you take a hint from them, to seek more earnestly and steadfastly the Lord, you will get good by them; and in this way you will get the better of them. So far as they are from the enemy of souls, he will desist, if he sees they make you more constant and earnest in prayer." "I am willing to hope I have already acknowledged your last favour, as I do not find any of yours among my large parcel of unanswered letters. But for fear I should have mislaid it, and might appear to you negligent or ungrateful, I snatch a little time to wait upon you with a few lines. I am under a necessity of learning to write as briefly as I well can to all my friends, for a season; for I have a long job in hand, the transcribing and revising my hymns, in which I cannot avail myself of the kind assistance you and Miss P-B- have repeatedly afforded me. And if I do not exercise some resolution and self-denial with respect to letter-writing, I should hardly get through it in a twelvemonth. Yet though I might transcribe a hymn or two while I am writing this, I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of inquiring after your welfare. You will please to remember, I can find time to read long letters, though not to write them. "Last Sunday evening my thoughts were led to a subject which I believe has very seldom been treated of in a public congregation. It was upon our faculty (if I may call it so) of dreaming. I cannot say that dreaming is an extraordinary phenomenon, be cause it happens to most people, and to many people almost every night. Yet if it were not so frequent, it would surely be thought wonderful: yea, it is so; though we are, for the most part, wonderfully inattentive to it. In considering it, I spoke of it as designed by Divine Providence to give us a standing and experi mental proof of two very important points, which are both much contested and denied by the wise infidels and sadducees of the present age. First, I think it an unanswerable evidence of the activity of the soul, that it is distinct from the body, and does not necessarily depend upon the body for its perception. In a dream we see, hear, speak, and feel, as distinctly as when we are awake. How wonderful is this! How analogous, in all probability, to the mode of communication which consists among disembodied spirits! What confounding and diversifying of images; what various scenes and prospects; what real impressions of joy, sorrow, fear, and surprise, do we meet with in our sleeping excursions! Secondly, I consider it a proof not to be gainsaid, that we are surrounded with invisible and powerful agents, who certainly, sometimes at least, are concerned in producing the impressions we feel, and perhaps always. It is evident, I think, that some dreams, even in modern times, are monitory and prophetical, which therefore can, with no appearance of reason, be ascribed to the desultory workings of our own imaginations. And the dreams which are confused, wild, and trivial, yet, with respect to their texture and machinery, are so much of the same nature with those which are more important, that I think it highly probable they are all equally the effects of a preternatural power which has such an access to us, when our bodily faculties are locked up in sleep, as it cannot obtain when we are distinctly awake, except when the bodily organs are much indisposed, as in the case of deliriums, epilepsies, madness, &c. which may, in my view, be ascribed to the same cause. I can only start a hint, for you to pursue in your thoughts. We live in the midst of invisiblesbut not the less realities for being invisible. We have legions of good and evil spirits around us ; and the latter only wait the opportunity of sleep, or indisposition, and then, if the Lord permits them, they are capable of filling us with distress and horror! We know not fully how entirely it is owing to his goodness and care over us, that we enjoy one peaceful hour either by night or by day." "I thank you for your obliging letter. Surely never dog dreamed so opportunely and apropos as your Chloe. an I should be half angry with her, if I could believe she knew your intention of writing upon the subject, and wilfully dropped asleep in the very nick of time, out of mere spite to my hypothesis, and purposely to furnish you with the most plausible objection against it. I admit the probability of Chloe's dreaming: nay, I allow it to be possible she might dream of pursuing a hare; for though I suppose such amusement never entered into the head of a dog of her breed, when awake, yet as I find my powers and capacities when sleeping, much more enlarged and diversified than at other times, (so that I can then fill up the characters of a prime minister, or a general, or of twenty other great officers, with no small propriety, for which, except when dreaming, I am more unfit than Chloe is to catch a hare,) her faculties may, perhaps, be equally brightened in her way, by foreign assistance, as I conceive my own to be. But you beg the question, if you determine that Chloe's dreams are produced by mere animal nature. Perhaps you think it impossible that invisible agents should stoop so low as to influence the imagination of a dog. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the laws and the ranks of being, in that world, fully to remove the difficulty. But allow it possible, for a moment, that there are such agents, and then suppose that one of them, to gratify the king of Prussia's ambition, causes him to dream that he has overrun Bohemia, desolated Austria, and laid Vienna in ashes; and that another should, on the same night, condescend to treat Chloe with a chase, and a bare at the end of it; do not you think the latter would be as well and as honourably employed as the former? "But as I have not time to write a long letter, I send you a book, in which you will find a scheme, not very unlike my own, illustrated and defended with much learning and ingenuity. I have some hope of making you a convert to my sentiments; for though I confess they are liable to objection, yet I think you must have surmounted greater difficulties before you thought so favourably of the sympathetic attraction between the spirits of distant friends. Perhaps distance may be necessary to give scope to the force of the attraction and therefore to object that this sympathy is not perceived between friends in the same house, or in the same room, may be nothing to the purpose. Newton and I are tolerably in union to each other; and yet often when herspirits are sadly hurried, I, who am very near her, have no more sympathy with her in her distress (till she tells me of it) than if I was made of marble. And about ten days ago she was suddenly attacked with a disorder, which might have been quickly fatal; while I at the same time was drinking tea at Mrs. Unwin's, and chatting and smiling as if nothing had been the matter. I think Mrs. "I but seldom fill up so much of a letter in a ludicrous way: I cannot call it a ludicrous subject, for to me it appears very striking and solemn. The agency of spirits is real, though mysterious; and were our eyes open to perceive it, I believe we should hardly be able to attend to any thing else but it is wisely and mercifully hidden from us. This we know, they are all under the direction and control of him who was crucified for us. His name is a strong tower, and under the shadow of his wings we are in safety. They who know, and love, and trust Him, have nothing to fear. "The Lord favoured you with a near sense of Divine things, while you were at C, to preserve you from being ensnared. It is now withdrawn or weakened, to remind you that it is not of your own stock or at your own command. Different dispensations and frames are as needful for us as the different seasons of the year are for plants. He does all things well. I trust you will continue waiting in the usual course of appointed means, (of which secret prayer and the study of the Scriptures are the chief,) and your sun will in due time break out again." (To be continued.) MISCELLANEOUS. For the Christian Observer. ON SACRED POETRY. IT has for many years been a general observation among literary persons, that the flowers of Parnassus cannot thrive in the garden of Religion. The soil of Paradise is represented as unfit for the rearing of these tender plants: they can grow only, we are told, in the ensanguined plains of war, or the fairy scenes of fiction. An attempt to enforce or illustrate the sublime doctrines of the Gospel with the graces of poetry, discovers, in the estimation of many critics, a taste deplorably vitiated and depraved. Others reject it with abhorrence, and are almost shocked with it as impious. Now it is true that the invocation of Apollo, or the Maids of Helicon, at the commencement of a Christian poem, would not only be little less than impious, but it would be absurd and disgusting in the highest degree. Examples may, indeed, be adduced from some admired pieces of "Devotion's bards," wherein the names of the heathen deities, or some mythological allusions, have been injudiciously introduced. In that fine fragment, for example, of the late Henry Kirke White, in which Satan is represented as giving his bold compeers" an account of the failure of his attempt Here is evidently a gross impropriety, for, to say nothing of the introduction of a mere imaginary and fictitious deity in an affair of such importance, he who had once been an angel of light could not, surely, be supposed to be ignorant that Jove was nothing more than an empty name. Besides, the way in which Jove is mentioned, seems to intimate that he was a being of superior prowess to Satan himself, which the prince of the infernal powers, he who had dared to cope with Omnipotence, could not, we may conceive, be very ready to allow. But does it hence follow that the subject itself was ill chosen, and incapable of poetical ornament without having recourse to classical fiction? This question receives its best answer in the poem itself; in the boldness of its imagery, and the beautiful simplicity of its allegories. It is probable, indeed, that riper years and judgment would have induced the ingenious author to avoid blending heathenism with Christianity; but I cannot think that he would ever have been induced to change his sentiments respecting the propriety of his subject on the contrary, we have reason to imagine, from the two last affecting stanzas, that it was his determination to employ those poetical, as well as other talents, with which he was so eminently blessed, in the service of Him who gave them; and that he considered the productions of his younger years comparatively trifling, and beneath the dignity of his profession. The above-mentioned objection to sacred poetry was, perhaps, first started by Boileau. He tells us, "De la foi d'un Chrétien les mysteres terribles D'ornamens egayez ne sont point susceptibles." The Christian faith's dread mysteries refuse The ornamental trappings of the muse. In a country where levity and fashionable folly prevailed to such a degree as was then the case in France-and at a time, too, when religion was buried under the clouds of mysticism, and every thing sacred was viewed with a superstitious dread-such a declaration was not astonishing, especially as it comes from a person, who, with all his wit and learning, had certainly very inadequate views of the mysteries of which he was speaking, and who, it is to be feared, left the world, to say the least, very little better than be found it. But that Dr. Johnson could entertain such an opinion is more surprising. He thus objects to devotional poetry in a strain similar to that of Boileau : "The paucity of its topics enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction." Is it possible that any man who has taken ⚫ an ample survey of the Divine perfections, or cast an eye over the diversified landscape of Divine goodness, and the ample field of grace which is exhibited in the recovery of fallen man, can talk of paucity of topics? Is it possible that any CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 190. one who has read the rapturous strains of Isaiah, or the still sublimer songs of Jesse's son, can say that religion rejects the ornaments of figurative diction? Though Dr. Johnson was a man of gigantic talents, and a Colossus of philological learning, yet he does not seem to have been much distinguished for liberality of sentiment, or fervour of devotion; and with Cowper, who certainly excelled him in both these respects, I am inclined, in some instances, to question the correctness of his taste. To make Divine truth palatable to those who have no relish for it, or rather have a radical dislike to it, is, indeed, out of the power of language or poetry. They cannot desire to see God set forth under his various attributes of power, wisdom, justice, or even of mercy. They cannot, with complacency, read any thing which treats immediately of Jesus Christ, and the invaluable blessings of salvation; and it must be remembered that for such persons, among others, if not chiefly, Johnson was writing. If he had perused with a candid and unbiassed mind, what Cowley, Watts, and Blackmore have said upon this subject, he might, probably, have been induced to modify his opinion, or, at least, to speak with more candour. After a deserved eulogium which he passes on the second of these writers, as a scholar and divine, he will hardly be thought to have done justice to him as a poet, when he ranks him among those with whom youth and ignorance may be safely pleased. In the Hora Lyricæ, there are some pieces which would have added to the laurels of our justly-admired moralist himself. What, for example, can be more truly sublime and poetical than the hymn on God's dominion and decrees, especially the two following stanzas of it! Chain'd to his throne a volume lies, His providence unfolds the book, And makes his counsels shine: Each op'ning leaf, and ev'ry stroke, Though quite forgotten half your Bi- This too general dislike of poetry among serious persons, arises, perhaps, in a considerable measure, from the unworthy use to which it has been converted by irreligious men, though, in some persons, it may be owing to a natural deficiency of taste and sensibility. It is said of Pope, that though his ear was eminently well tuned in judging the harmony of numbers, he had so mean an idea of music, as to think it below the dignity of human nature. It is requisite, therefore, that a man should have a taste for any art or science, before he presumes to give his judgment upon it. Let not, then, those "foes to song,' who are destitute of poetical qualifications, reprove their neighbours who are occasionally inclined to take a draught at the fountain of the Muses. That fountain has contracted no inherent contamination from the polluted lips which, in different ages, have sipped its stream: nor are its waters the less pure, because they have sometimes flowed through the channels of profligacy and vice. Even the conse crated censers of old were not unfitted for holy uses, by having been once made the receptacles of unhallowed fire, or by having passed through the bands of profane rebels: they needed only to be cleansed and fashioned anew, in order to serve those purposes for which they were originally intended. The pearl of truth has not lost any of its brilliancy by having been once covered with the dust of error or superstition. And though the almost divine art of poetry has been too often made use of to kindle the incense of flattery to the idols of human as ever, -to blush at her degenerate sons, Retain'd by sense to plead her filthy cause, To raise the low, to magnify the mean, The heathens had the example and countenance of their supposed gods in all this, and are therefore entitled to pity as well as censure. But what excuse will be alleged for the improprieties of modern writers, who were born in a land on which Revelation sheds its benign influence? Can powers of genius exorcise their page, And consecrate enormity with song? These writers have not been content to follow the footsteps of In all the their heathen brethren. compositions of the Roman and Grecian bards we, for the most part, find a reverential regard paid to their duties, such as they were. But these men have often dared to dart the arrows of sarcastical wit against Heaven itself. Nor are they to be exempted from censure, who have given loose to their pens in invective, slanderous abuse, or sycophancy. Would that I had not to rank in this class the |