such instances have been known, and therefore such representations are only vividly reflected images of reality; for if the laws of criticism do not enjoin, in works of genius, a careful adaptation of all examples and sentiments to the purest moral purpose, as a far higher duty than the study of resemblance to the actual world, the laws of piety most certainly do. Let the men who have so much literary conscience about this verisimilitude, content themselves with the office of mere historians, and then they may relate without guilt, provided the relation be simple and unvarnished, all the facts, and speeches of depraved greatness within the memory of the world. But when they choose the higher office of inventing and combining, they are accountable for the consequences. They create a new person, and, in sending him into society, they can choose whether his example shall tend to improve or to pervert the minds that will be compelled to admire him.

It is an immense transition from such instances as those I have been remarking on, to Rousseau's celebrated description of the death of his Eloisa, which would have been much more properly noticed in an earlier page. It is long since I read that scene, one of the most striking specimens probably of original conception and interesting sentiment that ever appeared; but though the representation is so extended as to include every thing which the author thought needful to make it perfect, there is no explicit reference to the peculiarly evangelical causes of complacency in death. Yet the representation is so admirable, that the serious reader is tempted to suspect even his own mind of fanaticism, while he is expressing to his friends the wish that they, and that himself, may be animated, in the last day of life, by a class of ideas which that eloquent writer would have been ashamed to introduce.

LETTER IX.

DOES it not appear to you, my dear friend, that an approving reader of the generality of our ingenious authors will acquire an opinion of the moral condition of our species very different from that which is dictated by the divine declarations? The Governor of all intelligent creatures has spoken of this nation or family of them, as exceedingly remote from conformity to that standard of perfection which alone can ever be his rule of judgment. And this is pronounced not only of vicious individuals, who are readily given up to condemnation by those who entertain the most partial or the proudest estimate of human nature, but of the constitutional quality of that nature itself. The moral part of the constitution of man is represented as placing him immensely below that rank of dignity and happiness to which, by his intellectual powers, and his privilege or being immortal, he would otherwise have seemed adapted to belong. The descriptions of the human condition are such as if the nature had, by a dreadful convulsion, been separated off at each side from a pure and happy system of the creation, and had fallen down an immeasurable depth, into depravation and misery. In this state man is represented as loving, and therefore practically choosing, the evils which subject him to the condemnation of God; and it is affirmed that no expedient, but that very extraordinary one which christianity has revealed, can change this condition, and avert this condemnation with its formidable consequences.

Every attempt to explain the wisdom and the exact ultimate intention of the Supreme Being, in constituting a nature subject in so fatal a degree to moral evil, will

fail But even if a new revelation were given to turn this dark inquiry into noonday, it would make no difference in the actual state of things. An extension of knowledge could not reverse the fact, that the human nature has displayed, through every age, the most aggravated proofs of being in a deplorable and hateful condition, whatever were the reasons for giving a moral agent a constitution which it was foreseen would soon be found in this condition. Perhaps, if there were a mind expanded to a comprehension so far beyond all other created intelligences, that it could survey the general order of a great portion of the universe, and look into distant ages, it might understand in what manner the melancholy fact could operate to the perfection of the vast system; and according to what principles, and in reference to what ends, all that has taken place within the empire of the Eternal Monarch is right. But in this contemplation of the whole, it would also take account of the separate condition of each part; it would perceive that this human world, whatever are its relations to the universe, has its own distinct economy of interests, and stands in its own relation and accountableness to the righteous Governor; and that, regarded in this exclusive view, it is an awful spectacle. Now, to this exclusive sphere of our own condition and interests revelation confines our attention ; and pours contempt, though not more than experience pours, on all presumption to reason on those grand unknown principles according to which the Almighty disposes the universe; all our estimates therefore of the state and relations of man must take the subject on this insulated ground. Considering man in this view, the sacred oracles have represented him as a more melancholy object than Nineveh or Babylon in ruins; and an infinite aggregate of obvious facts confirms the doctrine. This doctrine then is absolute

authority in our speculations on human nature. But to this authority the writers in question seem to pay, and to teach their readers to pay, but little respect. And unless those readers are pre-occupied by the grave convictions of religious truth, rendered still more grave by painful reflection on themselves, and by observation on mankind; or unless they are capable of enjoying a malicious or misanthropic pleasure, like Mandeville and Swift, in detecting and exposing the degradation of our nature, it is not wonderful that they should be prompt to entertain the sentiments which insinuate a much

more flattering estimate. Our elegant and amusing moralists no doubt copiously describe and censure the follies and vices of mankind; but many of these, they maintain, are accidental to the human character, rather than a disclosure of intrinsic qualities. Others do indeed spring radically from the nature; but they are only the wild weeds of a virtuous soil. Man is still a very dignified and noble being, with strong dispositions to all excellence, holding a proud eminence in the ranks of existence, and (if such a Being is adverted to) high in the favour of his Creator. The measure of virtue in the world vastly exceeds that of depravity; we should not indulge a fanatical rigour in our judgments of mankind; nor be always reverting to an ideal perfection; nor accustom ourselves to contemplate the Almighty always in the dark majesty of justice.-None of their speculations seem to acknowledge the gloomy fact which the New Testament so often asserts or implies, that all men are "by nature children of wrath."

It is quite of course that among sentiments of this order, the idea of the redemption by Jesus Christ (if any allusion to it should occur,) can but appear with equivocal import, and "shorn of the beams" which constitute the peculiar light of his own revelation.

While man is not considered as lost, the mind cannot do justice to the expedient, or to "the only name under heaven," by which he can be redeemed. Accordingly the gift of Jesus Christ does not appear to be habitually recollected as the most illustrious instance of the beneficence of God that has come within human knowledge, and as the fact which has contributed more than all others to relieve the oppressive awfulness of the mystery in which our world is enveloped. No thankful joy seems to awake at the thought of so mighty an interposition, and of him whose sublime appointment it was to undertake and accomplish it. When it is difficult to avoid making some allusion to him, he is acknowledged rather in any of his subordinate characters, than as absolutely a Redeemer; or if the term Redeemer, or, our Saviour, is introduced, it is done as with a certain inaptitude to pronounce a foreign appellative; as with a somewhat irksome feeling at falling in momentary contact with language so specifically of the christian school. And it is done in a manner which betrays, that the author does not mean all that he feels some dubious intimation that such a term should mean. Jesus Christ is regarded rather as having added to our moral advantages, than as having conferred that without which all the rest were in vain; rather as having made the passage to a happy futurity somewhat more commodious, than as having formed the passage itself over what was else an impassable gulf. Thus that comprehensive sum of blessings, called in the New Testament Salvation, or Redemption, is shrunk into a comparatively inconsiderable favour, which a less glorious messenger might have brought, which a less magnificent language than that dictated by inspiration might have described, and which a less costly sacrifice might have secured.

It is consistent with this delusive idea of human