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one man and of another, as to proportion rewards and punishments according to this rule; therefore the law puts all, except those who are manifestly deficient in reason, upon the same level: it supposes every man to know the laws of his country; consequently, where a malicious act is proved, it presumes a malicious intention, and the criminal is sentenced accordingly.

But how justifiable soever this proceeding may be, upon the necessity there is for it in order to preserve some tolerable degree of peace and quiet in the world; yet it is eviden* that the general presumptions upon which all human judicatures. proceed, do not leave reason for an exact distribution of justice; and it often happens that men are made equal in punishment, who, if all circumstances could be considered, are not equal in crime. But could you introduce a judge endowed with a perfect knowledge of men's hearts, there would be an end of all such general presumptions: he would do, in every case, what was exactly right and equitable; and the only standing rule of the court would be that of the text, "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required."

One such court there is, in which He who knows the secrets of every heart will sit judge himself; before whose tribunal there will want no evidence to convict the guilty, no advocate to defend the innocent: there, no pretended excuse will be admitted, no real one excluded: there, every man with all his actions, with all his talents and abilities, and all his opportunities of knowing the will of God, will be weighed in the balance; and "Unto whom much was given, of him shall much be required."

XX. THE MAJESTY OF THE REDEEMER.-W. Archer Butler.

ON such a subject as this, what can one say which is not unworthy? It is far vaster than our vastest conception, infinitely grander than our loftiest; yet, overpoweringly awful as it is, how familiarity reconciles us to hearing it without awe! Perhaps even the overpowering greatness of the subject makes us despair of conceiving it. All the wonders of God fall deadly on unfitted minds. And thus men learn listlessly to hear words, without even an effort to attach ideas to them; and this is not least the case with those who dispute the most bitterly about the lifeless words themselves. In such a case all that can be done is, to endeavour to devise some mode of meeting this miserable influence of habit, by forcing the mind to make some faint effort to realize the infinite magnificence of the subject. Let us endeavour, then, to approach it thus.

You are wandering (I will suppose) in some of the wretched retreats of poverty, upon some mission of business or charity. Perplexed and wearied amid its varieties of misery, you chance to come upon an individual whose conversation and mien attract and surprise you. Your attention, enkindled by the gracious benevolence of the stranger's manner, you inquire; and the astounding fact reveals itself, that, in this lone and miserable scene, you have, by some strange conjuncture, met with one of the great lights of the age, one belonging to a different and distant sphere, one of the leaders of universal opinion; on whom your thoughts had long been busied, and whom you had for years desired to see. The singular accident of an interview so unexpected, fills and agitates your mind. You form a thousand theories as to what strange cause could have brought him there. You recall how he spoke and looked; you call it an epoch in your life to have witnessed so startling an occurrence to have beheld one so distinguished, in a scene so much out of all possibility of anticipation. And this, even though he were in no-wise apparently connected with it, except as witnessing and compassionating its groups of misery.

Yet again, something more wonderful than this is easily conceivable. Upon the same stage of wretchedness a loftier personage may be imagined. In the wild revolutions of fortune, even monarchs have been wanderers. Suppose this then,-improbable indeed, but not impossible surely. And then, what feelings of respectful pity, of deep and earnest interest, would thrill your frame, as you contemplated such a one cast down from all that earth can minister of luxury and power, from the head of councils and of armies, to seek a home with the homeless, to share the bread of destitution, and feed on the charity of the scornful! How the depths of human nature are stirred by such events! how they find an echo in the recesses of our hearts,-these terrible espousals of majesty and misery!

But this will not suffice. There are beings within the mind's easy conception that far overpass the glories of the statesman and the monarch of our earth. Men of even no extreme ardour of fancy, when once instructed as to the vastness of our universe, have yearned to know of the life and intelligence that animate and that guide those distant regions of creation which science has so abundantly and so wonderfully revealed; and have dared to dream of the communications that might subsist-and that may yet in another state of existence subsist-with the beings of such spheres. Con

ceive, then, no longer the mighty of our world in this strange anion with misery and degradation, but the presiding spirit of one of these orbs; or multiply his power, and make him the deputed governor, the vicegerent angel, of a million of those orbs that are spread in their myriads through infinity. Think what it would be to be permitted to hold high converse with such a delegate of heaven as this; to find this lord of a million worlds the actual inhabitant of our own; to see him, and yet live; to learn the secrets of his immense administration, and hear of forms of being, of which men can now have no more conception than the insect living on a leaf has of the forest that surrounds him. Still more, to find, in this being, an interest, a real interest in the affairs of our little corner of the universe; of that earthly cell, which is absolutely invisible from the nearest fixed star that sparkles in the heavens above us. Nay, to find him willing to throw aside his glorious toils of empire, in order to meditate our welfare, and dwell among us for a time. This surely would be wondrous, appalling, and yet transporting; such as that, when it had passed away, life would seem to have nothing more it could offer, compared to the being blessed with such an intercourse!

And now mark,-behind all the visible scenery of nature; beyond all the systems of all the stars; around this whole universe, and through the infinity of infinite space itself; from all eternity and to all eternity; there lives a Being, compared to whom that mighty spirit just described, with his empire of a million suns, is infinitely less, than to you is the minutest mote that floats in the sunbeam. There is a Being in whose breath lives the whole immense of worlds; who with the faintest wish could blot them all from existence; and who, after they had all vanished away like a dream, would remain, filling the whole tremendous solitude they left, as unimpaired in all the fulness of his might, as when he first scattered them around him to be the flaming beacons of his glory. With him, coinfinite with immensity, coeval with eternity, the universe is a span, its duration a moment. Hear his voice attesting his own eternal sovereignty: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."--But who is he that thus builds the throne of his glory upon the ruins of earth and heaven? who is he that thus triumphs over a perishing universe, himself alone eternal and impassible? The child of a Jewish woman; he who was laid in a manger, because there was no room for him in the inn at Bethlehem!

READINGS

IN

SENATORIAL AND JUDICIAL ELOQUENCE.

I.—MR. PITT (LORD CHATHAM) IN REPLY TO MR. HORACE WALPOLE.

SIR-The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing, that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of those who continue ignorant in spite of age and experience.

Whether youth can be attributed to any man as a reproach, I will not, Sir, assume the province of determining; but surely, age may justly become contemptible, if the opportunities which it brings have passed away without improvement; and vice appear to prevail when the passions have subsided. The wretch who, after having seen the consequences of a thousand errors, continues still to blunder, and in whom age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object either of abhorrence or contempt; and deserves not that his grey head should secure him from insults. Much more, Sir, is he to be abhorred, who, as he has advanced in age, has receded from virtue, and become more wicked with less temptation; who prostitutes himself for money which he cannot enjoy, and spends the remains of his life in the ruin of his country.

But youth, Sir, is not my only crime: I have been accused of acting a theatrical part.-A theatrical part may either imply some peculiarities of gesture, or a dissimulation of my real sentiments, and the adoption of the opinions and language of another man.

In the first sense, Sir, the charge is too trifling to be confuted, and deserves to be mentioned only that it may be despised. I am at liberty, like every other man, to use my own language; and though I may, perhaps, have some ambition to please this gentleman, I shall not lay myself under any

restraint, nor very solicitously copy his diction or his mien, however matured by age or modelled by experience.

But if any man shall, by charging me with theatrical behaviour, imply that I utter any sentiments but my own, I shall treat him as a calumniator and a villain; nor shall any protection shelter him from the treatment which he deserves. I shall, on such an occasion, without scruple, trample upon all those forms with which wealth and dignity entrench themselves, nor shall any thing, but age, restrain my resentment; age, which always brings with it one privilege that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment.

But with regard, Sir, to those whom I have offended, I am of opinion that if I had acted a borrowed part, I should have avoided their censure: the heat which offended them is the ardour of conviction, and that zeal for the service of my country which neither hope nor fear shall influence me to suppress. I will not sit unconcerned while my liberty is invaded, nor look in silence upon public robbery.-I will exert my endeavours, at whatever hazard, to repel the aggressor, and drag the thief to justice, whoever may protect him in his villany, and whoever may partake of his plunder.

II.-LORD CHATHAM (MR. PITT) ON THE AMERICAN WAR.

I CANNOT, my Lords, I will not, join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment. It is not a time for adulation: the smoothness of flattery cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth. We must, if possible, dispel the delusion and darkness which envelop it; and display, in its full danger and genuine colours, the ruin which is brought to our doors. Can ministers still presume to expect support in their infatuation? Can parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty, as to give its support to measures thus obtruded and forced it? Measures, my lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to scorn and contempt! "But yesterday, and Britain might have stood against the world: now, none so poor as to do her reverence!"-The people, whom we at first despised as rebels, but whom we now acknowledge as enemies, are abetted against us, supplied with every military store, have their interests consulted, and their ambassadors entertained, by our inveterate enemy; and ministers do not—and dare not-interpose with dignity or effect. The desperate

upon

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