Perhaps, they who know human nature will hardly think that it is fitted for the exigencies of common life, except where there is a predisposition to unimpassioned regularity. The necessity of a more ardent religion for minds of a higher character, so as to furnish an adequate object for the affections and the imagination, as well as for the reason and conscience, is, in my mind, sufficient to account for Cowper's becoming a Methodist. At a period of peculiar sensibility, he fell in with some connexions of his own, who, though possessed of questionable opinions, were sincerely and ardently devout; and, in the exalted happiness which he thought he saw in them, he felt an attraction operating on his own heart, which he was not desirous, and, perhaps, in a sense, not able, to resist. Sentiment, therefore, of the strongest and most insinuating kind, made Cowper a Methodist.

His view seems to me to have been precisely that of the eloquent Saurin. "Heureux le fidèle, qui, dans les combats que lui livrent les ennemis de son salut, peut opposer plaisirs à plaisirs, délices à délices; les plaisirs de la prière et de la méditation aux plaisirs du monde; les délices du silence et de la retraite à celles des cercles, des dissipations, des spectacles. Un tel homme est ferme dans ses devoirs, même parce qu'il est homme, et qu'il ne depend pas d'un homme de ne pas aimer ce qui lui ouvre des sources de joye; un tel homme ne peut jamais succomber entièrement sous les tentations, parce que, selon l'energique expression d'un apôtre, 'La paix de Dieu, qui est au dessûs de tout entendement, garde' c'est-à-dire, preserve les sens, et

empêche, par les delectations dont elle l'inonde,
qu'ils ne l'entraînent dans le crime." The only
difference was, that Cowper needed balm for a
wounded spirit, rather than support against dan-
gerous attractions; but the matter of aid was one
and the same: and it seems, that for about seven
years after the first enkindling of this elevated
devotion, even his constitutional malady was over-
borne by the unabating spring-tide of his happiness.
The delights of this period lived ever after in his
memory, his imagination, and his heart, even when
his hopes of his own future happiness became so
unhappily shaken by his melancholy. To this
affection, perhaps, we owe it, that he made poetry his
occupation, and it seems as if this exercise had the
power of suspending his complaints, of scattering,
for the time, the clouds which enveloped him, and
of restoring to him, at least transiently, the sunshine
of the breast. But even from these gleams a light
has streamed forth upon his verse, which makes
the common objects of earth appear to us, in his
description, as if they were already illumined with
the dawn of an eternal day. How much they so
appeared to himself, none but his own delightful
expressions can give an idea. To them, therefore,
I finally appeal, in support of the substance of the
above observations:-

Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste
His works. Admitted once to his embrace,
Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before;
Thine eye shall be instructed: and thine heart,
Made pure, shall relish with divine delight,
Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.

The soul that sees him, or receives, sublim'd,
New faculties, or learns, at least, t' employ
More worthily the pow'rs she own'd before:
Discerns in all things-what with stupid gaze
Of ignorance till then she overlook'd-
A ray of heavenly light gilding all forms
Terrestrial, in the vast and the minute,
Th' unambiguous footsteps of a God,
Who gives its lustre to th' insect's wing,
And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds.
Much conversant with heav'n, she often holds,
With those fair ministers of light to man
That fill the skies nightly with silent pomp,

Sweet conference. Inquires what strains were they
With which heav'n rang, when ev'ry star, in haste
To gratulate the new created earth,

Sent forth a voice, and all the sons of God
Shouted for joy. Tell me, ye shining hosts,
That navigate a sea that knows no storms,
Beneath a vault unsullied with a cloud,
If, from your elevation whence ye view
Distinctly scenes invisible to man,
And systems of whose birth no tidings yet
Have reached this nether world, ye spy a race
Favour'd as ours, transgressors from the womb,
And hasting to a grave, yet doom'd to rise,
And to possess a brighter heav'n than yours?
As one who long detain'd in foreign shores
Pants to return, - and when he sees afar
His country's weather-bleached and batter'd rocks
From the green wave emerging, darts an eye,
Radiant with joy, toward the happy land,—
So I, with animated hopes, behold,
And many an aching wish, your beamy fires,
That shew like beacons in the blue abyss,
Ordain'd to guide th' embodied spirit home
From toilsome life to never-ending rest.

Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires

That give assurance of their own success,

And that infus'd from heav'n must thither tend.

See, my dear sir, I began on the 19th of January, as you have perceived, to write a letter, and on this 11th of April I finish an essay. I only fear it may combine some of the worst qualities of both, without having the requisites of either. On various grounds it might need an apology, but that would not mend it. I can only say, that I submit it to you for transmission to your friend, or not, as you judge best; and if transmitted, I commit it to him, to use it or overlook it as he thinks proper. It is, probably, too late to be of use to him; and perhaps it pursues so peculiar a path, as to be entirely wide of all he could wish to tell the public. It claims no merit but having been suggested by an unfettered love of truth, and by veneration for a singular example of excellence, moral and intellectual.

368

REFLECTIONS ON 2 TIMOTHY, III. 15.

"And that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus."

ST. PAUL had been just before predicting the evils which were likely to arise to the Church from the multiplying of false teachers; and being deeply impressed with the dangers to which Christians would be exposed from the contagion of their doctrine and example, he exhorts his beloved Timothy to be vigilantly on his guard. But he conveys his advice rather by stating facts than by direct admonition. He reminds Timothy of the benefit he might derive from having had so near a view of St. Paul's own doctrine and conduct, but he lays a still deeper stress on the advantages of his early education, it being from this that he infers his capacity of profiting by St. Paul's example. "Evil men and seducers," says he, "shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But continue thou in the things thou hast learned and been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, and that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus."