evidence of the gracious sincerity of professors, to themselves and others; and the chief of all the marks of grace, the sign of signs, and evidence of evidences, that which seals and crowns all other signs." p. 394.

"There may be several good evidences that a tree is a fig-tree; but the highest and most proper evidence of it is, that it actually bears figs." - p. 395.

"Christian practice is the sign of signs, in this sense, that it is the great evidence, which confirms and crowns all other signs." p. 395.

We add a short quotation from a sermon of Paley* to the same effect, and particularly on account of its practical char

acter.

"The efficacy of the spirit is to be judged of by its fruits. Its immediate effects are upon the disposition. Whenever, therefore, we find religious carelessness succeeded within us by religious seriousness; conscience, which was silent or unheard, now powerfully speaking and obeyed; . . . . . when we find the thoughts of the mind drawing or drawn more and more towards heavenly things; the value and interest of these expectations plainer to our view, a great deal more frequent than heretofore in our meditations, and more fully discerned; the care and safety of our souls rising gradually above concerns and anxieties about wordly affairs; when we find the force of temptation and of evil propensities, not extinct, but retreating before a sense of duty; self-government maintained; the interruptions of it immediately perceived, bitterly deplored, and soon recovered; sin rejected and repelled; . . when we feel these things, then may we, without either enthusiasm or superstition, humbly believe that the spirit of God hath been at work in us."

In this result, as we have already observed, the most judicious writers of the present day concur. But our appeal lies to a more decisive authority than all these, even to the Lord Jesus and his Apostles, and nothing can be more explicit than their language on this point. Thus, "He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." "Ye are

my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." And certainly it is to the friends of Jesus, if to any, that the holy spirit is given. "Whosoever is born of God, doth not commit

* Sermon "On the Influence of the Spirit." Part III.

sin." "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." "For the fruit of the spirit is in all goodness, and righteousness, and truth."

These, then, are the authentic evidences that we are moved by the spirit of God. They are not strange, sudden, unaccountable, or miraculous. They do not require the sacrifice of our rational powers. They do not depend upon the fluctuation of the feelings, upon sympathy, heated appeals to the passions, or upon the excitements of crowds. They are seen in practice, quietly but effectually influencing the life, producing repentance, reformation, a growing conformity to God's will, a continually increasing purity, piety, and heavenly-mindedness. They are solid. They are durable. They have "the promise of the life that now is," and can alone prepare us for fuller manifestations of divine favor in the eternal world.

And, as another proof of the reality of God's presence to the human soul, we add, in conclusion, that of Experience. We speak here of no mystical influence, but of one which is clear, distinct, rational, and matter of habitual consciousness with the truly pious spirit. It is a religious peace; a holy joy in God, in his Son, and in the revelations of His will, that no words can adequately express. The soul thus visited from on high will perceive, that Christian truth is to all its capacities like light to the eye, each being made for the other; that the revelation of the Gospel is but the enlargement and confirmation of all other truth; that it interprets all the secrets of our mysterious nature; meets all its inner wants; answers to all its higher aspirations; solves all the dark problems of providence; presents a noble aim to life; gives an all-concerning significance to human conduct; relieves the mind from the anguish of uncertainty respecting the future, from the distress. of conflicting passions, from the solicitations of bad desire, from the opposition between duty and feeling, from the stings of remorse, and all the sad requitals of an outraged and hostile conscience. The spirit, thus touched of God, experiences what is emphatically called in the Scriptures a "joy in believing." It opens, continually, to new displays of His exhaustless love; perceives more and more of His stupendous plan of grace in the salvation of man; attains a blessed consciousness of thinking worthily and acting well; and gains more and more of that temper of our Divine Master, which elevates, tranquillizes,

amends, and hallows the life. In every dark hour, its language will be, as it has been, "O what a power there is in the Infinite Mind of Deity, to communicate itself to the soul that looks singly to Him for comfort and support! The greater the exigence, the more perfect the adaptation; the more troubled the sea is around us, the more we feel the security and firmness of our hold upon the Rock of Ages!" In a word, the spirit, thus guided from above, will experience, more and more, that the Saviour's parting promise of "peace" to his immediate diseiples is not confined to them, but is fulfilled to his faithful followers now; that it is, indeed, "his peace"; that it is given, in very truth, "not as the world giveth"; that it adds to every token of Divine Beneficence some relishes of heavenly blessedness; makes the whole creation one august temple for praise; renders life one continued offering of love and homage; and clothes every event, even while it is " seen and temporal," with the sublimer wisdom of "things unseen and eternal."

We here take leave of this long protracted discussion. Why, are any ready to ask, has it been so long and earnestly pursued? Our answer has already virtually been given in the introduction to this Essay. It is because every thing relating to the Influence of God upon the human soul is of ineffable importance; because what we deem the truth in respect to it, is the most cheering, sustaining, animating of all truths; because, moreover, it is a subject that is peculiarly liable to misapprehension, perversion, and abuse; and, because, in point of fact, it has been, and is, as we conceive, lamentably and shockingly mistaken, perverted, and abused. Therefore it is, that we have labored to give a Scriptural and rational account of it; to assert and prove the doctrine as, we believe, our Lord and his disciples taught it; and, at the same time, to deny all license to dark bigotry, to wild enthusiasm, and to fanatical excess. We have hoped to do something, by which the sincere and earnest inquirer might be guided to true and useful results; to relieve the doctrine from errors and overstatements which have prevented its reception with some enlightened minds; —something to make the great truth felt as well as admitted, experienced as well as acknowledged, that God is near to the human soul as nothing else is near, and near with an all-controlling, all-penetrating, all-subduing power.

ART. VI.-Lives of Sacred Poets containing a Biographical and Critical View of English Sacred Poetry during the Reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles the First. By ROBERT ARIS WILLMOTT, Esq., of Trinity College, Cambridge.

To the lovers of whatever is old, because it is old, and to the lovers of what is good, because it is good, whether old or not, this volume will be a source of great pleasure. It has been published with the above title, "under the direction of the Committee of general literature and education, appointed by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge" in England. The first series only has reached this country.

The object of the work, as the author states in his preface, is not to furnish a history of English Sacred Poetry; "a rapid view of some of its principal cultivators, in addition to the more extended memoirs, was all that could be offered. This object appeared likely to be attained by the interspersion of occasional biographical and critical sketches, together with specimens.'

The present volume commences with an introduction, in which are given brief notices of several poets who employed their genius upon sacred subjects previous to the seventeenth century. "It should never be forgotten," says our author, "in speaking of Chaucer, that he was among the first to resort to that precious fountain which his contemporary Wickliffe had opened, and that he drank of the water springing up to everlasting life.""

From the death of Chaucer to the reign of Henry VIII. a blank ensues in English literature. The Reformation which began under Henry, while it gave a vast impulse to the human mind in every department of thought, most especially affected the species of literature we are considering. The book of books was then unsealed; and we at the present day, when Bibles are in every house, can hardly conceive with what eager eyes its pages were pored over, and with what panting hearts its truths and promises were meditated. The stream, that had been for ages dammed up, was set free. The imagination, that had been priest-bound, leaped for joy to find itself at liberty to "wander through eternity," and form a paradise for itself, without consulting the formulas of the Church. Then Poetry, that had left the earth a prey to ignorance, superstition, and tyranny, descended again from the

heaven to which she had flown, and resumed her sway over the hearts of men. The imaginations and affections, that had been shut out by spiritual despotism from the garden of religion, and had been driven to the haunts of vulgarity and earth-born vice, returned to drink at the holy wells that had so long been closed; the faith of the Christian and the aspirations of genius, which had been most unnaturally dissevered, were again united; the devotion of the worshipper and the enthusiasm of the bard flowed once more in the same channel; poet and prophet became one; the first fruits of genius were laid upon the altar; and God was honored, as he should ever be, in the gifts he had bestowed.

It

And it might with reason have been expected, that the Scriptures, upon being opened to the public eye, should awaken and bring to life whatever of poetry lay concealed in the community. They are not only depositories of truths valuable to every individual, because connected intimately with every individual's present and future welfare, but they abound in brilliant pictures for the imagination; their solid and substantial contents are inlaid with the diamond ornaments of Eastern poetry, which throw a splendid lustre over their pages, making them as delectable to the taste, as they are invigorating to the moral and spiritual nature of man. is true, the first attempts at sacred verse in England were rude, of which the version of the Psalms in Edward the Sixth's time, by Sternhold and Hopkins, is an example. But a new era was about to commence. The sky of English literature was red with the rising glory of Spenser, and his Faery Queen walked forth with blended majesty and sweetness to captivate all hearts. The poet designed in this work, it seems, "to represent all the moral virtues, assigning to every virtue a knight, to be the patron and defender of the same; in whose actions, the feats of arms and chivalry, the operations of that virtue whereof he is the protector, are to be expressed; and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same, are to be beaten down and overcome.”

Among the poets noticed by Mr. Willmott in his Introduction is Robert Southwell. He belonged to the society of Jesuits, and in 1592 was imprisoned on a charge of sedition. After an imprisonment of three years, he was condemned, and executed at Tyburn. We copy the following verses from his lines "Upon the Picture of Death."

VOL. XVIII.

N. S. VOL. XIII. NO. II.

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