Christ when we want them; it is running after him, not for the miracles, but for the loaves; not for the wonderful things of God and the desire of pleasing him, but for the pleasure of pleasing ourselves." * Nowadays, the effort made is in the opposite direction, and to dwell on the "sensible pleasures" and "delicacies in prayer," in order to enhance the contrast between the bright glory and prospects afforded by the religious life, and the gloomy and hopeless future which are supposed to afflict the infidel. The object now is to make religion attractive, and it has been pursued with very marked success. Let any one compare the taste and beauty of a choral service in a modern church or cathedral, with the harsh and grating ugliness which made "going to church" in the days of our youth an ascetic exercise. The coarse, untutored voice of the village shoemaker or tailor, who acted as clerk; the hideous boxes called pews; the dolorous and droning music; the whole framed in a choice specimen of Georgian architecture, barbaric with white-wash and clumsy ornament, will still return to the memory in a dreamy mood. These things have gone, and are replaced by what is very often a real artistic success; good music and singing, the dim religious light of stained windows, flowers, mosaics, or paintings, in churches "Holy Living," cap. iv. § 7. * often not untouched by the spirit of medieval beauty. This great reform in the ordering of divine service has passed beyond the limits of the Establishment, and penetrated even among the dissenters, whose chapels no longer display the resolute deformity of a past age. The outward change has been preceded and accompanied by a deeper inward change; the doctrine of terror has been laid aside and replaced by a doctrine of mildness and hope, so much so that few realize the gloomy horrors of the old creed. The younger generation has hardly an idea of the dismal spiritual pit in which their fathers lived. In the eighteenth century the case was still worse. The chill shade of religious dread spread beyond the circle of the professedly devout, and darkened life and literature. Only profane revellers passed out of it, and their example was not edifying. In what a cavern of black thoughts did Samuel Johnson pass his life, and what a fearful "Horror of the Last" gat hold of him in his latter days. Edward Young, who inveighed against wealth and honours in order to obtain them, adjusted with skill and care the strains of his venal muse to the popular taste, and sang that "A God all mercy is a God unjust." Few books in the last century were more popular with serious persons than the "Meditations" of James Hervey, which ran through numerous editions when it first appeared, and was still a favourite with pious folk in the earlier portion of the present century. Such pompous and tawdry fustian one would hope could hardly have been accepted for eloquence, had it not been supposed to convey vital religious truth. As a poetaster of the day expressed it : "In these loved scenes what rapturous graces shine, Soul and sense are charmed in this wise: "The wicked seem to lie here, like malefactors in a deep and strong dungeon; reserved against the day of trial. "Their departure was without peace.] Clouds of horror sat lowering upon their closing eyelids; most sadly foreboding the blackness of darkness for ever. When the last sickness seized their frame, and the inevitable change advanced; when they saw the fatal arrow fitting to the strings; saw the deadly archer, aiming at their life; and felt the envenomed shaft fastened in their vitals-good God! what fearfulness came upon them! What horrible dread overwhelmed them! How did they stand shuddering upon the tremendous precipice, excessively afraid to die, yet utterly unable to live.— O! what pale reviews, what startling prospects, conspire to augment their sorrows! They look backward; and behold! a most melancholy scene! Sins unrepented of, mercy slighted, and the day of grace ending. They look forward, and nothing presents itself but the righteous Judge, the dreadful tribunal, and a most solemn reckoning. They roll around their affrighted eyes on attending friends, and, if accomplices in debauchery, it sharpens their anguish to consider this further aggravation of their guilt, That they have not sinned alone, but drawn. others into the snare. If religious acquaintance, it strikes a fresh gash into their hearts, to think of never seeing them any more, but only at an unapproachable distance, separated by the unpassable gulph." Will any one presume to say that for one deathbed which has been smoothed by religion, a thousand have not been turned into beds of torture by such teaching as this? But we must go back to the palmy days of Calvinism, to Scotland in the seventeenth century, to realize fully the revolting devil-worship which once passed under the name of Christianity, and, what is more, really was Christianity, gospel-truth, supported by texts, at every point taken from scripture. No class of literature lies buried deeper in oblivion than old-fashioned theological literature. Its brilliant "Meditations among the Tombs," vol. i. p. 94. but transitory life is followed by a perennial death, from which there is no resurrection. Dead divinity is the deadest thing that ever lived. Only now and then a literary historian recalls one of these vanished spectres; the mass of believers are content to ignore their spiritual ancestry. Take the case of the Rev. Thomas Boston, a minister of the Church of Scotland, who lived in the latter end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. Boston was one of the most shining lights of the Scottish Church, and his most famous book, "Human Nature in its Fourfold State," was for a long period almost placed on a level with Holy Scripture. It is certainly a very wonderful book, written with great power, and eloquence of a kind which might well impose upon readers who accepted the writer's premises. It seems written in a white heat of sustained passion, in which the devil-worshipper (for Boston is nothing else), persuaded that he has conciliated his devil for his own purposes, deals damnation on all poor wretches not so favoured, with an exultant and fiery joy which is really astounding to witness. The man would have delighted, one would say, to be a stoker in the infernal regions. Out of a volume of five hundred pages I select a page or two which are nothing but average specimens of a tone of thought which I apprehend would |