We find the effect just what might be expected. A little sophistry from his wife overcomes him; and he soon enters into her design, not only with no reluctance, but with eagerness. He hears her detail the plan of treachery and murder; and bursts into the raptures of ambition.

Bring forth men children only!

For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.

This is now the turning period of his character; he gives himself up to guilt; he expects all his pleasure from it; he passes the line from which there is no return; and whatever remorse he may feel, or however keen his perception of his own state, there remains no more place for repentance, though he seek it carefully with tears.

It is thought by some to be an extremely mystical doctrine, that no man can be good without a great change in the affections of his heart. But surely a reference to the principles of our nature will lead us to this conclusion; and we have Shakspeare on our side. Macbeth, in the outset, has every amiable principle of humanity; nor was there one new principle called into action when he proceeded to the last stages of guilt. All his crimes were grafted on the common propensities of the heart. But the poet has told us the secret; he was a mere man of the world; he had no regard to a future state, and no fear of God. He

was like thousands of specious characters, who are living at random, and are ready to receive the first temptation. No cord of law, no band of faith bound him to his duty. He was a bark on the sea, ready to be blown in any direction. He was a specimen of human nature, and from his mournful story, every man, who lives for this life only, may learn to know himself.

These truths have often been taught from the authority of revelation; but they have been disregarded. They are here repeated, in the hope that some may receive them on the authority of Shakspeare.

There is another theological truth, which Shakspeare has brought out and sanctioned in this remarkable tragedy; and that is, the distinction between repentance and remorse. Macbeth is in the deepest remorse ever after he committed the murder; though he is as far from repentance as the most desperate persistency in sin can place him. He knows his guilt; he knows the vanity of all his honors; he knows that not one moment's repose lies between him and the grave; and the prospect beyond he shuts up in darkness and unbelief. Yet he hugs the vain shadows of his dignity; and finds his hope in the exhausted rewards of ambition. He stands alone on the mount; and enjoys nothing but the playing of the sunbeams on its barren ice. There is one speech of his, where the regret of a hardened heart is brought out in the most striking language that tragedy can

show. I allude to the speech, in which the usurper, in the very bloom of his success, and on the throne of his power, turns to the victim he has murdered, contrasts his condition with his own, and envies him the repose of the tomb. No poet ever surpassed this; for a moment, our detestation for the wretch is lost in pity; and we own the deep anguish there is in mental punishment.

Duncan is in his grave.

After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;

Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

Can touch him further!

I have long been convinced, that, when Christianity assumes or presupposes a distinction in human nature, a careful analysis of that nature will always show such distinctions to be just. I am, therefore, happy to find, in this important tragedy, that the Bible and Shakspeare agree. That great master of human nature, who had no theories to support, and hardly a prejudice to blind him, has come, by the powerful impulses of his genius, to a conclusion on which some of the most important truths of revelation are built. There is something very convincing in the careless discernment of an untutored mind. The man of theory makes observation warp to his system; but the voice of nature is always the voice of truth.

THE PURITAN.

No. 36.

How would you be,

If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

Measure for Measure.

WE read, in one of the gospels, that our Saviour began his conversation with one of the Jewish teachers, by declaring one of the mystical doctrines of the new religion, in the strongest language, namely, That a man must be born again, to see the kingdom of God.

In all ages, men have been led by experience, to appreciate the duties of morality. We go into the city for the purpose of making the purchase of certain articles, necessary or convenient for our use. We are partially ignorant of the nature of the commodity, or the state of the market; and feel ourselves exposed to be a prey to that cunning selfishness, which can take an advantage of our simplicity. What a treasure

it is, in such cases, to meet with an honest man, with whom we are confident that the bargain will be just! Or we are thrown by shipwreck on an unknown coast. The night, is dark, our goods are scattered; the inhabitants come down with their torches; how comfortable it is to know that we have not fallen into such hands as have sometimes disgraced the shores of Cornwall or New Jersey! Honesty is beautiful; compassion is beautiful; and why reed we look farther for true excellence, than external deeds? Jealous of human nature, why need we pry, for true virtue, into its seminal principles in the heart of man? There has been a tendency, ever since the world existed, to depart from the central point of action, and find all goodness in external things; and it is curious to see, that as men's conceptions become grosser, they look for the existence of virtue in positions farther and farther from its real root. As it is in money, or rather the essence of property, it really exists in the things we can use, as the necessaries and comforts of life; but we first transfer it into gold and silver, and then into paper and bank bills, which are but the representation of a representation, until at last, a real miser prizes the shadow more than the substance. So it is with virtue; it really exists in a virtuous disposition; but as that is unseen, men proceed to set it in objects at a greater and greater distance from its source. First it is a good act combined with a good motive; then it is a moral act apart from the motive; then it passes