REMARKS ON AUTHORS.

When I look at the mind of Lord Bacon-it seems vast, original, penetrating, analogical, beyond all competition. When I look at his character—it is wavering, shuffling, mean. In the closing scene, and in that only, he appears in true dignity, as a man of profound contrition.

BAXTER surpasses, perhaps, all others, in the grand, impressive, and persuasive style. But he is not to be named with Owen as to furnishing the student's mind. He is, however, multifarious, complex, practical.

CLARKE has, above oll other men, the faculty of lowcring the life and spiritual sense of Scripture to such perfection, as to leave it like dry bones, divested of every particle of marrow or oil. South is nearer the truth. He tells more of it: but he tells with the tongue of.a viper, for he was most bitterly set against the Puritans. But there is a spirit and life about him. He must and will be heard. And, now and then, he darts on us with an unexpected and incomparable stroke.

THE MODERN GERMAN WRITERS, and the whole school formed after them, systematically and intentionally confound vice and virtue, and argue for the passions against the morals and institutions of society. There never was a more dangerous book written, than one That Mrs. WOLSTONCROFT left imperfect, but which

GODWIN published after her death. Her" Wrongs of Women" is an artful apology for adultery: she labours to interest the feelings in favour of an adultress, by making her crime the consequence of the barbarous conduct of a despicable husband, while she is painted all softness and sensibility. Nothing like this was ever attempted before the modern school.

"SOME men," said Dr. Patten to me, "are always crying Fire! Fire!" To be sure where there is danger, there ought to be affectionate earnestness. Who would remonstrate, coldly and with indifference, with a man about to precipitate himself from Dover Cliff, and not rather snatch him forcibly from destruction? Truth, in its living influence on the heart, will show itself in consecratedness and holy zeal.

men.

things. I have found in it a striking illustration of the uniformity with which the grace of God operates on

Crantz, in his “ Account of the Missions in Greenland," had shown the grace of God working on a Man-Fish : on a stupid-sottish-senseless creature -scarcely a remove from the fish on which he lived. Loskiel shows the same grace working on a Man-Devil a fierce-bloody-revengeful warrior-dancing his infernal war-dance with the mind of a fury, Divine grace brings these men to the same point. It quickens stimulates, and elevates the Greenlander: it raises him to a sort of new life: it seems almost to bestow. on him new senses :.it opens

his
eye,

and bends his rouses his heart: and what it adds-it sanctifies. The same grace tames the high spirit of the Indian : it reduces him to the meekness, and docility, and simplicity of a child. The evidence arising to Christianity from these facts is, perhaps, seldom sufficient, by itself to convince the gainsayer : but, to a man who already believes, it greatly strengthens the reasons of his belief, I have seen also in these books, that the fish-boat, and the oil, and the tomahawk, and the сар

of feathers excepted—a Christian Minister has to deal with just the same sort of creatures, as the Greenlander and the Indian, among civilized nations.

ear, and

Owen stands at the head of his class of divines. His scholars will be more profound and enlarged, and better furnished, than those of most other writers. His work on the Spirit has been my treasure-house, and one of my very first-rate books. Such writers as RicCALTOun rather disqualify than prepare a Minister for the immediate business of the pulpit. Original and profound thinkers enlarge his views, and bring into exercise the powers and energies of his own mind, and should therefore be his daily companions. Their matter must, however, be ground down before it will

be fit for the pulpit. Such writers as Owen, who, though less original, have united Detail with Wisdom, are copious in proper topics, and in matter better prepared for immediate use, and in furniture ready finished as it were for the mind.

PALEY is an unsound casuist, and is likely to do great injury to morals. His extenuation of the crimes committed by an intoxicated man, for instance, is fallacious and dangerous. Multiply the crime of intoxication into the consequences that follow from it, and you have the sum total of the guilt of a drunken

man.

RUTHERFORD'S Letters is one of my classics. Were truth the beam, I have no doubt, that if Homer and Virgil and Horace and all that the world has agreed. to idolize were weighed against that book, they would be lighter than vanity. He is a real original. There are in his Letters some inexpressibly forcible and arresting remonstrances with unconverted

men.

I SHOULD not recommend a young Minister to pay much deference to the SCOTCH DIVINES. The Erskines, who were the best of them, are dry, and laboured, and prolix, and wearisome. He may find incomparable matter in them, but he should beware of forming his taste and manner after their model. I want a more kind-hearted and liberal sort of divinity. He had much better take up Bishop HALL. There is a set of excellent, but wrong-headed men, who would reform the London preachers on a morc elaborate plan. They are not philosophers who talk thus. If Owen himself were to rise from the grave, unless it were for the influence of the great name. which he would bring with him, he might close his

days with a small congregation in some little meetinghouse.

SHAKSPEARE had a low and licentious taste. When he chose to imagine a virtuous and exalted character, he could completely throw his mind into it, and give the perfect picture of such a character. But he is at home in Falstaff. No high, grand, virtuous, religious aim beams forth in him. A man, whose heart and taste are modelled on the Bible, nauseates him in the mass, while he is enraptured and astonished by the flashes of his pre-eminent genius.

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66 HAVE YOU read my Key to the Romans??? said Dr. TAYLOR, of Norwich, to Mr. NEWTON. "I have turned it over." "You have turned it over! And is this the treatment a book must meet with, which has cost me many years of hard study? Must I be told, at last, that you have turned it over,' and then thrown it aside? You ought to have. read it carefully, and weighed deliberately what comes forward on so serious a subject." "Hold! You have cut me out full employment, if my life were to be as long as Methuselah's. I have somewhat else to do in the short day allotted me, than to read whatever any one may think it his duty to write. When I read, I wish to read to good purpose; and there are some books, which contradict on the very face of them what appear to me to be first principles. You surely will not say I am bound to read such books. If a man tells me he has a very elaborate argument to prove that two and two make five, I have something else to do than to attend to this argument. If I find the first mouthful of meat which I take from a fine-looking joint on my table is tainted, I need not eat through it to be convinced I ought to send it away."