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with slow and thoughtful steps, and an humble and resigned confidence, to meet the attack of sin and death, under the shadow of his holiness, who would often have gathered us under his protecting wing, and we would not. Thus will this poor worm, who once crawled along the earth, yielding, with a faint heart and trembling conscience, to every sin that assailed him, "become more than conqueror through him "that loved him."

APPENDIX.

IT may be a matter of surprise to some readers that Mr. W had not exercised his poetical talents upon religious subjects: but the fact was, that he seemed to shrink from such themes as too lofty for his geniustoo pure and too awful for what he humbly thought his insufficient powers. The standard of excellence which his imagination had raised was so high, that no effort of his own could give him satisfaction.

He had sometimes entertained the idea that religious subjects might be profitably introduced in songs adapted to national music, which might thus be made a vehicle of popular instruction: how much he felt the delicacy and difficulty of such a task, will appear from the judicious observations contained in a letter to a pious friend who had sent him some verses written with that view.

66 MY DEAR

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*

"The

poems upon which you desire my opinion seem to be the production of a truly spi"ritual mind—a mind deeply exercised in experimental religion, which sees every object through a pure and "holy medium, and turns every thing it contemplates

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"into devotion. But their very excellence in this re

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spect seems, in the present instance, to constitute "their leading defect. Their object, if I understand it aright, is to make popular music a channel by which

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religious feeling may be diffused through society; "and thus, at the same time, to redeem the national "music from the profaneness and licentiousness to "which it has been prostituted. As to the first ob

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ject: the natural language of a spiritual man, which "would remind one of the like spirit of much of his "internal experience, would be not only uninteresting, "but absolutely unintelligible to the generality of man"kind. He speaks of hopes and fears, of pleasures "and pains, which they could only comprehend by "having previously felt them.

"You remember that it is said of the new song "that was sung before the throne,' that no man could "learn that song, save those that were redeemed from "the earth and therefore it often happens, that those "who best understand that music, are more intelligible "to heavenly than earthly beings: they are often bet"ter understood by angels than by men. The high

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degree of spirituality which they have attained often "renders it not only painful, but impossible, to accom❝modate themselves to the ordinary feelings of man"kind. They cannot stoop, even though it be to 66 conquer. To the world, their effusions are in an "unknown language. In fact, they often take for

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granted the very work to be done; they presuppose

"that communion of feeling and unity of spirit be

66 tween themselves and the world which it is their

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primary object to produce; and when they do not produce this effect, they may even do mischief; for "the spontaneous language of a religious mind is, generally speaking, revolting to the great mass of "society they shrink from it as they do from the "Bible.

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"Just consider all the caution, the judgment, and the "skill, requisite in order to introduce religion profitably "into general conversation, and then you may conceive "what will be the fate of a song-to which a man has recourse for amusement, and which he expects will "appeal to his feelings--when he finds it employed on "a subject to which he has not learnt to attach any "idea of pleasure, and which speaks to feelings he

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never experienced. It is on this account I conceive "that a song intended to make religion popular should "not be entirely of a religious cast; that it should take "in as wide a range as any other song, should appeal "to every passion and feeling of our nature not in "itself sinful,-should employ all the scenery, the

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imagery, and circumstance of the songs of this world, "while religion should be indirectly introduced, or delicately insinuated. I think we shall come to the "same conclusion if we consider the reformation of "the national music as the primary object. The pre"dominant feelings excited and expressed by our "national airs, however exquisitely delightful, are

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