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being, and even to the existence of a state, are in danger of disappear ing from the face of our beloved country; I mean, all employment and all persons! In things so related to one another, it may be well, indeed, that, if either of them come to an end, both should cease together. But here the cessation of one, and much more of both, presents an image of such frightful desolation, (naturally belonging to the history of "the last man,") that the mind recoils from it with horror.

But let me not too much alarm your gentle readers. All that I wish is, to check a misuse of language, now very generally prevalent.

A few years ago, some person, manifestly ignorant even of the first rudiments of the Latin tongue, introduced the word avocation, in the sense of business, employment, vocation ; unaware, it would seem, that it properly means that which calls us off, or diverts us from our proper work; not our business, but an interruption of it: and now the foreign intruder threatens to supersede every better and more rightful native of our own soil. The only plea I ever heard used in its behalf was, that avocation was short for advocation: that is, that off means on, and from, to.

The other misuse of terms to which I allude is, the substitution of individual for person. Here again, attention to the derivation will correct the now fashionable error. Individual (signifying "that which cannot be divided,") bears a constant, though it may be a tacit, reference to a more complex mass : it implies contradistinction to a collective body. Though the committee, in their collective capacity, withheld the desired information, an individual member communicated it to me:" this is correct language; but, "I met an individual" (instead of a person)" who told me the report that was spread," is a style of speaking which one CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 326.

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hears to satiety in many companies, and on many platforms, but which is affected and improper, and tends to destroy the precise and appropriate use of words.

J. S.-H.

CHARACTER AND CLAIMS OF THE REV. CHARLES WESLEY.

TotheEditorofthe Christian Observer.

WHATEVER may be my opinions on the conduct of Charles Wesley, as having deviated from the discipline of the Established Church, in aiding his brother as the founder of a new community, I bear in mind the fact that he entirely disapproved of what he justly considered to be inconsistent with the system of primitive Methodism ; which was not the formation of an independent party, but of a society remaining within the bosom of the national church, and contributing to its spiritual influence, by the faith and holiness of a certain order of its members. Accordingly, when his brother introduced a kind of dubious episcopacy, by means of a Greek bishop, Charles, among other things, wrote the following epigram;

So easily are bishops made,

By man's or woman's whim;
Wesley his hands has laid on Coke,

But who laid hands on him? My immediate subject, however, is with the claims of the epigrammatist to a hymn, the authorship of which has occasioned some discussion in your pages. As a writer of devotional poetry, Charles Wesley merits all which has been said of him by a critic, who has himself made a most valuable addition to our sacred poetry. "Christian experience," writes Mr. Montgomery, in the preface to his Christian Psalmist, "furnishes him (Charles Wesley) with inexhaustible themes; and it must be confessed, that he has celebrated them with an affluence of diction, and a splendour of N

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colouring rarely surpassed. At the same time, he has invested them with a power of truth; and endeared them, both to the imagination and the affections, with a pathos which makes feeling conviction, and leaves the understanding little to do, but to acquiese in the decisions of the heart. Among his highest achievements may be recorded, 'Come, O Thou Traveller unknown;' in which, with consummate art, he has carried on the action of a lyrical drama; every turn in the conflict with the mysterious Being, against whom he wrestles all night, being marked with precision, by the varying language of the speaker, accompanied by intense, increasing interest, till the rapturous moment of discovery, when he prevails, and exclaims, I know thee, Saviour, who Thou art!' The hymn, Come on, my partners in distress,' anticipates the strains, and is written almost in the spirit, of the church triumphant. Thou wretched man of sorrows,' and its companionpiece, Great Author of my being,' are composed with equal strength and fervency of feeling-feeling congenial yet perfectly contrasted with that in the former instance for here, instead of the society of saints and angels, he indulges lonely, silent anguish, desiring to live and die alone' with God, as if creature-communion had ceased with him for ever. Thou God of glorious majesty' is a sublime contemplation in another view;-solemn, collected, unimpassioned thought, but thought occupied with that which is of everlasting import to a dying man, standing on the lapse of a moment between two eternities.' The hymn on the day of judgment,

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Stand the omnipotent decree,' begins with a note, abrupt and awakening, like the sound of the last trumpet. This is altogether one of the most daring and victorious flights of our author. Such pieces prove that if Charles Wesley's hymns are less varied than might have been desired for general pur

poses, it was from choice, and predeliction to certain views of the Gospel in its effects upon human minds; and not from want of diversity of gifts. It is probable, that the severer taste of his brother, the Rev John Wesley, greatly tempered the extravagance of Charles, pruned his luxuriances, and restrained his impetuosity, in those hymns of his which form a large proportion of the Methodist collection; the few which are understood to be John's in that book, being of a more intellectual character than what we know to be Charles's,-while the latter are wonderfully improved by abridgment and compression, in comparison with the originals, as they were first given to the public."

I will now endeavour to bring some collateral evidence that Charles Wesley was the real author of the hymn attributed to others; and if I can thus restore it to the right owner, Mr. Montgomery, at least, will not complain. A duodecimo volume lies before me, entitled, "Hymns and Sacred Poems, by John Wesley, A. M., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; and Charles Wesley, A. M., Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Fourth Edition. Bristol: 1743." In this book (p. 216), I find the hymn, "Jesu, lover of my soul;" containing five stanzas, the third, which, by the way, is uniformly omitted in the Wesleyan collections, as well as in every other, standing thus:

Wilt thou not regard my call?

Wilt thou not accept my prayer?
Lo! 1 sink, I faint, I fall,-

Lo! on thee I cast my care:
Reach me out thy gracious hand!
While I of thy strength receive,
Hoping against hope I stand,

The

Dying, and behold I live! The above date proves, that the Rev. Robert Robinson could not be the author of the hymn; for he was born in 1735, and was therefore only eight years old even in 1743, when the fourth impression of the Wesleys' collection appeared. In

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fact, he did not profess to receive the doctrines of Methodism, till about the seventeenth year of his life. On the other hand, Charles Wesley was born in 1708; and consequently, in 1743, was thirtyfive. This comparison of dates is, of course, entirely in Charles Wesley's favour. I argue nothing positively from this appearance of the hymn in the collection of 1743; as the contents of that work are, in various instances, from other writers. That the composition in question was written by Charles Wesley is, I think, plain from interternal evidence; both as respects its phraseology, and from the strong devotional likeness it bears to his portrait by Mr. Montgomery, illuminated as that picture is, by many of his other hymns; some of them repeating sentiments, and involutions of words, similar to what are found in the performance occasioning this communication. Your correspondents will now judge, how far I have succeeded in restoring to the revered name of Charles Wesley an effort which (to adopt the language of the epitaph, at Eltham, on Bishop Horne,) "will continue to be a companion to the closet, till the devotions of earth shall end in the hallelujahs of heaven." I will only add, in the words of Mr. Montgomery,-"If he who pens these sentiments, knows his own heart-though it has deceived him too often to be trusted without jealousy-he would rather be the anonymous author of a few hymns which, like the one now under discussion, should be an imperishable inheritance to the people of God, than bequeath another epic poem to the world, which should rank his name with Homer, Virgil, and our greater Milton."

DEFENSOR.

Another correspondent, N. L., after giving the same information as Defensor, relative to the early editions of the Wesley Hymns, adds;

The same volume, (I quote from the fifth edition,) contains the wellknownChristmas and Easter Hymns, which have, with reason, found a place in alm os all our collections of hymns, and at the close of several editions of the New Version of the Psalms: I refer to those which begin, "Hark! the herald angels sing," and "Christ the Lord is risen to-day." The former of these in its original form commences thus, "Hark! how all the welkin rings, Glory to the King of kings." That beautiful hymn, "Jesu, thy blood and righteousness," stands in the same volume as a translation from the German, and consists of no fewer than twentyfour verses. It may easily be conjectured that the suppressed verses fall far short, both in sentiment and expression, of that portion which is usually retained.

SCRIPTURAL GEOLOGY.

N. L.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. In my former papers, I have briefly IN stated the leading physical facts to which geologists appeal, and considered, with particular reference to Mr. Bugg's strictures, some of the usual inferences from them. I conceive myself to have established, to a high degree of probability, the two following conclusions :

1. That the surface of our globe has been visited with an extensive, and probably universal deluge; and,

2. That the secondary strata were formed previously to that event, by a gradual and orderly deposition, continued, with more or less of occasional interruption, during a period co-extensive with many generations of the animals whose remains are imbedded in them.

The former of these opinions will not be controverted: I have therefore not fully drawn out the geological evidences for its truth. Those of your readers who seek

them in Dr. Buckland's Reliquiæ Diluvianæ, will regret that so sincere and zealous a believer in revelation as Mr. Bugg should have endeavoured to invalidate the arguments there adduced. It is surely of some importance to be able to prove that what we know from Scripture to have been a fact, bears upon it, even from mere physical considerations, the highest character of probability.

My second conclusion does not receive the same decided support from Scripture: it must however be tried by that standard, so far as such a trial is possible. If Moses and St. Paul really contradict me, I am unquestionably wrong. I hold no opinions respecting the limits of Revelation, inconsistent with the fullest acknowledgment of this principle. But, on the other hand, I must again remind your readers, that every question determined on merely probable grounds, is reopened by the discovery of new evidence; whether the point at issue be the interpretation of a text, or the circumstances of an historical fact. In themselves, all things are either true or false: Probability is intelligible only in reference to the imperfection of our knowledge, and the weakness of our reason: to suppose therefore that the most probable meaning of a text must necessarily be the true one, would be to maintain, not the certainty of God's word, but the infallibility of man's judgment.

But is it, in fact, necessary to reconsider the currently received interpretation of Scripture? May not the secondary strata have been deposited between the Mosaic creation, and the Mosaic deluge? It

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may be thought that no modern geologist" would ask such a question; yet I find the following amongst other suggestions, in the work I have before quoted:

"If we adhere to the common interpretation of the periods of creation, as having been literally days of twenty-four hours, and re

fuse to admit the existence of another order of things previous to that recorded by the inspired writer, we might still perhaps find a sufficient space of time for the purposes required in the interval between the creation as thus limited, and the deluge.-- Upon this hypothesis we must suppose the present continents, in the greater part of their extent, to have been included in the channel of the primitive ocean, and to have gradually emerged thence during this period; becoming occupied, as they appeared, by the land animals whose remains we find among the diluvial gravel. The primitive continents may, upon this supposition, either have been limited portions of the present, (such as present no secondary rocks,) for at first it seems evident that a limited space only would be requisite; or, if more extensive, they may have been submerged in whole or in part, (more probably the latter, from the description of the rivers of Eden,) during those great convulsions which accompanied the deluge."-(Conybeare and Phillips, Introd. p. lix.)

For myself, I advocate no theory; that is to say, no general and determinate theory: I see no present. prospect of establishing any; though conjectural explanations of detached phenomena, almost necessarily occur to the mind of an observer: and are useful both for the recollection of ascertained facts, and the direction of future inquiries. But without espousing the hypothesis stated above, I may be allowed to compare it with Mr. Bugg's. Like his, it accords with the ordinary interpretation of Scripture; whilst it is surely far more consistent with the general tenor of geological observations. It would be so, even if Mr. Bugg's examples were allowed as real exceptions to the ordinary rule. Undoubtedly it leaves many things unexplained -the mere outline of a theory must do so-but it does not preclude all possibility of explaining them. But Mr. Bugg's

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hypothesis is so palpably inconsistent with geological facts, that he seems inclined to explain them by a miraculous action of the diluvial waters. A more improbable supposition could scarcely be devised; for, whatever might be the cause of the deluge, its recorded effects were clearly natural.-The waters were poured from the fountains of the great deep and the opened windows of heaven, that they might "destroy all flesh," by their natural operation. Is it conceivable they should be employed in miraculously sorting shells and disposing pebbles? Mr. Bugg hints, that "the variations in the animal creation, between the fossil remains and the existing species," may have been effected by natural causes, since the deluge. This supposition has little support from observation, and used to be thought of bad tendency; (see Paley's Nat. Theol. chap. 23 ;) but it will suit my present purpose very well. According to this hypothesis, the fossils of the chalk differ from recent shells, because the specific characters have gradually altered in successive generations: but then, by parity of reasoning, the dissimilarity which exists between the fossils of the transition limestone and those of the chalk, must be attributed to the same cause; and this idea, followed out, will convert Mr. Bugg's theory into that which I am contrasting with it.

I think it possible, that the secondary strata may really have been deposited subsequently to the creation of man. At the same time it must be confessed, that all known phenomena may be accounted for as well, or better, on other suppositions; nor is it at all improbable, that future discoveries may modify or subvert all our present theories. Should this be the fate of any theory which professes to be built on a Scriptural basis, (I say professes, for the word and the works of God cannot really contradict each other; the contradiction

must arise from our misunderstanding one or both,) more or less of temporary discredit must attach to the foundation on which we profess to ground our inferences it is therefore, well worth while to consider whether Revelation does indeed guide and limit our conclusions, in the manner and to the degree commonly supposed. With this view, I shall make some remarks on Mr. Bugg's biblical discussions, in your Number for last April.

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I. It has been usually supposed that the inferior animals became subject to death, in consequence of the fall of Adam. In support of this opinion, Mr. Bugg adduces the following passages: "The wages of sin is death." "Sin hath reigned unto death." "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." The third of these passages must have been inserted by accident; the rest occur in one context, (Rom. v. and vi.) But for the authority of those who have thought differently from myself, I should not for a moment suppose that this passage alluded to the inferior animals in any manner whatever. I would request your readers to peruse the chapters referred to, with a temporary assumption that they relate solely to the human species. I cannot perceive that the Apostle's argument loses any thing in weight, or that a single expression becomes less appropriate, on this supposition. If there be any seeming exception to this remark, it is the text, " by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin," but the remainder of the verse explains the Apostle's meaning: "and so death passed upon all men, for that all (all men, Tavтεç) have sinned." The word "world" is clearly used to denote the race of mankind, as in the following texts, where all allusion to the brute creation is excluded by the manifest sense," The world by wisdom

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