death, although we were not instrumental to the fall. God looks upon our case, and doth not hinder it. He hath sent a reme

ped. It is in contemplating his method of handling some of those darkest and most impenetrable mysteries, from which the greatest and the wisest of men and of divines have ever turned their modest eyes, that we have been continually and painfully reminded of the truth of the saying-"That fools rush in where angels fear to tread." His speculations upon the intermediate state of the soul!-upon the actual, visible, and tangible occurrences of the DAY OF JUDGMENT!-and, perhaps, most of all, his minute and laboured disquisitions upon the precise nature of the torments of hell, have not merely disgusted us as specimens of the most outrageous bad taste, ignorance of the duties of his place and calling, and extravagant self-conceit but they have really shocked us as so many pieces of blasphemy. When we think of the delicacy and modesty of the great founders of the English church, in approaching the very outskirts of these forbidden regions, and then turn to this young and very imperfectly educated man, and observe with what vulgar and rejoicing audacity he treads the ground that a Hooker, a Taylor, a Barrow would have trembled to contaminate, by the footstep of even the most enlightened genius-we do confess, that we want words to express all our feelings. The boyish greenness the satisfied short-sightedness-theirreverent free-and-easy words, phrases, and images, which this person exhibits in many passages of the sort we have indicated, would probably do more harm to an elegant and imaginative mind, labouring under the weight of doubt, than all the and avowed profanities of a thousand atheists. Let any man read dispassionately the following single specimen, and we shall be heartily content to stand by his judgment.

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"The mercy and goodness of God need not be lauded here, after what hath been written in the third part of this discourse. But though exceeding great, and greatly to be adored, and sufficient for the salvation of all the earth, these attributes do consist with others of a firmer texture and a sterner mood. Here are we, the sons of men, suffering daily pain, misery, and

have never heard of it. Contemplate the condition of whole continents of the earth sweltering in sultry toil, or raging in fierce contests of mutual misery and destruction, oppressed by the wilfulness of single men, at whose pleasure they are bought and sold, imprisoned, and put to death, without knowledge of better things to come, or cheerful hope of any redress of wrong. All for what? for the sin of our first great parents, over whom we had no control; let them contemplate this, and see what stern attributes dwell by the side of divine mercy and goodness. I confess, when I con

template the administration of this woeful world since the fall, so far as it is recorded in the annals of nations, I feel a shrinking terror of the sternness of Him in whose hands the government rests. The world hath been a very furnace of hot and murderous passions, a seething vessel of blood, which hath never rested, but smoked to heaven in vain. Even still, after the great propitiation and atonement for the world's sins, it never resteth.

Every day men are immolated upon a bloody altar, and their unshrived spirits pass in most desperate moods into eternity. Wickedness rageth, princes combine against the Lord and his Anointed, they filch the sacred authority of God, they plant their scornful foot upon the neck of noble nations, and they defy the tears and groans of millions to melt their stony hearts. Oh, my God! when will this have an end? when wilt thou dash them in pieces like the potsherd, and vie them in thy hot displeasure? This, when I look upon, and remember from what small beginnings it Almighty's force of character to carry anyarose, I, for one, CANNOT DOUBT of the thing into effect!! If God can exist with such a blighted region and tormented people under his government, why may he not also exist in the knowledge and permission of hell? Tragedies as deep as hell are consummating every day under his tender eye, and deeds of darkness, foul as the pit, transacted in highest places with the insignia of his holy authority. They make his name a sounding horn through which to blow blasphemy and cruelty over the world. They make his religion a veil of midnight, to darken the eye of reason, and deaden the free-born energies of man. Why, if his nature be so soft, doth he allow these most shocking sights for one instant? and, allowing them now, may he

not allow them hereafter?

"Do these amiable enthusiasts now imagine that the Divine nature is grieved, and its enjoyment overshadowed, by the enor mities into which this earth has broken

loose? No! The Divine nature is a strong texture of being, which is not troubled by any such provocations. It is bound in bands of eternity and unchangeableness. It giveth law, and rejoiceth in the execution of law. It giveth one law of blessedness to righteousness, another law of misery to sin; and it is pleased and satisfied with both. For, each is equally needful to the welfare of the universe; which standeth happy, because with obedience cometh all enjoyment and delight, with disobedience all misery and tribulation to its people. They step across the dividing line, and a thousand perplexities from within, a thousand troubles from without, invade their heretofore untroubled being. And they are shipped off by no active infliction of God, but as it were by the necessity of their nature, to herd and congregate with spirits accursed. This may seem, to soft and tender-hefted nature, a blemish in the character of God, and the construction of his creatures. But seem how it may to human nature, it is no less certain, and hath been evinced in the bevy of angels who were detruded from their seats in hea

ven to the bottomless pit, and too fatally evinced in all Adam's posterity denounced for one offence. I wonder that we should speculate, who are labouring under the fatal reality! The beings of another sphere, who retain their constancy and enjoyment, may speculate about the limitations of divine infliction, and wonder to what length God's hatred of sin may carry him against the soft intercession of his mercy and goodness, and when these two principles of his nature will come into equilibrium and find a resting place. But for us, who taste and know, who feel and suffer, it is vain to urge such speculations against assurance, and to raise up tranquillizing delusions of God's nature against positive revelations of his nature.

"Next to meet their philosophical notion, that all punishment is for the reformation of the offender; however good it may be in human jurisprudence, it certainly is not the principle of the divine procedure, as that is to be gathered from what we know ; in evidence of which, I instance the condition of the apostate angels, who since their fall have not been visited by hope nor relaxation of woe, but are ever urged, and ever to be urged, if Scripture is to be believed, with excessive woe. They were as good spirits as any other, as well ingratiated in their Creator's favour and advanced in his confidence, and had as good and rightful a hold of his tender mercy. But there they lie in chains of darkness, dreeing the everlasting penance of sin, which, when once it enters, deranges the fine tissue of happy natures for ever;even as we often see a stroke of terrible calamity derange for ever the organization of

reason and intellect, which no solacements of friends or softening influence of time shall afterwards restore. Sin is rightly conceived of, not by comparison with crimes against human law, that may be wiped away by a suitable forfeit, but when it is imagined to bring along with it an irremediable fall; God's provinces would not otherwise be secure, but always under calms and storms, like our habitation. Therefore, to insure the felicity of the whole, the part is sacrificed. Where sin comes, it weeds the creature out from his place, and transplants him into sinful regions, where he can have his humour gratified at its proper expense.

"Man is an exception certainly to this rule of steadfast and immovable conditions proceeding from sin. But, that it is the exception which confirms the rule is most manifest, from the terrible power of an Almighty Being, which was necessary to wrench us from the grasp of our enemy back again into hope; from the steps that had to be taken in the courts above, and the exhibition that had to be made in the world beneath, before recovery was even possible. And see, with all the sacrifice and suffering, by how slow degrees recovery comes about, how few have partaken of it, and with how much chance of failure it is surrounded; what a struggle, what a trial is involved in the salvation of any single man! Which all serves to shew how hard it was to win man back from under the curse that is engraven on all creation against sin; and how, with all the intervention of Christ Jesus, there has only, as it were, dawned on us the morning streaks of a day, which a thousand vicissitudes may overcast and utterly deface; it is but a star of hope that hath peered through the sorrowful gloom, unto which, if we take steadfast heed, the day will dawn, and the daystar arise upon our hearts-but if not, then double darkness and tenfold dismay will cover us for evermore.

"The true character of Sin, therefore, I hold, both by the example of the reprobate angels and the history of man's redemption, is, that it brings with it irremediable conclusions. The Saviour's powerful arm hath, as it were, made a little clear space around us for holy action, and opened a bore in the cloudy heavens through which the light of restoration may come in upon the hopeless earth. And this illuminated spot shifts about and about upon the face of the earth, and a thousand angels of darkness are aye endeavouring to scarf up the bright sign of mercy in the heavens. Oh! they grudge us so much won from their rightful dominion over a sinful place, and it is A FEARFUL STRUGGLE which the power of the Spirit of God hath to maintain against them.

They come on, howling for their own, like wolves that have been scared from their prey. When the dawn visits another region, they raise commations to shut it out. Thrones they rally under their black banners, and principalities under their ensign of darkness; false religion makes them drunk with the cup of her abominations, and they rush full upon the servants of the Lord like incarnate demons from the pit. Sin is the lord of this earth, and grudgeth hard to give up what he won in the fatal garden."

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"What may be in the womb of eternity, I know not. Whether there may be a visit paid to hell's habitations by another 'mighty to save,' I know not. Whether there may be some other dispensations of mercy to the abject creatures when this dispensation is fulfilled, another trial of the forlorn creatures, and another levy of righteous men carried after probation and sanctification to heaven, and so, dispensation after dispensation, the numbers of the damned thinned and thinned, until at length they shall be all recovered-these things, there is not one shadow of revelation to induce the hope of, and therefore I declare it to be the most daring invasion upon the prerogative of God, the most monstrous abuse of his gracious revelation, the most dangerous unloosing of its power over men, to set forth as certain, as probable, or even as possible, such doctrines as are wont to be set forth amongst us."

Mr Irving cannot, FOR ONE, DOUBT THE ALMIGHTY'S FORCE OF CHARACTER!!!"-but no- we leave all this entirely without comment. If other people can read such things without painful feelings, we certainly cannot. If such speculations are the proper materials for addresses to Christian congregations, assembled chiefly (which your thundering popular pulpit orators are so very apt to forget) for the purpose of worshipping their Maker, we are entirely mistaken in all our views as to these matters. We have no doubt, a parcel of servant girls and apprentices may prick up their ears when they hear such unwonted topics started, and go home with great satisfaction, after hearing a few paragraphs exploded about themes, the proper discussion of which is not much farther beyond their own understanding than that of their oraclewe willingly believe that all this may be so; but we do not believe, that such a choice of themes, far less such a method of treating them, is at all adapted for conciliating the favour of "the more learned," or even of " the more imaginative classes." Fine ladies

and gentlemen will do much for the sake of a stare. They will take their stare and have done. We venture to prophesy that we shall hear very little of Hatton-Garden Chapel after the long vacation.

We have said these things in no spirit of unkindness towards Mr Irving. He is young-and he is clever -and he may change his plan, and do far better things hereafter. We sincerely hope it may be so. But we must hint in conclusion, that if, instead of giving advice as to the choice and management of subjects in the composition of sermons, to such a divine as Mr Gordon of Edinburgh, (which he so coolly does in the dedication of his argument to that clergyman,) he himself would condescend to imitate a little of that modesty for which Mr Gordon, in the midst of real learning and real eloquence, is so honourably distinguished, it might be much better for his own congregation, to say nothing of his own character Mr Gordon is a man of profound attainments in the exact sciences-but his habits of close reasoning are not found to impair the flow of his Christian zeal. He is naturally an oratora true orator-and yet his feeling of the vastness and mysteriousness of the arcana of Theology, makes him well content to keep his oratory for man, and the doings of man. Such an example might be held in view sometimes, with great advantage, by Dr Chalmers himself-but to see this raw and affected imitator of the Chalmerian vein, so entirely overlooking that example-nay, to see him capable of the unheard-of audacity of giving advice to the eminent person who sets it

this is really almost enough to make one shut Mr Irving's book for ever, with feelings less benign than we should wish to entertain towards any man who we are bound to believe means well, however mistaken the cast of his exertions may be.

We have a very few words to say in rather a lighter strain, ere we close this article-but we hope Mr Irving will not fall into the error of supposing that we have not been very serious, merely because he finds us dismissing him in the end not with a frown, but with a smile.

To come to the matter at once, then, the most novel thing of which this book of sermons can boast, is, after all, a thing not worthy of being

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treated in a very serious tone. It is neither more nor less than the occasional admixture of remarks upon literary subjects, and particularly the literature of our own day. Our preacher, for example, several times apostrophizes Lord Byron, as Woe-begone, fallen man," &c. &c. &c., and calls him and Moore "Priests of the Cyprian Goddess," (rather a queer sort of allusion, by the way, from a Christian preacher,)-and we doubt not all this, however trite it would have appeared in a weekly paper, or monthly magazine, might be amusing from the Hatton-Garden pulpit. We have also a formal eulogy of two pages upon Wordsworth, for which, no doubt, the author of the Excursion will be exceedingly grateful to the author of so many Orations and Arguments. But one passage there is which we cannot think of not quoting. The orator has been lamenting over the fact, that the English nation possesses no great poem upon the subject of the Day of Judgment, (a subject, by the way, which we hope no man more a poet than Mr Irving himself, will ever be so rash as to meddle with,) and then he breaks out into the following paragraph:

"Instead of which mighty fruit of genius, this age (Oh, shocking!) hath produced out of this theme two most nauseous and unformed abortions, vile, unprincipled, and unmeaning the one a brazen-faced piece of political cant, the other an abandoned parody of solemn judgment. Of which visionaries, I know not whether the self-confident tone of the one, or the illplaced merriment of the other, displeasech ME the more. It is ignoble and impious to rob the sublimest of subjects of all its grandeur and effect, in order to serve wretched interests and vulgar passions. I have no sympathy with such wretched stuff, and I despise the age which hath. The men are limited in their faculties, for they, both of them, want the greatest of all fa-" culties to know the living God and stand in awe of his mighty power; with the one, blasphemy is virtue when it makes for loyalty; with the other, blasphemy is the food and spice of jest-making. BARREN. SOULS! and is the land of Shakspeare and Spenser and Milton come to this! that it can procreate nothing but such profane spawn, and is content to exalt such blots

and blemishes of manhood into ornaments

of the age? PUNY AGE! when religion and virtue and manly freedom have ceased from the character of those it accounteth noble. But I thank God, who hath given us a refuge in the great spirits of a former VOL. XIV.

age, who will yet wrest the sceptre from these mongrel Englishmen; from whose impieties we can betake ourselves to the 'Advent to Judgment,' of Taylor; the Four Last Things,' of Bates; the Blessedness of the Righteous,' of Howe; and the Saint's Rest,' of Baxter; books which breathe of the reverend spirit of the olden time. God send to the others repentance, or else blast the powers they have abused so terribly; for if they repent not, they shall harp another strain at that scene they have sought to vulgarize. The men have seated themselves in his throne of judgment, to vent from thence doggrel spleen and insipid flattery; the impious men have no more ado with the holy seat than the obscene owl hath, to nestle and bring forth in the Ark of the Covenant, which the wings of the cherubim of glory did overshadow."

Now, really the worthy Laureate meets with very scanty charity here from this great preacher to the imaginative classes. We grant that his hexameters are lame, and that the whole affair is wretched as a poem, although it certainly does contain some passages which it would be well for Mr Irving's hearers, if Mr Irving could approach within a hundred miles of, in his moments of happiest inspiration. But to call such a man and such a poet vile," "unprincipled," profane," blasphemous," ," "mongrel," "impious," &c. and to threaten him with harping in hell, on account of his "Vision of Judgment"-Why, really, we cannot read this without echoing the meek-souled Mr Edward Irving's own ejaculation," Oh! shocking!”"

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To be serious once more-and just for a moment-Mr Edward Irving, when he mentions, in or out of his pulpit, such a person as Mr Southey, might really do well to remember what Southey is, and what Irving is. What are the ideas suggested by the mere names of the two men? Grant that we may be aliowed to consider The Vision of Judgment as an indifferent poem-Well-Paradise Regained is, as a whole, an indifferent poem-some of Shakespeare's plays are indifferentmany of Wordsworth's poems, many of Scott's poems, many of Byron's Poems, are, compared with their best efforts, indifferent-But are these men the less Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Southey, because they have written some indifferent poems? The question is not, whether such a man as Southey has written one indifferent book, but whether he has X

not written many admirable booksbooks which belong to the classical literature of England-books which bear the impress of original and masterly genius-books which live, and which cannot die? This is the true question; and it being answered in the affirmative, as it must be by every man who knows anything whatever about our literature and our poetry-by every man who has ever had head enough and heart enough to understand a single page of such works as Thalaba, that exquisite etherial romance—or the life of Nelson, that specimen of chaste and nervous biography-that gem of English patriotism-or the sublime poem of Roderick-in a word, by every man who knows anything at all about what Mr Southey has done-This being answered in the affirmative, and it being moreover remembered, that Mr Southey is not only one of the very first order of living scholars and authors in England-indisputably so-but that he is also, "his enemies themselves being judges," a man who has through a life, not now a short one, discharged every social and moral duty of an English GENTLEMAN, with uniform and exemplary propriety-All this being kept in mind and it being also kept in mind, that Mr Edward Irving is a young, raw Scotch dominie, who probably never sat in the same parlour for five minutes with any man worthy of tying the latchets of Mr Southey's shoes-a person who has done nothing as yet, and who very probably never will do anything, that can entitle him to any place at all in the higher ranks of intellect a vain green youth, drunk with the joy of a novel, and, in all likelihood, a very transitory notoriety All these things, we say, being calmly had in mind, and this precious paragraph read over again, we really do not hesitate to say, that we cannot conceive of there being more than one opinion as to who is the most dauntlessly and despicably arrogant person now living in England. We confess that such

a measure of self-conceit and self-ignorance-such a total negation of diffidence and of delicacy, to say no more about the matter, inspires us with many doubts as to Mr Irving-doubts of rather a more serious nature than we are at present disposed to enlarge upon.

Such are our serious feelings in regard to this base outrage upon the decorum of the pulpit, and the rights of genius and virtue. Nevertheless, taking a lower, and perhaps a more suitable view of this Mr Irving's case, and considering him merely as a young adventurer, who wants to make a noise, we certainly do not advise him to desist from seasoning his discourses with literary allusions and personalities. He may depend upon it, that the more personal his allusions are, the more alluring and delectable will they be found by

"the more learned, imaginative, and accomplished classes ;" and he is probably sufficiently aware already, that there is no vehicle in which they may be more safely and conveniently conveyed to such classes, than the Sermon-we beg pardon the Oration. Why not review Don Juan in that form? We venture to promise a crowded auditory of both Whigs and Tories, matrons and maids, the day for which that Oration is announced. Let the clerk read the extracts, if Mr Irving feels fatigued. He really has had the merit of hitting upon one good new idea; and by all means let him make the most of it. And, by the way, since he has laid aside altogether the name of sermon, why keep up the farce of sticking texts from the Bible to the beginning of his productions? It would be well, we think, to try the effect of a neat little text from some popular work of the day." In the Book of Blackwood, in volume the

-, page the, column the second, and there the first paragraph, you will find it written," &c. This would certainly produce a sensation among the more imaginative classes.