tating it, and to deal faithfully with a bad heart, without dealing cruelly with it. He must know how to inspire the poor with true sentiments of their own nature, and with a true sense of the worth of character; he should know how to sympathize with human weakness, and how to call forth human strength; how to count and to characterize the pulsations of the mind, and, like a skilful physician, to direct his attention to the prevailing symptoms of moral disease. Do not say that such men are not to be found; let the demand for them be what it should be, and they will be found. I shall hail with joy unspeakable the day, should I live to see it, when I shall learn that this ministry is well begun in England."-Pp. 14-16.

DR. DODDRIDGE'S CORRESPONDENCE AND DIARY.*

THE first half of this volume closes the Correspondence of Doddridge, on which we have already said enough to shew our opinion of its value. Our present concern is with the Diary.

We were not mistaken in our anticipation that its publication would lay open recesses hitherto unexplored of a spirit whose ingenuousness, never perhaps surpassed, had to maintain so incessant a struggle with timidity, that its inward workings were never so fully revealed to men as those of many a less innocent being. Here we have the revelation complete we mean in the union of the Correspondence and Diary; for heaven forbid that Doddridge should be judged by the Diary alone! In it we see how a sensitive constitution like his, made for perpetual alternations of joy and grief, for transitions from mirth to meditation, for impassioned love, for devoted general benevolence, for a true understanding of the bliss of existence, and for a foretaste of the steadfast, substantial enjoyments of a better state, may be cramped, may be perverted, may be exasperated by tyrannical restraints, till it becomes ferocious in the infliction of self-torture, and all but impious in its erroneous estimate of the good and evil that are in the world. It has been long enough urged and acknowledged that Doddridge was a bright example of the efficacy of religion in stimulating to benevolent exertion, and in sanctifying the life. He was such an example; but for the honour of true religion it must be further inquired whether his powers were developed to the utmost, and whether he enjoyed-whether his heart and mind were kept in the peace which passeth understanding. It needs but a glance into his Diary to be convinced that it was not so. We find there a paralyzing superstition under which his powers languished; and a harrowing misery under which faith could not but faint, and almost expire. Endowed with an imagination which should have poised itself on steady wings in an exalted region of light and hope, he crouched in the darkness, he grovelled in the dust beneath the scourge of a savage theology. The vivid apprehension which should have been clear to discern the workings of God throughout a wide range of objects, was directed full upon petty coincidences, till the finest sensibilities were placed under the tyranny of the commonest accidents, and the pilgrimage from strength to strength was rendered gloomy by the shadows of superstition, and retarded by needless fears of the multitude of spectres which haunt such an obscurity. That all things are done by the workings of the Divine Spirit, that thoughts pass through the mind of man as shadows glide over the face of the earth, that every dewdrop has its destination, and every whisper of the breeze its burden of meaning, is acknow

* The Correspondence and Diary of P. Doddridge, D. D. Vol. V. Edited by J. D. Humphreys, Esq. London. 1831.

VOL. V.

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ledged by every religious man as amply as by Doddridge; but under none but a heart-withering system of theology could such a belief be made the instrument of torture like that he groaned under. What must it have been to the mind of such an one as Doddridge to believe that he had incurred the Divine displeasure by praying too earnestly for the life of his child; and that this child was made the instrument of his punishment, directly by her own rebuke, and indirectly by her sufferings!

"God only knows with what earnestness and importunity I prostrated myself before him to beg her life, which I would have been willing almost to have purchased with my own. When reduced to the lowest degree of languishment by a consumption, I could not forbear looking in upon her almost every hour. I saw her with the strongest mixture of anguish and delight; no chemist ever watched his crucible with greater care when he expected the production of the philosopher's stone, than I watched her in all the various turns of her distemper, which at last grew utterly hopeless, and then no language can express the agony into which it threw me. One remarkable circumstance I cannot but recollect: in praying most affectionately, perhaps too earnestly, for her life, these words came into my mind with great power, Speak no more to me of this matter. I was unwilling to take them, and went into the chamber to see my dear lamb, when instead of receiving me with her usual tenderness, she looked upon me with a stern air, and said with a very remarkable determination of voice, 'I have no more to say to you, and I think from that time, though she lived at least ten days, she seldom looked upon me with pleasure, or cared to suffer me to come near her. But that I might feel all the bitterness of the affliction, Providence so ordered it, that I came in when her sharpest agonies were upon her, and those words, O dear, O dear, what shall I do? rung in my ears for succeeding hours and days. But God delivered her; and she without any violent pang in the article of her dissolution, quietly and sweetly fell asleep, as, I hope, in Jesus, about ten at night, I being then at Maidwell. When I came home, my mind was under a dark cloud relating to her eternal state; but God was pleased graciously to remove it, and gave me comfortable hope, after having felt the most heart-rending sorrow."Р. 361.

This child, whose eternal state was transiently considered doubtful, was seven years old, and so amiable and engaging that she won all hearts.-Was Jesus ever heard to say, "Of such is the kingdom of hell" ?

It is most painful to read the self-reproaches which abound in almost every page. The causes of many of them appear to us to be wholly visionary; and where facts are mentioned, such as indolent habits, the indulgence of impetuous emotions, and other sins, it is perfectly evident that such faults and failings would have been much more readily cured by the stimulus of energetic hope than by the depressing torments of fear and remorse. Doddridge's theology seemed framed for the express purpose of detaining him or dragging him back to the very beginning of a spiritual course; and when he made progress, it was in spite of his creed and not in consequence of it: it was through the power which remained to emancipate himself from the bondage of his superstitions, and not because those chains were any thing but a hindrance to him. The very office of religion is to lead us on far out of the reach of fear and abasement; to invigorate and not to depress; to bid us rejoice evermore, and never to countenance such despondency as is here expressed:

"On the whole, I apprehend my character has risen much of late, and stands fairer and brighter than it ever did. But surely if many of those that now hold me in the greatest esteem knew what I was in secret, if they had seen what the eye of God has seen, with what horror, with what contempt would they behold me! I have lived a most trifling, foolish life; have taken little care to dispose my business, to redeem my time, to manage my expenses. I have been extremely negligent in reading the Scripture, and in attending to the exercises of secret devotion. I have not a heart to lament it. The spirit of God has justly deserted me, and left me under the conviction of the most aggravated guilt, without the least emotion of tender sorrow. O God, I humbly own that thou art just, and wilt be so, if I am hardened in this world and condemned in the next."-P. 286.

What wonder that there was an indisposition to secret devotion and to studying the Scriptures, if the one was to be pervaded with remorse, and the other defiled with injurious conceptions of the Giver of grace? What charm can the Scriptures have while they are believed to teach that it may be just to harden men in this life, and condemn them to all eternity in the next? We will make but one more extract from the copious records of the wearing griefs of this gentle, tender-spirited being, who needed and ought to have enjoyed the most animating and soothing influences of the gospel to whose service he had devoted himself. These records bear a mournful character from the first page, with few intermissions, till the last :

"... Notwithstanding all this, my conduct has been very ungrateful and thoughtless. I must confess that, in one respect, I have been more cautious than usual, for I have read a chapter in the New Testament every morning and evening. I have preached several times, and now and then with some spirit, though generally ill. But as to keeping up a lively sense of God upon my spirit, I must confess that I have exceedingly failed, and that my soul has been strangely sunk into carnality. I am ashamed to think how much I have been attached to flesh and sense; in how irregular a manner I have indulged my inclinations and passions; and how total a neglect there has been of inward communion with God. Since my return home, I have most shamefully triffed away my time by lying in bed by far too late, by meddling with books in which I had no concern, by neglecting self-examination, and making proper memorandums. And even now, in the reflection upon these things, my heart is strangely cold and unaffected. The Lord mercifully forgive me, and pour forth something of his grieved and forfeited spirit to cause me this day to approach him in his worship, and to enjoy communion with him, which is a thing I now seldom taste, and only know by report and by remembrance." -P.310.

How was it forgotten in the midst of this self-reproach that there is communion, close communion, with God in every emotion of joy which attends the vicissitudes of sunshine and shade, or echoes the melodies of the groves, and in every thrill of gratitude which is excited by domestic endearments and social pleasures? Such emotions, such gratitude, were ever stirring in the bosom of Doddridge; and it was never, therefore, true that he knew nothing of communion with God but by report and remembrance. His false theology deceived him, by giving him wrong notions of the nature of communion with God.

We have referred to intermissions of his remorse and fear. There are such; but they are few, very few; and they are made up of rapturous emotions whose very nature is to be transient. We look in vain for the record of any one occasion of tranquil enjoyment of religious services. We do not, of course, suppose that there never were such. The composed spirit of some of his letters on religious subjects assures us that he found rest and peace in his dependence on God: but the private record before us bears no traces of such repose. We imagine that he had recourse to his Diary as a relief to his excited feelings, and that he was unwilling to disturb his calm states of mind by putting himself under the power of agitating associations. In other words, the substantial goodness of his religion was testified in the

actions which he imagined to be the least religious; and its substantial peace experienced when he thought least about it. We, at least, see more of true religion in some of his gayest letters to his young friends than in the following retrospections, which it is but justice to extract, after having exhibited some of an opposite character :

"In the prayer I had much communion with God, in the sermon little or none, but so much in the sacrament that my very heart was almost swallowed up. A variety of plain, solid, and natural thoughts sprung in upon my mind like water from a fountain, and gave unutterable pleasure. Many of them are vanished away, some few remain; the substance of which is as follows." (In all this we sympathize, and would readily approve, if the thoughts were, as he says, plain, solid, and natural;" but none such do we find in the abstract of his discourse, which is too long to be here given. The sentiments are flighty to an extraordinary degree. He goes on,) "Such were the workings of my heart at this most delightful and edifying ordinance. O! that it may not prove only a transient blaze of spirits; but that the happy consequences of it may go along with me into all the devotions and all the services that lie before me this month, and that I may be prepared for all the will of God!"-"This, like yesterday, has been a day of unmerited, unbounded goodness. I can hardly express the sweet communion with God which I had in his house and at his table. I had been discoursing on communion with him, and through grace I have felt it. A sermon composed under great deadness, which when I composed it I thought very meanly of, was delivered with great seriousness, spirit, and pleasure. It was the language not merely of my tongue, but of my heart. I had communion with God as my compassionate, wise, almighty, bountiful Friend; with Christ as my atonement, righteousness, intercessor, head, and forerunner; and adored the divine grace for such manifestations to so guilty and wretched a creature." Pp. 342, 344.

We have referred to mistaken views of the design of prayer, and, therefore, we are unwilling to pass over this part of our subject without notice: but it is one of peculiar delicacy, and one on which we should scarcely have ventured to pronounce in the case of such a man as Doddridge, had not our astonishment been excited by the record before us of his vestry retirements. How such minute considerations of time and circumstance could coexist with passionate devotion we can scarcely imagine: and still less what good consequences could be expected to arise from communion so pre-arranged, and limited, and regulated. Such regulations are the necessary cessary condition at present of social worship; but why they should be brought into arbitrary connexion with private devotion, whose very essence is freedom, and how any wise man can attempt to determine his own precise state of feeling at any future moment, -how he can resolve at what hour to be penitent, at what to rejoice for others, at what to mourn for himself, while, at the same time, devotion is made professedly to consist in impulses, we do indeed wonder. A few words from the Diary will suggest all we would say. Alone in the vestry,

"Till near one, I addressed myself to God in suitable thanksgivings, humiliations, and confessions; then nearly three quarters of an hour was spent in prayer for the increase of the church; in pleading many select promises before God, and interceding for my brethren and their societies, as well as for my own; nor shall it I trust be altogether in vain. Then till twenty minutes past two, I drew up some maxims agreeably to what I had intended to think of in relation to my daily conduct in general, and as to my behaviour as a husband, father, master, tutor, pastor, and correspondent, and some miscellaneous purposes, which then I turned into prayer, beseeching of God resolution and prudence; and concluded by recommending to him the labours We have not the heart to extract the record of one of these days of retirement, (dated June 1st, 1751,) which is one of the most afflicting confessions we have ever met with. We are glad to see it here, nevertheless; because it affords an unquestionable proof that bodily indisposition was the cause of much of the spiritual grief which this pious man experienced. The adherents of his theology will hasten to cast the burden of his conflicts on the peculiarities of his physical constitution; and it is very true that he was so framed as to be naturally indolent, yet excitable, subject to alternate raptures and deadness of feeling. What we complain of is, not that Doddridge was thus predisposed, but that his religion was one which incessantly aggravated, instead of alleviating, these natural evils. When in society, where he was exposed to the salutary checks arising from a diversity of opinions and sentiments, the religion of Doddridge exerted its pure and genuine influences. He was cheerful as innocent, and dignified as meek: but when removed from these restraints, he was wrought upon by the corrupt conceptions which carried fear and darkness into the deepest recesses of his spirit, or illumined them with a fitful and artificial light. Had Doddridge known God only as a tender Father, Christ only as his holy and approved messenger, sin and sorrow as finite and limited influences, holiness and peace as the natural and ultimate elements of being, how serene, how exalted, might have been his mortal life! As it was, how was it made up of extremes! Now weak, now mighty; in some things narrow and puerile, in others lofty and enlarged; now in raptures, now on the brink of despair; sometimes commanding our reverence, and sometimes pleading for our compassion. This is not what life is intended to be; such is not what the gospel is designed to make us. None ever surrendered himself more unconditionally to the workings of the Spirit than Doddridge. Alas for him that its operations were disturbed and perverted by human intervention !

We may say alas! for others also, to judge from the abstracts of his devotional services given in his Diary. We have never seen examples of a more imaginative and less solid and profitable style of preaching. Upon occasion, no doubt, very strong impressions must have been produced; but there is throughout an assumption of a very excited state of feeling in the hearers to begin with; and of a kind of excitement merely factitious, in very many instances. Such preaching is equally unlike the apostolic method, to which Doddridge would have done well to refer more frequently; and inapplicable to the spiritual state of men in this or in any other age.

The Editor of this volume will probably be as vehemently assailed on occasion of its appearance as he was when the first came out to scandalize so many good people. We think him perfectly right, however, in presenting us with the whole truth, unacceptable as it will be to many, and painful as in some respects it must be to all. It is high time that some one should set an example of intrepid fidelity in the article of biography; and in no instance could the example be more useful than in the present. No wise man will think the worse of Doddridge for any thing he may have said of himself. What blame there is lies with his theology: what scandal there is rests with those who have hitherto misrepresented him. Doddridge is now proved to be, not exactly what he was thought to be, but something more. He is proved to have quite as strong a right to our admiration; quite as close a hold on our affections; while to these is added a new and irresistible claim to our compassion and respectful sympathy.