly loathe it; they live for it, till its treatment compels them to covet death and annihilation." "Are you aware, Sir, that such a weariness and satiety would almost esta blish a system of universal suicide" "If suicide be the effect of the disgust created by such weariness and satiety, and this disgust be universally experienced at some period or other of every individual's existence, as I firmly believe it is, I allow that such a system as you describe, is the natural result."

"Then why are not all men suicides?"

"Surely, Arthur, you have not for gotten the Prince of Denmark's soliloquy. Let him answer your objection.

-The dread of something after death Puzzles the will.

You know the rest. Shakspeare, when he makes Hamlet deliberate between life and death, pictures the Conflict endured by every suicide who pauses, before he plunges into an unseen state of being, where he may possibly exchange an hour of anguish for deathless agony. The terrors of an untried futurity flash CHRIST, OBSERV. No. 59.

on the soul; conscience, as the relenting assassin describes it, is a blushing, shame-faced spirit that mutiuies in a man's bosom. But I may ask, what is the world to a person bereaved of a beloved relation or friend; what to a candidate for some desirable station supplanted by a rival; what to one attacked by a torturing and incurable disease; what to another who has lost his all at a crash; what is it to any man dispossessed, beyond hope of recovery, of the supreme object of his pursuit? Let a person lose that one thing which from the vast heap of supposed advantage he has selected and appropriated, and for other matters which a bystander might esteem to be capable of filling up the vacuum equally well, he will care nothing. Losing the one thing he loses all: finding his joys packed up and gone,' and no prospect, the most remote, of substitution, he is then tempted to self-destruction; because he has survived, as he thinks, the very contingencies of happiness, and life is henceforth to be a series of successive misery. But then intrudes an indistinct persuasion of another state; he would indeed willingly discredit its existence; but his unbelief is immature; it cannot decoy him farther; he approaches the confine of scepticism, but the overshadowing dark ness of the undiscovered country forbids more daring adventure."

I neither denied nor acknowledged the accuracy of these assertions. Hitherto I had never been tempted to reason with Hamlet. But a time soon after came, when I experienced, in all its force, that terrific suspence which he describes; and although my reasonings were, as you will believe, in their external character, every thing but the embellished logic of the poet, in substance they were tre mendously the same. But to return to our discussion.

" Then I will concede," said F to my friend," that your estimate of the world is just, that it is essen4 U

tially evil, that it directly tends to entail misery upon its adherents. Here then an enquiry arises, which you are bound to resolve. I ask, what countervail of happiness is offered by religion, in case a man of the world, as you call him, crosses over to your party? The least, he can expect, ought to be an equivalent." My companion looked now as though I had puzzled him. What! thought I, is the preacher at a fault! In a moment 1 inanaged very conveniently to expel the remembrance of my own embarrassments, and anticipated my poor uncle's complete and final defeat; having already, as I conceived, thrown into disorder his right wing and centre. But the enemy at length rallied. "I am so conscious," observed Mr. M- in reply to my question, "of my inability to do justice to so sublime a cause, that even were my understanding equal to the subject, I could not undertake to furnish such proof as shall satisfy you of the supreme excellence of religion, because it is not enough that the mind be convinced of its truth to appreciate religion justly, we must discover its value by personal possession. I view the Gospel in the light of a remedy, and a remedy supposes some antecedent distemper the same physician who offers and applies the antidote, brings us acquainted with the malady he engages to heal. Now, with regard to the disordered state of the world, the information of revelation is unambiguous and direct, and grounded on appeals to the actual Condition of mankind. Man is the merchantman seeking goodly pearls, the similitude obviously implies, that the world is habitually busied in the pursuit of certain objects which it judges to be valuable; and here the allegory would terminate, were the merchantman solely in tended to represent the human race in general; but the remainder of the parable compels us to restrict its meaning to those of mankind whose unproductive search after happi

:

ness in earthly things, has been interrupted by the discovery of something superior; for we are informed, that when he had found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. The parable proceeds no farther; it leaves the merchantman satisfied; he has parted with possessions once deemed invaluable in order to secure a possession more invaluable, of price so incalculable as to preclude the necessity or desire of renewed search.

be

"I may adduce another illestration of the unsatisfying nature of the world contrasted with the dura ble excellence of the Gospel, from the conversation held at the well, between the Messiah and the woman of Samaria: whosoever, said he, drinketh of this water, shall thirst again! an assertion which may accommodated, without violence, to describe any source whatever of earthly gratification; and it includes the idea of inability to afford any permanent satisfaction; it al lows an assignable portion of delight, but ensures Christ however accompanies his assertion with declaring, whosoever drinketh of THE WATER THAT I SHALL GIVE HIM, SHALL NEVER THIRST! he exhibits his religion in contrast. In both instances he describes the Gospel as a remedy."

no continuance.

"But, Sir, it is not fastidious, I presume, to ask, if a remedy, how does it operate? Can it annihilate pain and sorrow? What can it de (I adduce one of your own examples,) for a person bereaved of a beloved relation, or friend?" "It will render him, if a Christian, submissive to the loss. Religion is the parent of resignation: the sufferer will allow, that what the Creator lent, he had a right to recal; he will remember, that the affliction was sent by one who mingles mercy with chastisement, and thus his suffering will become the minister of good. Besides, the loss he is enduring will instrumentally detach his soul from the world; he will

the world now deserted me, I looked round with a look of wild surprise, agitated by revenge and despair, and all but resolved to take that desperate leap into the dark which was-but over this part of my history I would for ever throw a veil. **** In this extremity infinite mercy interposed. The injuries which I had received, and which at first instigated me to regard mankind with disgust and hatred, and increased my irritability and arrogance of character, these very injuries and their disastrous consequences were commissioned to sever me, and I trust effectually, from the desires and anxieties of this world. And now, if, as a dupe who had at last detected the impostures of his deceiver, I scorned and abhorred that world, yet as one who was instructed to foresee its final doom, it became the object of my deepest commiseration. I learned, Sir, to compassionate men, not to hate them!

In resigning the object of my once idolatrous attachment, few circumstances affected me more sensibly than the sarcastic contempt of my associates; especially of those among them, whose intellectual powers and attainments I was accustomed, and with perfect justice, to admire and respect. It was no difficult matter to awe the profane fool into silence by a very indolent exercise of the discursive faculty; 'but that which would crush an infant, produces no fatal effect upon a

man. Nothing scarcely did I dread more, than the scrutiny of my opi nions by any one whose understanding was not to be despised. Here Į felt, that

"

-Still the world prevail'd and its dread laugh,

Which scarce the firm philosopher can scorn,"

and which, by the bye," the firm philosopher" never did, nor will scorn. But if the character, whose attacks I feared, evidenced, or af fected to evidence, a personal regard for me, my terror was pro portionably increased. I was dis tressed by my inability to clear the subject nearest my heart from the difficulties it necessarily involves; and with respect to which it is, I conceive, impossible to satisfy ap unhumbled, an unsanctified, mindAnd had I even been capable of confuting, with the most triumphant success, the objections of my opponents, would their defeat have been followed by a practical submission to doctrines which their passions and interests conspired to late? If they acquiesced in my principles during the current hour, how could I calculate upon their obedience for the next? Those days, however, of debate are gone. I soon after became a stranger in my own circle. But the loss has been supplied; and I humbly hope, that the friendships I have since formed, will not merely endure to the grave, but be renovated in eternity. ***