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writing or speech ought to be studied and understood,—namely, with a reference to the object proposed by the writer or speaker.

For example, if we bid any one proceed in a straight line from one place to another, and to take care to arrive before the sun goes down, he will rightly and fully understand us in reference to the practical object which alone we had in view. Now, we know that there cannot really be a straight line on the surface of the earth; and that the sun does not really go down,-only one portion of the earth is turned away from it. But whether the other party knows all this or not, matters nothing to our present object, which was not to teach him mathematics or astronomy, but to make him conform to our directions, which are equally intelligible to the learned and the unlearned."

Now, the object of the Scripture revelation is to teach men, not astronomy or geology, or any other physical science, but religion. Its design was to inform men, not in what manner the world was made, but WHO made it, and to lead them to worship Him, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, instead of worshipping His creatures—the heavens and earth themselves-as gods; which is what the ancient heathen actually did.

Although, therefore, Scripture gives very scanty and imperfect information respecting the earth and the heavenly bodies, and speaks of them in the language and according to the notions of the people of a rude age, still it fully effects the object for which it was given, when it teaches that the heavens and the earth are not gods to be worshipped, but that "God created the heavens and the earth," and that it is He who made the various tribes of animals, and also man. But as for astronomy and geology and other sciences, men were left, when once sufficiently civilized to be capable of improving themselves, to make discoveries in them by the exercise of their own faculties.

FRIENDSHIPS IN HEAVEN.

I am convinced that the extension and perfection of friendship will constitute great part of the future happiness of the blest. Many have lived in various and distant ages and countries, perfectly adapted (I mean not merely in their being generally estimable, but in the agreement of their tastes and suitableness of dispositions) for friendship with each other, but who, of course, could never meet in this world. Many a one selects, when he is reading history—a truly pious Christian, most especially in reading sacred history-some one or two favorite characters, with whom he feels that a personal acquaintance would have been peculiarly delightful to him. Why should not such a desire be realized in a future state? A wish to see and personally know, for example, the Apostle Paul, or John, is the most likely to

arise in the noblest and purest mind: I should be sorry to think such a wish absurd and presumptuous, or unlikely to be gratified. The highest enjoyment, doubtless, to the blest, will be the personal knowledge of their divine and beloved Master; yet I cannot but think that some part of their happiness will consist in an intimate knowledge of the greatest of his followers also; and of those of them in particular whose peculiar qualities are, to each, the most peculiarly attractive.

In this world, again, our friendships are limited not only to those who live in the same age and country, but to a small portion even of those who are not unknown to us, and whom we know to be estimable and amiable, and who, we feel, might have been among our dearest friends. Our command of time and leisure to cultivate friendships imposes a limit to their extent: they are bounded rather by the occupation of our thoughts than of our affections. And the removal of such impediments in a better world seems to me a most desirable and a most probable change.

I see no reason, again, why those who have been dearest friends on earth should not, when admitted to that happy state, continue to be so, with full knowledge and recollection of their former friendship. If a man is still to continue (as there is every reason to suppose) a social being and capable of friendship, it seems contrary to all probability that he should cast off or forget his former friends, who are partakers with him of the like exaltation. He will, indeed, be greatly changed from what he was on earth, and unfitted, perhaps, for friendship with such a being as one of us is Now; but his friend will have undergone (by sup position) a corresponding change. And as we have seen those who have been loving playfellows in childhood, grow up, if they grow up with good, and with like, dispositions, into still closer friendship in riper years, so also it is probable that when this our state of childhood shall be perfected, in the maturity of a better world, the like attachment will continue between those companions who have trod together the Christian path to glory, and have "taken sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of God as friends." A change to indifference towards those who have fixed their hearts on the same objects with ourselves during this earthly pilgrimage, and have given and received mutual aid during their course, is a change as little, I trust, to be expected, as it is to be desired. It certainly is not such a change as the Scriptures teach us to prepare for.

1 The same thought is beautifully expressed by one of the most excellent of sacred poets,uthor of The Christian Year:

"That so, before the judgment-seat,

Though changed and glorified each face,
Not unremember'd we may meet,

For endless ages to embrace,"

CONSISTENCY AND INCONSISTENCY.

To censure a man as inconsistent when he alters his course of proceeding, his language, his opinions, &c., in conformity with a change of circumstances, is to censure him for that which must be continually practised by every one who is not insane; to cen, sure him for changing his mind on finding himself mistakenthough circumstances remain the same, is to censure him for what ought to be practised by every one who is not infallible; and to censure him for holding contrary opinions at the same time, though this-and this only-may strictly and properly be called inconsistency, and ought sedulously to be avoided, is to misapply the censure, which would be better directed, not against the inconsistency of his notions with each other, but for the erroneousness of those which are .erroneous. The consistency with each other, of opinions that are all wrong, is far enough from improving the case.

OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIANITY.

The main, and almost the universal, fallacy of antichristians is, in showing that there are objections against Christianity, and thence inferring that it should be rejected; when that which ought to have been proved is, that there are more or stronger objections against the receiving than the rejecting of it. At the first announcement of the gospel, when Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the promised Deliverer, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed, the burden of proof lay with Him. No one could be fairly called on to admit His pretensions, till He showed cause for believing in Him. If "He had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin." Now the case is reversed, and the religion exists, that is the phenomenon; those who will not allow it to have come from God, are bound to solve it on some other hypothesis less open to objections. Infidels, when supposing it to have been a human contrivance, not established by miracles, are bound to give an explanation of the still greater miracle,-its having arisen and prevailed as it did, in defiance of all opposition, forcing men of all ranks and of all nations to disown the gods of their ancestors, and to adore a Jewish peasant who had been cut off by the most ignominious death. This explanation they have never given, though they have had eighteen hundred years to try; and thus they have tacitly confessed that no hypothesis can be devised which will not be open to greater objections than lie against Christianity.

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DUTY OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

It is said that, some years ago, there was a bridge at Bath in so crazy a condition that persons chose rather to make a long circuit than run the risk of crossing it. One day, however, a very nervous lady, hurrying home to dress for the evening, came suddenly upon the spot, without, till that moment, remembering the danger. What was she to do? If she went on, the frail arch might give way under her; to go round would be fatiguing, and attended with loss of time. She stood for some minutes trembling in anxious hesitation; at last a lucky thought occurred to her she called for a sedan-chair, and was carried over in that conveyance!

Now, when people, who think to escape the danger of having to judge for themselves in religious matters, by choosing to take some guide as an infallible one, and believe or disbelieve as he bids them, thus adding, to the undiminished previous chances of error, the additional chances against the authority they have chosen what is this but putting, not only their own weight, but that of the sedan-chair also, on the tottering arch?

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WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, 1811–1863.

THIS distinguished novelist was born in Calcutta' in 1811. In his seventh year he was sent to England to be educated, and was placed at the school of the Charter-House,2 the well-known Greyfriars of his stories. Thence he went to Cambridge, which he left without taking a degree. On coming of age he found himself in possession of twenty thousand pounds, and he entered upon life with this ample fortune, besides health, strength, a noble figure, and an excellent genius. Not wishing to lead an idle life, he chose the profession of an artist, to perfect himself in which he visited Italy and Germany; but, as has been well said, "it was destined that he should paint in colors which will never crack and never need restoration;" though the influence of his artistic studies may clearly be traced in his writings. When about twenty-seven years old, fortunately for his fame, he lost nearly all his fortune by speculations, and therefore began to devote himself to literature for a support. His first effusions appeared as tales and criticisms in Fraser's Magazine, under the names of Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Fitz-Boodle, Esq. From an early date he was connected with Punch, at first as the Fat Contributor, and soon after as the

1 His father, who was the son of the Rev. Richard Thackeray of Hadley, in Middlesex, then held a post in Calcutta in the civil service of the East India Company.

2 This is a hospital, chapel, and school-house,

in Aldersgate Street, London, instituted in 1611 by Sir Thomas Sutton. Among the eminent persons educated here may be named Dr. Barrow, Blackstone, Addison, Steele, John Wesley, George Grote, &c.

author of the inimitable Jeames's Diary' and The Snob Papers. "If satire could do aught to check the pride of the vulgar upstart, or shame social hypocrisy into truth and simplicity, these writings would accomplish the end."

Thackeray's name now became known, and his writings sought after. In 1846 appeared his first, and perhaps greatest, novel, Vanity Fair, which gave him rank at once as one of the greatest living writers of fiction. Nowhere is Thackeray's peculiar power more concentrated than in this novel, and the heroine the cool "woman of the world" Becky Sharp, an unprincipled governess, elbowing her way into fashionable life-will long remain the type of feminine intellect without virtue. In 1849 appeared Pendennis, the hero of which is an accomplished, gentleman-like "man of the world," without much moral principle to guide him. In 1851 he delivered at "Willis's Rooms" a course of Six Lectures on the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century, commencing the course with Swift and ending with Goldsmith. Towards the close of 1852 appeared Esmond, which introduces us to the society of Addison and Steele; and after that he came over to our country and delivered his lectures upon The Four Georges. He was everywhere received with great enthusiasm, and his lectures were numerously attended, and elicited the warmest commendations. On his return, The Newcomes and The Virginians appeared, and a new set of lectures on The Four Georges. In 1860 he became the editor of the Cornhill Magazine, which rapidly attained a degree of success without example in English magazine literature. Lovel the Widower and The Adventures of Philip appeared in its pages; but they are not to be compared with his previous novels. The last of his published works was Roundabout Papers, consisting of twenty papers which appeared from time to time in the Cornhill, and in which are seen much of the irony, humor, and shrewdness of the author. He died on the 24th of December, 1863.8

The precise place which Thackeray is destined to hold in English literature it is impossible now to predict; though, without doubt, he will stand somewhere among the foremost of his class, and will probably be included among the

1 "Jeames" is a London flunkey, elevated to sudden wealth by speculation in railway shares, -an excellent counterpart to many a "shoddy" in our country, who has become rich by government contracts during the "slaveholders' rebellion."

2 Its object is to hold up before the world "a severely truthful representation of its own painted iniquity."

Between these two, or preceding Vanity Fair, he wrote some of his smaller works, such as The Paris Sketch-Book, The Second Funeral of Napoleon, The Fatal Boots, The Hoggarty Diamond, The Irish Sketch-Book, the Journey from Cornhill to Cairo, &c.

4"All that was most brilliant in the capital was assembled to hear him. Amidst a throng of nobles and beauties and men of fashion were Carlyle and Macaulay, Hallam with his venerable head, and Charlotte Brontë, whose own fame was just at its height, and who saw in the lecturer her ideal of an elevated and high-minded master of literary art. The lectures were thoroughly appreciated. Everybody was delighted to see the great masters of English of a past age brought to life again in their habits as they lived, and endowed with

the warm human reality of the lecturer's Dobbins, and Warringtons, and Pendennises." -HANNAY.

See the epigram on the Four Georges, by Walter Savage Landor, p. 537.

The moral of which is "the misery occasioned by forced or ill-assorted marriages." 7 A vivid picture of English life and manners during the middle of the eighteenth century.

8"It is long since England has lost such a son: it will be long before she has such another to lose. He was indeed emphatically English, -English as distinct from Scotch, no less than English as distinct from Continental. The highest purely English novelist since Fielding, he combined Addison's love of virtue with Johnson's hatred of cant; Horace Walpole's lynx eye for the mean and the ridiculous, with the gentleness and wide charity for mankind, as a whole, of Goldsmith. Non omnis mortuus est. He will be remembered in his due suc cession with these men for ages to come, as long as the hymn of praise rises in the old Abbey of Westminster, and wherever the English tongue is native to men, from the banks of the Ganges to those of the Mississippi."-HANNAY.

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