less drawn from God, than by those common pursuits and interests, which, while it would be sinful to avoid them, I cannot engage in without sin. It is in the realities of life, and not merely in the fictions that occasionally amuse us, that I find the most baneful poisons, the most effectual weaners from "love to God." 'I think many people "strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel," in these very circumstances; and Satan willingly suffers them to abstain, with holy horror, from the theatre, or to throw aside a novel with abhorrence-so the idol, the real idol he has erected in their hearts, receive its daily worship. You cannot suppose I am bringing this forward by way of argument, for the one or the other; but it always appears to me that people begin at the wrong end when they attack such errors as these. One might as well expect to demolish a building by pulling down some external ornament, while the pillars were left unmoved: and I think many, who exclaim with vehemence against those who indulge in some of the vain pleasures of the world, (for which probably themselves have no relish, and from which, therefore, it costs them little self-denial to abstain,) would do well to examine if there be not some favorite idol within their own breasts, equally displeasing in the sight of a heart-searching God. I do not say this to you, dear E. I know you watch your heart, as well as your conduct; and earnestly desire to guard it in every quarter from the incursion of the wily adversary; and while you have abundant occasion to warn me of that worldlymindedness, which I desire daily to mourn over and to mortify, I hope your anxiety for me, as one who reads novels, and tolerates the frequenting of plays," will be abated at least. I will discuss the subject with you as often as you please; but do not again employ your time in arguing me out of opinions which I ever discarded. * * * pp. 229-32. The following on leaving Colchester is in a more familiar strain. To MR. J. C. 'Colchester, August 29, 1811. Having a leisure evening, the last probably before our removal, I devote it to fulfilling my promise to write to you once more from Colchester. Yes, we are really going; and in a few days the place that so long has known us, shall know us no more. Before I quit this scene of the varied interests of my childhood and youth, I ought to give my mind a long leave of absence, and send it back leisurely to revisit the past-to "recall the years in exile driven, and break their long captivity;" but in the hurry of the moment, the feeling of it is lost; and even if I could afford to send my thoughts on this retrograde excursion, and "up the stream of time could turn my sail, to view the fairy haunts of long lost hours," I ought not to ask you to accompany them; for they would stay to contemplate scenes and gaze on faces unknown and uninteresting to you. I can invite my friends to sympathize in my present interests, and to survey with me my future prospects: but of that fairy land they could only discern a line of blue distance; while to me, "Here a cot, and there a spire, still glitter in the sun." But a melancholy and sentimental retrospection is an unprofitable indulgence-a kind of luxury which perhaps I have no right to allow to myself. Let me rather, if I have time for contemplation, take a more humbling and painful survey; and, reviewing the sins and follies of childhood and youth, resolutely say, "The time past of my life shall suffice to have wrought them." But I want energy to commence a new career. Whether my mind will recover vigor under new circumstances, or will faint under the exertion I have in prospect, remains to be seen: it is a fearful experiment. Here I sit in my little room: it looks just as it always did; but in a few days all will be changed: and this consecrated attic will be occupied, (how shall I tell it you?) by an exciseman; for his wife observed to me, when surveying the house--" Ah, this room will do nicely for my husband to keep his books in:"well, I shall take with me all that has rendered it most interesting; and as to the moonshine and the sunbeams that will continue to irradiate its walls, I would not withhold them from this son of traffic, although they will never kindle a spark of poetry in his eye. * * * My good friend, be not too confident in your scholarship: you may be master of all the learned languages, and yet a very dunce when you endeavour to decipher the hieroglyphics inscribed on a female heart. If you have a taste for puzzling studies, there are the Babylonish bricks for you, which have hitherto defied so much erudition :--but there would be a chance of success in attempting to decipher them.' pp. 252-4. We give one more extract as furnishing important matter of reflection. To MISS E. M. 'Marazion, April 24, 1816. * I am glad you heard and were pleased with Mr and wish you knew him as a parlour companion ;-one does not often meet with a person so completely intellectual. 'Of Methodism and Arminianism, I knew scarcely more than the names before I came here, and am very glad of having seen them for myself. Cornwall certainly offers a favorable specimen of the Methodists: the good they have done is unquestionable, even by the most prejudiced witnesses. But what they have effected is fairly attributable to their zeal and laboriousness, rather than to their peculiar opinions. The ignorant poor, when they become pious, are so almost exclusively "taught of God"-they are so little encumbered with human knowledge, that I believe it makes very little practical difference indeed whether they are called Arminians or Calvinists. The same unerring Spirit guides the minds of both to all essential truth. But does it not seem that opinions are of more importance, and produce more decided effects in the more cultivated? I think I have lately witnessed some such effects. An Arminian, who is much interested in his peculiar views, unconsciously perhaps to himself, very sparingly and partially exhibits in his preaching the good news of the christian system :--he seems fearful of preaching a too free salvation for sinners. I am far from saying that this is the case generally with the Methodist preachers; but I am sure it was the case with the most zealous Arminian I ever heard or knew. But if peculiar opinions give a bias to the strain of preaching on one side, there can be no doubt that it does so in a much more baleful degree on the other. I would much rather, as I value my soul's safety, attend to the preaching of an Arminian, than of a high Calvinist. I have heard a few of these preachers, and have seen and heard much of the effects of such a doctrine among the common people. It is said to be just now a fast spreading evil among the evangelical clergy of the establishment; and it is spreading like a leprosy among the ignorant in all denominations. I believe there is scarcely any tendency towards it among the regular dissenting ministers; but some of their flocks are infected. There is something so flattering, and imposing, and comfortable, in the statements of preachers of this class, and the evil (except in avowed Antinomianism) is so much concealed, that it is no wonder the doctrine is eagerly embraced by those who wish for a cheap and indulgent way of getting to heaven; nor even that many of the sincere and humble are led into the snare. If the accounts we hear are correct, it is not Towgood, but high Calvinism, that has induced Mr to leave the establish ment-it is said he objects especially to reading the Ten Commandments! pp. 282-3. ART. XIV.--Address on Church Music; delivered by Request in the Vestry of Hanover Church, and in the Third Baptist Church in Boston. By LOWELL MASON. Boston, Hilliard, Gray & Co. 1826. pp. 42. THE subject of sacred music has occasionally occupied the pages of the Disciple and Examiner, and we are glad to be called to it again by the sensible pamphlet before us. Mr Mason writes at once like a friend of music and of religion, and advocates the cause and the union of both, with a spirit that is worthy of the subject, and with statements that cannot fail to excite thought, if they do not always produce conviction. On some points we dissent from the opinions he has expressed. But in his main positions we must cordially concur; we are glad to find them presented to the public in a form to attract attention, and desire to do something in the following pages to extend and second them. It has happened, from various causes, that no part of public worship has been so frequently, we might say so generally, a matter of dissatisfaction and complaint, as its psalmody. Sometimes musical taste is offended by the harshness of the performance, and sometimes devotional sentiment is pained and disgusted at finding this exercise degenerate into an ostentatious exhibition, or a mere amusement. The latter is very justly, though somewhat irreverently satirized by Pope, when he describes the performance in a polite chapel, where 'Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, "Of all our The former, though exclaimed against as if a new thing at the present day, has always abounded, and was lamented by Dr Watts in a passage quoted by Mr Mason. religious solemnities, psalmody is the most unhappily managed. The very action which should elevate us to the most delightful and divine sensations, doth not only flatten our devotions, but too often touches all the springs of uneasiness within us.' Mr Mason directs his remarks to the remedy of these abuses and evils. Regarding it as a divine institution and as designed for the religious edification of worshippers in their devotions, his object is to consider by what means its legitimate purposes may be effected. This he thinks can only be done by keeping in constant view its true design, and by religious per sons taking upon themselves the superintendence and management of this part of worship. For, as he justly reasons, if it be given exclusively into the hands of young and thoughtless persons, who feel only a musical and not a religious responsibility, it cannot be expected that it should be serious and edifying. The choir therefore, for he objects to the universal and promiscuous chorus of the congregation, should be constituted of serious persons, who will study mainly to produce a religious effect. Care should be taken that they sing well; and in order to this, there should be a competent leader, who ought to be induced to give a great deal of attention to the subject by a sufficient salary. They should be accompanied by an organ, rather than other instruments; the appropriate performance on which he describes with many just remarks. This is an outline of his general plan. The discourse is in other particulars very miscellaneous, and contains observations on singing schools, just and satirical, on the selection and adaptation of tunes, on the question, whether all can learn to sing, and on the desirableness that music should be studied and well understood by all who are intending the office of the ministry. It is not our design to follow him through all or any large portion of these remarks. We shall merely go on in such a course as may suggest itself while we write. In respect, then, to the abuses to which church music is liable, as we have said they are nothing new, neither are they any thing strange. The preaching, and even the prayers of God's house, are exposed to similar abuses. Prayer may become formal, awakening no devotion in those who attend it; or it may be listened to merely as a display of the minister's gifts, and an exertion of talent. Preaching may degenerate into a rhetorical exercise, or a theatrical amusement, and a sermon, which comes warm and earnest from the speaker's soul, laden with argument and feeling, that ought to rouse the most insensible, may yet be listened to as only an oratorical display. If we find it necessary to guard against these abuses, it is not a matter of wonder that there is still greater reason to guard against similar perversions of psalmody. For, as we hear prayer and preaching only when they are designed for a religious end, there are associations of reverence connected with them, which are not easily obliterated, and which are not so necessarily connected with sacred music. Music we hear every where, at all seasons, connected with all sorts of subjects, and |