Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

"Those parents who are gifted with learning and piety are by no means released from the duty of training up their offspring in the way they should go, because an important auxiliary is afforded them. All their duties are still to be performed. They are still to bring their children to the footstool of Jehovah's throne, and to teach them to pray to their Father who is in heaven; they are still to read and explain to them the word of life, and to lead them to look through nature up to nature's God.'"

"All of us, my brethren, have it in our power to assist, more or less, the maintenance of this powerful engine in the cause of learning and religion. Although primarily intended for the poor, and the youthful poor, all may benefit, or be benefitted by it. Those who are blessed with children, although they may be intelligent and wealthy, should encourage them to attend, to set a good example to the poor, and to cheer those active and meritorious brethren who have here devoted themselves to God, by their countenance and confidence.

"Those whose minds are improved by due cultivation, and whose hearts have been touched by the Spirit of God, should share the delightful burden which they see their companions bearing.

"Those who are ignorant, although they may have passed the spring-time of life, should come and seek assistance, trusting that the good seed here implanted, even in a season somewhat advanced, may, when watered by the dews, and warmed by the mild influences of heaven, bring forth much fruit to immortal life.

"Those who have aught to give, should here come forward and confer the aid of generous contributions; for, although instruction is gratuitously con

ferred, there are many expenses incurred for a variety of useful purposes connected with the schools, which, unless defrayed by those who are gifted with this talent, necessarily impede their successful progress.

"Permit me, in conclusion, my brethren, to address a few words to those who, under this society, are conferring, and then to those who are receiving its salutary lessons. Those of you who are engaged in the communication of instruction, need not that I should impress on you the responsibility of your task; you need not that I should remind

you, that you owe much of your study, much of your prayerful intercession to those young children who are brought to you, like Samuel to Eli of old, and whom you are to direct, as he did his young disciple, to say to the Lord, Speak, for thy servant heareth; for you are undoubtedly led to the course you are pursuing by a sense of sacred duty.

"In the world, and by the worldly, such instructors are sought as possess splendid talents and extensive acquirements, although they may be destitute of all holiness, and of all sense of accountability to their God: but it is not so in the church.

"Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis,
"Troja eget."

"Although talent and learning are seen and welcomed among you, you are chiefly expected to seek that wisdom which is from above, and communicate it to the children of your care, to make them pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. You are to teach them that there is a wisdom of this world which is foolishness with God. The church cannot be too grateful to you for what you have done, and are doing; go on cheerfully in your valuable career. Should you be permitted to spend many days on earth, you may see some of these interesting youth filling those stations of usefulness and respectability here, for which they were prepared, by initiation, through your instrumentality, into knowledge and religion: and, in the world beyond the

grave, may hear some, who are commanded to take their stations among the highest hosts of cherubim and seraphim, claiming you as, under Christ, the winners of their souls."

"My young brethren, who are here receiving instruction, permit me to say a few words to you, which, although you may have often already heard, you may advantageously often hear again. You are now enjoying advantages which cannot be too highly prized placed, as you are, in a community, where merit is almost sure of its earthly reward, there is no station of usefulness and dignity to which good instructions well improved will not conduct you. But should it be your lot to pass unnoticed and unknown through this life, you here may gain those principles, and that information, which will conduct you, through divine grace, to immortal glory hereafter.

"Cherish a sense of affection and gratitude for those who, prompted by love for your souls, are now affording you the privileges you enjoy, and reward them as far as you can by your diligence and fidelity.

"The blessings you are receiving are not necessarily confined to yourselves. Should you be under parents who have no fear of God before their eyes, and whose hearts are not right in his sight, many opportunities may occur in which you can render them most important service. While you exhibit towards them all the reverence which their relationship and the command of your God require; there are times when you may successfully indulge in meek remonstrances with them, on the error of their sentiments, and the laxity of their morals. Remember, that although days should speak, and multitudes of years should teach wisdom, there is a spirit in man, and that the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding; that great men are not always wise, neither do the aged always understand knowledge; that the young, who have the Spirit of God, may, many a time, call on the old, who have not, to hearken while they show their opinion.

"Above all, be frequent in your prayers, and let all your benefactors,

but especially your parents, be borne in them by you to your God. Who can say but they may have cause to thank the Almighty through eternity, that you here were enabled to receive instructions they could not, and would not give?"

For the Christian Journal.

REVIEW OF KRUITZNER.

LORD Byron, besides founding a tragedy on this tale, has given it a new circulation in the reading world. He states that it made a deep impression on him at the age of fourteen, and contains the germ of much that he has written. To this it must be added, we fear, that it has furnished, or at least developed, many of the dark traits supposed to exist in his own character. At all events, be the actual Lord Byron what he may, Kruitzner, as far as he goes, is a resemblance to the ideal Lord Byron of the public. And it is much to be feared that the same tale, read in this connexion, may produce in others the bad effect it doubtless produced in him. If so, it is to be lamented that new editions of the work are now printing, and a public eagerness awakened, which must produce an extensive circulation of its mistaken and even mischievous contents.

Kruitzner is a tale founded on both mistaken and mischievous principlės. Its moral is indeed good. But it belongs to that class of works, which open and develope certain bad feelings naturally latent within us, which ought never to see the light; or rather, which ought never to be seen in a merely critical light. Every man has some fault or latent sin, which he can keep under by moral and religious principles; but which, if he learn to regard it with a merely scientific or curious eye, may become too familiar to him, and lose gradually its repulsive aspect. Evil in such a case becomes rather a phenomenon for investigation, or perhaps merely to be gazed upon, and that till we become familiar with it, than a violence done to the moral instinct. The chemist and anatomist subdue many feelings of disgust in the practical department of those sciences; and it is to be feared that inward disgusts of more

vital importance will insensibly be weakened by becoming conversant with the phenomena and operation of frail or wicked propensities. Passions and sentiments of which one might for ever have been almost unconscious, will be penetrated to, and exposed, and roused, by the merely curious and unsanctified knowledge of itself which the heart thus acquires. The very brooding of the mind will quicken a germ within it, which otherwise would have perished. How far such brooding and wrong study may have injured Lord Byron, is for himself to judge. They certainly will injure others.

There are many novels chargeable with this bad tendency; or, at least, there were many such, the contemporaries of Kruitzner. And this latter, as if to mark its affinity, is a German tale, though written in English. The hero is the son of a Bohemian count; a voluptuary; full of self in all its forms; self-love, and self-will, and self-conceit. He disgraces himself in public stations; and then, without waiting for reproaches, abandons his father and his home. After rioting for a period in the wealth he carred off, he begins to fear its too great diminution; at length, under an assumed name, he marries an amiable woman in humble life; some years afterwards, he is encouraged by his father to expect a reconciliation; but on his way home, travelling without his wife and son, he gives himself up for three months to the "vices which had already made a wreck of his honour and his peace;" he is again discarded, when his father is informed of his misdoings, but is permitted to send his son to be brought up as the heir of the old count. Many years afterwards, his supplies failing, and hearing of his father's death, and of the danger of the interference of a collateral relative to obtain the estates, he undertakes to return to them, with his wife and another child; they are detained by sickness on the road; are beset by the emissaries of his rival relation; under very tempting circumstances of both need and secrecy he commits a theft; the next day he is unexpectedly joined by his long absent son, who mentions the robbery with the due proportion of severe words, as

"villain" and "ruffian." These appellations sting the father, and he declares himself to be that ruffian; the son and the father agree to cast the blame on a suspicious stranger then with them; on the same individual is laid the charge of the murder of the obnoxious relative which occurs the night following. Kruitzner, with his wife and youngest child, escapes, arrives at his paternal domains, and is acknowledged; the elder son soon joins them, and is gradually discovered by the father to be as bad as himself. At length the stranger formerly accused unexpectedly appears, and assures the father, in the presence of his son, that that son was the murderer of the relative before mentioned; the son acknowledges the crime with the most abandoned unconcern, flies and joins (or rather rejoins) a band of robbers, and is slain in an attack on them. The father, never happy, becomes completely broken-hearted, and dies. Such are the outlines of the tale. It shows that a bad man may be punished in his fortune, in his children, and in his thoughts; the book will scarcely allow us to add, in his conscience. And this unquestionably, as far as it goes, is a good moral. But the interest of the reader is continually solicited or allured in behalf of this Kruitzner. He is accordingly introduced sick, distressed, and beset by spies; every way inviting pity. We are told indeed that he had

66

pride rather than dignity," and that "the love of pleasure (voluptuous dissipation) was the great spring of his soul;" and we see him, under a feigned name, communicating his disgrace to the honest family into which he married; but we are also informed, that "he was not a villain ;" his robbery is termed an "indiscretion;" and, " though the slave of passion, he was not deliberately capable of those actions it seemed to prompt." Kruitzner also is made to appear to advantage as compared with his son, whose character is an unfinished sketch of a most finished villain. These features of the book are sufficient to destroy all the beneficial effects of the moral connected with the story.

But the more important objection is

[ocr errors]

the philosophy or metaphysics occasionally introduced, relating to the mental course and progress of sin, which so captivated Lord Byron. It may be very scientific to ascribe the "undermining of parental duty and affection" to a "pride," which mistook the advantages of education, fortune, rank, and ancestry, for a personal gift, and thus" resolved not to be accountable to man;" but it would be vastly more practical to exhibit this want of filial love as a hardened contempt of the laws of God and nature, and of men. It may be true, as a metaphysical curiosity, that a latent pride is the seed of such fruit; but this truth is not formidable enough for moral purposes; for the seed is so small as scarcely to attract notice, much less receive reprobation; and when the fruit appears,-why, fruit from the seed is but the course of nature, and the unfortunate person is rather to be pitied than condemned! This sentiment is avòwed in another passage, in which it is declared, that particular circumstances might render him of necessity the very villain" it had been suspected he would prove:" a villain from necessity! a philosophical mode of speech, intimating that strong difficulties and temptations take away the sinfulness of sin! nine out of ten of mankind who thus study the metaphysics of their evil deeds, will be apt to forget their moral burden on the conscience.

66

To selfishnes and pride all the faults of Kruitzner are ascribed. When he resolves to address an amiable woman, leaving her unsuspicious of his bad name, lest he should be repulsed, the theory of his baseness is, "it had never made a part of his character to contend with any passion:" how piti ful, in a moral view, is such a remark on a procedure so vile! it should have been branded as meanness and fraud; but such plain dealing with Kruitzner would have demolished the hero of the story. When, long after marriage, he relapsed into vice and excess, it was because the hope of reconciliation with his father renewed his arrogance and conceit, and imagined importance, and led him to "self-applause and congratulation," and "his pride demanded

an indemnification for the privations [of voluptuous debauchery !] it had long undergone." When again he steals a "rouleau of gold," his yielding to the temptation is accounted for on the same principle; "how should he who had never known what it was to contend with one imperious wish now stem the torrent?" And, to the same effect, in every ebullition of pas-" sion, and in every difficulty, Kruitzner does wrong simply because he had begun wrong, and must, for good metaphysical reasons, so continue. So that though the narrative has a moral, technically speaking, it is yet utterly deficient in sound moral principles. Nay, there are even sly attacks upon religion: "the region of eternal blessedness is to be occupied by minds, not bodies;" that is, there is no resurrection of the body. And it is doubtless on this account that we are to expect, in the future world, "to know [recognise] each other by the sympathetic influence of the virtues and affections!" The opinion of Job was, that after worms had destroyed him, he should yet, in his body, see God, and his eyes behold him, and of course, that he should, in his body, and with his eyes, see and know his fellow saints.

In conclusion, this petty novel would not be worthy of a review,but for the artificial notoriety which it gains by Lord Byron's commendation. Perhaps it would be a good enough book of its kind, as good almost as some of Miss Edgeworth's, if it had not now received so fatal a key for its interpretation, as the having had a share in forming the character of that unhappily conspicuous nobleman. Under all the circumstances, it seems proper to expose its contents in their true light, lest other minds should unwarily find in it the same dangerous attractions. MILES.

For the Christian Journal. On the word CATHOLIC. In the prayer for all conditions of men, the following supplication occurs: "More especially we pray for thy holy church universal; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call them

selves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of Spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life." This petition is a comprehensive and admirable one. It shows us what is meant by the term "church universal," the body of Christ and contains a brief yet full supplication for what is necessary to the true interests of our Saviour's kingdom on earth.

It seems, on referring to the English Prayer Book, the term "Catholic" occurs in those petitions, where we use the word "universal." The words are of the same import. But, unfortunately, in our country, and even among churchmen, the term " Catholic" is almost exclusively applied to members of the Romish communion. We speak of the church of Rome as "the Catholic Church." Did we reflect for a moment, we could hardly fail to notice the impropriety of this exclusive application of the term. Our church is as strictly Catholic, or universal, as the Greek church, or the church of Rome; perhaps more so:--at least, we think so; for we hold ourselves to be the true church, purged from the errors of Popery, and equally as far removed from the laxity and false discipline of sectaries. In the words of the 19th article, we conceive our's to be "the visible church of Christ," that " Congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly administered according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same. The same article gives us the true ground of our being more Catholic-more truly the universal church-than the church of Rome. What says it?-It speaks of our purgation from their errors :- "As the church of Hierusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith:" and it is our church that has discarded their errors in all these particulars.

The first thing to be done, in regard to the church, is to settle our faith as to the prominent points of religion, and thence draw our notions of a true

church: and, not like the Romanists, begin with the notion of a church, and thence go to the doctrine.*. If the former be done, there can be little doubt as to the result. We shall no longer be censured for saying that we tread in the steps of the apostles and prophets-for saying that our's is indeed a truly Catholic and apostolic church. Such it will be found to be in every essential requisite, by him who candidly and without prejudice examines the subject. But this, it may be said, is assertion without proof: nevertheless, it may be shown to be an opinion drawn from frequent observation, and confirmed by long experience.

son,

Are we not then Catholic in the truest and fullest sense of the word? "When I say, I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," says Bishop Pear"I mean that there is a church which is holy, and which is Catholic; and I understand that church alone which is both Catholic and holy." To whom then will this apply? to the church of Rome? Is it both Catholic and holy? Who will pretend to justify its corruptions of primitive Christianity? And if it is not holy, who will presume to say it can, in the fullest sense, be Catholic? "All churches which retain the Catholic faith, are Catholic churches." Those churches must be Catholic which are derived immediately from the apostolic times, and are distinguished by apostolic faith, ministry, and ordinances. "When the church is taken for the persons making profession of the Christian faith, the Catholic is added in opposition to hereticks and schismaticks, expressing a particular church continuing in the true faith, with the rest of the church of God, as the Catholic church in Smyrna, the Catholic church in England," &c.‡

From the above remarks, it seems that our church is properly "the Catholic;" for it professes "all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same." Churchmen ought therefore to

* See Burnett on the 39 articles-art. 19. Exposition of the Creed, p. 335, folio. + Ibid. p. 347.

§ Catholic-its etymology is this:-Kaba, sicut; and oxos, universus, totus: according to the whole, i. e. according to the whole, er

« PreviousContinue »