Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

generous sympathies, are discouraged and injured by the preeminence given to quick and cunning spirits, on whom all praise and honour are conferred, to the gradual extinction of the gentler moral sensibilities among the people. Happy were the days when neither these nor the numerous other disturbing causes we now experience were at work to prevent the rich and the poor from cherishing in themselves, and keeping these their best affections in mutual exercise, as the magic band of strength and happiness between them; and never happy, in my opinion, will either be, till, by retracing our steps, these sympathies can be regained and re-enjoyed.

"It can never be," exclaimed my acute friend. "Go backward to that state of the poor we cannot; forwards we must go, enlightening and instructing them in various knowledge, removing from them all this sense of a dark dependence, awakening them to trust only to themselves, to improve in every way by dexterity and activity their worldly possessions, so that they will find their interest in being good and loyal subjects, and in preserving order and stability in the state."

"I do not believe," said I, "that such methods will ever produce that result. When those living attachments are removed, how dreadful will be their heartless poverty if your scheme of independence does not universally prevail; and, if it should, the substituted love of property will never produce contentment; it is a mere principle of the horse-leach-give-give-give, till the heart, worldly and unaffectionate, a stranger to the joy of others, will soon heat into fever and discontent, murmuring for a more equal share in the goods of Mammon, or, for some other selfish end, bring about a violence and sudden spasm in society; and then man, by suffering, is driven back to poverty, and is told again to seek his happiness in mutual dependence and in love." "Indeed," said my friend," are we never then to go forward, and is the condition of human beings never to be bettered?"

"In truth," I replied, "it remains to be shewn in what the bettered condition of man really consists. According to the Scriptures it is not in his affections being drawn away from God and man, saying in his heart, I am, and there is none else beside me'-not in being intellectually instructed, for Christ (who came to improve our nature to the utmost, and knew it fully) nowhere recommends such a duty-not by confiding in a spirit of moneyed accumulation, for blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,' (Luke vi.) And they who have known human nature under what, to political and sensual men, would be termed the wants and debasements of life, and have seen the soul happy in religion, the heart happy in the reciprocation of worldly benefits and benevolence, and the body happy in the cheerful serenity of health, have witnessed, I believe, a condition not easily to be

bettered-a condition too acceptable to God for him to permit the disturbing schemes of man to change and annihilate it. The frame of human society He has planned and fixed; and when man sets himself to re-arrange it, in order to contrive an escape from its duties, He will provide in his government that it quickly revert to its essential form the poor shall never cease out of the land, therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother,' (Deut.) In their unperverted state, every page of Scripture, and every day's experience, tell us that faith, benevolence, the plain-sightedness of true wisdom, and the simplicity of real happiness, are to be found. If men, indeed, place all their belief of perfection in riches, learning, or station, it is natural they should behold no beauty in a state so opposite to their own. But God seeth not as man seeth, and he will preserve from the meddling legislation of the world that condition of life which he ennobled beyond every other, by appearing and dwelling in it while on earth, and by selecting from it his friends and the teachers of his wisdom; and his guardian spirit will surely continue to protect from violation that misunderstood and despised estate on which, through his ministry, he bestowed his especial approval and applause.'

"But I wish not," said my quick and friendly opponent, " to remove religion from its proper influence among them; but would teach them rather to trust to its liberty and its independence—that they should fear God, and know no other fear.'

"I believe," said I," that a true fear and love of God would not exist long in the hard, barren, and rocky soil you have prepared for its reception. By removing the opportunities of reaching that nutritive support of a contented, humble, and affectionate state of heart, you would, I fear, prove only the truth of Scripture-that' if man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen."'"

Our friend, whom we had come to visit, here interfered, and remarked how true it was that man lived not by bread alone; for almost the whole of his happiness arose from the health of his religious, moral, and social condition. Those relationships, therefore, so necessary for the maintenance of his true. and highest enjoyments, it should be the leading care of a nation to guard and cherish. Blessings similar to those you have mentioned, he said, as arising out of patriarchal protection, were found in the powerful and maternal fosterings of the church; for, in those days of her due influence and authority, she was a continual source of ennobling sentiment and happiness to the poor. From her hand charity was received without disgrace, for it came not as the blighted fruits of unwilling taxation, but in its heavenly and proper form, as a gift from God, and "so

man did eat angel's food," and both the soul and body of the receiver were blessed by the bounty. "On the subject of education, to which you have alluded," added he, " the extent to which intellectual culture may be given without usurping or impairing the moral principle of action, and the methods of doing this, appear to be very difficult and much controverted questions. That its ascendent tendency is so to usurp and impair it, the whole legislation and prevalent opinions in our age and country too sorrowfully testify, as they did in the days of our divine Saviour at Jerusalem. Indeed, if we look even at Socrates, we see that his unwearied teachings were directed to destroy the subtle and erroneous reasonings of the world, and to replace the power of religious and moral truth which had been supplanted and dethroned by them. These worldly enlightenments should, therefore, be administered with a cautious and holy hand. That, in a subordinate union with purer influences, they may be made to co-exist harmoniously and profitably, I believe to be possible and desirable; but I also believe it to be rare and difficult.”

"So rare and difficult," I replied, " that I should hardly know where to find them united in a just and proper commixture; yet do I not deny that in some fine and felicitous natures they may be occasionally so combined; for I have pride and joy in knowing it to be a truth, and can call up the memory of many years of happy friendships to bear witness to powers and learning valued and used only as the humble instrument of living and divine wisdom, and absorbed and disappearing in the higher character-that is, feeling totally and transcendently that to know God is to have the only knowledge, and that when this universe shall have crumbled into dust, and all the knowledge of it shall be passed away and forgotten, He will shine forth to his own people in his own glory, and they shall see him as he is.'"

PARISH CHURCHES.-No. XX.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE PARISH CHURCH OF ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCH, OF THE
CHAPEL AT BLACKFORDBY, AND OF THE CHAPEL IN THE
RUINS OF ASHBY CASTLE.

ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCH appears to have been a position of the Britons in primeval times, and afterwards a Roman station. In the Saxon times, the place was probably maintained as a residence of the Mercian thanes; and after the Norman conquest, the nobles of that martial race made the Tower of Ashby a strong hold. When, in after times, as government was strengthened

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small]
« ÎnapoiContinuă »