The West Indians are waxing bolder than ever in their wickedness. Grand Juries have ignored the bills against the ringleaders in the demolition of the missionary chapels; and pretended "church unions"-most unchristian unions, which no English bishop, we are persuaded, can approve-have been formed for ejecting missionaries, and retaining the slaves in heathen darkness. There is much more that is revolting and horrible, which we must speedily advert to. The question is not generally known to the British public in its true bearings, or slavery would perish at a single stroke. The outrages in Ireland continue, and fearful deeds of bloodshed are constantly occurring. Government is exerting itself with some vigour and success in carrying into execution the late tithe act; but unless much more is done, not only must tithes fall, but the established church, and Ireland before long be virtually separated from England. The horrible familiarity of the peasantry with blood, is a most appalling feature of the state of affairs in Ireland. Let British Protestants not forget their persecuted brethren in their daily prayers and we venture to suggest that pecuniary liberality ought not to be neglected, as great numbers of Irish clergymen are plunged into the most distressing state of wretchedness; many are almost starving for want of the bare necessities of life. We may in a future Number state some most distressing and appalling facts, unless in the mean time the friends of religion and Protestantism, shall be induced to turn their attention to the subject, with a view to see whether any thing can be done to relieve the existing distresses. Surely our fellow-Protestant Christians in Ireland have as powerful a claim as expelled foreign patriots and Roman-Catholic refugees. The cholera seems, in the mercy of God, to be abating. It has been the means of calling forth a spirit of prayer, humiliation, and serious inquiry in many places; and God has been pleased in numerous instances, to hear and answer the supplications of his servants. We have to record the deaths of two individuals, eminent in their respective departments of life, but widely different departments, Sir Walter Scott and Dr. Adam Clarke. Of the former we need add nothing to what we have often stated, both of his much respected and beloved character and his splendid talents; though we have never disguised our earnest wish that the latter had been directed into some more valuable department of literature than that which occupied so many of his best years. We are not deeply read in his novels, but the irreverent use of Scripture language in some of them, is a transgression which must distress every thoughtful mind. They are however, we believe, remarkably pure and virtuous in their sentiments; and some of his other publications, especially his little historical works, are such as a Christian parent, who disapproves of even guarded novels, may cheerfully admit into his household. Of Dr. Clarke we have some very interesting memorials lying before us; but it were better to defer our notice of this eminently great, learned, and good man, till the intended publication of an authentic memoir of him, which we understand is in hand. We lament to hear on every side of the ill effects which have ensued from the Beer Act. The principle of that bill we thought excellent; both as it tended to encourage a cheaper and better article of wholesome beverage, and also to supercede spirit shops; but there must have been some serious defects in the details of the act, as distinct from its principle. These should be carefully investigated, and a well-digested plan drawn up to remedy them before the next session. The chief evil appears to us to be allowing beer to be drunk on the premises where it is sold, which is no part of the principle of the measure, and is rather in opposition to it. The parochial clergy will do well to take the matter into serious consideration, and to use their efforts for a salutary amendment of the act, without going back to the old regulations of unfair and impolitic restriction. The present system of excess and evil was never intended or suspected. Among the witnesses examined by the House of Commons' Committee upon dramatic literature was Mr. G. Coleman, the licenser, who it appears has exercised his anomalous function with a greater degree of propriety than pleases the stagemanagers, actors, the immoral part of the audience, and, we fear, by the cross questions put to him, some of the House of Commons' Committee. He is roughly handled in the committee for declaring that scriptural allusions ought not to be permitted on the stage; that they become profaned, and have an injurious effect upon the public feelings and manners; and that colloquial oaths and cursing are indecent and immoral. Some member, apparently vexed at these answers, taunts him with his own theatrical publications, and asks him if he did not himself introduce swearing and occasional scriptural allusions. With great manliness and right feeling he avows that he did so, but that he was at that time a younger man and "a careless immoral author," and that now "he would be very happy to relieve his mind from the recollection of having written those oaths." We copy these notices for the use of those who still maintain that the stage is a school for virtue. What must be the state of morals in the "dramatic circles" when a licenser is ridiculed for his fastidiousness merely for recommending the omission of oaths and irreverent Scriptural allusions. The House of Commons cross-examiner talks about 66 some very good joke about Eve," in one of Mr. Coleman's own plays; and when Mr. Coleman laments it as being "improper," the honourable member by his question attempts to defend it, on the ground that "the audience are always struck with it." We wish, for the sake of the ensuing elections, that we knew the name of the member who thus prefers dramatic effect to public decency. The continent of Europe is in a state of great peril. Holland and Belgium have not settled their differences; and France and England seem likely-most unwisely and unjustly in our view-to interpose with arms to arrange them. Germany is every where excited, in consequence of the measures of the Diet; but no open disturbances have yet occurred. Don Miguel and Don Pedro continue in arms in Portugal, without any decisive advantage hitherto on either side. alleged death of the king of Spain may, if true, lead to new disturbances, especially as there seems likely enough to be a civil war respecting the succession to the throne. We trust that England will not be actively drawn into any of these quarrels. The We omitted to mention in our late notices of French memoranda, the death of M. le Baron Cuvier, who held the responsible office of the direction of the affairs of the Protestants in France. His loss to science is very great: he was the first naturalist of his age; and "the Christian part of his countrymen," says one of his eulogists, " rejoiced to see in the labours which constituted the basis of his fame, none of those elements of fragility which mark the conclusions of science, when opposed to the word of God." We expressly transcribe this part of the encomium of his Christian friends, because he has been accused in this country, by some writers who evidently did not understand him, of contravening the Mosaic account of the creation. M. de Staël once remarked, that every age, as well as individual, has its specific duty; and that the duty of the nineteenth century is to bring science in all its discoveries to bear upon religion, and to corroborate (if so we may speak) the word of God. The researches of Cuvier did this. His scientific conclusions relative to the order in which man was created, coincide with the Mosaic narrative, and refute the objections of other less cautious or less skilful naturalists. He shews that no authentic tradition reaches beyond the first æra of the Bible; and he derives all mankind from one stock, and from the regions of central Asia. His last occupations were devoted to a kindred object. In his admirable lectures in the college of France, he refuted certain naturalists, who, to overturn the doctrine of final causes, teach that there was originally but one kind of animal, a mere chance in the infinite mutations of matter in eternal ages, and that from this have arisen all others, modified by appetency. Man is thus accounted a mere worm, or polypus, which happens by chance to have been more developed than his kindred worms, or polypi, and owing all his superiority to a happy accident. Cuvier's demonstrations overturned this absurd theory, and formed an excellent course of natural theology, the more valuable as being the result of independent science. His infidel opposers, in consequence, accused him of being prejudiced, of philosophising under prepossession, and being as bigotted as a Papist ; because he did not believe, for example, that the giraffe had gradually grown so tall through many gradations, from wormhood, by the necessity of browzing on high branches; and that the human hand, the whale's foot, and the dolphin's fin are one original member variously modified; and the brain of man only an improvement on that of a bird or fish. Paley thought it necessary to refute this doctrine of appetency and for this purpose adduces in particular two remarkable instances; the strap that binds down the tendons at the ankle, and the valves connected with the circulation of the blood, which could not be generated by appetency, as they actually oppose it. But we are not writing a history of Cuvier's life or discoveries. Our readers will not have forgotten the interesting Obituary of his admirable daughter, in our volume for 1828, p. 531. We forgot to mention some time since that a decree of the grand council of Berne had reversed the act of the secret council of June 1829, by which thirty inhabitants of the canton, several of them husbands and fathers of families, were banished for the crime of worshipping God according to their conscience. The Bishop of New York has issued a circular to the clergy of his diocese in reference to the cholera; with two prayers for the occasion, which are those appointed last winter by the heads of the church in England. It is pleasing to see that our daughter or sister church, while she has followed her ritual, does not think it necessary for the assertion of her independence to disdain to receive from us even an occasional form of prayer. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. J. S.-H.; AMBIDEXTER; P. H. D.; S. N. J. M.; ZENAS; TYRO; AN UNKNOWN FRIEND; Eλaxioтos; and TRANSCRIPTOR; are under consideration. SUPPLEMENT TO RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY. BRITISH AND FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY. THE DIFFICULTIES OF CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. SEVERAL years ago I was requested to draw up memoirs of a good man, then lately dead; who, having long filled a public situation, was well known not only in his own extensive circle, but generally throughout the Christian world. There were local and relational reasons why I should undertake the task; and as I had been on terms of familiar intimacy with the party in question, this circumstance was mentioned as emphatically appointing myself to the office of biographer. The decision of my friends was ostensibly just, as grounded upon personal knowledge of the departed; but this very familiarity presented difficulties which I could not meet. Eusebius (so I will call him) was a holy man; but he had many blemishes, to say the least of them; and such as shewed themselves to the wide world in their milder forms, while they assumed a more determined character of error and inconsistency in the little world of home. Without going into farther detail, you will easily understand a state of embarrassment, which ended in my finally declining an attempt to tell all sides, and yet gratify many who almost idolized his memory. There were other considerations tending to such an issue. I had read -as all of us have-many obituaries of persons who seemed to shine brighter in death-bed scenes than they ever shone before; and as epitaphs are proverbially a compound of adulation and irony, a like character has often marked the recital of what has passed before posthumous fame was superadded. Dr. Johnson once said, "Few persons die without affectation,"―a declaration which appears highly offensive and cruel, when first heard; but, if patiently examined by persons capable of analysing our wayward nature, discovered to be the assertion of one who knew mankind, and had sufficient independence of mind to speak the truth, at the risk of creating strong disgust before it could be dispelled by reflection. And what do the insulated events of death prove? Partisans of any cause are elated when their leaders die with composure and fortitude; particularly if they expire under the terrors of The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, Luke's iron crown, and Damiens' bed of steelcircumstances of the last hour, which are used up in forming the heroworship both of the Papal and Protestant world. The cavaliers of the seventeenth century exulted in the scaffold-anecdotes of the heroism of Laud and Charles I.; but a few years afterwards the regicides themselves kissed the stake with the spirit of a rival martyrdom. They suffered, says Burnet, "with much firmness and shew of piety, justifying all they had done, not without a seeming joy for their suffering on that account; so that the king CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 371. 4 U was advised not to proceed farther..... Harrison went through all the indignities and severities of his execution, in which the letter of the law in cases of treason was punctually observed, with a calmness, or rather cheerfulness, that astonished the spectators," To this may be added the testimony of the high monarchist, Hume: "No saint or confessor ever went to martyrdom with more assured confidence of heaven, than was expressed by those criminals, even when the terrors of immediate death, joined to so many indignities, were set before them." The story of what seemed to be the supernatural fortitude of Damiens and of Ravaillac, under the most terrific tortures, is well known. I only mention these several examples of what shall I call them?-affectation, fanaticism, vain-glory; or submission, confidence, resignation? Whatever they were, all I wish to insist upon is, the danger of estimating any man's character by what may be said by rote, or by imitation in his final moments, rather than from the tone of his previous life. How much this argument is strengthened by what we read so frequently in the newspapers, about the happy and triumphant deaths of felons at the gallows, need not be particularized. Even Cook the murderer of Mr. Paas has been almost canonized. Eusebius died suddenly, and of course there was nothing to tell of his death-bed and last sayings; but it is too evident, that what is considered to be an impressive death-scene appears to lay the narrator under a kind of necessity to support the final circumstances of life, by recurring to the party's former opinions and conduct. His temptation is to make too much of these, in order to consolidate a consistent report. I am, indeed, painfully aware of the anxiety we all feel, on summing up the evidence of a departed friend's sincerity, in cases of a dubious character, to interpret even anomalous proofs with the utmost favourableness, and to substantiate the very shadows of religious principle. But no one needs to be offended by such anxiety. It is at once a personal and a Christian feeling. Yet we are not to merge the solemnities of eternity in emotions of human tenderness and sympathy. If an individual seem to die well, we ought to be thankful for this apparent indication of hopeful character and divine support. But if the death is to be substituted for the life, or the last twenty days for the last thirty years,—or if there be a positive disproportion between the high triumphs of death and the unsatisfactoriness of a long profession of religion which shone with a feeble, uncertain, and flickering light,-it may be better to rest on the death-bed hope, than to grope our backward way into preceding glooms, in search of evidences. No one who believes the Gospel of salvation can doubt as to the extent of the exercise of Divine grace; or that God can and does save at the eleventh hour. But this is not the question. Christian biography is chiefly meant to exemplify the influence of Christianity, and thence to teach the infidel world that it is no "cunningly devised fable;" while it is also intended to confirm and animate believers themselves, not merely in the prospect of their deaths, but in the conduct of their lives. The obituary of an inconsistent or suspicious religionist is frequently a premium upon insincerity. It is observable also, that when the dead are praised, it is often with such indiscrimination and commonness of eulogy as to mean nothing. Of the Earl of Radnor, for example, who died in 1776, Sir James Stonhouse wrote,-"In the conjugal relation, his lordship was indulgent and constant; in his parental, affectionate and judicious; as a member of society, active and benevolent; as a peer of the realm, loyal and independent; as a Christian, uniform and exemplary *." All this might be true of his lordship; but who does not see that the printer might retain such an encomium in type till the death Letters to the Rev. Thomas Stedman. No. X. of the next peer, who should be judged to merit a similar generality of praise? And this involves another difficulty of religious biography. It is often very proper and edifying to preach a funeral sermon, and to annex an obituary of the deceased in an appendix, for circulation within his own vicinity; but if an exemplary person dies in Northumberland, and another in Devonshire, and if-as is often the fact-the same obituary mutatis mutandis will do for both, it would seem to be inexpedient to send either to the Christian Observer, or any other Magazine, and much more so to manufacture a volume on the occasion. This is not suggested in order to discourage the publication of the lives of good men, but to induce the compilers of such memorials to be discriminative and select in their composition. And it may be here mentioned to their encouragement, that scarcely the most obscure Christian passes through life without leaving some insulated anecdote or incident, or local peculiarity, which so far might make a narrative original. To say, when a pious clergyman dies, that he was a faithful pastor in the pulpit and in the parish, and an excellent Christian in private life, and subscribed to the Bible and Church Missionary Societies, and had a Sunday-school, and distributed tracts, is to add not a tittle to our treasures of biography. 'Twas his-and his-and may be said of thousands! Only adduce some specific and impressive illustration of general facts, which marked out any given character, and tends to rivet the eye that languidly wanders over paragraphs already written about other men; and twenty lines so acuminated will recur to the memory, when whole pages of mere repetition are forgotten. I remember reading in a country church, the epitaph of a clergyman, which, after the common inscription of name and dates ended thus :-" Whose usual saying was, that a parson should die preaching and praying, and who fulfilled his own words." I have forgotten even the church where I saw the monumental tablet, as well as the clergyman's name, in fact, every thing but the aphorism, and this has dwelt in my recollection for upwards of five and twenty years *. The words of the wise are as goads.' Are But the greatest difficulty of Christian biography remains behind. we to tell the faults of good men; and if so, how are we to tell them? A faithful chronicler, as such, is surely bound to conceal nothing. In Foster's pungent essay on a man's writing memoirs of himself, we are indirectly instructed how absurd it is to describe the externals of character, while we cover up the interior. All of us naturally come abroad in our holiday dresses, when we ought to be seen in the coarse and dirty habiliments of this work-day world; as a Quaker once said to a lover, "Go a courting, friend, in thy every-day clothes." Few lovers are likely to do this; and few biographers to delineate their subject with the fidelity here implied. The late venerable Mr. Scott, says: 'I like much Mr. sermon on Mr. ; but nothing of defect is admitted: it is too unqualified praise: it tends to make me despond; and it led me to say, Some persons will ere long tell lies of me also. I admire Mr. Milner's plan about Mr. Howard: state debtor and creditor. If we have any thing good about us, there is a set off; and it is best that it should be in some measure stated." To this his biographer Mr. John Scott, adds :-" I must confess that the rule laid down in the closing sentence, unless its restric -'s An illustration of this is, or was, on the tomb of Donne or Sir Henry Wotton, in something of this kind, "He was the author of the opinion Disputandi Pruritus Ecclesia Scabies;" an aphorism, by the way, of no great sagacity, and easily abused by any one too indifferent to truth to be willing to defend it. Were the controversial writings of the Reformers an example of ecclesiastical leprosy, or of their anxiety to fortify and garrison the Protestant citadel? Yet the Papists doubtless thought that they must have had a strange itch for wrangling. |