it nothing for a good man now to hear blasphemy and profane ribaldry when he sails to Margate? Nothing at all (exclaim the Reviewers) compared to fanaticism! Beware of a Methodist! Habet fænum in cornu. Every thing is pleasant but the whinings and groanings of a Methodist! Let me see every thing but the Tabernacle! and yet, though I never saw it, I will give you a complete section of it! I would rather,' says the merry Reviewer, see Punchinello, or the dancing dogs, than an assembly of Methodists! As Homer did a liar, he hates them as the gates of Hell! The testimony of a profane officer to the worth of pious sailors, seems to gravel you considerably, or else why do you transcribe it into your pages? It is not for the purpose of commendation, but for profane banter and mockery You cannot disprove the fact, nor account for it but upon false principles. Lord Nelson favoured them; but you shew them no mercy. From the very face of your argument, it should seem that sailors should continue to swear, and never sing hymns; or else that all attempts to reform our brave tars are impertinent and ridiculous. The Religious Tract Society comes in next for a share in your abuse. Is not every man bound, by a law paramount to all human authority, to do all the good he can in his station? If he, or others in concert with him, do good by circulating cheap Tracts on subjects of infinite importance, where is the harm of this? Are not cheap political tracts circulated, in critical junctures, in our country? and why may not Religious Societies disseminate knowledge in a cheap form to the poor? It is passing strange, indeed, that all religious warmth, all active zeal for the glory of God and the good of men, is decried as enthusiasm! and you screen your own coldness to the best interests of men, by declaiming against fanatics! Every degree of exertion for the salvation of men which surpasses your own standard (which, forsooth, is scanty enough) you behold with suspicion, and pronounce it the symptom of a heated brain; and you censure, without mercy or justice, the active Christian, in whose diligence you read a reproach your own apathy and indifference.

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In things that fall within your own sphere, you do excellently. You discover talents of no common kind: happy will you be if they are directed to the honour of that God who confers them upon you! But when you meddle with religion, you are not at home. You seem to forget the quid valeant humeri of your friend Horace. For instance, in your review of Hoyle's Exodus, you say, That the stagnant and bloody waters were the first plague in Egypt; and immediately after came the plague of lice. Now, if you had read the Bible with attention, you would have found that there is no foundation for the epithet stagnant in the history; and that the plague of the frogs came after the plague of turning the waters into blood. This is but a trifling oversight; but it should teach Reviewers not to be too minute nor too

severe in their animadversions. Humanum est errare. With relation to your few comments upon Methodists and Methodism, it may appear to you that I am u equal to the task of commenting upon them, that it is a pigmy grappling with Her cules, Impar congressus Achilli; but I shall beg leave to attempt it.

I begin with assuring you, Gentlemen, that I am not a Methodist, nor the son of a Methodist. I am an obscure individual, far in a wild, unknown to public view,' not much affected with the praises nor censures of men; but screened from both by a happy obscurity. Nevertheless, I occasionally peep through the loop-holes at the busy scenes, and am not indifferent to the movements of Providence in the church and the world. Your second remark is directed against the doctrines of inward emotions and impulses, as leading to every species of folly and enormity. Here your reasoning is not fair nor conclusive, because you do not produce sufficient data from the writings of the Methodists on which to build your conclusions: Methodists, as far as I know, never put inward emotions on a level with the Scriptures, as a foundation of faith, or standard of manners. This you have not proved, and, therefore, your inferences are illegitimate and unfounded. To the law and to the testimony they constantly appeal. But, Gentlemen, does religion produce no emotions in the mind? Is it a cold system of doctrines that never seizes upon the heart, but leaves it dark and insensible? Then all the descriptions in Scripture of the feelings, the joys, the raptures of good men, are enthusiasm and fanaticism! Then David was a fanatic when he said, ' My soul thirsteth for the living God, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks! My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God!' Paul, whose sober judgment you cannot question, was all on fire when he was constrained by the love of Christ. He was like a burning seraph when he felt it himself and preached it to others. Is that subject now stale and insipid, and not calculated to produce emotions in the mind? · and, though you never experienced these emotions in your own hearts, can you hence argue against the fact? Garrick once overwhelmed his audience with his powers. The emotions he produced were strong indeed. Every eye was suf fused with tears; but a cold-hearted arithmetician was present, who wondered at their pusilasimity. While their hearts were penetrated with the subject, he coldly counted Garrick's words, and felt nothing! Internal feelings are not the rule of duty, but surely they are the privilege of all good men; but a stranger intermeddleth not with their joys.

But the Methodists hate pleasure. Yes, they do; -pleasures of the kind specified by you! None of these are rational, nor enjoined by Scripture. Theatres have always been the re-ort of the wicked, and of the refuse of society. Wise men, in every age, have shunned them, as nurs: ries of vice and incentives to

impurity. The wiser Heathens reprobated them, as injurious to the state, and pernicious to public morals. In the bost ages of Christianity, theatres were equally avoided as Heathen temples; and no person who regarded his character could associate with actors. In the whole history of society, there occurs not an instance of a man who was made wise, brave, or virtuous by the theatre-but the examples of persons ruined in their character, in their religious principles and fortune, by attending plays, defy all calculation. Be so good as read Jeremiah Collyer against the Stage, and pronounce whether his arguments can be answered. Dryden himself confessed that the most of them were unanswerable. Why find fault with conscientious men for not attending the theatre? Would you compel them to attend? Are they the worse for not attending? Cards were not known to the antients; and were invented to please a royal idiot. If you can describe the pleasure they communicate, or the good they produce, you shall be my great Apollo. You chastize the licentious More, and in this you deserve great credit from your countrymen; but why, as censors of public morals, do you vindicate the passions excited by gambling? The great Locke condemned cards in the most express manner; and why call it Methodism to avoid them as a snare, and condemn them as an evil? Surely, Gentlemen, you forgot your dignity when you mentioned Punchinel'o, dancing dogs, and blind fiddlers! - a pretty spectacle, indeed, to see wise men witnessing such scenes! Are you acquainted with any Methodists? Have you ever been distressed with their ennui, their groans and sighs which they offer, you say, to the Deity? I have witnessed their devotions, but saw no ennui, no wretchedness, no infelicity, marked in their faces, or pourtrayed in their worship. Some of their preachers are very eloquent, and speak good sense in a captivating style. They sing most delightfully in their chapels and churches, and appear in every thing the reverse of being wretched. If the face be an index of the mind, if devotion be a test of character, they seem to be a very happy people indeed. In the Tabernacle there is no vaulting nor tumbling; and no low arts used to prosure popularity! All who have attended the Tabernacle can contradict your assertion, as destitute of truth and replete with malignity. That some preachers have occasionally uncouth attitudes, may be granted to you; but that that place resembles Saddler's Wells, is a shocking insult upon the devotions of a pious audience. The most virulent enemy to our common Christianity could not have said any thing more indecent or wide of the truth.

Where you learn that Mthodists lay very little stress upon practical righteousness, you do not inform us. Such an assertion required strong docume: ts to support it, either from the preache ing or books of the Methodists; but no such thing appears: ali is unfounded rumour. They do not say to their people,

Do not be deceitful, do not be idle, get rid of your bad passions! or, at least" (here your consciences remonstrate against you)" if they do say these things, they say them very seldom." Did you ever hear them say so? or did you ever read such shocking sentiments in any of their works? Why not then, in the name of common honesty, mention the place, the person, or the book? Here is defamation of the blackest kind! Here is 'filching a good name, the immediate jewel of the soul,' with a witness! 'Tis pity but Shakespeare were alive, to look our Re viewers broad in the face, and say to them, Who steals my purse, steals trash,' &c. His presence would create a blush in their checks. They would revere him, though they are not ashamed to calumniate the Methodists; but, as abler pens are employed in refuting your unfounded assertions, I shall, for the present, bid you adieu. I remain, Gentlemen, Perthshire.

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yours, S. G.

THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER.

THE EYE.

THE Eye is in form nearly globular; it consists of three coats and three humours, Fig. 1. represents the section of an

eye cut horizontally across the middle. The external coat, which is represented by the outer circle, A B C D, is called the Sclerotica; the front part, B E C, which rather projects, is called the Cornea. The next coat, which is represented by the second. circle, is called the Choroides. In the front of this coat is an aperture, a b, through which the rays of light pass into the eye: it is called the Pupil. That part of the Choroides which surrounds the pupil, and which in some persons is blue, in others brown or almost black, is called the Iris (see a c be, fig. 2, which represents a front view of the eye.) The Iris may be enlarged or diminished: this is effected by means of two sets of muscular fibres; the one like a number of circles of different sizes placed within each other, so as to have one common centre in the middle of the pupil: the other set of fibres appear

like

lines drawn from that centre to the circumference of the largest circle, and are called Radial Fibres. When too strong a light shines upon the eye, the circular fibres contract and diminish the pupil, by which a less number of rays are admitted. When too little light is received to perceive the object distinctly, the radial fibres contract; by which the pupil is enlarged, and a contrary effect produced. Unless the Iris possessed this property, the most painful effects would be produced, by sudden transitions from a greater to a less degree of light, or the contrary. There are some animals who can so contract the pupil, as to admit a very little light; or enlarge it to such a degree, as to take in the faintest rays, and see objects when other creatures cannot: — a wonderful provision for such as seek their prey in the night!

The third coat is called the Retina, which spreads like a network all over the inside of the Choroides. Immediately under the Cornea is a transparent fluid, like water, and is called, the Aqueous Humour: it gives a protuberant figure to the Cornea. At the back of this is situated the Chrystalline humour, d f, in the shape of a double convex glass, of the consistence of a very hard jelly, and perfectly transparent. It is kept in its place by a fine transparent membrane, which attaches it to the circumference of the iris. The rest of the eye, Z Z, is filled with the titreous humour, which is transparent, and about the consistence of the white of an egg. A is the Optic Nerve, which proceeds from the eye to the brain. In a future paper we shall describe the effect of the different parts of the eye in producing sight. The wisdom and goodness of the Creator appears in the astonishing apparatus of muscles with which the eye is furnished, to produce all the necessary and convenient motions in the situation where it is placed, and in the provision made to preserve this delicate organ from injury. The eye brows defend the eye from too strong a light; the eye-lids act like curtains to cover and protect it during sleep; and, when we are awake, they diffuse a fluid over the eye as often as we wink, which keeps it clean and well adapted for transmitting the rays of light; and, lest the sight should be interrupted by this operation, it is performed in an instant; the eye-lashes guard the eye from floating dust, with which the atmosphere abounds. It is a remarkable circumstance that fishes, who have no occasion for a defence against dust or motes in the air, have no eye-lids * Thus, in the works of Jehovah there is nothing superfluous, and nothing deficient ! — and the more minutely they are examined, the more evidently will it appear that He is excellent in counsel and wonderful in working,' both in the world of nature and of T. P. B. grace!

XVII.

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Derham's Physico-Theology, p. 110.

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