By the influence of the former of these tendencies, Madame Guyon, after having followed her imagination into the wildest vagaries, was brought back to sober religious truth, and Fenelon's too warm fancy was kept from either injuriously affecting his own religious character, or rendering him, after the first slightly eccentric movement had been corrected, any other than the safe, as he was eminently the sympathizing Christian teacher. By the latter, Bossuet was driven to dishonor his own good name, and to damage the truth he espoused, through his intemperance of spirit and heartless vindictive

ness.

To contend, even for the truth, with such as Fenelon, were a difficult and almost thankless task; but to do so in the spirit and style of Bossuet, though with an angel's intellect, would betray the cause attempted to be defended.

The whole controversy was probably much less an affair of religion than an intrigue of the court; and it is well remarked of a certain grave divine of that age, that he "appears always to have a smile on his countenance when he mentions Quietism;" and Leibnitz observes, that "before the war of words began, the prelates should have agreed on a definition of the word love, and that would have prevented the dispute."

The development of mysticism made on this memorable occasion was, after all, much less erratic or intense than what has appeared at other times; but the great names of the parties engaged in the controversy to which it gave rise, render it memorable in history. The whole affair is full of instruction for the thoughtful. It teaches the essential spirituality of religion, which may indeed exist shut in by ecclesiastical barriers, but it is perpetually rising above and breaking over them. It also shows the tendency of the human heart, even when impelled by its religious instincts, to run into fanciful and pernicious errors; and even in its abjuration of self, to deify the imagination, the emotions-the self. It demonstrates most clearly that only under the steady light of the word of God, of the Bible, expounded from the pulpit, read in the family, and studied in the closet, can the religious instincts of the heart be permitted to operate freely without endangering the salvation of the individual and the peace of society.

[For the National Magazine.]

SMALL THINGS.

BY ALICE CAREY.

LWAYS the arms of God are about

A1

us, upholding and protecting and guiding us to that which is best for us. Sometimes afflictions come; but who shall say that in their time these are not good for us-that they are not the discipline which perfects us? Every step, crooked as well as straight, seems to me to bear us forward on our immortal journey. This is but the dawning of the long life, and we walk as it were in twilight shadows; but before us we see the day brightening and whitening, and we feel that as more light flows in upon us, we shall turn less frequently aside from the way of truth and righteousness.

And while we cannot but mourn over the weaknesses and frailties of ourselves and of our fellow men, we feel that they have their uses, for God would have made nothing altogether worthless-and the starry heavens and the flowery fields, has he not made them all? And if he gave the stars their motions, and makes the sun to rise and set, and fills the slender rim of the moon to a golden fullness; if he makes the seasons to come in their time, the winter and the harvest; if he opens the blue eyes of the violets, does he not also make the thistle bloom, and give the berries of the sumach their sourness? If we recognize God's providence in the sunshine, shall we not see it also in the storm? And while the heavens are darkened shall we not feel that

"Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face?"

Surely afflictions spring not from the dust: short-sighted at best, we cannot at all times see their uses, but we doubt not but that the morning will come when it is night, and we think not the sun is extinguished when the mist covers up his face, and why should we feel that love has forsaken us when sharp pains torment us? Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and he scourgeth every soul whom he receiveth. It is the tacit theory of many that God is the author only of what we term great things-that he cannot come down to attend to the small things which belong to life; but, to my mind, no thought is so beautiful as that all our

wants are known, and all our prayers answered,―

That with great systems for his care,
Beyond the furthest worlds we see,
He bends to hear the earnest prayer

Of every sinful child like me.

And, after all, how shall we say what is great and what is small? with our puny little hands shall we measure things, and say this is the work of Divinity, and beautiful and good; and this is a little or a bad thing, and came into the world we know not how? for we can find but one great Originator, and must ascribe to chance or accident those things which we think unworthy of God's care; for if they are beneath his care, they could not have been fashioned by his hands.

I said, we know not what is great and what is small; for all things that are, are necessary to the great system of things -nothing is out of place, nothing worthless.

In the mechanism of men we find the rivet and the screw as useful as the iron bar and the heavy beam; and if we wrench them away, we see directly how the most ingenious contrivance tumbles apart; and yet in the divine architecture we audaciously find superfluities.

Heaven shield us from arrogance and vain presumption, and temper the right spirit of inquiry with more of the profitable faith of little children! Our Father knoweth what is best for us, and he doeth all things well; and that which seems evil is, perhaps, our best good. We are too much given to lean away from the bosom of Providence, and hug to our hearts a creed. We are too much disposed to listen to the teachings of men, and not to that voice which speaks to our hearts from out the heaven of heavens. We let go the hand of the angel, and grope our way blindly, and so are lost.

Give us, O our Father, more of the child's faith! Teach us how to recognize thee in thy works; for the trees that shadow us are of thy planting, and thy name is written in the flowers. The brook talks in silver syllables of the plenitude of thy mercies; the ripe harvest bows its heavy head before thee; and the sea, gnawing the brown sand in wrath, moans back from thy reproving hand, and is still showing us that thou art mightier than thy mightiest works. For myself, I recognize God's goodness and greatness more in lit

me.

tle things, than in those which are so above I feel his providence more surely in the bright little flower at my feet, than in the cold planet that is so far away. I can pluck the one and fold it in my bosom, and taste its sweet odors in the air; while the other excites only my wonder and my worship, but warms not so well my heart with gratitude. The soft green grass that is pleasant to my feet, warms my nature to thankfulness more than the golden pavements which poets tell us are waiting in the skies. The arms of a kind mother or a fond sister shelter me better, while I am here, with my earthly needs and nature, than the wings of the seraphs—just as the harvest apples and the wheaten loaf nourish me better than would the food of angels.

I am not of those who regard this life as a small and worthless thing. To me it is a great and a glorious thing to live: to breathe the common air is a luxury-to eat and to drink are pleasant-to see the sunset and the sunrise is grandeur enough to dazzle my mortal vision-and to buy love with love is the filling all my nature with ecstasy. True, I am but an atom in this world even, but I am sure there is within me an immortal soul, and I am sure He who made it will keep it, and that its little light can no more go out, than the brightest star in heaven. Nature, that stands closest to the spoken inspiration of the prophets, shows us that nothing can perish. Matter takes new forms; the green leaf fades and falls, and resolves itself back to the brown earth; but the matter is not lost, and the life-principle that shot the greenness up into the sunshine is not lost, but the earth teems again, year after year, with the same freshness and beauty. If anything were perishable, all could be perishable; but as the material is indestructible, except by divine miracle, shall we not conclude the spiritual is also immortal? for the soul is better than the body.

I said this life was a good life; and that the spiritual life is higher and better than the mortal life, does not contradict it: the lower rounds of the ladder are as useful as those at the top, inasmuch as the topmost can only be gained by means of the lower, and this life, as it were, is the lower round of existence. The spirit which shall wing its way through the long ages of eternity, is here in its chrysalis state.

The grain of wheat decays before the bright blade opens; and this material form must decay before the wings of the spirit expand.

The present needs of this immortal germ must be cared for, in order to educate it for higher needs: the culture it receives here is not lost upon it; for every accession of knowledge is a mark on its immortal nature.

They whose lives have been good and pure are ready at death-or rather, when the great change comes-to hear the "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter now into rest."

And it is the disregard of little things in this life which sends ultimately so many where there is weeping and wailing. The neglect of one little duty ends not with that neglect; but the consequences it involves are incalculable.

Good and earnest work is good and earnest prayer, and good and earnest prayer is good and earnest work; and God hears and answers one as well as the other the flowers, and the grass, and the harvest, and the garden, are the answer to the prayer of labor; and faith, and righteousness, and peace, are the answer to the earnest breathings of the soul. It is a little thing to put a flower-root in the ground; but if the little work be neglect ed, the glory of the blossom will never bless our eyes it is a little thing to say, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; but forgetfulness of it leads to forgetfulness of God, and the soul that forgets God is a great way from the kingdom.

destined to be burned up in the fire, or crushed out in the grave, or, at best, a hard apprenticeship, going into freedom only through death.

"An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave-ten thousand angels can't confine me there." There is a long bright journey before us; and the transient darkness of the tomb precedes but a little the breaking of the eternal day. Every good action I do brings its reward; every upward step is one more in the long progress; every earnest prayer draws me nearer to heaven, and every sinful deed darkens the splendor of eternity.

We are in a nursery-and pain, and sorrow, and disappointment are the instructors that we needs must have; but we must not feel that we are shifting blindly because of our afflictions, or that God forgets us because of our nothingness in comparison with the great universe.

The hairs of our heads are numbered, and not a sparrow falls to the ground without his notice.

The oak-tree was in the little brown acorn once-the broad wings of the eagle in the small egg-the freed spirits were once children as we are-the Redeemer of the world lay in a manger.

Earth would be, indeed, the beginning of heaven, if men realized the importance of small things-if they could remember that the greatest achievements of genius resolve themselves into little and obscure points-that the happy household, which is a sweet type of heaven, is made happy by little offices of kindness—and that the Master said to the diseased man, "Wash and be clean." It was a little thing.

RESTLESS HABITS OF THE CALMUCKS.

It is, I affirm, a bad doctrine that this life is an insignificant—a hard life, and to be got over with as little trouble as may be, for the mischief it leads to is beyond all calculation. Who will bestow care on that life which they feel to be worthless,

the dominion of the Russian crown, there are several divisions of the tribe, each governed by separate princes. One of the most celebrated of these has built a palace on the shores of the Volga, not far from Astrakhan. This appears to be the nearest approach to a settled habitation that any of these restless beings have attained to; and so great is their dread of a more composed life and industrious habits, that when they are angry with a person, they wish "he may live in one place and work like a Russian." They live chiefly upon horse-flesh and churned mare's milk, from which a kind of spirit is distilled.

THE RELIGION OF THE POETS.

"THAT

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

"HAT which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God." Such is the verdict of the Judge of all upon many of the points regarding which men are most harmoniously agreed. We adopt it in all its extent to guide us in the remarks which we are now to offer regarding the productions of one whom myriads delight | to honor.

The gifts and genius of Sir Walter Scott have, perhaps, been more extensively admired than those of any man that ever lived. For obvious reasons, Homer cannot be compared with Scott in this respect; while even Shakspeare, who admits no rival near his throne, has not addressed himself to so many of the multiform aspects of our wondrous nature, as did Sir Walter Scott. In consequence of this, he seems to form a class by himself, and we are far from wishing to detract by one iota from what all must concede who have hearts to feel, or understanding to estimate the highest attainments of genius. But just in proportion to our readiness to concede the unchallengeable ascendency of Scott, should be our watchfulness lest his power be employed to injure the truth. In that respect, our duty to the sacred cause demands that we should enter a solemn protest against whatever would tamper with the holy, or degrade the divine; and after many years of close familiarity with the writings of the great novelist and poet, we are deliberately of opinion that his influence has been very detrimental to the cause of truth, in multitudes of minds. We now design to offer some illustrations of this opinion, so unhesitatingly announced, regarding one of the world's most brilliant and honored idols.

And we observe, first of all, that certain of Scott's productions elaborately endeavor to lower the reputation of some religious men. The author professes, indeed, to laugh only at their foibles, and, like Moore, he held it to be one thing to laugh at these, and quite another to laugh at religion itself. True; but then Scott's oblivion or ignorance of what true religion is, apparent in page after page, leads him to represent as foibles what is the very truth of God, or expose as fanaticism such

doctrines as are found in passage after passage, in the writings of Paul. Earnest religion that which teaches man to endure all, to take joyfully the spoiling of his goods, or not to count his very life dear to him, that he may finish his course with joy-is constantly the butt of Scott; and some of the most distorted of his characters are elaborately drawn, so as in effect to discountenance truth. His writings, in some places, thus attempt to laugh men out of their religion—to do by a sneer, or a joke, or a caricature, what Claverhouse did with his persecuting hordes, or Lauderdale with his iniquitous sentences on the judgment-seat.

Scott says, indeed, in a letter to Lord Montague, (1824,) in regard to “zeal in religion," that "mortals cannot be too fervid ;" but then the remark is connected with the state of religion at Cambridge about the time when Simeon had disarmed the enmity of many, and rendered evangelical religion an honored instead of being a persecuted thing; and it was to warn a nobleman against that that Scott wrote as he did. In early youth, he had been a hearer of one of the most devoted ministers in Scotland, the friend of Whitefield, the correspondent, we think, of Jonathan Edwards, in short, one of the men who were raised up by God to revive his own work in the northern division of Great Britain.

The lessons of that man, however, enforced by the devoutness of Scott's mother, and the steadfast consistency of his father, could not reconcile the future novelist to the truth of God in its personal or energetic power. How could they, when one of his early boon companions wrote of Scott, "Drunk or sober, he is always a gentleman;" and adds, " He looked excessively heavy and stupid when he was drunk, but he was never out of goodhumor!" All that is recorded in his life by his son-in-law, without one expression of regret, or warning; and if such tendencies were carried forward into life, we need not wonder, though that form of enthusiasm which Simeon so largely promoted at Cambridge was viewed in the light of a beacon on a rock by Sir Walter Scott. We know not his design in certain of his writings, and do not pretend to judge of it; but viewing them as now public property for good or for ill, we see much in them to make earnest religion