And trim the vessel for so long a course;

And call our prudence and our courage up,
To aid us on the voyage. I confess-
Weakness it may be-but I still confess
Myself amongst the number who prefer

To sail by chart and compass;-who much wish,
By observation of the lights of heaven,

To guide their course on earth;-and in the night—
Tempestuous oft, and peril-fraught-of life

To mark religion's fixed and guiding star.
Religion! Piety! names much abused
And little understood by worldly men
Professing each. Religion! Piety!

To worship God and love him—if to man
Love be permitted;—these are glorious themes--
For meditation fit;-and to be sung

With lowliness and caution. They reveal
Man's best possession, and his highest good;-
They raise his nature-dignify his hopes-
And stamp his Maker's image on his mind.
Mistaken oft (their masks, or counterfeits)
Lo! Superstition and fanatic Zeal

Frown o'er the earth, and make a wilderness
Where Nature meant a garden! These degrade
Man and his nature;-these pervert the will
Benign of God; they vilify his works,
And cast sad odium o'er his gracious word.

“How rotten—how corrupt the human heart! "How desperately wicked! Not one thought "Attuned to virtue;-not a single act

"But, mark'd by dire depravity, proclaims "His fallen being and degraded state.

"Not his a partial sickness;-not the blight

"Which shakes the bloom, but rotten at the root

"He grows;-of flower and fruit devoid;-of good

46

Incapable by nature. Child of wrath—

"And worthy to become so! Downward prone "The reptile licks the dust-nor dares to raise

His breath towards incens'd-indignant heaven.

"His all of virtue worthless;-each bright act "Of seeming good-hypocrisy and guile."

Such-and so hideous-and more fearful still (Till we expect abhorring earth will gape And whelm the monster in her dark abyss) Is man-his Maker's image! as pourtrayed In pulpits-when, in sable garb, the priest Deals forth anathemas;-and echoes loud Threats of damnation in despairing ears. The self-named prophet see! his sleeky hair Lank falling o'er a face of thought devoidYet full of fury-as he calls on God— A wrathful God! to aid his preacher's cause.

In Nature's broadest mould (to wield a plough More fitting) his proportions framed;—his hands, Like a flail falling, shakes the groaning desk;— His brow, with grace and perspiration fraught, Frowns o'er the crouching multitude, who hear They all are worthless-and groan out "Amen!" "Pastor and people-each," he says, "" are vile!" Who doubts the dictum of the holy man? If they be worthless, let us mark them then; If vile, let us avoid them. They best know The plague-spots on their hearts. If hypocrites, Let us beware that we be not deceived.

But 'tis a libel on the name of God

Rank blasphemy-to say that man was made
Incapable of virtue;-that his heart
Cannot conceive, or his hand execute

One thought or deed aright. Was it a dream,

Amid the strugglings of my erring youth,
When, o'er the clouds of passion, reason rose,
The mind's bright day-dawn! gilding all the scene,
And lighting on to virtue? Passion toss'd,
With care-with crime oppressed, still Truth is dear.
Yes! Man may wander in the paths of vice

An exile-and an alien-and a slave;
But virtue is his home! It is the hearth
Paternal, where the heart and its desires
Will linger. 'Tis that favoured-cherished spot,
Which, absent, we deplore-and, present, love!

Why starts the tear at the sad tale of woe?
Compassion calls on man to aid his kind.

'Tis called humanity;-it takes our name,

And marks our nature. Wherefore throbs the pulse,
Indignant! when the tyrant's galling chain
Entwines his victim? or the bigot's fires
Pre-figure hell-himself the torturing fiend—
But that a love of truth and justice reigns,
Which flames or fetters cannot burn or bind?
Why in the historic page, repeated oft,

And with applause repeated, stands each deed,
Heroic or sublime? Why noted strong

With execration every deed of shame

But that within their hearts-deep in their hearts-
All men alike applaud the good, and all,
Though self-condemned, condemn the evil! See!
'Tis Curtius leaps within the yawning gulph!
Tis Codrus falls-to save their country each!
The youthful Macedonian smiles and takes,
Of venom falsely charged, the proffered draught,
In confidence of friendship. See return

To chains and torture (light when void of shame)
The Roman who his country counselled true,
His life the penalty. See too prepared

The hemlock and the bowl-and he* must die
Whose crime was wisdom;-he whose questions keen
Pointed with truth-perplexed the jarring schools.
He falls who truth's eternal dictates taught-
Victim, alas! of sophists and buffoons!+

* Socrates.

The instances adduced of virtue are, perhaps, too familiar with most readers, to render explanation necessary; yet a brief remark may prevent mistake or obscurity. To say nothing of Curtius, whose supposed self-devotion in leaping into the gulph, is a matter of common allusion; the oracle having declared, on an invasion, that that party who shed the first blood should be defeated, Codrus, king of Athens, sought the enemy's camp in diguise, and, provoking them to violence, fell the first victim. Alexander the Great, at the brink of the grave, from having bathed in the Cydnus when overheated, received, at the moment when taking a draught from the hand of his friend and physician Phillip, an anonymous scroll, stating that it was intended to poison him; he put the letter, with a smile, into the hands of Phillip, and immediately drank off the medicine. Regulus, being made prisoner by the Carthaginians, was sent by them to Rome, (under a pledge that he would return) to negotiate a peace, and an exchange of prisoners; knowing the reduced state of those who sent him, he strongly advised against both-and then voluntarily, returned

to tortures and to death.

Art thou unmoved? By Nature sore depraved, Doth no enthusiastic glow arise

At acts like these? Is there no string within

To vibrate in accordance with such tones?

No busy thought that whispers to the heart-
"I too am man, and not incapable

"Of lofty thoughts-and actions great and good?"
If such thou art-there is a theme that speaks-
Though little heeded-volumes to the heart
Attuned to truth. There breathed a man who fell-
Than patriots nobler---to preserve mankind !

A man-above all Greek and Roman lore-
Yet little sung by bards, and falsely scanned
By friends who misconceive-and foes who hate
What either knows not of. A man whose life
Was virtue's pattern;-whose exalted course,
Above the mists of passion and of sense,

To pride impervious, pierced through error's maze;
Who thought and spoke-and felt-and lived the truth.
What laurels decked his brow? A wreath of thorns.
What was his fate? How walked he and how fell?

A lowly life-and an untimely end.

By priests and hypocrites (the rabbis named,
The reverend of their day) to death pursued,

He died a martyr in a glorious cause—
Meet emblem of its nature and its fate,
By greatness and hypocrisy abhorred.
He died a martyr! Death, with pangs for all,
For him had tortures all must not endure:
Stripes and the cross-rude insults, than the gall
He drank, more bitter. And his parting prayer-
Was it for vengeance? For himself? His friends?
No! his oppressors. They who sought his life-
Who madly nailed him to the hated tree,

And scoffed him there: for these he prayed, and cried
"Forgive them, father! for they know not what
"They do unthinking." Thus A MAN hath prayed--
Our pattern and example! Say not then
That man is vile and rotten at the core-
His nature fallen and his state corrupt.
Reverse the picture. Rather cultivate

The seeds of good within him. Fan to flame

The embers, deadened oft, yet warm within,

Of heaven-sent truth. Arouse him from the trance,
Delusive and enervating of sense.

Urge him to speed-and thunder in his ear

The danger and the madness of delay.

Clothe him in armour;--gird him round with truth;

With righteousness his breast-plate;--for his shield
Humility and confidence in God.

Deliverance his helmet ;--and his sword

The swift and soul-convincing word of life.
Then leave him to his warfare--with the world,
And the world's greatness;-with (more, potent foes!)
Himself his passions! he shall conquer all,
And rise triumphant from the arduous strife,
Quenching the fiery darts of evil men,
And ruling firm the empire of his mind.
Then peaceful sit him down in that great day,
When his Creator's glorious kingdom comes,
And earth and all its phantoms-fade away!
(To be continued.)

ON THE PAY OF THE DISSENTING PRIESTHOOD.

With Extracts from "The Support of the Christian Ministry." A Sermon, by James Bennett, of Rotherham College.

THE existence of a priesthood, whose members exercise an exclusive right to teach-and who, following religion as a trade, are paid for thus teaching-is common to nearly all dissenting parties, as well as to the establishment. The Freethinking Christian church, who consider the equality of its members, and the absence of the hireling teacher, as essential points of Christianity, is, indeed, almost, if not altogether, the sole exception. The funds and revenues of the established church, however, being prescribed and defined by law, the sources of those funds and revenues are comparatively well known; but with regard to the dissenting bodies, the case is different. The payments to the ministry