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REMARKS ON AUTHORS.

WHEN I look at the mind of LORD Bacon— it seems vast, original, penetrating, analogical, beyond all competition. When I look at his character-it is wavering, shuffling, mean. In the closing scene, and in that only, he appears in true dignity, as a man of profound contrition.

BAXTER surpasses, perhaps, all others, in the grand, impressive, and persuasive style. But he is not to be named with Owen as to furnishing the student's mind. He is, however, multifarious, complex, practical.

CLARKE has, above all other men, the faculty of lowering the life and spiritual sense of Scripture to such perfection, as to leave it like dry bones, divested of every particle of marrow or oil. SOUTH is nearer the truth. He tells more of it: but he

tells it with the tongue of a viper, for he was most bitterly set against the Puritans. But there is a spirit and life about him. He must and will be heard. And, now and then, he darts on us with an unexpected and imcomparable stroke.

THE MODERN GERMAN WRITERS, and the whole school formed after them, systematically and intentionally confound vice and virtue, and argue for the passions against the morals and institutions of society. There never was a more dangerous book written, than one that Mrs. WOLSTONCROFT left imperfect, but which GODWIN published after her death. Her" Wrongs of Women" is an artful apology for adultery: she labours to interest the feelings in favour of an adultress, by making her crime the consequence of the barbarous conduct of a despicable husband, while she is painted all softness and sensibility. Nothing like this was ever attempted before the modern school.

"SOME men," said Dr. Patten to me, " are always crying Fire! Fire!" To be sure-where there is danger, there ought to be affectionate earnestness. Who would remonstrate, coldly and with indifference, with a man about to precipitate himself from Dover Cliff, and not rather snatch him forcibly from destruction? Truth, in its living influ

ence on the heart, will shew itself in consecratedness and holy zeal. When teachers of religion are destitute of these qualities, the world readily infers that religion itself is a farce. Let us do the world justice. It has very seldom found a considerate, accommodating, and gentle, but withal earnest, heavenly, and enlightened teacher. When it has found such, Truth has received a very general attention. Such a man was HERVEY, and his works have met their reward.

HOMER approaches nearest of all the heathen poets to the grandeur of Hebrew Poetry. With the theological light of Scripture, he would have wonderfully resembled it.

HOOKER is incomparable in strength and sanctity. His first books are wonderful. I do not so perfectly meet him, as he advances toward the close.

LOSKIEL'S " Account of the Moravian Missions among the North American Indians" has taught me two things. I have found in it a striking illustration of the uniformity with which the grace of God operates on men. Crantz, in his "Account of the Missions in Greenland," had shewn the grace of God working on a Man-Fish: on a stupid

-sottish-senseless creature--scarcely a remove from the fish on which he lived. Loskiel shews the same grace working on a Man-Devil: a fierce -bloody-revengeful warrior-dancing his infernal war-dance with the mind of a fury. Divine grace brings these men to the same point. It quickens, stimulates, and elevates theGreenlander: it raises him to a sort of new life: it seems almost to bestow on him new senses: it opens his eye, and bends his ear, and rouses his heart: and what it adds it sanctifies. The same grace tames the high spirit of the Indian: it reduces him to the meekness, and docility, and simplicity of a child. The evidence arising to Christianity from these facts is, perhaps, seldom sufficient, by itself, to convince the gainsayer: but, to a man who already believes, it greatly strengthens the reasons of his belief. I have seen also in these books, that the fish-boat, and the oil, and the tomahawk, and the cap of feathers excepted-a Christian Minister has to deal with just the same sort of creatures, as the Greenlander and the Indian, among civilized nations.

OWEN stands at the head of his class of divines. His scholars will be more profound and enlarged, and better furnished, than those of most other writers. His work on the Spirit has been my treasure-house, and one of my very first-rate books. Such writers as RICCALTOUN rather

disqualify than prepare a minister for the immediate business of the pulpit. Original and profound thinkers enlarge his views, and bring into exercise the powers and energies of his own mind, and should therefore be his daily companions. Their matter must, however, be ground down before it will be fit for the pulpit. Such writers as Owen, who, though less original, have united Detail with Wisdom, are copious in proper topics, and in matter better prepared for immediate use, and in furniture ready finished, as it were for the mind.

PALEY is an unsound casuist, and is likely to do great injury to morals. His extenuation of the crimes committed by an intoxicated man, for instance, is fallacious and dangerous. Multiply the crime of intoxication into the consequences that follow from it, and you have the sum total of the guilt of a drunken man.

RUTHERFORD'S Letters is one of my classics, Were truth the beam, I have no doubt, that if Homer and Virgil and Horace and all that the world has agreed to idolize were weighed against that book, they would be lighter than vanity. He is a real original. There are in his Letters some inexpressibly forcible and arresting remonstrances with unconverted men.

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