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them and to his own family, and strongly recommended to their practice the excellent morality of the gospel." (P. 134.)

While Mr. Day thus formed a church in his own house, in which he led the devotions and filled the office of a Christian instructor, the question naturally arises whether he could satisfy himself with the liturgy as it is still established on the credit of the theological wisdom of the sixteenth century. I think he could not, and I ground my opinion on the sentiments which occur in his political pamphlet published in 1784, and entitled, The Letters of Marius. The three first letters are addressed to his friend Dr. Jebb, in which the following passages are introduced for the purpose of illustrating some political opinions. At page 3, he speaks of "a saving faith, according to the true orthodox form of Credo quia impossibile." At page 13, is the following passage: I.

"I have often thought it a wonderful fallacy of some divines to depreciate human reason in order to exalt religion for unless that religion be imparted by particular inspiration to every individual, what other method is there of establishing it, than proofs adapted to his reason? The more therefore you convince him of the weakness and fallibility of that faculty, the more you must incline him, were he consistent, to doubt his power of judging concerning the particular evidence you propose." He adds, p. 15: Here is the general fallacy both of divines and politicians: both begin by teaching you to distrust yourself, and address themselves, if I may use the expression, to the hypocondriacism of human nature. When their representations have succeeded to a certain degree, they give you to understand that the only cure for all your evils is to adopt their own particular system of faith or government."

The following passage, p. 19, contains language worthy of an enlightened Christian. I need not say how congenial to the views of that excellent man to whom these letters were addressed.

"The first apostles of Christianity were mild and lowly, like the founder of their faith. They addressed themselves to the reason of men and propagated their religion by persuasion, They abjured the luxuries and the

enjoyments of sense; they submitted to every insult; they refused the offered benefits of their friends, and deprecated only by prayers and blessings the malice of their enemies. But mark the change! The instant a royal convert has given the clergy entrance to a court, they abjure every principle of their religion. Then we lose sight of a suffering, and begin the era of a triumphant church. The immediate successors of fishermen and mechanics consent to be clothed in purple and scarlet, to wallow in all the sensualities of the most abandoned age and country, and to disgrace the simplicity of the most spiritual religion, by the rites and ceremonies of the grossest. The power of consulting about the interpretation of the articles of their religion, which was expressly given to the whole body of Christians, is, in a short time, nonopolized by the clergy; and the power of choosing their pastors and bishops, a right equally deducible from equity, history, reason, and the scriptures, taken from the laity, and shared between the hierareby and the civil power. And this system of practice and belief, so grossly adulterated, so totally unlike the original, is called Christianity, and enforced by racks, and flames and gibbets; the ancient supporters of civil, and now the wel come auxiliaries of ecclesiastical pow er. What may we suppose would have been the state of Christianity, at the present hour, had not the daring and original genius of Luther reduced it something nearer to its original principles in the sixteenth century? What may we suppose will be is state in the twentieth, should no new Luther arise to teach our clergy the distance between the house of the Lord and the courts of princes, the difference between the service of God and mammon?"

Mr. Day presently supposes an objector to exclaim, you are writing upon government and political liberty, why then deviate to the abuses and corruptions of Christianity?" He answers, "because the history of Christ ianity, a perfect and recorded succession of facts, which every man may consider at his leisure, is the best il lustration in the universe of the subject on which I am writing. Because if neither the immediate doctrines of heaven itself, nor its positive com

"On horror's head, horrors accumulate"For thou canst nothing to DAMNATION add

"Greater than this."

SIR,

SHAKSPEARE.

HE doctrine of eternal torments has

THE

more appearance of grandeur than any other article of the orthodox creed. Soinetimes it is displayed in all the horrible minuteness and variety in which it is possible to contemplate pain; at others more artfully veiled to heighten its effect, and expressed by distant hints and broken images which make even a sceptic shudder. It en

According to Mr. Keir's Account, (p. 97,) "On the 28th day of December 1789, as Mr. Day was riding from his house in Surry, to his mother's seat at Barehill, [Berks,] an end was put to his valuable life at the age of forty-one years. His horse having taken fright, threw him to a considerable distance. By this fall his brain suffered such a concussion that he never afterwards spoke."

What Mr. Day has justly attributed to Dr. Jebb, may be recorded as his own praise, "a consistency of life and manners, the delicate colouring of private honesty and integrity, to fill up the flowing outline of public profession, and to make it worthy of a people's admiration." We scarcely know how to turn from the contemplation of such characters; one sacrificing to the claims of conscience the fair prospects of early years, and devoting himself, for an honourable subsistence, to an arduous profession which would also afford him the means of extensive benevolence: the other, with an ample fortune, sparing of personal gratifications, that he might abound in benefits to others--both blessed with consorts who cherished their memories, as they had encouraged and assisted their exertions, and possessed and deserved their tenderest affections. If the world is to improve, the time must surely arrive when, as to such men the people will tell of their wisdom, and the congregation will shew forth their praise.

IGNOTUS.

this world with the thunders of the next." It rouses the most ignorant to energy if not to eloquence. It "makes mad the guilty, and appals the free." But admitting that it is attended with all these advantages, I think it may be argued that there is nothing in it essentially poetical-nothing which has a tendency to purify or refinenothing which can elevate the mind above itself, and add to the stock of its sublime conceptions.

There is, I apprehend, no poetry in the mere excitement of terror, or in the display of mental or bodily suffering. Pain and horror, considered in the abstract, can be objects only of pity and disgust; and the more they are realized to the mind, the more they tear or oppress it. It is a mistake to suppose that because they have been associated with magnificent and pleasing images, they have any thing in themselves on which our contemplations can repose. No doubt sorrow has been made the source of some of the most delicious sensations which we are capable of enjoying. But then it has been by associations not its own

by the tender and solemn images with which it has been encircled, and * the sympathy we delight to indulge. Thus meditations on the instability of all earthly things derive their touching interest from our perceptions of a resting place that can never perish. We feel that our consciousness of mortality proves us to be immortal. There is a melancholy "ill bartered » for the gatishness of joy," but we do not love it because it is painful. The memory of buried friendship the

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prospect of beauty cut down like a Hower-the recollection of past afflictions and joys, all come mellowed over the heart by a thousand tender remembrances which take all that is earthly

from sorrow. So even death itself is softened in the anticipation, not only by the holy hopes which look beyond it, but the images with which fancy encircles its victims. We think of it as of a placid slumber-as a shadow thrown from a passing cloud-as a humbler of human pride that levels artificial distinctions, and gathers all the children of men to rest together. The garlands of affection are hung gracefully on the tomb where the .weary reclines from his labours; beauty looks most lovely in the tears it sheds there; and all the malevolent passions and uncharitable thoughts of the bitterest foe are melted into tenderness beside it. Images of funereal pomp have charms for the imagination, as well as solace for the heart. This appears the true secret of that mysterious pleasure which we sometimes feel at the exhibition of fictitious guilt or distress. They are the mere materials on which the poet works-the back ground of the pictures that delight us. We are not gratified because we see our fellow creatures in suffering, but because from their suffering they rise triumphant-because in grief the mighty energies of the soul are called forth in the fulness of their strength, or the sweet instances of affection receive a

holier tinge. It is not the province of a poet merely to draw tears or make us shudder: rather it is his triumph to render grief soothing to shed a tender enchantment over the scenes of woe-to break the force of affliction by the gentleness of his own imagination, through which he enables us to survey it. If this be not the case, why is the "Gamester" inferior to "Lear," or "C George Barnwell" to "Macbeth" or "Othello?" Why are not the works of Mrs. Opie preferable to those of Richardson? If mere horror he required, how inferior is the tale of Duncan's murder to many examples of atrocity with which the Newgate calendar will supply us! The truth is that if a man of real genius choose materials of mere human interest, he will so adorn them with mild and joyous associations, and so interweave them with the sweetest

emotions of the heart, that the darker shades which remain will seen rather to blend in harmony than to operate

as a contrast.

The doctrine of eternal torments is a theme for eloquence, for energy, for passion. But imagination is formed of no elements of human pa sion; it enters not into the intensity of suffering; it is too celestial in its movements to beat with the pulse of agony. It" broods over the vast abyss and makes it pregnant." It throws its own lovely radiance over all the objects which it contemplates. It softens down all the asperities of things, lightens the sad realities of actual existence, and makes us view a broken and discordant world silent and harmonious as a picture. The popular ideas, therefore, of eternal misery are no themes on which a poet can dwell.*

Some perhaps may think that these observations may be answered by the word MILTON. But a little reflection will convince them that the works of that great post furnish the best exam ple of the position I have ventured to develope. He has indeed the words "Satan" and "Hell," but O, how unlike are his descriptions of them from the ideas which the orthodox receive! It was impossible for a genius like his to paint the hell of a bigot. Setting out with a vague description of its misery, as if he meant to suit it to the taste of the Assembly

the present day has, however, thought fit *The most popular writer in verse of merely to add energy to his verse or to occasionally to hint at eternal torments, point his curses. As it is evident from various parts of his writings that he utterly disbelieves in the doctrine, he must do it from a mere taste for the shocking. De stitute of any spirit of joy, he is incapable of entering into the true sources of delight, and can, at best, only strew a few flowers over objects of repulsiveness and horror. In one of his late poems-if so it can be termed he has wished that the grave of a human being may be sleepless. He descends into the regions of darkness, not to break in with the glories of imagination,-not to leave there the imperishable monuments of talent-but to light the of the furies! The use he makes of the torch of personal animosity at the flames doctrine of undying woe is a fit example of what its abstract poetical merits are, when it is not moulded and softened by the magic influences of genius.

of reverend divines, he ends with making it almost a paradise. We lose the idea of horror in that of grandeur. We pass over the burning marl without pain when Pandemonium rises in its beauty. In the very catalogue of the satanic armies we are carried to all the solemn temples and glorious images of the ancient world. And for the "leader of these armies bright," who ever felt any thing but admiration and sympathy? To make a stand against omnipotence makes him more than conqueror. If the doctrines of Calvinism were ever so true, Paradise Löst would remain as pure a fiction as ever was written. Those worlds of heaven and hell, that magnificent chaos through which the hero makes so sublime a progress in a hundred lines, those angels whether successful or defeated the gorgeous palaces of hell, and that everlasting throne, which have so real a presence in the poem-have no existence in any creed which has ever been invented. They are the mighty creation of the poet's own genius, assoiled from all encumbrance of systems, untrammelled even by any distinctions of matter and spirit, and orthodox in nothing but in name.

At all events the doctrine of endless misery, if it has any thing sublime about it, must be disbelieved in order to be enjoyed. Indeed how is it possible to enter into any of the enjoyments of life with an idea of such a reality present with us. While we think that the people among whom we live and move, those with whom we are holding daily intercourse by the perpetual courtesies of life, those perhaps whom we love with an affection that death cannot extinguish-will be tormented in unspeakable agonies for ever, we can scarcely derive gratification from the sublimity of our own conceptions. A man might rather exult in having witnessed the mortal agonies of a friend, to shew in what dreadful colouring he could paint them.

In this world, thank God, there are no beings of this description. That any one can talk of the sublimity of his contemplation on eternal torture, shews that he does not in heart believe it. The man who, in the mansions of blessedness, could derive satisfaction from the miseries of his brethren, must be truly unfit for heaven. Even the emperor who fiddled on a tower

contrast the wise and humane treatment of the insane which is now peculiarly encouraged, with the ignorance and barbarity formerly displayed towards that afflicted portion of our race. It may well be expected to moderate the admiration of the golden days of good Queen Bess and to excite the admonition, Say not that the former days were better than these. Bedlam, which had been for many years a receptacle for lunatics, was then on the spot which is now called Old Bethlem. The Marshalsea, in Southwark, appears always to have been a prison.

"1561-The 10th of April was one William Geffrie whipped from the Marshalsea in Southwark, to BedJem without Bishopsgate of London, for that he professed one John Moore to be Christ our Saviour. On his head was set a paper, wherein was written as followeth: William Geffrie, a most blasphemous heretic, denying Christ our Saviour in heaven. The said Geffrie being stayed at Bedlem gate, John Moore was brought forth, before whom William Geffrie was whipped, till he confessed Christ to be in heaven. Then the said John Moore being examined, and answering overthwartly, was commanded to put off his coat, doublet, and shirt, which he seemed to do very willingly, and after being tied to the cart, was whipped an arrow's shot from Bedlem, where at the last he also confessed Christ to be in heaven and himself to be a sinful man. Then was John Moore sent again into Bedlem, and Geffrie to the Marshalsea, where they had lain prisoners nigh a year and a half, the one for professing himself to be Christ, the other a disciple of the same Christ." Hollingshed, 111. 1194.

Such were the moral discernment and the Christian spirit of an age which had undertaken the extraordinary task of forming articles and imposing creeds to save posterity, Christ

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SIR,

Τ

Family Sermons.

BREVIS.

IT has long been a subject of regret with me that I cannot find any book of sermons which appears to me to be adapted to the use of families. The works which I have made use of I have found deficient in some quality or other which I think essential, in compositions intended for that purpose. In some, the language is too lofty, and the style too much ornamented; others are logical and argumentative, abounding in nice distinctions; and others contain mere moral essays, devoid of those all-important motives which are only to be derived from the gospel.

The work I am desirous of possess ing is one plain and simple in the style, persuasive rather than argumentative, abounding in scriptural motives and illustrations, and dwelling frequently upon those glorious promises, and those awful threatenings, which appear in almost every page of the gospel, and elevate Christianity far above every other system.

Such a publication is, I think, a desideratum in all Unitarian families. It would be extremely useful among persons of the middle ranks of life, whose education has been confined, and whose daily employments preclude them from much reading. It would also be much more beneficial to servants, and the younger branches of families, than the books which are generally made use of. And there is another description of persons, for whose use such a publication is, I think, particularly required. I mean those who have departed from the prevailing creeds of the day, and embraced Unitarianism. Such persons must be, I suppose, wholly at a loss for books to substitute in the place of those numerous publications, which are circulated with zeal by Christians of other denominations. This may not be the case with persons of liberal education and cultivated minds, for whom there is an ample supply in the many elegant and perspicuous works which have been written by Unitarians; but for the poor (I mean the unlearned) to whom, at least equally

with others, the gospel should be preached, the food is scanty indeed. I might enlarge upon the advantages to be expected from a publication of sermons such as I have described; but, not to occupy any more space in your valuable Work, I will conclude with a hope that if any of your correspondents can point out such a work, he will do so; and if that cannot be done, that some one will endeavour to supply the deficiency; and besides the satisfaction of being extensively useful, I have little doubt that he would reap an ample pecuniary reward for his labour.

I am, &c.

J. H. P. S. Is not this subject worthy the attention of the Unitarian Tract Society; and would not the offer of a small reward soon furnish ample ma terials from which such a publication might speedily be made?

Mr. Rutt's Edition of Dr. Priestley's Works.

SIR,

AMIDST the general satisfaction

which was manifested by the company at the last Anniversary of the Unitarian Fund, there was one circumstance referred to, at which I felt considerable regret, viz. the fear ex pressed by Mr. Rutt, that he should be under the necessity (for want of encou ragement) of relinquishing his project for publishing by subscription the Theological Works of the late Dr. Priestley.

Anxious to promote (though in a feeble manner) so desirable a purpose, I have taken the trouble to transcribe two extracts from the very interesting "Memoirs of the late Rev. Theophilus Lindsey, M. A." by Mr. Belsham, which appear to me particularly suitable and deserving of notice at the present moment, and which, with the few remarks that follow, I shall be obliged by your inserting.

The first is taken from the fourth chapter of that work, in which the author giving an account of the earliest hearers of Mr. Lindsey at the chapel in Essex-street, mentions "Mrs. Rayner, a near relation of the Dutchess of Northumberland and of Lord Gwydir, a liberal patroness of the cause of truth," of which the following (p. 120) is but "one instance out of many. That "to this lady the Christian world