world and the children of God. There is no peace to the wicked: even, literally, if we could look into the hearts, in how many cases should we see the workings of malignant passions, the strong conflict of unholy dispositions, which bespeak the dominion of sin; their heart is a fountain, from which flows every thing that is evil. They have no peace with God; for conscience tells them, whenever its voice can be heard, that God's wrath is kindled against them, and that at the day of his appearing he will render to them according to their evil deeds. But" peace is sown for the righteous." It was the legacy of our Lord to his disciples, and is still the portion of the humble Christian. The Apostle prays for the Romans, that they might be filled with peace and to the same purport it is said in the book of Isaiah, that if the people had hearkened to God, then should their peace have been as a river; that is, should have continued to flow with a constant and undiminished stream. The object of our desires should be, not that we may sometimes possess that peace which cometh from Heaven, but that it may dwell in us continually; that it may take an absolute and exclusive possession of our souls; and that God would subdue in us every passion which is inconsistent with it, and promote the growth of those holy desires and heavenly principles which tend to confirm and increase it. The third subject of the Apostle's prayer is, that they might abound in hope.. Peace, joy, and hope tend mutually to the confirmation of each other; and those who are eminent for the possession of any one part of the blessings which the Apostle enumerates in his prayer, will usually possess also the others; but by mentioning them separately, and dwelling upon each in its turn, the Apostle seems to admonish his converts with what earnestness they should seek for the attainment of each. Hope is the great comfort and support of life; our happiness is generally in prospect; and if this friend of the wretched were ba nished from the world, even the season of enjoyment could impart no pleasure. But what are all the hopes and expectations, which this world can furnish, when compared with the hope of immortality! The worldly man delights in things which perish in the using ; the disciple of Christ is animated by a hope which extends beyond the grave. His language is that of the Apostle, "I know in whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day." All worldly hopes are clouded by uncertainty: "Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth:" but the hope of which St. Paul speaks is a firm and assured hope;-it is built upon the truth of God. The effect of this Christian hope is of a purifying nature: "Every one that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as God is pure.' He constantly endeavours to avoid all sin; he seeks to obtain more and more of that holiness which shall be perfected in heaven; to become daily more meet for that inheritance towards which his hope continually aspires: he watches over every propensity which is contrary to the Divine will; and trusting that hereafter he shall be like his Saviour, when called to see him as he is, he seeks for the highest degree of conformity to his Lord, which it is possible on earth to attain. Having noticed the blessings which St. Paul implores for his converts, we may proceed→ II. To show the way in which they are to be obtained. It appears from the text, that joy, peace, and hope are to be derived from God. In speaking of 66 blessings; for he says, "All joy and peace in believing." They belong to that man only who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Saviour of sinners. It is "being justified by faith," saith St. Paul, that we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ:" and in a similar strain St. Peter speaks, in his Epistle to the strangers of the dispersion"Whom having not seen ye love, in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." It was this faith in Christ which gave them an assured confidence and persuasion that God was their reconciled father. By it they were justified in his sight, and made' heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. It is by faith that we are enabled to appropriate to ourselves the benefits of our Saviour's cross and passion; and thus to possess in our minds a lively impression of that glorious state which is the portion and inheritance of the people of God. the benefits to be obtained, St. Paul adopts that description of the Almighty which is best suited to his subject, and most directly calculated to inspire us with encouragement in our prayers. In a preceding part of the chapter, when entreating that they might possess a spirit of love and unity, according to Jesus Christ; he speaks of the Father as the God of patience and consolation; thus inviting us to cast our dependence upon him as the Author of those spiritual blessings which the Apostle solicits. If peace and joy be associated with Christian hope, by what terms can we better describe the author of these benefits, than that which is here adopted, "the God of hope?" The declaration of this passage is consistent with other parts of the sacred volume. Whatever benefits we possess, whether temporal or spiritual, whether in relation to the present life or the future, are freely given to us of God. Every good and every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights;" and he that seeks true peace, joy, or hope, The agent, by whom faith is imfrom any other source, will find all planted in our hearts, and by whom bis labour end in disappointment. the blessings here mentioned, of In praying that God would fill joy, and peace, and hope, are comthem with these spiritual blessings, municated to us, is the Holy Spirit. and then reminding them of the The Apostle, therefore, prays that source from which all their hope God would thus "fill us by the and consolation must be derived, power of the Holy Ghost.' By the Apostle does not intend to His agency the work of salvation throw discredit upon the means is to be begun, and to be perfected of grace. On the contrary, he him- in us. Whatever knowledge we posself uses earnest prayer for these şess of God as our reconciled Fabenefits; knowing that prayer is ther, or of Christ as our Redeemer; the usual channel through which whatever progress we make in that they are communicated. But nei- spiritual life, which is preparatory ther are we to suppose that joy, to eternal life, all proceeds from peace, and hope, will invariably the influence of the Spirit of God, be sent in answer to our prayers: enlightening our minds, convincing many ask and have not, because our understandings, subduing our they ask amiss: we must therefore worldly affections, releasing us from desire to pray in that manner which the dominion of sin, imparting to us God has enjoined, and with that a new nature, and gradually leading spirit which he requires. Our us on in the way of holiness, till we prayer must be the prayer of faith. become meet for a better state. We This Christian grace is expressly have no power of ourselves to do noticed by the Apostle as the means any thing as of ourselves... If we of obtaining the above-mentioned speak peace to our hearts, when 99 We may remark, 2d, How happy is the condition of the children of God! If we observe them, even with respect to the present world, who is the man that may be fairly compared with the Christian? The most ordinary reflection will convince us that human happiness de God has not spoken peace, it is a fatal tranquillity; if we profess to rejoice in Christ when our faith is not genuine, it is a joy which must soon vanish away; if our hope be built upon any imagined excellencies of our own, upon any other foundation than that which God bas laid, our edifice will not stand in the hour of trial. But he work-pends not upon the outward coneth mightily in them that believe; he witnesseth with our spirits that we are the children of God; he transforms us into the image of Christ; and, by the frequent communications of his grace, gives us a foretaste of happiness, so that even here the Christian is oftentimes filled with joy and peace, and enabled to abound in hope. We ject, may observe from this sub 1. What a sublime view does it afford us of the work of salvation! We perceive that all the persons of the Trinity are engaged in promoting it. We receive it from the mercy of the Father, by the mediation of the Son, and through the operation of the Holy Ghost. And yet many persons are found to neglect it! They deem it of little importance; although it excites so deep an interest in all the persons of the Godhead; although that interest has been exhibited to us by so many wonderful means; although it is for man that all these miracles of grace have been displayed, yet how little in general is he moved by a sense of his own wants, or by the mercy and goodness of God! But behold what ground of consolation and encouragement are exhibited for the returning penitent, The Father is mentioned to us as the God of hope: he invites all to come to him through the mediation of his Son, and to receive the blessings of reconciliation and peace: he has promised to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him; for every one that asketh receiveth, and be that seeketh findeth. dition, but the state of the mind: if there be peace and tranquillity within us, of how little moment are all things external! The man who believes in Christ Jesus, and is influenced by the Spirit of God, bas a source of consolation and of hope which nothing can disturb: be rises above all the changes and conflicts of this scene, to a purer sky, where the light of the Divine countenance shines serenely upon him; and peace, and hope, and joy, are shed abundantly around him. His treasure is in heaven, and his heart is there. He considers this transitory life as a short pilgrimage-a country in which he has no continuing city, and with which be has little farther concern in the way of sorrow or of joy, than as it affects his passage to his eternal home. Every successive day, in proportion as it weakens the hopes, and diminishes the prospects of those whose views are on this side the grave, serves only to animate his joy, and to enlarge his prospects. Though the outward man fails, the inward man is renewed day by day. The decay of the body, which so fearfully indicates to others their approaching dissolution, conveys the message to him that he is now to be set at liberty; to be released for ever from pain and anxiety, and to enter upon that glorious state, where peace and joy are to be his attendant portion. The moment which covers all other prospects with a veil of darkness, unfolds to him the realms of light, the kingdom of his Father and his God. The happiness which he tasted upon earth has now its consummation: the communications of the Spirit are no longer imparted to him through circuitous channels, but flow directly from the Fountain in all their fulness and their purity! MISCELLANEOUS. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. WHEN, several years since, I became acquainted with what is usually termed the Religious World, there appeared to prevail among the families composing it a jealousy, almost amounting to hard and uncompromising intolerance, of such books of amusement as professed to be compiled for the school-room library, unless the writers of these performances contrived to give them a decidedly religious tendency, or, at any rate, to wind up their stories with some very serious moral; and even then the compilations in question were seldom delivered out for perusal without many injunctions that the children were not to mind the entertaining part, but rather strain it out from the rest as vile and noxious. All this severity was one of the many exclusive systems which, in barring the door against a rush of possible, and, as I think, very probable, mischief, left no reasonable aperture for the ingress of what, under more liberal restrictions, might have been extremely beneficial. But the principles of the systematizers, in the instance referred to, were correct; and however injudiciously applied, the solicitude of the parents so applying them resulted, not from caprice, but from affection, and from a moral affection too, for their offspring, whose inexperienced years they dared not expose to the contagion even of contingent evil. The hearts, sir, of these philosophers were right; but when you remember the domestic libraries formed, or rather denuded, by their creed, and compare them with the copiousness and fashionable air of existing col lections, you will be tempted to suppose that the cautious philosophy of our earlier days resembled the scowling suspicions of still earlier monks, who hated every book which was new, without taking the trouble to ascertain whether its contents were really as novel as its exterior. The The desert book-cases which held their stations some thirty years ago along the parlour wall, locked sufficiently melancholy and sepulchral, and as though they had been constructed to imprison the spectres of departed literature; while their scanty and uncouth contents reminded one of the organic reliquiæ arranged in the cabinets of the fossilist, and which show fragments of what were the herbaceous and animal products of a former, and perhaps an antediluvian world. lapse, however, of about one quarter of a century, has produced an unforeseen revolution in the lettered taste of the religious public; and I, for one, have witnessed, with no very pleasurable feelings, the rise and rapid growth of a new order of things. I do not, in the spirit of a modern recluse, complain of it on the bare score of novelty: it is on far stronger grounds that I object to it, especially in the arrangements and general character of domestic literature among such persons as are, or ought to be, by their knowledge and profession of religion, self-excluded from any very familiar intimacy with the babits stigmatized by themselves as properly worldly. To come to the immediate subject of this address, how are we to account for the present naturalization of fashionable literature in Christian families; and espe cially of one class of books which in other days was universally interdicted in the self-same circle-novels? Observe, sir, I do not prefer this inquiry to the governors and members of families in general, but to those, and those exclusively, who speak of the line of demarcation necessarily separating the two grand moral divisions of society. By what ever name you choose to characterize these, it is perfectly well understood by the parties directly concerned in the matter under discussion, that there ought to be a difference, a definable difference, between themselves and the unthinking crowds which trifle and glitter around them. Distinctions created by mere phraseology, costume, modes of address, or even adhesion to a religious sect, may exist, without any salutary influence on the mind; so that individuals very widely separated from the rest of the species by language, livery, and ceremonial, may be quite as irreligious as their fellows, and thus be only worldlings in masquerade. But the difference supposed, and required, by Christi anity itself in its disciples, affects the current feelings, the tone and leading character of the mind, its usual train of thought, and its gratifications. If such be a correct view of this difference, it follows that spiritually-minded persons cannot meet the world at large in its modes of pleasure, without a violation of their principle. How then is the phenomenon to be explained, that two parties, professing to be (in relation to the objects severally pursued by them) irreconcileably disunited, do yet consent to be allied in their taste for the popular literature of the times? The same airy, sparkling, effeminate systems of philosophy-the same impassioned volumes of poetry-the same novels, polluted as they are by levity, profaneness, and false estimates of bu man obligation, seem to be dividing, with ominous equality, the applauses of the two moral divisions It is indeed pleaded, that, from the refinement of the age, works of fiction are no longer stained with the indecorum which characterizes the writings of Fielding, Smollett, and the novelists of their times. The plea is just; and if the expediency of encouraging works of fiction depended upon their comparative, or even their positive purity, the question would generally be determined in favour of modern writers-as far, at least, as the majority are concerned. But it argues a portentous want of moral feeling when an apologist for novels insists on a formal production of expressions and sentiments obviously and flagrantly bad.* -He would be but an unskilful artist, * An admired and truly British painter of the French character observes: "In Paris there is nothing seen painfully to offend the eye; and this is enough to satisfy the Parisians that they ought not to shock the mind. They know nothing of the difference between virtue and vice as a matter of feeling. It must take the tangible and palpable shape of an action before they can perceive it; and even then their perception is not always correct. Where principles are unsettled, and duties ill understood, and worse practised, the most vicious will assume a companionable decorum of behaviour; for they will feel that they must not go much out of the common way; and being on terms of familiarity with all around them, their iniquity will help to form a generally debased standard, instead of remaining distinct and odious, as a contrast to what is pure and valuable."--Scott's Visit to' Paris, ch. ix. 1 |