sketched, than in the words of a Funeral Discourse pronounced by the Rev. Dr. Gilman, in the Unitarian Church of Charleston, upon receipt of the news of his death.

Although educated a Calvinist, and having commenced preaching in the belief of that religious denomination, yet his mind had long been gradually assuming more liberal views of Christianity. He had been an associate of the youthful and eloquent Buckminster, and was intimate with the excellent Dr. Parker, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Accordingly he entered with the fullest and most active sympathy into all the struggles, principles, and conduct of the Rev. Mr. Forster. When Mr. Forster felt constrained to promulgate those views of Unitarian Christianity which resulted in the separation of this Church, he was countenanced and supported in the most effectual manner by Mr. Hurlbut, who, in conjunction with the late Judge Lee, Mr. Hugh Paterson, and several other votaries of religious liberty, secured the existence, establishment, and subsequent prosperity of this religious society. He was willing to stake his popularity, his standing, and his prospects of future support on a cause, which he deemed to involve the best and dearest interests of society, and which, from profound and patient study, he felt convinced was identical with all necessary and fundamental Religious Truth. Few of you, who are now enjoying in quiet your spiritual privileges, can appreciate the degree of Christian heroism required to introduce a new modification of religion against the prejudices, convictions, and opposition of a whole community. But with all the tremulous uncertainty of the experiment, Mr. Hurlbut and his coadjutors manfully took their stand. He defended the Ark in which were deposited his most precious spiritual treasures, by his tongue, by his pen, by his substance, by the sacrifice of his ease, and the exposure of all those earthly blessings, which less disinterested men imagine are the first to be looked after. He wrote several impressive essays in the Unitarian Defendant, published in this city in 1822. He published a charming life of Mr. Forster, which he prefixed to a volume of Sermons by that lamented divine; and he still continued to enlighten and favor the public by several essays inserted in the Christian Examiner* and among the Tracts of the American Unitarian Association. But it was not so much by his active public exertions, or by the multiplication of his felicitous writings, as by the experimental work

* Mr. Hurlbut was the author of two articles in the Examiner, the first in the No. for March, 1837, on "Furness's Remarks on the Four Gospels;" the second in the No. for March, 1839, On the Genius and Character of Scott. ED.

ings of Religion in his interior character, that Mr. Hurlbut deserved the epithet of godly presented in our text. (Psalms xii. 1.) He cherished an habitual, living, perceptible sense of the Divine Government in the world. You could not be acquainted with him without recognising the power and beauty of his faith. I never saw, and I never read, in any instance of an uninspired character, of the sentiment of religion employed so availably, so efficaciously, so successfully, and even so triumphantly, against the mighty inroads of affliction and adversity, as in the case of him to whom these brief and imperfect notices are devoted. Storm after storm of disaster fell upon him; child after child of extraordinary and precocious promise was snatched from his embrace; year after year of pain, debility, and disease seemed to drag him through existence, yet still you found him erect, elastic, calm, cheerful even, for his soul amidst every earthquake had leaned palpably upon its God. This was not stoical indifference, for he had the keen suscepti bilities of a child. It was the power of his clear and deliberate faith. Thus he continued to the last. Death came upon him unexpectedly indeed, but took him not by surprise. He calmly made his preparations as for a journey of tomorrow morning. 'I shall soon be with them,' he said, alluding to the departed spirits of his family. Wearied and shattered but not crushed or subdued, the Hero of many a mighty moral struggle, the sympathizing follower of Him who was the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, he wrapped his drapery around him, and after a pilgrimage of sixty-three years, he fell asleep, or rather he awoke to an eternal existence."

Such is some outline of the life of one whose desert was of that retiring nature, whose pursuits and habits were so secluded and domestic, that they claimed and received none of that public and popular reward which the force of circumstances frequently bestows upon less attainments. His light never shone in public, except when struck out by collision with what he conceived popular error, and only on rare occasions did he put forth his powers. The strength of his intellect, and the solidity of his moral faculties, were only equalled by the depth of his affections; and hence resulted a character of rare balance and harmony fully equipped either to act or to suffer.

To

He has fought the good fight, and left to those whose career has not yet closed "the memory of a well spent life." those who knew and regarded him, in the words of his Master we would say, "If ye loved me ye would rejoice, because I go to the Father."

S. A. H.

S. Beperd.

THE POET OF PUSEYISM.*

NOWADAYS every important movement even in politics and theology appears anxious to enlist the muses in its cause. Amongst us, songs have been found more potent for electioneering purposes than speeches; and inflammatory hymns have done more to promote fanaticism than the sermons of itinerant ranters, or the tracts of the champions of the Second Advent. Temperance and Anti-slavery owe no small degree of their progress to poetic aid. The cause of the slave especially has inspired some of the noblest lyrics in the language, and Longfellow and Whittier have sung of freedom to ears else deaf to its claims.

Our mother-country shows the same tendency to connect poetry with present interests. The Muses speak now from unwonted quarters and upon unwonted themes. Their voice is heard from busy factories and from learned halls. The Corn Law Rhymer sings sadly of the burdens of the poor, and calls sternly for reform. The Conservative wails over the irreverence and degeneracy of the times, and sighs for a return of those former and better days, when altar and throne were thought to stand side by side upon the rock of ages.

We propose to speak particularly of the poet of the most remarkable movement that is now going on in England. We are probably right in regarding the author of "The Cathedral," and "The Baptistery," as more eminently the bard of Puseyism than any other aspirant to the honor. By him (Isaac Williams is his name) the doctrines of the Oxford Tracts are virtually set to music, and made quite melodious. In fact, we are moved to believe, that the Oxford Movement owes much more of its diffusion to its poetry than to its theology. Dr. Pusey speaks of Keble's Christian Year, as the book that first awakened the English Church from its laxity and torpor, and became the herald of a new age. To us surely there is far more power in that beautiful volume than in all the Tracts.

*1. Thoughts in Past Years. By the Author of "The Cathedral." New York. 1841.-2. The Cathedral, or the Catholic and Apostolic Church in England. Third Edition. Oxford. 1841.-3. The Baptistery, or the way of Eternal Life. By the Author of "The Cathedral," Oxford. 1842.

We should be in much greater danger of being converted to the Oxford doctrine regarding the Holy Supper by Mr. Wil liams's exquisite Sacramental Hymn than by Dr. Pusey's ponderous sermon on the Eucharist, although we are not likely to be led by either of them into the idolatrous practice of worshipping bread and wine as very God.

It is obvious that the Oxford Divinity has some peculiar poetical capabilities. It idolizes antiquity, and has the affluence of the old ecclesiastical ages to supply images and associations. It is highly mystical, and allows a scope in finding double senses and spiritualizing the letter, that would astound a Transcendentalist and horrify a Swedenborgian. It revels

amid the ruins of the past, and finds its most precious themes in holy places that faith has adored and romance glorified. It stands moreover in such contrast with the general tendency of the times, as to find ample material for eloquent rebuke and admirable ground for a bold display of its marked characteristics. Its strains come upon the ear as a vesper hymn that should peal forth from some venerable cathedral in the midst of a bustling city, and bid the wayfarer quit the tumult, and enter and adore. There is an air of sadness moreover about these modern ascetics that is highly favorable to poetic feeling and effect. The deepest poetry as well as the holiest faith has been nurtured in the sanctuary of sorrow. We may see the truth of this in the sacred poets of Scripture, in the penitential Psalms and in the elegies of the prophets. "How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people," is a passage not only characteristic of Jeremiah the Jew, but of all the Jeremiahs who have mourned over a captive nation or a fallen church. These Anglo-Catholic Churchmen, as they style themselves, sigh for the return of the past; and as they consider the progress of what they call licentiousness, but the world calls reform, they wail forth their grief in plaintive notes, else indignantly appeal to the faithful to come and rescue the Holy Ark from Philistine hands. Now sorrow, especially when connected with lofty interests, is very capable of a poetic turn. It is far easier to sing of griefs than joys, even as it is easier to paint the clouds that darken the sky than the clear and almost living azure of an unclouded firmament; far easier to represent the varied colors of the broken solar beam than the colorless light of the undivided ray.

Dr. Johnson in his life of Waller has asserted, that religious

sentiments and the ideas of Christian Theology cannot be fitly applied to poetical purposes; and he spoke undoubtedly the truth so far as his own views of religion and theology are concerned. But his views of Christianity had neither the romance of the imaginative Catholic nor the freedom of the genial Protestant. The noblest poetry has been inspired by religious sentiment; yet we allow it to be very hazardous to try to connect dogmatic theology with poetry. Dante and

Milton, Tasso and Spenser show their religion in every canto, almost in every line; yet their poems are very little helped by the dogmas that now and then appear. Even Dante, in his attempt to construct Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, upon the true Catholic model, moves far more by his portraitures of character and pictures of scenery than by his exhibition of dogmas. It is a somewhat perilous experiment therefore for a writer to undertake to embody theology in verse and make dogmatists of the Muses. In fact the Muses, notwithstanding the Christian costume they have adopted in the Christian ages, often show a yearning for their pristine ways, and give evidence that the waters of Siloa have by no means cured them of their love of Helicon.

However it is far easier for a strong Churchman to embody his faith in poetry than for an Independent, especially one of any great Calvinistic bias. Calvinism is too metaphysical to admit of proper ideal imagery, and all true poets of this faith have most happily contrived to overlook their dogmas in their verse, and have owed their power to the proper treatment of those great moral and religious subjects, which concern all men and all creeds. How little Calvinism there is for instance in Cowper. Besides, Calvinism is too soul-crushing, too disparaging to the human will and affections to allow the poet free range through the world and free use of life's common scenes and characters. The Churchman loves to connect outward beauty with religion; and even shapes the decorations of the sanctuary in unison with his doctrines. The baptismal font and holy table not only have a picturesque beauty in the Cathedral, but are regarded as the great media of regeneration and life. Thus dogmatism is made beautiful, and a poem, like Keble's on Baptism or Williams's Sacramental Hymn, at once recalls a beautiful scene, and urges an alleged doctrine. Where forms are less regarded, the tendency is to forget outward beauty, and make religion either so metaphysical as to appeal solely to the intel