Jesus, and the way of salvation through a crucified Saviour. "Not till 1783, had we the satisfaction to see the brethren, J. Heinrich, Fleckner, and Raabs arrive to our assistance. They came in a Malay prow; the ship in which they had sailed having been seized by a French privateer, which claimed her as law ful prize, because he found on board a few old English newspapers in a trunk belonging to Mr. Wilson, an English gentleman, who had escaped from Hyder Ali's prison. This was pretence sufficient for the Frenchman to seize upon a neutral Danish vessel; nor could any redress be ever procured, to the great loss of the mission. After long and vexatious detention, the mate and the three brethren purchased a Malay prow, and stole off in the night; as the Malay prince would not suffer them to go. Thus we received, instead of our expected stock of provisions, only more mouths to feed. However, we rejoiced to see our dear fellow-missionaries, and did what we could for their relief. The prow being unfit to return without proper sails, we worked up our whole stock of linen and sail-cloth, and even some of our sheets, and were ten days employed in making `sails, and fitting her for the voyage. In her the mate, with the brethren, Raabs and Heyne, left us for Tranquebar. I cannot describe my feelings, when I took a final leave of my dear brother Heyne, with whom I had so long shared weal and woe, lived in true brotherly love and union of spirit, and enjoyed so much of our Lord's help and comfort, in days of perplexity and distress." (To be continued.) EXTEMPORE AND WRITTEN SERMONS. Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. In a recent Number of your work, I read a well written paper on the advantages of extempore preaching, and the disadvantages of delivering written discourses from the pulpit. It is a subject which has often occupied my thoughts; and I confess that the result of my meditations upon it, and observations concerning it, has been different from that of your able correspondent. I shall proceed briefly to state my reasons for the conclusion to which I have come in favour of written sermons. I would, however, beg to premise, that the question, I conceive, is not between an extempore sermon preached and a written sermon read, but between an extempore sermon preached and a written sermon preached. This distinction is by no means sufficiently considered. A written sermon read in a pulpit, is not that for which I am now about to plead. I only plead for a written sermon (always supposed sound in doctrine) preached; that is, delivered with earnestness, animation, feeling, proper emphasis, and, above all, with a holy unction of spirit manifest in the preacher. With these qualifications, I think written discourses are to be preferred to extempore ones. I should recommend the former plan in preference to the latter, because I think it better for the preacher himself, and better for his hearers. I think it better for the preacher himself: he is less exposed to the temptation of vanity, ostentation, and self-exaltation. There is something in the exercise of eloquence which tends to engender those feelings, and, however a real Christian may pray against them, yet a leaven of them, will, in most cases, be found where there is commanding talent; and I think experience abundantly proves this to be the fact. Indeed, while man is what he is, it cannot be otherwise. I think, further, that many inconvenient effects are produced by extempore preaching, not immediately connected with the delivery of the discourse. The mind of the minister, at least of nine ministers out of ten, is not at ease on the Lord's day. He cannot, with an uninterrupted calmness of spirit, enter into the devotional parts of the service. Hence, when he does not himself officiate, he will perhaps remain in the vestry while the people are praying; or if he is in the church, his mind is wandering after what he is to preach. All this is much to be lamented. A minister is also much tempted to appear to preach more extempore than he really does. I have often been grieved to see in good men the desire after this un deserved applause, apparent both in their conversation and in other ways; and, among others, in slyly concealing their notes written in a small hand, or short-hand, in a book so minute, as to be hidden in the leaves of their Bible. Many Dissenting ministers have confessed they did this on account of the prejudices of their people. I need not add how much the sermons of an extempore preacher must be affected by the state of his mind and body. A head-ache, unexpected vexation, or troubles weighing down the spirit, a decline in his own communion with God, lessening his delight in his hallowed employment, and many other things will have a sensible effect upon his preaching. In many cases also, extempore preaching leads to indolence in study, and prevents a proper growth in theological and Scriptural knowledge. A fluency is ob tained to speak on certain doctrines; and, with a different text and collo cation, the same sermon is in fact preached every Sunday. This tends to keep both the minister and his church very low. It is an effect which has been to a certain extent produced of late years, and is to be greatly deplored. Should it be said that these are but abuses of the practice; I would reply, that the evils which your correspondent has pointed out as belonging to the other system, are only abuses of it. Further, the plan of extempore preaching is attended with disadvantages to the people as well as to the preacher. Great talent of this kind is sure to become the idol of the multitude. The manner of preaching often becomes more important to a people than the matter of it. I have known persons who would go to hear a preacher without a sermon case, though his statement of doctrine was very obscure, in preference to a holy, faithful, and affectionate minister who preached a written discourse. This evil again arises from an idea too much countenanced, that extempore preaching is necessarily Gospel preaching. The effect on hearers in general, is not good. If a man is very eloquent, they are tempted to idolise him; if he is deficient in talent, to despise him. I must be permitted to add, that to expect that all who may be fitted for devout and affectionate pastors of Christ's church, should be capa、 ble of extempore preaching, is unreasonable. The very qualities which would unfit many humble, retiring, timid, nervous, but deeply pious young men for the bar or the senaté, would make them blessed instruments of good in the cottage of the poor, and at the sick-bed of the dying, and even in the pulpit, while delivering with pious warmth a written discourse. I myself decidedly prefer the mixed mode recommended by Bishop Burnet, and I heartily wish it were more generally adopted. I would have the greatest part of every discourse carefully studied and written; but I would not preclude a preacher from giving utterance to the feelings of his heart, in the application of his subject to the hearts and consciences of his hearers. H. S. C. H. ROMAINE AND CLARKE ON ELISHA COLE. Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. We are all dependent creatures, and need each other's help: I at least cannot do without your assistance, do very Mr. Editor, though you may well without mine. The matter is this; I have not had the honours or advantages of a university education, and I am therefore often grievously puzzled at the contradictory statements of divines to whose works I apply to enlighten my ignorance. In the present instance, I wish to know what I ought to conclude respecting a book in which I happen to be much interested: I mean Elisha Cole on the Sovereignty of God. Now, what am I to think when I meet with the two following opposite opinions by two good and great men? Mr. Romaine tells me as follows: "The doctrines of grace, of which this book treats, are the truths of God. Our author, Elisha Cole, has defended them in a masterly manner. He has not only proved them to be plainly revealed in the Scriptures, but that, without the stedfast belief of them, we cannot go on our way rejoicing. It is from these doctrines only that settled peace can rule in the conscience, the love of God can be maintained in the heart, and a conversation kept up as becometh the Gospel."-The other divine I have alluded to, Dr. Adam Clarke, tells me, as follows: "That horrible caricature of the Sovereignty of God by Elisha Cole; -a work which has made several Socinians and Deists, but never yet one genuine Christian. Such a work can draw no man to God, but may well affright many from him."-Now, good Mr. Editor, have patience with me: what am I, a poor simple man, to think, to do, to say? Speak we of the errors and mistakes of unlearned men, what opinion must I form of these two learned men, these Hebrew and Greek scholars? Dear sir, tell me, and let me know which is right. CASAPHIA * Lest our correspondent should think us will retail to him a conversational remark of uncourteous in not replying to his query,we Mrs. Hannah More's, on our once asking her whether she read the works of, what are read them with discretion. I do not approve called "The High CalvinisticDivines.” “I of all their doctrines, and I shudder at some of their rash assertions; but I admire the piety, the devotedness to God, the unction, the intimate acquaintance with the mysteries of the Christian life, the joy and peace in the Holy Ghost, which I find in many writings of this school. I like the lean of their fat meat. We would rather, however, urge our spiritual edification, writers who are not correspondent, generally, to select, for his carried away to extremes of doctrine on any side; to avoid equally the miserable leanness of some writers of the Arminian school, and the unwholesome pinguidity of others of the Calvinistic. Let him read with discretion." 22 REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. Four Years in France; or, Narra tive of an English Family's Residence there, during that Period; preceded by some Account of the Conversion of the Author to the Catholic Faith. London. UNKNOWN injury has been done to the cause of Christianity, by a system of interpretation which might be called the dilution of meanings. According to this scheme, an escape from one form of irreligion to another, under the shelter also of such CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 325. words as conscience and conviction, is frequently dignified by the name of CONVERSION. Ceremonies, opinions, connexions, localities, all things may be changed, except the heart and the life; and these remain as they were. The changeling was once a Protestant, and he is now a Romanist; or, two years since, he wrote in defence of the Council of Trent; but, yesterday, appeared his apology for Cranmer, in reply to Mr. Hallam, or the Edinburgh Reviewer; or, if he occupied a ple G beian station in society, he no longer tenderness; and he was thoughtful buries himself in debauch at the to a degree which indicated a mind Pope's Arms, but staggers home rising above the usual delusions of every evening from the Luther's the school-boy age. He was an Head. "I obtest," says the author example of the remark in the Tirobefore us," against all revolutions: cinium of Cowper:change of forms and names, and, generally speaking, of persons even, does not always produce a change of principles, or of conduct." Of this obtestation, his own volume is a vivid but undesigned illustration. Its writer has told us all his secrets ; and even if many of them had been withheld, we might easily have guessed at them from what are unfolded. The convert was an English clergyman, educated at Magdalen College, Oxford; and who, about thirty years ago, deserted to the Latin church. The whole account of his "conversion" indicates nothing beyond the mutation of a theory. We cannot discern what spiritual and practical knowledge of Christianity he possessed, while among ourselves; neither what he gained, by crossing over to another party. There is the same indefiniteness, and the same absorption in little questions, which is found in every tale of superficial conversion; so that if the story proceeded no farther than the detail of his own case, it would be exceedingly unimportant and nugatory; but he has interwoven, with the account of his residence in France, a report of the life and death of his son. To this portion of the book our remarks shall be chiefly confin ed; Henry Kenelm B. -, the author's son, appears to have been, from his earlier days, a youth of more than ordinary seriousness and amiableness of character. His con science discovered signs of extreme In early days the conscience has in most "Something remained behind, a reserve, a sadness even, which I entreated him to account for. He gave me his full confidence; and I learned, with very great sorrow, that, for the last eighteen months of his stay in college (Stoneyhurst), his mind had been a prey to scruples. This pious awe, and fear to have offended,' carried to excess through inexperience and a want of due apprehension that it is by the will only that we offend, had destroyed his gaiety, retarded his improvement, and doubtlessly much injured his health. "I asked him, What advice did your director give you?'- None.' Any other superior?' None.' Yet his state was sufficiently evident: he joined in no play; he did not seek the company of his brother. Alone, or with one or two companions, he employed the time allowed for play in walking up and down, indulging the workings of his own mind. I regretted that I had not taken him home when he requested, after his illness: I regretted that, instead of taking his brother to college, a measure so inefficient for his consolation,-I had not come to France a twelvemonth sooner: I regretted the time lost, and the time that was still to be lost in regaining it. But Kenelm's mind was now at ease; feelings, originating probably in a weak state of health, and continued only through want of good counsel and sympathy, were at an end, when he found himself with those whom he loved, by whom he was beloved: his understanding was too clear for him to persevere either in inadequate notions of the Divine goodness, or in false judgments respecting duty. Scruples are, by no means, of the nature of religious melancholy; they are not inconsistent with the Christian grace of hope: they suppose innocence; for the sinner may be hardened, may be penitent, may be wavering, but cannot properly be said to be scrupulous: scruples not only preserve from sin, but have also the good effect (the gift of Divine mercy), of purging the heart from all affection to sin, as was manifested in the future life of Kenelm. "Yet this fear, the beginning of wisdom,' acting on an ill-informed conscience, is hurtful, as it indisposes to a cheerful energetic performance of duty. I said to Kenelm, If there are beings (and we are told that such there are), who are interested that man should do ill, they could by no other means so effectually obtain their purpose as by fixing our attention on that by which we may offend.' A priest, whom I had known in England during his emigration, and whom I had the advantage of meeting again at Paris; a man whose sanctity inspired Kenelm with respect and confidence, said to him, 'Unless you shall be as sure that you have offended God in the way in which you apprehend, as you would be sure of having committed murder, I forbid you to mention it even to me in confession.' I will own that the vigour and prudence united in this counsel struck me with awe. The saints are men of great minds: philosophers are mistaken in thinking them fools."pp. 281-284. It cannot, surely, be necessary to bring further evidence of what we have termed the poverty and hollowness of the convert's adopted, scheme of Revelation. Here is a young man oppressed by a certain solemnity of feeling, so burden some as to make him solitary in a crowd of joyous companions; neg. lected by his director, and evidently suspecting that there was more in religion than usually developed itself among mankind; the child also of a parent who professed to have so narrowly examined the pretensions of two Christian communions, as to have made a deliberate election between them, and yet, by that same parent, discouraged from a closer investigation of his spiritual state; and soothed into self-compla cency, by a metaphysical assurance about the will! Had the subsequent part of the narrative informed us, that Kenelm had afterwards wandered into all the frivolities of have been regarded as nothing better the world, his early seriousness might than a scruple, in its lowest and most unspiritual sense. But this was not the case. He was always sedate and sober-minded; and the inference is, that his melancholy hours at Stoneyhurst might partake of what the church which our author deserted calls the " sighings of a contrite heart, and the desires of such as be sorrowful." But observe our convert's doctrine on the powers of the human understanding; the indication of innocence by scruples; and the purifying efficacy of these scruples, in releasing" the heart from all affection to sin." Then, beyond this deep of ignorance, we are called to stand on the brink of a lower abyss. A priest, of eminent "sanctity," forbids Kenelm to go beyond a certain limit in confession; and this treacherous counsellor is venerated by his father as a saint of a great mind, one who soared beyond the highest range of philosophy. We should have calculated, that had this young man become acquainted, at such a crisis of his spiritual life, with a really enlightened Christian, his instructor would have hailed the appearance of what was, possibly and probably, the remembrance of his Creator in the days of youth, the apprehension of a soul, awakening to eternal realities, oppressed by a sense of human guilt and misery, and conscious of its liability to wrath and final condemnation; unless delivered from the dread of a hereafter, by a process of safety. quite distinct from its own energy and merits. There was enough, even in the devotional formalities at Stoneyhurst, to excite, in the bosom of inexperience itself, a suspicion of its own deficiencies. We cannot avoid feeling what a contrast to the repulse given to this interest. ing youth, would be the compas |