groves,

and shade, or echoes the melodies of the and in every thrill of gratitude which is excited by domestic endearments and social pleasures? Such emotions, such gratitude, were ever stirring in the bosom of Doddridge; and it was never, therefore, true that he knew nothing of communion with God but by report and remembrance. His false theology

deceived him, by giving him wrong notions of the nature of communion with God.

We have referred to intermissions of his remorse and fear. There are such; but they are few, very few; and they are made up of rapturous emotions whose very nature is to be transient. We look in vain for the record of any one occasion of tranquil enjoyment of religious services. We do not, of course, suppose that there never were such. The composed spirit of some of his letters on religious subjects assures us that he found rest and peace in his dependence on God: but the private record before us bears no traces of such repose. We imagine that he had recourse to his Diary as a relief to his excited feelings, and that he was unwilling to disturb his calm states of mind by putting himself under the power of agitating associations. In other words, the substantial goodness of his religion was testified in the actions which he imagined to be the least religious; and its substantial peace experienced when he thought least about it. We, at least, see more of true religion in some of his gayest letters to his young friends than in the following retrospection, which it is but justice to extract, after having exhibited some of an opposite character:

In the prayer I had much communion with God; in the sermon little or none; but so much in the sacrament that my very heart was almost swallowed up. A variety of plain, solid, and natural thoughts sprung in upon my mind like water from a fountain, and gave unutterable pleasure. Many of them are vanished away; some few remain; the substance of which is as follows." (In all this we sympathize,

1

and would readily approve, if the thoughts were as he says, "plain, solid, and natural ;" but none such do we find in the abstract of his discourse, which is too long to be here given. The sentiments are flighty to an extraordinary degree. He goes on,) "Such were the workings of my heart at this most delightful and edifying ordinance. O! that it may not prove only a transient blaze of spirits; but that the happy consequences of it may go along with me into all the devotions and all the services that lie before me this month, and that I may be prepared for all the will of God!"—" This, like yesterday, has been a day of unmerited, unbounded goodness. I can hardly express the sweet communion with God which I had in his house and at his table. I had been discoursing on communion with him, and through grace I have felt it. A sermon composed under great deadness, which when I composed it I thought very meanly of, was delivered with great seriousness, spirit, and pleasure. It was the language not merely of my tongue, but of my heart. I had communion with God, as my compassionate, wise, almighty, bountiful Friend; with Christ as my atonement, righteousness, intercessor, head, and forerunner; and adored the divine grace for such manifestations to so guilty and wretched a creature."― pp. 342, 344.

We have referred to mistaken views of the design of prayer, and, therefore, we are unwilling to pass over this part of our subject without notice: but it is one of peculiar delicacy, and one on which we should scarcely have ventured to pronounce in the case of such a man as Doddridge, had not our astonishment, been excited by the record before us of his vestry retirements. How such minute considerations of time and circumstance could coexist with passionate devotion, we can scarcely imagine: and still less, what good consequences could be expected to arise from communion so pre-arranged, and limited, and regulated. Such regulations are the necessary condition at present of social worship; but why they should be brought into arbitrary connexion with. private devotion,

whose very essence is freedom, and how any wise man can attempt to determine his own precise state of feeling at any future moment, - how he can resolve at what, hour to be penitent, at what to rejoice for others, at what to mourn for himself, while, at the same time, devotion is made professedly to consist in impulses, we do indeed wonder. A few words from the Diary will suggest all we would say. Alone in the vestry,

"Till near one, I addressed myself to God in suitable thanksgivings, humiliations, and confessions; then nearly three quarters of an hour was spent in prayer for the increase of the church; in pleading many select promises before God, and interceding for my brethren and their societies, as well as for my own; nor shall it, I trust, be altogether vain. Then till twenty minutes past two, I drew up some maxims, agreeably to what I had intended to think of in relation to my daily conduct in general, and as to my behaviour as a husband, father, master, tutor, pastor, and correspondent, and some miscellaneous purposes, which then I turned into prayer, beseeching of God resolution and prudence; and concluded by recommending to him the labors of to-morrow."

p. 522.

We have not the heart to extract the record of one of these days of retirement, (dated June 1st, 1751,) which is one of the most afflicting confessions we have ever met with. We are glad to see it here, nevertheless; because it affords an unquestionable proof that bodily indisposition was the cause of much of the spiritual grief which this pious man experienced. The adherents of his theology will hasten to cast the burden of his conflicts on the peculiarities of his physical constitution; and it is very true that he was so framed as to be naturally indolent, yet excitable, subject to alternate raptures and deadness of feeling. What we complain of is, not that Doddridge was thus predisposed; but that his religion was one which incessantly aggravated, instead of alleviating, these natural evils. When in society, where he was exposed.

to the salutary checks arising from a diversity of opinions and sentiments, the religion of Doddridge exerted its pure and genuine influences. He was cheerful as innocent, and dignified as meek: but when removed from these restraints, he was wrought upon by the corrupt conceptions which carried fear and darkness into the deepest recesses of his spirit, or illumined them with a fitful and artificial light. Had Doddridge known God only as a tender Father, Christ only as his holy and approved messenger, sin and sorrow as finite and limited influences, holiness and peace as the natural and ultimate elements of being, how serene, how exalted, might have been his mortal life! As it was, how was it made up of extremes! Now weak, now mighty; in some things narrow and puerile, in others lofty and enlarged; now in raptures, now on the brink of despair; sometimes commanding our reverence, and sometimes pleading for our compassion. This is not what life is intended to be: such is not what the gospel is designed to make us. None ever surrendered himself more unconditionally to the workings of the Spirit than Doddridge. Alas for him that its operations were disturbed and perverted by human intervention!

We may say alas! for others also, to judge from the abstracts of his devotional services given in his Diary. We have never seen examples of a more imaginative, and less solid and profitable, style of preaching. Upon occasion, no doubt, very strong impressions must have been produced; but there is throughout an assumption of a very excited state of feeling in the hearers to begin with; and of a kind of excitement merely factitious, in very many instances. Such preaching is equally unlike the apostolic method, to which Doddridge would have done well to refer more frequently; and inapplicable to the spiritual state of men in this or in any other age.

The Editor of this volume will probably be as vehemently assailed on occasion of its appearance as he was when the first came out, to scandalize so many good people. We think him perfectly right, however, in presenting us with the whole truth, unacceptable as it will be to many, and painful as in some respects it must be to all. It is high time that some one should set an example of intrepid fidelity in the article of biography; and in no instance could the example be more useful than in the present. No wise man will think the worse of Doddridge for any thing he may have said of himself. What blame there is lies with his theology: what scandal there is rests with those who have hitherto misrepresented him. Doddridge is now proved to be, not exactly what he was thought to be, but something more. He is proved to have quite as strong a right to our admiration; quite as close a hold on our affections; while to these is added a new and irresistible claim to our compassion and respectful sympathy.

WEST INDIA SLAVERY.*

Ir a spirit from some higher region were moved by curiosity to visit our planet, what, in the circuit of the globe, would most excite his wonder and dismay? There is much in every inhabited clime which to a celestial mind must appear "most strange, most pitiful;" — much which cannot but draw down "tears such as angels weep." Here, oppression and answering degradation; there, lawlessness and violence; here, abject superstition; there, rebellion against

* The Death Warrant of Negro Slavery throughout the British Dominions. London: Hatchard and Son, and Arch. 1829. pp. 38.