Obituary. Death of the REV. SAMUEL DRAPER-Communicated by the REV. SAMUEL LUCKEY. Beekman, Dutchess Ct. July 22, 1824. DEAR BROTHER, I have just arrived in this circuit from Redding, and find the painful intelligence which met me there to be correct. BROTHER SAMUEL DRAPER is dead! He had arrived within a few miles of his circuit, at the house of his old friend, PETER POWER, in Amenia. Finding him seriously indisposed, the family called in a physician, who visited him a few times without considering his illness imminently dangerous. On the 7th instant, it was thought advisable to have counsel in his case. But before any was obtained, he sunk down in the arms of death, unexpectedly to his physician, and the family where he was, and, probably, to himself. He was near two hundred miles from his family, who were ignorant of the event; and the people on the circuit successively assembled at his several appointments, anxiously looking for their new preacher, little thinking that he whom they expected to declare to them the word of life, was in the eternal world. His principal concern during his sickness was about his circuit. [Brother DRAPER's age was about forty-seven. He has left a bereaved wife, and six children.] 口米口 Yours, &c. REV. N. BANGS. Poetry. From the "Matins and "Let not your hearts be troubled, but confide All tending to the realms where blessing lies, Even as he stood on Canaan's shores, we stand. "O night! how beautiful thy golden dress, SAMUEL LUCKEY. Vespers" of MR. BowRING. And there Thy court is-there Thy court, at- By myriad, myriad messengers-the song Art lovely in my eyes-thy thoughts to me flower blows; And breezes of the south play 1ound thy throne; With his gay smile away-and so we lie, THE METHODIST MAGAZINE, FOR OCTOBER, 1824. Divinity. From the Imperial Magazine. SPECIMEN OF BISHOP DUPPA'S PREACHING. Angels Rejoicing for Sinners Repenting. Delivered in a Sermon by the Right Rev. Father in God BRIAN DUPPA, Bishop of Salisbury, in the year 1648. Luke xv. 10.-" Likewise I say unto you, There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." MAN never yet invented more ways to damn himself, than God hath done to save him; nor was he ever varied into more shapes of sin, than his Saviour hath been of mercy; for as before his incarnation the Israelites had a cloud to usher them, and God was in that cloud; Moses had a flame to beckon to him, and God was in that flame; Elias had a voice to call him, and God was in that voice; so after he was incarnate, when he became one of us, sin alone excepted, which makes us not of him,) as if to have been man alone, was not enough, he ransacks the whole inventory of his creatures, puts on all shapes to gain a soul: to the traveller, he calls, I am the way; to the benighted, he shews, he is the light; to the stranger, he opens himself, I am the door: look for him among the plants, you shall find him a vine; search for him in the flock, the Baptist points him to you, Behold the Lamb! or if metaphors be but verbal transfigurings, track him by his parables, which are more real; if you meet there with a sower, Christ is that sower; if you hear of a bridegroom, he is that bridegroom; if you see the man that brings back his lost sheep in triumph, he is that man or if you find a woman that calls her friends to joy with her, Rejoice, for I have found the piece which I had lost: know that that piece is thy soul, those friends are the angels, he is that woman too: for that parable, this text is the moral, the meaning of the parable, Likewise I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. That parables are pictures, Athanasius tells us, but withal, such pictures as have their velamina, their shadows, their curtains VOL. VII. 46 diaphanous enough for the eye of faith to look through; but not for the eye of unbelief or ignorance. For as saint Hierome counselled a Roman matron to keep her young daughter from reading of the Canticles, ne anima non intelligens vulneraretur, lest the soul that understood not the spiritual sense, should perish in the literal; or as those images, which the Papists call, Idiotarum libros, the laymen's books, being misunderstood do prove the fool's idolatry: so these images (for parables are but the images of things) did not so much instruct, as abuse the eyes of them that saw them, until our Saviour drew the curtain. They had heard of a sheep that had gone astray, of a piece of silver that was lost, that both again were found, that friends were called to rejoice for both; but what this was to them, what share they had in this joy or that recovery, they had not heard, till he that made their ears applied it to their hearts with an "Ourw, λeyw vμiv, Likewise, I say unto you, I, that came to heal that which was wounded, to bind up that which was broken, to save that which was lost; I, that have left the ninety-nine in the desert, all the angels in heaven (for so the fathers interpret it) to find out one wanderer; I say unto you, to you sinners, that come near to hear me; to you pharisees, that murmur, because those sinners come so near me; to you that know not what the value of a soul is, what music is in the groans, or what beauty is in the tears, of a sad convert, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. The authority of the speaker must win some credit to this argument; for so far distant is heaven from earth, so rare the commerce between them, that unless God bring the intelligence himself from thence, man will not believe. Let the Separatist boast of his private spirit that hath revealed it, or the bishop of Rome cite his infallible chair; every one is not wax enough to take impression at this. But if our Saviour set his divine seal on; if we once find his ipse dico, I say unto you, then let him that hath ears, hear; no oracle ever spake like this; truth, to the truth incarnate. Be not therefore troubled either with the contrariety of passions in these words, that sorrow should beget joy; or the disparity of the persons, that angels should rejoice for sinners; or the inequality of the extent, many angels for one sinner; for Christ hath spoke it, and we are to believe it. First, that there is joy, though we know not what it is. Next, there is a ubi, a place where, of this joy, though it be not here. Last of all, there is a query too, a why, a reason, a cause, of this joy, for one sinner that repenteth. . But first, of that joy itself; for velut solatium erit, saith Tertullian, disserere de illo, quo frui non datur, sick men may talk of health, and why not I of joy? As in sorrow the heart is contracted and straitened, so in joy the passages are enlarged, the cordial spirits scattered, the heart itself runs out, 'tis so dilated; which makes Aristotle say, that joy is, as it were, the letting of the heart : out. But if they that feel no joy, cannot define it; nor they that feel it, keep it in their hearts; nor he that wants a heart, judge of it, who shall then resolve us what joy is? or where we shall find a thing to this name? For, examine first the joy of a proud man; lieth it not in the breath of others, a thin cabinet of air which every man hath a key to, but himself. Let but them above him agree not to think him great, or wise, or noble; let but his fellow-worms forbear to honour him; he that holds the plough shall not change joys with him. Or look on the joy of the voluptuous doth not sorrow often wait so close as to tread upon the heels of it? Have you not heard the epicure cry, O his gout! even at that time, when he hath been feeding his disease with riot? Were not the Israelites struck with meat between their teeth? and was not Zimri slain in the embraces of his Cosby? Besides, to share in all the good that is under the sun is at the best but indolence, a privation of grief; it is not joy; or if we will needs strain higher for a word for it, it is but an acquiescence, saith Scaliger, a kind of wresting of the mind, it is not joy he were a strange chymist, you would think, that, when a drop of wine were cast into the sea, durst undertake out of that vast element to extract the spirits of that one drop of wine, and say, here they are: nor shall I conceive him easier an artisan, that can out of the sea of his ordinary hourly discontents, extract this drop of joy, and shew it to me. The truth is, we know not what it is, because we seek not for it where we should. Copernicus, that thought the earth moved, and the heavens stood still, was not yet so mad as either to look for trees in heaven, or stars upon the ground; yet we in our search for joy, do as mad things as this comes to for what would you imagine, if you should see a man knock at a grave-stone for a companion, or go down into a charnel-house to make merry if you did not pronounce him directly frantic, you would guess surely that he had mistook the place: and the like do I of you, saith St. Austin, Qui quæritis gaudium in loco non suo, who look for joy either in the honours or pleasures of this life, or whatever else is not the proper sphere of it. But suppose there were such a thing on earth as joy; that the Philosophers' stone, the northwest passage, and that, were found out together; yet there remains another disquisition: for where shall we have a lodging for it? where a breast capable to entertain it?-in the heart of the sinful man? no, God himself hath barr'd that door against it: for, gaudere non est impiis, as we find it denounced in the prophecy of Esay, there is no peace, no joy to the wicked. They cannot rejoice; they may perchance drown their grief in wine, or drive away their discontents with company, they may reprieve their souls for a time from melancholy; but the fits of a constant ague, or the flowings of the tide, come not more duly, then it returns again: shifting the place will not serve the turn, unless we can shift ourselves; for post equitem sedet atra cura, like the rats that followed the German bishop, thy sad thoughts will after thee. Draw the curtains of thy bed, yet they will lie with thee; shut the door of thy closet, yet they will come in unto thee; for the truth is, saith S. Bernard, Intus est quem fugis, every ill man hath his enemy within him : his own heart calls to him, as his did in the vision, Ego tibi horum sum causa, I am the cause of all this trouble unto thee: thou hast made me ill, I will not leave thee quiet.-No joy then to the wicked: but shall we knock at more innocent doors to see if there it harbours? were the prophets in the Old Testament acquainted with it? the apostles in the New? or shall we inquire of innocence itself, the Saviour of us all? But he will inquire of us again, as he did in the first of the Lamentation, O all ye that pass by, not was there ever joy, but was there ever sorrow like my sorrow? But you will say, perhaps, though he himself were the son of sorrow, yet he bid his followers joy, in the fifth chapter of Matthew, xaigslɛ, rejoice; or as if that had been too little, xa ayaλλîards, be exceeding glad: true, but it was in there reproaches: so saint Paul had his joy, but it was in his afflictions: the martyrs had their joy, but it was in their bitter sufferings. The few notes they heard of joy were but like the breakings of an echo, a word or two they heard, but not a sentence; or like a ring of bells in a high wind, they heard some imperfect sounds of it, but they could not hear the lesson. Yet mistake me not, I would not have you hang down your heads at this, or, because the earth is not your heaven, therefore to make it your hell; for as gold keeps the name in the leaf as well as in the wedge, in the coin as in the bullion; or as he that sees a beam or two shine through the crevice of a wall, may say he sees the sunshine, as well as he that walks abroad; so neither are we so destitute of all comfort, but we may say, there is a leaf of joy, the tinfoil of it here, there are some few glimpses that shine in upon us: but for the full, the solid, the jubilating joy, look for it no longer in this valley of tears; there is joy, but not here; true joy, but not yet: you that sow in tears be certain you shall reap in joy; but be as certain to tarry till the harvest; you must stay; no remedy till heaven be your dwelling, till the angels be your partners, incorruption your change, immortality your garment; for the earth is not the place, dull flesh is not the subject of it. Find it we shall, yet not in the presence of men, but of the angels. Thus having shewn you the negative, where joy is not; my next venture (if it prove not a desperate one) shall be to show you where it is, vwTIOV Twv yleλwv, in the presence of angels. He that comes out of a dark room into the sunshine, shall be sure to find his eyes dazzled: what then will become of us, whose eyes (Aristotle could say) were tanquam Noctua ad solem? how shall we look on this joy of angels? shall we think of the place |