ON THE ORIGIN, NATURE, AND PROGRESS I. PRICE 1d. gave him dominion over the earth, air, and sea, it was this which gave him moral elevation, which raised him so vastly above those creatures whose end was but to vegetate and die.* We read, during the sojourn of Adam in paradise, of no slaughtered victims, whose smoke ascended as a sacrifice to heaven, apt emblem of the forfeiture incurred of life and happiness; there was then no allusion made to a bleeding Saviour, nor to the necessity of an atonement; no need for the cry of contrition, though that of humility would ever become him. Now, alas, the case is widely different, the wants and weaknesses, the temptations and trials of our fallen state, de of the Almighty, not only for mercy to pardon, but for grace to help in every time of need. There was, therefore, it is evident, this remarkable distinction between the worship offered by an innocent and a guilty creature, THE worship of a supreme Being has been the practice of every age and country. Whatever the mode of worship, or the object worshipped, the fact is clear, and a most important one it is, that man, believing in the existence of a Deity, leaned upon him with that feeling of dependence with which a feeble creature would naturally regard its Protector and its Guide; that he either felt the necessity of communion with him in order to make his felicity perfect, or sought to avert that indig-mand our constant application at the throne nation which conscience told him he had incurred. The intercourse which existed between our first parents and their Maker seems to have been carried on by personal interviews, as well as by prayer and praise. So long as they remained obedient to the Divine command, the path from earth to heaven was cheerfully pursued; man was an angel in the garb of flesh, waiting for the time when he should be allowed to put off this mortal coil, and join those blessed spirits whose society he had been permitted to enjoy in the fairer world on high. God was not then afar off, not seen dimly through the cloud of sin and sorrow which now hangs heavily over his prospects; but he was one with whom from morn to dewy eve" he held sweet converse; -prayer was the connecting link between man and God, that which proved him capable of better things, though he followed worse. The capability of drawing nigh to Him who gave him birth, who crowned him with his loving-kindnesses and tender mercies, who 66 VOL. VII.-NO. CXCIII. the former was spontaneous, natural, free, unburdened by ordinances of any description; while the latter was attended by the presentation of gifts, by the offering of sacrifices, and by numerous ceremonies, all which it is impossible to imagine were self-appointed, or the natural dictate of a mind conscious of right. And if those expensive rites and ceremonies which once obtained, and were divinely appointed (generally during the period from Adam to Moses, and specially from that of Moses to the coming of our Lord); if they are now abolished, that circumstance points to the commencement of a new dispensation, Some have imagined, that had not man become degenerate, all animated nature, as it shared in the misery of his fall from God, would have shared in the happiness consequent upon his steady obedience to him, and would have been ultimately raised to a higher grade in the scale of existence. Z [London: Robson, Levey, and Franklyn, 46 St. Martin's Lane.] and an apparent approach to a purer form of worship; but it does not fail to exhibit in still deeper colours human guilt and Divine benevolence. The atonement of Christ, as the one sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; the necessity for his mediatorial office, and of his intercession with the Father, inculcated in the New Testament, shew more clearly than all the institutions which contained or embodied the creed, and constituted an essential part of the faith and practice of the Old Testament saints, that man was a guilty creature, and needed pardon; that God was merciful, and waited to be gracious. It is indeed impossible, on any other supposition than that man did once enjoy personal communication with God, or delighted in presenting to him the tribute of prayer and praise, and that by some grievous offence he was deprived of such a glorious privilege; it is impossible, I say, on any other supposition, to account for the prevalence of worship in any form, such worship at least as, being onerous in its demands, and rigid in its requirements, was very far removed from the simple offering of innocence and a mind at ease. But if we look at the very nature of that worship which became a duty when the garden of Eden was closed to our first parents, does it not strike us as being exactly such as would be instituted upon a breach taking place between man the creature and God the Creator, particularly when we consider that the life of the one party had become forfeit, that Satan claimed him as his servant, and death as his prey? From the very institution of such a mode of access to God as by sacrifice, the necessity of that blood of sprinkling was signified, which should not, like the blood of Abel, call for vengeance, but, speaking far better things, should bring peace to, by making atonement for, the soul. It further signified, that as the blood was accounted the life, man's life was demanded; he was like the victim, with flowers encircling its head, moving on to inevitable death. In the way appointed by the Almighty for approach to him are clearly represented distance and alienation; we are thereby impressed with the truth, that man had been a wrong-doer, that he and his Maker were no longer one. Nor can we imagine that those feelings of distance and alienation were the effect of any humbling view which he might take of his relative position with regard to his Creator-from reflecting how great, and good, and holy was God, and how poor and abject was man; this might indeed account for the humility of his posture when bowing before the footstool of the Most High, but neither for his backwardness in approaching it, nor for the prac tice of presenting an offering as a propitiation. There is no necessity that the poorest subject, whose heart knows its own innocence, should come reluctantly to the throne of his sovereign and offer gifts, in order that mercy might be extended toward him: it was clearly guilt that made man a coward, and forbade his presuming to enter the Divine presence without a sacrifice which testified that he felt himself obnoxious to wrath, or without some offering which intimated his persuasion that every blessing was forfeited, and that the supply of his daily necessities was matter of free gift, not of right. The origin of any other form of worship than that of prayer and praise, the simple dictate of innocence and peace, must be ascribed to an impression stamped upon the heart, that there was One to whom man must look as the great sacrifice for sin: and now that clearer light has fallen upon the Divine decrees, now that we can see with the eye of faith the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world presenting himself before the altar of justice as the Victim for man's transgression, and the Intercessor for those gifts and graces which are needful for his guidance into the way of salvation,-we know that the heart and the affections are the offerings due from a weak, sinful, and dependent creature to an offended but placable Creator.. Now, immediately after intimation is given of human apostacy, we find man bending the suppliant knee, and offering the fruits of the earth and the firstlings of the flock; we see the representatives of the human race acting like criminals under a sentence of wrath, deprecating the righteous vengeance of their Judge; we see them rendering an acknowledgment which innocence would never have dreamed of making, and an atonement which justice could never have demanded; and, to pass by the well-known practice of Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we must look upon it as something beyond an extraordinary coincidence merely, that in every age and nation prayers have been made and sacrifices offered to God the Avenger. The Assyrian sage, who directed his practised eye. along the paths of the heavens; the Egyptian magi, who were conversant with all the arts and sciences of antiquity; the Grecian philosopher, who explored the world in his search after wisdom,-all alike made it their aim to find out God, to draw near to his seat. If we turn to the wanderer in the desert or the forest, we find him rendering a willing homage to that great Spirit, whose power he acknowledged in the boundless expanse too big for mortal eye to comprehend, or in the unbroken solitude of his own fastnesses. Prayer alone, or simply, it may reasonably be supposed, would form a part of man's natural and delightful employment in his primeval state. While all other created beings would look for their provision solely from the element in which they moved, this would satisfy their every desire; man, on the contrary, would look to heaven for his support and happiness; august in conscious worth, confident in his innocence, from thence he would feel that all his purest enjoyments issued, and thither he would hope to be translated at some future period, in all the vigour and beauty of tried and matured perfection. This bright vision was, however, soon to be overcast; and instead of running his appointed course, like the sun in his strength, in one splendid and cloudless track, by his own stupendous folly he was shorn of his beams; he became an outcast in the world, which was created for his dominion and happiness; a lost and ruined creature, "to grief and every ill a prey." But how different from the natural homage paid by man in innocence was that called forth by the exigencies of his fallen condition and present relation to his Maker! And how greatly is the reasoning thereby strengthened, which goes to prove the present nature and object of worship to be, prostration of soul, confession of sin, deprecation of vengeance, supplication for pardon,-all which terms imply the necessity of addressing the divine Being in language suited to the states of mind represented by those expressions; all which too, being directly opposed to the natural pride of the human heart, must be resolved into their first element, the apostacy of our great head and representative! The consent of all antiquity to the existence and the usage of propitiatory sacrifices, is the strongest corroboration possible of the Scripture-account of the fall; for however easy it might be to impose ceremonies which were expensive, and ordinances which were burdensome, so long as the one captivated by their magnificence, and the other procured for the devotee a reputation for peculiar sanctity, yet the universal prevalence of worship, where such motives could not exist-worship embracing customs in the last degree mortifying to human pride, and, on any other supposition than that of their propitiatory nature, so utterly useless,-warrants the ascription of their origin to the rooted conviction, that man nurses in his own bosom a serpent, whose sting gives constant warning of the presence of guilt and misery; and that tradition here, as well as in reference to numerous other Scripture-events, has its basis upon truth. SACRED POETRY. BY JAMES CHAMBERS, ESQ. Giles Fletcher-Sylvester-Drummond of Hawthornden- The life of many authors is the same: devoted to the GILES FLETCHER: born about 1588, died about 1623. lives in the "studious cloisters pale," or the quiet rural retreat. Apart from the common herd of mankind, their lives do not possess sufficient interest to excite the attention of their contemporaries, and posterity only begin to feel the loss of any records respecting them, when it is too late to remedy that loss. Such is the case with Fletcher. All the material information that we can gather respecting him, may be comprised in a few words. Having been elected a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, he was ordained about 1611. After a considerable period had elapsed, he was presented to the living of Alderton, in Suffolk. The situation was unhealthy; and the extreme ignorance of his parishioners and neighbours seems to have preyed on the spirits of one who had been accustomed to associate with the good and great. Fuller tells us that Fletcher's "clownish and low-parted parishioners valued not their pastor according to his worth, which disposed him to melancholy, and hastened his dissolution." It appears that he died of something very much like a broken heart. "Christ's Victorie" was his principal poetical production. Fuller says that it discovered the piety of a saint, and the divinity of a doctor: I can declare that it evinces its author to have been a poet of the highest order. More complete in its plan than “Paradise Regained," and containing passages equal to any in that poem, it has yet experienced a degree of neglect difficult to be accounted for. A brief analysis of the contents will be interesting to the reader. The invocation is full of "solemn and enraptured piety:" "O Thou that didst this holy fire infuse, And taught this breast, but late the grave of hell, The love that never was and never can be penned." Heaven." In it the redemption of man is traced to "But Justice had no sooner Mercy seen," &c. is one of the finest in the whole range of sacred poetry: Whenever the exact date of any circumstance has not been ascertained, I purposely avoid entering into the disputes of different authorities. The pages of the "Church of England Magazine" are too valuable to be occupied with such discussions as would more appropriately occupy the columns of the Antiquarian Society's Report. "From the centre of science and literature, to which he was so much devoted, he was compelled to remove to an obscure curacy in the north, where he could not hope to meet one individual to enter into his feelings, or to hold communion with him upon the accustomed subjects of his former pursuits."Memoir of the Rev. C. Wolfe, B.A., in Church of England Magazine, vol. vi. p. 273. it is too long for an extract. The description of Repentance is a splendid impersonation: "Deeply, alas, impassioned she stood, To see a flaming brand tossed up from hell, Canto the second is entitled "Christ's Victorie on Earth," and opens with a description of our Saviour's temptation in the wilderness. The devil having conducted Christ first to the Cave of Despair, and afterwards to the Pavilion of Presumption, finds all his efforts to seduce him vain; and in mingled rage and despair, "himself he tumbled headlong to the flood." Angels bear our Lord to an airy mountain, where a beautiful garden immediately sprang up, the description of which is most exquisite. A classical scholar only can appreciate the beauty of the numerous allusions: "Not lovely Ida might with this compare, Though many streams his banks besilvered, Though Plato on his beds a flood of praise doth rain." Canto the third is entitled "Christ's Triumph over Death," and is occupied with a description of the crucifixion. One of the most sublime passages in it is the representation of Judas suffering under "the horrors of an accusing conscience." "When wild Pentheus, grown mad with fear, And torches quench'd with blood, doth her stern son accost. Yet oft he snatched, and started as he hung. So when the senses half-enslumber'd lie, The headlong body ready to be flung, By the deluding fancy, from some high And craggy rock, recovers greedily, And clasps the yielding pillow half-asleep; In the fourth canto-" Christ's Triumph after Death"- Fletcher dwells upon "the resurrection of our Saviour, his ascension to the throne in heaven, and the everlasting happiness prepared for the good and virtuous in the kingdom of paradise." "No sorrow now hangs clouding on their brow, No poverty themselves and theirs disgrace; No fear of death the joy of life devours, No unchaste sleep their precious time deflowers, No loss, no grief, no change, wait on their winged hours." I shall conclude my extracts with a passage which has been pronounced, by an able critic, to be " in the true spirit of Hebrew poetry, or rather, perhaps in the conclusion at least-of that beautiful mysticism, of which Taylor, in his majestic prose, has furnished such splendid examples:" "In midst of this city celestial, Where the eternal temple should have rose, End and beginning of each thing that grows, That nowhere is contain'd, and yet is every where: Changer of all things, yet immutable, Before and after all, the first and last; Great without quantity, in whose forecast At once absent and present to them, far and nigh. No sweet concent or well-timed harmony, Or flowery odour mixed with spicery, A harmony that sounds within the breast, An odour, light, embrace, in which the soul doth rest." The similarity in the subjects of "Christ's Victorie" and the "Paradise Regained," demands a few words on the respective merits of these two poems. The peculiar stanza which Fletcher chose labours under several disadvantages: the number of rhymes required in it gives to the work an appearance of constraint, and we frequently perceive the author compelled to introduce a commonplace sentiment, or redundant expression, by the urgent demands of a refractory rhyme in some previous line of the stanza. There is a certain calm dignity and solemnity pervading every line of "Paradise Regained," which we vainly seek for in "Christ's Victorie." It may be said that Milton was in the highest degree imaginative, Fletcher fanciful. The latter was no doubt much influenced in the style, manner, and metre of his poem, by a repeated perusal of the "Faery Queen;" and he seems to have been deficient in that judgment which would have told how great a difference should exist in the treatment of a fairy fiction and the description of Him who was "God in man." In some parts of the poem we meet with passages which do not harmonise with those solemn and awful feelings which attend the contemplation of any period in the time of our Lord's sojourn upon earth. Milton entertained a dread of treading too presumptuously on sacred ground; in this Fletcher was deficient. I allege, as an instance, the respective passages in which they both describe that scene when Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness. Who does not feel the difference between Fletcher's description of our Lord "upon a grassy hillock laid," with "woody primroses befreckled," and Milton's lines, where we are told that he, "looking round on every side, beheld A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades"? It would be easy to point out many other passages (e. g. the description of our Lord's personal appearance,) in which the "fanciful prettiness" of the former contrasts disadvantageously with the simple dignity of the latter. Another great defect in "Christ's Victorie" is its irregularity. Though it contains passages of surpassing splendour and brilliancy, it shines with an unsteady and wavering flame. But a truce to criticism. Let the intelligent reader study this poem for himself, and he will then feel that "Christ's Victorie" only requires to be known that it may be appreciated. Joshua Sylvester (born 1563, died 1618) is chiefly known by his translation of "The Divine Weeks" of Du Bartas. Few books were more read in the reign of James. Sylvestert was an accomplished scholar; and the author of the "Paradise Lost" is under considerable obligations to his writings. Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649) is the author of " Flowers of Sion." The simile contained in one of his sonnets is so ingenious, that I am induced to quote it: "Of this fair volume which we World do call, If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care We clear might read the art and wisdom rare; Find out his power, which wildest arts doth tame, His providence extending every where, His justice, which proud rebels doth not spare, But sillie we, like foolish children, rest, Well pleased with coloured vellum, leaves of gold, Fair dangling ribbons, leaving what is best, Of the great writer's sense ne'er taking hold; Or if by chance we stay our minds on aught, It is some picture on the margin wrought." George Sandys was born at the palace of Bishopthorpe, in 1587. In his eleventh year he matriculated at St. Mary's Hall: it does not appear that he took any degree. After leaving Oxford, he visited Constantinople, Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land, of which tour he published an account in 1615. "It did me good," says Richard Baxter, "when Mrs. Wyatt invited me to see Bexley Abbey in Kent, to see upon the old stone-wall in the garden a summer-house, with this inscription, that In that place Mr. G. Sandys, after his travels over the world, retired himself for his poetry and contemplations." He was gathered to his fathers in the beginning of March 1643. His feelings of thankfulness to that almighty hand which had, during his long wanderings, preserved his going out and coming in, are finely expressed in the following lines: "DEO. OPT. MAX. O, who hath tasted of thy clemency In greater measure, or more oft than I? So when Arabian thieves belayed us round, And when, by all abandoned, thee I found. Thou savedst me from the bloudy massacres His "Paraphrase" is considered by Dr. Burney superior to any other version of the Psalms. The following lines are taken from the 131st Psalm. Thou, Lord, my witness art, My thoughts, nor soar too high; But in behaviour mild, And as a tender child Weaned from his mother's breast, On thee alone I rest. O Israel, adore The Lord for evermore; Be he the only scope Of thy unfainting hope." I should, in justice to Sandys, add, that Pope read his poetry" confessedly with pleasure ;" and that Dryden pronounced him "the best versifier of his age." George Wither: born 1588, died 1667. It would be impossible, as I have before observed, to embrace within my assigned limits the minute details which occupy the pages of more prolix biographies. The above observation is peculiarly applicable to Wither, whose memoir in Mr. Willmott's volume extends to 132 pages. My memorials of his history must be few and brief. He was born at Bentworth, near Alton, in Hampshire, and in 1603 was entered at Magdalen College, Oxford, under John Warner, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. He appears to have derived but little benefit from his academical studies. On leaving "the pillared cloisters and collegiate bowers" of Oxford, he sojourned for a short time among "the beechy shadows of Bentworth;" and thence adventured to the metropolis, there "to seek his fortune." He shortly became a member of Lincoln's Inn, and soon after published his "Abuses whipt and stript," a cutting satire on the men, morals, and manners of the age. Without producing any apparent good effect on the public, it consigned its author to the Marshalsea prison. His most celebrated poem, the "Shepherds Hunting," was composed during his confinement. Some years afterwards he published "Hymns and Songs of the Church," a patent for which was bestowed on him by the king. The successive appearance of "Fidelia," "The Songs of the Old Testament," his "Motto," "Fair Virtue the Mistress of Philarete," "Britain's Remembrancer," "Emblems," and "Halleluiah, or Britain's Second Remembrancer," served to testify the vigour of his mind, the depth of his resources, and his indefatigable industry. From having been a steady supporter of his Church |