Yet, guilty city, who shall mourn for thee? Shall Christian voices wail thy devastation? Look down! look down, avenged Calvary, "Her house is left unto her desolate ;" Proud Cæsar's ploughshare o'er her ruins driven, Fulfils at length the tardy doom of heaven; The wrathful vial's drops at length are pour'd On the rebellious race that crucified their Lord! pp. 100-102. In the streets of Jerusalem the Jews converse together respecting the signs and strange sights which had appeared in the heavens, and which had been observed to assume a very threatening aspect. While thus employed, they are joined by a Levite, who tells them the eastern gate of the Temple had opened spontaneously, and that all the strength of man vainly toiled To close the stubborn and rebellious leaves. This conversation concerning "the thronging and tumultuous signs" is interrupted by the sound of the rusalem! A voice against the Temple of the Lord! A voice against all people of the Land! Woe! woe! woe! At one moment is heard the chorus of maidens celebrating the unseasonable marriage which had just taken place, and then again the merry lyric is fearfully contrasted by the doleful cry of the son of Hananiah, who now adds to his former denouncement "A voice against the son of Hananiah! Woe, woe!" and at the instant, whether struck By a chance stone from the enemy's engines, down He sank and died! The High Priest approaches the groupe of Jews in the streets, and informs them that he had heard a tumultuous noise from behind the winged Cherudoth quit his palace;" and also "the bim, "as when a king with all his host articulate voice of man," saying, "LET US DEPART!" Ben Cathla, the leader of the Edomites, joins the Jews who had met T' exchange against each other their dark tales Of this night's fearful prodigies; and tells them that Michol, The tender and delicate of women, That would not set her foot upon the ground For delicacy and very tenderness, had slain, dressed, and partly devoured, her own child in the extremity of the city. Scarcely had he finished the her hunger, caused by the famine in horrible recital, when bursting sounds of the chorus are heard singing, Joy to thee, beautiful and bashful Bride! Joy! for the thrills of pride and joy become thee; Thy curse of barrenness is taken from thee; And thou shalt see the rosy infant sleeping Upon the snowy fountain of thy breast; And thou shalt feel how mothers' hearts are blest By hours of bliss for moment's pain and weeping. Joy to thee p. 120. John and Simon now appear, and command the Jews to retire. John mocks the High Priest's fears, and says to Simon In truth, good Simon, I am half your proselyte. Your angels, that do bear such excellent wine, AN OLD MAN, MIRIAM. Old Man. Who spake of Christ? What hath that name to do with saving here? He's here, he's here, the Lord of desola. tion, Begirt with vengeance! in the fire above, And fire below! in all the blazing city Behold him manifest! Mir. Oh! aged man And miserable, on the verge of the grave Thus lingering to beholdthy country's ruin, What know'st thou of the Christ? Old Man. I, I beheld him, The Man of Nazareth whom thou mean'st -I saw him When he went labouring up the accursed hill. Heavily on his scourged and bleeding shoulders crowned brow (Crown'd with no kingly diadem) the pale blood Was shaken off, as with a patient pity Unto the Roman, " On us be his blood, And on our children !"-and on us it hath been My children and my children's children, all, The Gentile sword hath reap'd them one by one, And I, the last dry wither'd shock, await The gleaning of the slaughterer. pp. 132-135. The dialogue goes on in the same dread strain, when Miriam says, Mir. Ha!-but now, oh! now Thou own'st him for the eternal Son of God, The mock'd, and scourg'd, and crown'd, and crucified. Of yon fierce flames! thou bow'st thyself Thou dost believe the blazing evidence before The solemn preacher, Desolation, Old Man. Maiden, I believe them, Believe, and thou shalt live! Old Man. Back, insolent! What! would'st thou school these gray hairs, and become Mine age's teacher? Mir. Hath not God ordain'd Wisdom from babes and sucklings? Old Man. Back, I say; I have lived a faithful child of Abraham, And so will die. Mir. For ever!He is gone, Yet he looks round, and shakes his hoary head In dreadful execration 'gainst himself What's here? It is mine home, the dwelling of my youth, O'er which the flaines climb up with such fierce haste. Lo, lo! they burst from that house-top, where oft My sister and myself have sate and sang Our pleasant airs of gladness! Ah, Salone! Where art thou now? These, these are not the lights That should be shining on a marriage bed. pp. 137-139. 536 Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. The foe are now in the streets, and "the Universal City burns." Miriam meets her sister wounded and talking wildly of her Amariah, who, to save her from pollution, had given her her death-blow. Simon is made prisoner, the Temple, in spite of the efforts of Titus to save it, is set on fire, and Miriam is borne off by a soldier, who is singularly gentle and respectful. The closing scene is at the Fountain of Siloe, and we know not if it be surpassed either in tenderness or sublimity. MIRIAM, THE Soldier. Mir. Here, here-not here-Oh! any where but here Not toward the fountain, not by this lone path. If thou wilt bear me hence, I'll kiss thy feet, I'll call down blessings, a lost virgin's blessings Upon thy head. Thou hast hurried me along, Through darkling street, and over smoking And yet there seem'd a soft solicitude, Oh, strangely cruel! Where I have sate so oft, when the calm Lay in its slumber on the slumbering Ah! where art thou, thou that wert ever Oh Javan! Javan! The Soldier. When was Javan call'd joy Refuse to bear thee in thy flight. pp. 153, 154. Javan had borne Miriam where his The same destruction Earth, behold! [Dec. Earth, Earth, And in that judgment look upon thine own! HYMN. Even thus amid thy pride and luxury, That secret coming of the Son of Man. Irradiate with his bright advancing sign: wave his fan, Sweeping, like chaff, thy wealth and pomp away: Still to the noontide of that nightless day, Shalt thou thy wonted dissolute course maintain. Along the busy mart and crowded street, And marriage feasts begin their jocund strain; Still to the pouring out the Cup of Woe; pp. 158, 159. Even safe as we, by this still fountain's side, So shall the Church, thy bright and mystic bride, Sit on the stormy gulf a halcyon bird of calm. Yes, 'mid yon angry and destroying signs, O'er us the rainbow of thy mercy shines, beam, Christian friends were ready to receive Almighty to avenge, Almightiest to re ever was composed, and which, if I am not greatly mistaken, is destined to have yet a much wider influence in the Philosophy of the Mind than it has hitherto acquired. As its eminent author says of it, it originally fell dead from the press, and very few people · since have taken the trouble to read it with any attention. The Essays into which it was afterwards broken down, however elegantly written, by no means do justice to the deep thinking of the original work. Mr Hume would have been a greater man if he had not courted popularity by aiming at giving a smart, lively air to his opinions, when he found them neglected in the simplicity of their first dress. He ought to have let them find their own level, as their intrinsic value was ultimately secure of being acknowledged. This unfortunate desire of present fame was, I believe, too, the cause of that strong infusion of infidelity, with respect to revealed religion, which, at the time, gave a zest, but is now generally felt as a disgrace, to the Essays. It was the fashionable tone of the times. The original treatise is written in a higher spirit. It is certainly not the work of a friend to Revelation any more than of Natural Religion; but there are no paltry sneers in it; and, whatever doubts are thrown upon the principles of Religion, they come in only by the way, and as the necessary concomitants of the doubts which it diffuses over all human knowledge. I should say that it was the work, not at all of a vain man, or of one who was not writing in perfect good faith, but simply that of a downright and fearless philosopher, who follows out his principles in a perfect contempt of consequences, and who takes for his motto, (certainly a very dangerous maxim) "Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum." These consequences, indeed, were such, that it was quite to be expected the work would be generally distasteful. Human reason is naturally very unwilling to be told that it is no reason at all; but it would have been better to have treated with respect, and some degree of deference, a system which was so wonderfully well connected in all its parts, and which bore so singular an impress of truth, even in its most shocking paradoxes, than to have held it up to ridicule, or to have been satisfied with cutting the knot rather VOL. VII. than attempting to untie it. Mr Hume was conscious of his own power while his countrymen were making him a theme of their uncouth derision, and he seems to have had a prescience that he had not yet gathered all his fame. In his last Will he leaves a direction that there should be inscribed on his monument simply the words,-DAVID HUME;-" Let Posterity," he says, "add the rest." The addition, indeed, will not be exactly what he expected, but I am much mistaken, if the name of this profound thinker does not yet receive the enco- . miastic epithets of a grateful posterity, and if, when his errors have passed away, he does not yet come to be universally regarded, as the Philosopher who has made the most penetrating and successful researches in the intricate science of Human Nature. He is a cool anatomist, who has dissected it throughout every fibre and nerve; and he may be pardoned, perhaps, if, in this sort of remorseless operation, he has lost sight of the principle of its moral and intellectual life. That is wanting, indeed; but it can easily be supplied to his system; and the great beauty of Mr Hume's analysis is, that, in every step, we may distinctly see where this principle applies, and what light it throws upon the dreary regions of that scepticism which so gloomily spread around, as the necessary result of its absence. As the dead subject from which our knowledge of the anatomy of the body is derived, soon becomes putrescent and horrible to every sense-so the mind, under the knife of this great mental anatomist, loses, indeed, all its divinity and living form; but, notwithstanding, he conducts his dissection so much in the true spirit of science, that we are rewarded by the knowledge of a structure which is again ready to start into life, if we only suppose the restoration of the vivifying principle. In some of my former papers I have, I think, distinctly announced what that principle is; and, now that I have fairly put myself to school to Mr Hume, I am much more satisfied that I am right, and that, although he did not himself know it, he has, in fact, Like following life through creatures you dissect, You lose it in the moment you detect. POPE, SY in his speculations, given the skeleton of the noblest and most purely Religious System of the Human Mind which has ever yet been unfolded to the world. If I am granted life and ability, I do not despair of perfectly establishing this truth. In the mean time, I only request your philosophical readers to take up Mr Hume's Essays on Cause and Effect, (the most important part of his speculations,) and if they will but carry this principle along with them, that, in all constant conjunctions of natural events, the mind feels the constancy and regularity of the operation to be a sign of intelligence and design, and that the belief which is felt in consequence is nothing but the sentiment of trust in that Supreme Intelligence-then, I say, he will perceive that the system of Mr Hume is a system of the most pervading theology. There cannot be a finer subject of speculation than this, and I heartily wish some powerful and ardent inquirer would give to it, in our schools of philosophy, the full energy of his penetration, and all the varied glow of his genius. The newer principles, and he edifies the faith of the most simple and least discursive. He cements likewise the indissoluble fabric of faith and of morality, and explains the true spirit and aspiring perfectibility of the humility of the Christian character. I recommend this book particularly to young men. It will shew them both the reasonableness and the grandeur of the gospel, and they must feel its force as coming from one, who himself, at an early period of life, is not more remarkable for his devout sentiments, than admired for his talents and accomplishments, and beloved for his social qualities. Instead of giving your readers another portion of my Dialogues at present, I exhort you to suspend them for one Number, and I will suggest to you, as far preferable, a passage from this able tract, bearing a good deal upon the speculation concerning miracles, which has already occasioned some discussion in your Journal. I am yours, &c. PHILOTHEUS.. such an one may be to the science EXTRACT FROM MR ERSKINE'S RE which he illustrates, he will only, perhaps, be the more capable of appreciating the value of this simple principle, which, if once established, will, I venture to predict, open a fountain of moral eloquence, and kindle a flame of the brightest devotion, in what have hitherto appeared the most remote, cold, and barren corners of Pneumatology. If there is any merit in those Dialogues which I have sent you at different times, it is chiefly in the perseverance with which this principle is kept in view in them. In their style and spirit they are fitter, I am well aware, for a former age than the present. We do not now like to have our religion brought before the microscope of a minute philosophy, and we are in the right; but these dialogues may still be of some use, if it is recollected that they are rather meant for sceptics than for ordinary people. There is a very excellent little treatise on "the Internal Evidence for the Truth of Revealed Religion," just published by a most exemplary lay gentleman, who has hit the happy medium of being equally useful and delightful to all descriptions of read ers. He philosophizes with those who are fond of tracing things to their MARKS ON THE INTERNAL EVT- "MANY persons, in their speculations on Christianity, never get farther than the miracles which were wrought in confirmation of its divine authority. Those who reject them are called infidels, and those who admit them are called believers; and yet, after all, there may be very little difference between them. A belief of the miracles narrated in the New Testament, does not constitute the faith of a Christian. These miracles merely attest the authority of the messenger,-they are not themselves the message: They are like the patentee's name on a patent medicine, which only attests its genuineness, and refers to the character of its inventor, but does not add to its virtue. Now, if we had such a scientific aequaintance with the general properties of drugs, that from examining them we could predict their effects, then we should, in forming our judgment of a medicine, trust to our own analysis of its component parts, as well as to the inventor's name on the out * Waugh and Innes. Edinburgh, 1820. |