ish and trifling; and yet, perhaps, he had the most regular and most governed imagination of any man that ever lived, and observed the greatest decorum in his characters and descriptions. But who can declare the great things of God but he to whom God shall reveal them ?" This observation was worthy a most polite man, and ought to be of authority with all who are such, so far as to examine whether he spoke that as a man of a just taste and judgment, or advanced it merely for the service of his doctrine as a clergy man. I am very confident, whoever reads the Gospels with a heart as much prepared in favour of them as when he sits down to Virgil or Homer, will find no passage there which is not told with more natural force than any episode in either of those wits, who were the chief of mere mankind. The last thing I read was the 24th chapter of St. Luke, which gives an account of the manner in which our Blessed Saviour, after his resurrection, joined with two disciples, on the way to Emmaus, as an ordinary traveller, and took the privilege as such to inquire of them what occasioned a sadness he observed in their countenances, or whether it was from any public cause: their wonder that any man so near Jerusalem should be a stranger to what had passed there; their acknowledgment to one they meet accidentally that they had believed in this Prophet; and that now, the third day after his death, they were in doubt as to their pleasing hope, which occasioned the heaviness he took notice of, -are all represented in a style which men of letters call the great and noble simplicity. The attention of the disciples, when he expounded the Scriptures concerning himself, his offering to take his leave of them, their fondness of his stay, and the manifestation of the great Guest whom they had entertained while he was yet at meat with them, are all incidents which wonderfully please the imagination of a Christian reader, and give to him something of that touch of mind which the brethren felt, when they said one to another, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures ?" I am very far from pretending to treat these matters as they deserve; but I hope those gentlemen who are qualified for it, and called to it, will forgive me, and consider that I speak as a mere secular man, impartially considering the effect which the Sacred Writings will have upon the soul of an intelligent reader; and it is some argument that a thing is the immediate work of God, when it so infinitely transcends all the labour of man. When I look upon Raphael's picture of our Saviour appearing to his disciples after his resurrection, I cannot but think the just disposition of that piece has in it the force of many volumes on the subject: the evangelists are easily distinguished from the rest by a passionate zeal and love which the painter has thrown in their faces; the huddled group of those who stand most distant are admirable representations of men abashed with their late unbelief and hardness of heart. And such endeavours as this of Raphael, and of all men not called to the altar, are collateral helps not to be despised by the Ministers of the Gospel. It is with this view that I presume upon subjects of this kind; and men may take up this paper, and be catched by an admonition under the disguise of a diversion. All the arts and sciences ought to be employed in one confederacy against the prevailing torrent of vice and impiety; and it will be no small step in the progress of religion, if it is as evident as it ought to be, that he wants the best taste and best sense a man can have, who is cold to the beauty of holiness. As for my part, when I have happened to attend the corpse of a friend to his interment, and have seen a graceful man at the entrance of a churchyard, who became the dignity of his function, and assumed an authority which is natural to truth, pronounce, "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die:"-I say, upon such an occasion, the retrospect upon past actions between the deceased, whom I followed, and myself, together with the many little circumstances that strike upon the soul, and alternately give grief and consolation, have vanished like a dream; and I have been relieved as by a voice from heaven, when the solemnity has proceeded, and after a long pause I have heard the servant of God utter, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." How have I been raised above this world, and all its regards, and how well prepared to receive the next sentence which the holy man has spoken, "We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" There are, I know, men of heavy temper, without genius, who can read these expressions of Scripture with as much indifference as they do the rest of these loose papers: however, I will not despair but to bring men of wit into a love and admiration of Sacred Writings; and, as old as I am, I promise myself to see the day, when it shall be as much the fashion among men of politeness to admire a rap. ture of St. Paul, as any fine expression of Virgil or Horace; and to see a well-dressed young man produce an Evangelist out of his pocket, and be no more out of countenance than if it were a classic printed by Elzevir. It is a gratitude that ought to be paid to Providence by men of distinguished faculties, to praise and adore the Author of their being with a spirit suitable to those faculties, and rouse slower men, by their words, actions, and writings, to a participation of their transports and thanksgivings. SECTION VIII. Against Atheism and Infidelity. -Procul, O procul este profani! VIRG. En. VI. 1. 258. Hence! far hence, O ye profane! THE watchman, who does me particular honours, as being the chief man in the lane, gave so very great a thump at my door last night that I awakened at the knock, and heard myself compli. mented with the usual salutation of, Good-mor row, Mr. Bickerstaff; Good-morrow, my masters all! The silence and darkness of the night dis posed me to be more than ordinarily serious; and as my attention was not drawn out among exterior objects by the avocations of sense, my thoughts naturally fell upon myself. I was considering, amidst the stillness of the night, what was the proper employment of a thinking being; what were the perfections it should propose to itself; and what the end it should aim at. My mind is of such a particular cast, that the falling of a shower of rain, or the whistling of wind, at such a time, is apt to fill my thoughts with something awful and solemn. I was in this disposition, when our bellman began his midnight homily (which he has been repeating to us every winter-night for these twenty years) with the usual exordium, Oh! mortal man, thou that art born in sin! Sentiments of this nature, which are in themselves just and reasonable, however debased by the circumstances that accompany them, do not fail to produce their natural effect in a mind that is not perverted and depraved by wrong notions of gallantry, politeness, and ridicule. The temper which I now found myself in, as well as the time of the year, put me in mind of those lines in Shakspeare, wherein, according to his agreeable wildness of imagination, he has wrought a country tradition into a beautiful piece of poetry. In the tragedy of Hamlet, where the ghost vanishes upon the cock's crowing, he takes occasion to mention its crowing all hours of the night about Christmas time, and to insinuate a kind of religious veneration for that season. It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes This admirable author, as well as the best and greatest men of all ages, and of all nations, seems to have had his mind thoroughly seasoned with religion, as is evident by many passages in his plays that would not be suffered by a modern |