and oh! and at page 173 is a similar instance, which is almost ludicrous. There the interjection, to use a familiar Johnsonian phrase, is a kind of "interstice between two intersections," with neither of which has it the slightest connection or concern. "And why? O! He was preparing them to be most glorious vessels," &c. Now this is a false emphasis, a fictitious energy, a kind of trick in composition, to which writers of an inferior order may resort, but of which a mind like Mr. Kelly's, possessed as it is of sterling and inherent powers, can have no need whatever. The dwarf, desiring to appear of natural size, may walk on stilts, but there can be no pretext for such an appendage, such an encumbrance rather, to the full-grown and well-proportioned man. Another and a more serious blemish in this volume is the occasional occurrence of extreme and exaggerated statements. We do not mean by this, statements which are untrue in themselves; for Mr. Kelly is too deeply versed in the oracles of God to admit into his pages any error of doctrine; but statements, the language of which is so far overcharged, that the faithfulness of the portraiture would not be, as it ought to be, at once recognized and identified by ordinary readers. Examples of this may be found at pages 74 and 203, to which we could add others; but reviewers though we are by profession, and having practised the "ungentle craft" more or less for a quarter of a century, we really have not yet acquired any relish for finding fault, and therefore we will pass on to the more agrecable task of recommending Mr. Kelly's work, which we can do with great sincerity. Its blemishes are such as might be casily corrected; its beauties and its excellences are of no common order, and the lessons which it teaches are such as "cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof." In his first object, then, we think Mr. Kelly has completely succeeded. He arrests the attention of his readers; having arrested, he retains it; and retaining it to the end, we think he very rarely disappoints it. Whether this may not be partly owing to the plan which he has judiciously adopted, of closing each essay with a striking passage from some standard poet or eminent Divine, we do not stop to enquire; but on the whole we are fully satisfied that if, in the family circle, during any one of these readings, "edification ends," it will not be because "weariness begins." The tone both of style and sentiment may appear somewhat too highly elevated for families of the ordinary cast; but people, it has been said, rarely find fault with any thing because it is too good for them; and Mr. Kelly's mind is at once so fertile and so happy in the use of illustration and imagery, which are a language universally intelligible, that it more than compensates for any occa sional exuberance in his metaphors, or obscurity in his expressions. Besides, his Essays (the authoress of Rosanne would have called them Sermonets) are, if we may be allowed the expression, seasoned with Scripture, and will therefore be the more readily understood when the Bible is daily read in the domestic circle. Indeed, we do not expect, nor it is probable does Mr. Kelly, that his Sabbath Evening Readings will often find their way across any threshold, which the Ministering Angel of Domestic Prayer has not crossed before them. In order, however, that our readers may fully appreciate the justice of our remarks, we will furnish them with an entire "Reading" from Mr. Kelly's volume; and we shall think very meanly of our critical infallibility, if this sample docs not generate within them an appetite for the entire work: 66 THIRTY-FOURTH SUNDAY EVENING. "He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him."Heb. vii. 25. 6 "A beautiful illustration of the truth of this divine statement may be drawn from the manner in which our Lord's saving power was first exerted; and did we limit ourselves to the brief records of His life, during His sojourn upon earth, we should be supplied with abundant proofs to sustain the truth here asserted. From the very outset of his divine mission one design was manifest-that it was on the extremest cases his saving power was first to be tried. It was not to the comparatively sound and moral part of the community he addressed himself, but to the most corrupt and diseased. His words were, The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.' I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' His own favourite and oft-repeated emblem of himself was, the good shepherd leaving the ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness, and going in quest of the one that was lost. And some of the first and earliest trophies of His grace were won from amongst the lowest grades of guilt and depravity. Witness the unchaste woman, who wept the torrents of penitence at the Saviour's feet, which she wiped with the hairs of her head; witness the demoniac of Gadara-her, too, out of whom the seven devils were cast; Zacchæus, the publican; the thief, expiring on the cross, who owned him Lord; yea, his own murderers and crucifiers, they 'who with wicked hands, took him and slew him.' All he said and did was significant of the same. The Parables bespeak the same design-compassion for the guilty and miserable; yea, for the guiltiest, the most miserable, His miracles were expressive of the same. They were significant actions; and when He caused the blind to see, he meant to convey that there was no degree of spiritual blindness which he could not also remove; when He raised the dead to life, even after being four days in the place of corruption, he meant to convey that there was no stage of spiritual decay and death which could baffle his power to quicken and call the soul to life. These records leave on the mind the undoubted impression that there was no case of guilt beyond His ability to cure, no extremity of suffering beyond his compassion to relieve. And this prepares us to feel the force of the inference which the apostle has drawn. Man is still the same being he ever was the apostate; the child of wrath; the heir of remorse, and guilt and misery. Generation follows generation, like the dark and troubled waves of the ocean: the tide of human guilt flows black and polluted as ever; and every successive age is fruitful in its examples-numerous as the sands of the sea-of guilt, guilt of all shades, of all degrees of aggravation. Nothing has been which may not again be; for man's nature is not 6 altered-it is incurably diseased. Satan's power over him to deceive and to destroy is the same; the law's power over him to bind him under its curse and to stir up the latent enmity of his heart against it is the same; and, consequently, there is the same demand now as before, for all that makes Christ the Saviour, the Physician, the Deliverer of His people. The same cases are, as it were, daily brought before Him, which call for an exercise of the same skill, the same ability, the same compassion, in breaking the power of sin, in dissipating the blindness of the soul, in melting its obduracy, in soothing the pangs of remorse, in curing the wounds which sin and Satan have left. But the consolation of the believer and the glory of our dispensation is, that the Great High Priest of it is the same. Ages, as they roll on, make no difference in Him. His power and His compassion continue the same. With Him it is not as with men who may make some great, some extraordinary effort-an effort however which they may never be able to repeat again. No: His power is changeless as the sun in the firmament. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;' what he has once done he can again do, and will do to the end. Not one of the cures which he wrought can be looked upon in the light of some isolated one—a cure which stands without a parallelbut only as one specimen of a power, which is as equable as it is everlasting, and which he can exert as easily now as before. This is the consolation of the Christian, the stay of his soul under fears and misgivings. A strong temptation to the soul under conviction of sin is to have doubts as to the ability and willingness of our Great High Priest to save. When cases of extreme guilt which have been pardoned are named, it is supposed that there were in these cases, certain mitigating circumstances which are not to be found in their own, and that the pardon of such guilt as theirs would require an exercise of compassion and power even beyond any yet exercised by the Saviour. They consequently debar themselves from the comforts which the passage before us supplies; they see not that the power-the love-the compassion-the willingness to save,-yea, the joy over the returning sinner, is the same now as it ever was. The thought which harasses them is, that there is a limit to divine mercy, and that in their case that limit has been passed. But mark the latitude the passage before us assigns to the exercise of divine mercy. Even admitting that their guilt exceeded the guilt of all preceding times,-admitting it stood without parallel,-yet this would not leave them hopeless; for who will venture to say that the very worst case of human guilt which could be pardoned has already appeared? Who will say that there may not be in reserve a trophy of divine grace even still more amazing than any to be yet found in the past records of human guilt? Or, in short, who can say to use the pointed language of an old writer-who can say what God's uttermost' is? "Thy judgments, Lord, are just; thou lov'st to wear But mine is guilt, thou must not, canst not spare, Yes, O my God! such crimes as mine-so dread, I bless the avenging hand that lays me low. (pp. 136-141.) AN INAUGURAL ADDRESS, delivered by the Right Hon. WE have little inclination to offer to our readers any opinions of our own, on questions of general politics. We doubt, indeed, if those which we should be inclined to express, would find any response in the minds of the majority of those who peruse this periodical. It seems to us that there still exists, very extensively, a warmth of partizanship in favour of the present administration, which we do not wish to conceal that we have long since lost. Continuing to yield to the Queen's government, as the government, that degree of obedience and support to which it is entitled, we still cannot feel towards it as if no hopes had been disappointed, no principles forgotten. Maynooth continues to receive the patronage of the State: the national grant for the education of the poor Irish is given to the Romish priests and withheld from the Protestant clergy: the government of Canada is resigned to the French and Popish party: the New Poor Law is resolutely maintained in England. A party adhesion must be indeed of a blindfold character, which could survive in all its vigour these repeated shocks. Ours has long since sunk towards the point of temperate; and it depends on the future course of the government, whether it continues to sink towards the freezing point, or revives and rises to a more lively and genial elevation. But we forbear to proceed further on these topics. Our attention shall be limited to those productions of an eminent member of the administration, which the press brings in a formal manner under our notice. The public career of Mr. Gladstone has long attracted, and probably will increasingly attract, more attention than that of any other official man; and this for the obvious and abundantly sufficient reason, that men hope that they discern, and may continue to find, in him, something higher than the mere worldly statesman. However the Christianity of England may have elevated the tone of public morals above that known in many other countries, it is unhappily but too certain, that even the last forty years has witnessed little better, in the internal history of our cabinets, than a mere struggle for power. Nay, on a very late occasion, in the midst of parliament, the Prime Minister confessed himself unable to raise his ideas to the conception of a higher motive, for himself and his colleagues, than that of "an honourable ambition." But Mr. Gladstone has repeatedly adverted to higher and more enduring motives of action, and men are very naturally intent to observe whether his course will exhibit the practical influence of these motives on his own conduct. So far as he has hitherto gone, we should say that he has fallen somewhat short of his own aspirations and of other men's hopes. Something, perhaps, of this, arises from the difficult circumstances in which he is placed: something from the unfixedness of his own view. But, that we are not giving a prejudiced or unfavourable account of the matter, may be seen in the dead silence which followed the publication of his last volume; in the frequent discontent expressed during the last session of parliament; and in the recent strictures of the Times. The closing sentences of the article in the Foreign and Colonial Quarterly Review for January, which the public prints declare to be Mr. Gladstone's production, are as follows:-"Without anticipating experience, and while awaiting its instructions, we rest for the present, in the confident belief, first, that England, with courage and consistency, will succeed, and that ere long, in imparting to other nations much of the tone of her own commercial legislation: secondly, that in despite of her burdens and her disadvantages, she will maintain her commercial position among the nations of the world, provided only she can also maintain, or rather also elevate, the moral and spiritual life of her own children within her borders. Her material greatness has grown out of her social and religious soundness, and out of the power and integrity of individual character: let us hope that it will not re-act, that it is not re-acting by corroding contamination upon the stock from which it has sprung. It is well to talk of our geographical position but this does not alone make a nation great in industrial pursuits. There is our mineral wealth: not so much, probably, greater than that of other lands, as earlier extracted and employed; and whence proceeded that earlier extraction and application? There is our capital, the fruit of our accumulated industry: why does this exceed the capital of other nations, but because there was more industry, and therefore more accumulation? There are our inventions; they did not fall upon us from the clouds like the Ancilia of Rome; they are the index and the fruit of powerful and indefatigable thought, applied to their subject matter. It is in the creature MAN, such as God has made him in this island, that the moving cause of the commercial pre-eminence of the country is to We must plead guilty to the stupidity of not being able entirely to understand this sentence. |