It would be going beyond my purpose, to carry my remarks from the literary merits, to the moral and theological characteristics, of christian books; else a very strange account could be given of the injuries which the gospel has suffered from its friends. You might often meet with a systematic writer, in whose hands the whole wealth, and variety, and magnificence, of revelation, shrink into a meagre list of doctrinal points, and who will let no verse in the Bible tell its meaning, or presume to have one, till it has taken its stand by one of those points. You may meet with a christian polemic, who seems to value the arguments for evangelical truth as an assassin values his dagger, and for the same reason; with a descanter on the invisible world, who makes you think of a popish cathedral, and from the vulgarity of whose illuminations you are glad to escape into the solemn twilight of faith; or with a grim zealot for such a theory of the divine attributes and government, as seems to delight in representing the Deity as a dreadful king of furies, whose dominion is overshaded with vengeance, whose music is the cries of victions, and whose glory requires to be illustrated by the ruin of his creation.

It is quite unnecessary to say, that the list of excellent christian writers would be very considerable. But as to the vast mass of books that would, by the consenting adjudgment of all men of liberal cultivation, remain after this deduction, one cannot help deploring the effect which they must have had on unknown thousands of readers. It would seem beyond all question that books which, though even asserting the essential truths of christianity, yet utterly preclude the full impression of its character; which exhibit its claims on admiration and affection with insipid feebleness of sentiment; or which cramp its simple majesty into an

artificial form at once distorted and mean; must be seriously prejudicial to the influence of this sacred subject, though it be admitted that many of them have sometimes imparted a measure both of instruction and of consolation. This they might do, and yet at the same time convey extremely contracted and inadequate ideas of the subject.* There are a great many of them into which an intelligent christian cannot look without rejoicing that they were not the books from which he received his impressions of the glory of his religion. There are many which nothing would induce him, even though he did not materially differ from them in the leading articles of his belief, to put into the hands of an inquiring young person; which he would be sorry and ashamed to see on the table of an infidel; and some of which he regrets to think may still contribute to keep down the standard of religious taste, if I may so express it, among the public instructors of mankind. On the whole it would appear, that a profound veneration for christianity would induce the wish, that, after a judicious selection of books had been made, the Christians also had their Caliph Omar, and their General Amrou.

LETTER V.

THE injurious causes which I have thus far considered, are associated immediately with the object, and, by misrepresenting it, render it less acceptable to refined taste; but there are others, which operate by perverting the very principles of this taste itself, so as

* It is true enough that on every other subject, on which a multitude of books have been written, there must have been many which in a literary sense were bad. But I cannot help thinking that the number coming under this description, bear a larger proportion to the excellent ones in the religious department than any other. One

to put it in antipathy to the religion of Christ, even though presented in its own full and genuine character, cleared of all these associations. I shall remark chiefly on one of these causes.

I fear it is incontrovertible, that what is denominated Polite Literature, the grand school in which taste acquires its laws and refined perceptions, and in which are formed, much more than under any higher austerer · discipline, the moral sentiments, is, for the far greater part, hostile to the religion of Christ; partly, by intro ducing insensibly a certain order of opinions unconsonant, or at least not identical, with the principles of that religion; and still more, by training the feelings to a habit alien from its spirit. And in this assertion, I do not refer to writers palpably irreligious, who have laboured and intended to seduce the passions into vice, or the judgment into the rejection of divine truth; but to the general community of those elegant and ingenious authors who are read and admired by the christian world, held essential to a liberal education and to the progressive accomplishment of the mind in subsequent life, and studied often without an apprehension, or even a thought, of their injuring the views and temper of spirits advancing, with the New Testament for their chief instructor and guide, into another world.

It is modern literature that I have more particularly in view; at the same time, it is obvious that the writings of heathen antiquity have continued to operate till now, in the very presence and sight of christianity, with their own proper influence, a correctly heathenish

chief cause of this has been, the mistake by which many good men, professionally employed in religion, have deemed their respectable mental competence to the office of public speaking, the proof of an equal competence to a work which is subjected to much severer literary and intellectual laws.

influence, on the minds of many who have never thought of denying or doubting the truth of that religion. This is just as if an eloquent pagan priest had been allowed constantly to accompany our Lord in his ministry, and had divided with him the attention and interest of his disciples, counteracting, of course, as far as his efforts were successful, the doctrine and spirit of the Teacher from heaven.*

The few observations which the subject may require to be made on ancient literature, will be directed to the part of it most immediately descriptive of what may be called human reality, representing character, sentiment, and action. For it will be allowed, that the purely speculative part of that literature has in a great measure ceased to interfere with the intellectual discipline of modern times. It obtains too little attention, and too little deference, to contribute materially to the formation of the mental habits, which are adverse to the christian doctrines and spirit. Divers learned and

* It is however no part of my object in these letters to remark on the influence, in modern times, of the fabulous religion that infested the ancient works of genius. That influence is at the present time, I should think, extremely small, from the fables being so stale: ali readers are sufficiently tired of Jupiter, Apollo, Minerva, and the rest. As long however as they could be of the smallest service, they were piously retained by the christian poets of this and other countries, who are now under the necessity of seeking out for some other mythology, the northern or the eastern, to support the languishing spirit of poetry. Even the ugly pieces of wood, worshipped in the South Sea Islands, will probably at last receive names that may more commodiously hitch into verse, and be invoked to adorn and sanctify the belles lettres of the next century. The Mexican abominations and infernalities have already received from us their epic tribute. The poet has no reason to fear that the supply of gods may fail; it is at the same time a pity, one thinks, that a creature so immense should have been placed in a world so small as this, where all nature, all history, all morals, all true religion, and the whole resources of innocent fiction, are too little to furnish materials enough for the wants and labours of his genius.

fanatical devotees to antiquity and paganism, have indeed made some effort to recall the long departed veneration for the dreams and subtleties of ancient phi osophy. But they might with as good a prospect of success recommend the building of temples or a pantheon, and the revival of the institutions of idolatrous worship. The greater number of intelligent, and even learned men, would feel but little regret in consigning the largest proportion of that philosophy to oblivion; unless they may be supposed to like it as heathenism more than they admire it as wisdom; or unless their pride would wish to retain a reminiscence of it for contrast to their own more rational philosophizing.

The ancient speculations of the religious order include indeed some splendid ideas relating to a Supreme Being; but these ideas impart no attraction to that immensity of inane and fantastic follies from the chaos of which they stand out, as of nobler essence and origin. For the most part they probably were traditionary remains of divine communications to man in the earliest ages. A few of them were, possibly, the utmost efforts of human intellect, at some happy moments excelling itself. But in whatever proportions they be referred to the one origin or the other, they stand so distinguished from the accumulated multifarious vanities of pagan speculation on the subject of Deity, that they throw contempt on those speculations. They throw contempt on the greatest part of the theological dogmas and fancies of even the very philosophers who would cite and applaud them. They rather direct our contemplation and affection toward a religion diinely revealed, than obtain any degree of favour for those notions of the Divinity, which sprang and indefinitely multiplied from a melancholy combination of

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