It is when man is moving about the little circle of his own pleasures, that he gains the contempt of others, if not of himself.

Real gentility, true courteousness, is the product of a friendly heart. All else, which men name politeness, is counterfeit. If amenity of manners does not spring from good will, it is nothing but hypocrisy, for while the professions of kindness are on the lips and in the gestures, the motive is unadulterated selfishness. A character formed under such influences cannot have one ennobling trait.

Now the adoption of the word of God as the rule of life implies and presupposes self-knowledge, true reverence and disinterested affection. It bids us search our hearts, and judge, as the truth demands. It nowhere disparages our reason, nor speaks slightingly of any faculty, except so far as we have perverted it by sin. It calls upon us to embrace its promises, and thereby act a manly part. God himself assumes the attitude of reasoning with us. In disobeying him, we are charged with unmanliness, with bru talizing our rational and moral nature.

At the same time, the biblical instructions are fitted to place our sins and weaknesses in the most convincing light, to reveal our guilt in contrast with God's spotless purity. It eradicates our pride by offering a gratuitous salvation. The reception of its gracious provisions cannot coëxist with self-ignorance, or an overweening conceit.

The Bible, also, is filled with objects which excite the deepest reverence. Its spirit is that of the profoundest awe. It utterly discountenances all unseemly familiarities with sacred things. On the other hand, it does not repress curiosity. It strikes the balance accurately between a blind admiration for the past, and an inconsiderate desire for change, between an indiscriminate veneration, and a passionate love of what is new. If the character be moulded in accordance with such influences, it will possess that accurate proportion, that appropriate adjustment, without which true manliness cannot exist.

We need hardly refer to the spirit which the Bible cherishes and enjoins to the perfect disinterestedness which it breathes and inculcates on every page. The counteraction of selfishness, the implantation of liberal principles, is its unceasing aim. Poetry and history, doctrine, admonition and example, sealed and ratified in blood,-all conspire to the same end, promulgate the same lesson. There is nothing there narrow, ambiguous, mean, serpentine, unless brought out in order to put the brand of

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The Ideal of all Excellence in the Bible.

35

reprobation upon it. The water of the river of life has not a more crystalline clearness.

Were we required to designate the principles of true politeness, we would not go to the pages of Chesterfield, nor to the usages of aristocratic society, nor to the ceremonies of royal courts. We would rather point to such men as Abraham and Paul, as specimens of true nobility. How nice a sense of honor had the father of the faithful! What a princely spirit shone out in his life! What a total forgetfulness of himself did the great apostle exhibit! His burning zeal in the cause of his Master, the stupendous labors which he performed, the depth of his insight into the scheme of redemption, are not the most interesting things about him. We wonder at his Christian chivalry, at his knightly bearing, at his delicate sense of what was due to himself and to others, at his Christ-like charity, over-leaping everything which commonly holds men in bondage. His courteousness was equal to his moral courage, his Christian generosity was more remarkable than his martyrdom.

VI. The Bible supplies a perfect example for the formation of character. The benefits of having before the mind some lofty ideal, when attempting to accomplish a great object, are well known. The masters in the arts, men of the highest order of genius, have well understood the advantages of this imagined perfect form, floating before the imagination. It has lived in their dreams by night, and excited them to superhuman efforts by day. They had no hope of ever embodying it in actual form. Its pictured brightness no color could copy, yet not the less did the artist toil on, painting, as he said, for eternity.

So likewise when excellence of any kind has been exhibited in actual life. A few great men have been the teachers of the world. Their example shines with a never-setting radiance. Through the mists of ages, their defects are not visible, while their great and beneficent deeds have a more potent spell as time passes on. Washington's usefulness is not seen in the country which, under God, he saved; it is in his undying example. David Brainerd's field of labor was not the Delaware Indians; it was the plains of India, and the gardens of Persia where his great copyist, Henry Martyn, lived and labored. Howard's theatre was not the prisons of Europe; it is in the hearts of philanthropists that his memory is now influential in the four quarters of the world. The good that men do lives after them. The limit of human life is not forty or sixty years,-ages are its own. Not

simply by great men are its deeds contemplated and copied. A thousand lesser spirits take heart and hope. The mere recollection of a name often determines the will. The recorded or the living example becomes an important element in moulding the character of myriads, whose name perishes on the spot that gave them birth.

But all these, at the best, are very imperfect examples. In the character of our Lord, we have absolute, yet attainable perfection. We may study it forever with unabated interest. It has just those points which touch the heart. The stern characteristics do not bear disproportionate sway. These are softened and made attractive by his inimitable gentleness, by his lamblike meekness, by all those softer qualities which form the foreground of the picture.

There is in the character of the Saviour that blending of qualities, that mingling of different colors, that fair and exquisite proportion-the study of which never tires. It has a feeble analogy in one of those old paintings which requires years of study to detect all its beauties, whose rare workmanship one life cannot adequately perceive.

The study of our Lord's character is eminently rich in its moral While we gaze, we are attracted, while we contemplate, the chains of ignorance and sin fall from around us.

VII. The Bible furnishes the most urgent motives, for the formation and perfection of the moral character. These motives are diversified, and appeal to various susceptibilities of our nature.

One motive addresses our self-interest. In the possession of the character which it aids in forming, we become associates with all the truly good and great. We are admitted into an illustrious company. This character is the key which opens to us royal palaces, and introduces us to kingly companions. We are no longer solitary wanderers on the wastes of life. We are guests at an imperial banquet. We are citizens of a mighty commonwealth. Possessed of this character, actuated by the spirit which it implies, we can almost converse with the departed whose bodies the grave conceals. We can almost see those old, familiar faces, whom a thin veil only hides from us. We are one with them, for the living and all the dead but one communion make. We are allied to them yet by the closest relations. They seem to call us upwards by their well-known, human voices.

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The Design of Pastoral Poetry.

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ARTICLE III.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE FOURTH ECLOGUE OF VIRGIL.

By Rev. Leonard Withington, Newbury, Mass.

THE fourth Eclogue of Virgil has always been regarded as a remarkable specimen of Pagan spirituality. The poet has been supposed to have uttered higher strains than he understood; and to have borrowed his sublimity from Hebrew inspiration. The Sibylline verses were of great account in the estimation of some of the fathers; their forgery and falsehood are pretty clear before the light of modern criticism. Still the design of this Eclogue is by no means certain; so obscure was it to Lowth, that he even expresses a doubt whether it ever can be explained.1 Yet we should never despair, because poetry is the language of the affections; and they are as permanent as the nature of man. If Virgil had any presages of his own immortality, he must have addressed his predictions to all generations.

My design is, to make some remarks on pastoral poetry in gen. eral, and then consider this Eclogue in particular.

Pastoral poetry is not intended to give us the most rigid representation of life and manners. It is not the design of it to hold the mirror up to nature, and to produce those feelings of recognition with which we read the dramatic writers. A pastoral is essentially a fancy piece by which we may obtain a distant glimpse of rural life, in those modes in which it plays before the imagination and exhilarates our hearts by relieving us from our present cares. As when we sail by some green island, or take a view from the sea of some Turkish city, we see nature and art dimly, with a few hints from reality for fancy to dress and adorn, and we contemplate the image while, at the same time, our reason tells us that a nearer view might impair the picture and dissipate the delusion; so, in pastoral poetry, the hint is taken from life, but we dress it at our pleasure; and the mind is delighted with the

1 Quid fuerit ipsius poetae consilium, quae mens, quanquam hic multum sese exercuerint doctissimorum virorum ingenia, tamen nec adhuc sciri arbitror, neque spem habeo, fore, ut unquam clarà investigetur.-Prelectiones XXI. p.

landscapes and personages of its own creation. Hence Mr. Pope has told us, that pastoral poetry "is an image of what they call the golden age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds, as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived to have been, when the best of men followed the employment." Dr. Johnson has denied this allusion to the golden age. It is certain, however, that the thought which Pope was feeling after in this remark is mainly correct. He felt that naked nature here could not be pleasing, and his object was to show that descriptions of country life only charm refined minds when shown in distant perspective. The imagination must be permitted to dash them. with the radiance of fancy and the colors of fiction. The tending of sheep can neither be romantic, nor pleasing to the man actually engaged in that occupation. A poetic excursion is commonly a migration from what we are to what we are not. The real shepherd knows too well the cares and toils of the employment, the noon-tide heats of summer, the rains and snows of winter, to relish the painting. Eclogues are the delight of those who dwell in cities and palaces; and to whom the country life seems pleasing because it is always in contrast with the art and excessive civilization around them. We all of us become tired of experienced life; we love to change the scene; to escape from the world of sensation to the world of fancy; and hence an age of refinement is always an age of pastoral poetry.

We find this remark verified by the whole course of literary history. The Songs of Solomon, (the piece of Hebrew poetry that comes the nearest to this species of verse,) were written at Jerusalem in the golden age of Jewish refinement. We know that Solomon was married to some of the Arab princesses;3 and perhaps in the summer season he might leave the city, and go to the native mountains of his rustic wife and enjoy the brooks and breezes, the flowers and forests of her paternal land. The beautiful Idyls of Theocritus are supposed to have been written in the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus, long after the Greek nations had passed the acme of their glory and were verging to the excesses of civilization. The age of Epic and Dramatic literature was over. The Doric dialect was on the wane even in Sicily; and probably would

1 Discourse on Pastoral Poetry prefixed to his Eclogues.-Works, page 4.

• I cannot easily discover why it is thought necessary to refer descriptions of a rural state to remote times, nor can I perceive that any writer has consistently preserved the Arcadian manners and sentiments.-Rambler, No. 37.

31 Kings 11: 1, 2.