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denominate practical Christianity--the activities created by Methodism were quite unknown. All over the country were Nonconformist churches , where some learned, scholarly, and philosophical minister was at the head of a class of thoughtful minds. Numbers of them seemed to have little to do but to think; the heart did not minister much to the head in many instances. The Unitarianism of our day was unknown. It thus represented very much the high Arian sentiment of reverence to Christ without the acknowledgment of His Godhead. The hymns of Watts abound in expressions of praise to Christ and to the Holy Spirit. He was called upon to vindicate that which he himself had done; he was called upon to defend that whole scheme of doctrine which accepted the Three Persons in the Divine Godhead. Perhaps the defect in all such efforts is, that the very attempt to embody some doctrines within the forms of the understanding naturally and essentially depraves them. If we say, as we often do, a God understood is no God at all--and this remark applies to mere natural religion--the same holds true of those higher doctrines of revelation which are the adumbrations of "the light which no man hath seen or can see." There are doctrines in Theology, even as there are doctrines in Science, the demonstration of which is rather negative than positive. Chemists tell us of an element essential to our life--we breathe it every moment; it contributes to the balance of all the powers of the atmosphere; it tames the subtle, fiery-tempered oxygen, the wild and vehement hydrogen; it represses, allays, and composes, but itself has no colour no odour; it has no active properties, no chemical affections; it is one of the greatest mysteries in nature. It is invisible, and yet it proclaims its presence; the chemist cannot touch it, but he is sure of its existence. It may well fill our minds with awe that we are ever in the presence of such an agent, that before it the lamp of science is darkened, like a man with a dim light in a room in which he sees phantoms he cannot touch, and hears voices the causes of which he cannot detect, and as he holds up his lamp he is aware of a presence that disturbs him, that will not enter into his knowledge, and for which he cannot account. Only he knows that it is. Such is nitrogen. It is thus we apprehend the doctrine of the Trinity.

The claim which the Unitarians put forth to find in Watts one of themselves is not less than audacious and dishonest. It is, however, founded--very ridiculously, we venture to think--upon some expressions reported after his death, which implied that he would have been willing, had he been able, to have altered some expressions in his hymns. Truly it is amazing that the author could survive the publication of his first volume forty years, and not alter many barbarisms of metre and expression. It may, perhaps, be partly accounted for from the fact that the copyright of the hymns had passed at once from his hands. We can very well believe there were certain expressions in his hymns he would have been not indisposed to alter, without touching at all upon matters of doctrine. It will be time enough for Unitarians to claim Watts when they are able to set aside his last published words, and to reconcile them with that faith which they call theirs, or to account, upon such principles as they would make him hold, for the sentiments which fell from his lips when dying.

But as a study of Watts' mind, these pieces of his are like all that emanated from his pen, characterized by exceeding reverence for the subject he attempted to elucidate, and by charity, respect, and courtesy towards his opponents. Johnson says: "I am only enough acquainted with his theological works to admire his meekness of opposition, and his mildness of censure. It was not only in his books, but in his mind, that orthodoxy was united with charity." Some will, perhaps, almost think that this width of charity in Watts degenerated into a vice; we hope this book has made it evident that he both had strong convictions and knew how to act upon them steadily. But his heart was very inclusive in its love. It was not merely that he lived within the shadows of persecution, and belonged to an order whose opinions were only tolerated; he represented the mildest type of Nonconformity. Perhaps we shall surprise some readers not very well acquainted with his writings, by informing them that one of the latest efforts of his mind and pen was upon the inquiry, "Whether an Establishment is altogether an Impossibility." This was in his Essay, published in the year 1739, on "Civil Power in Things Sacred." It is a singular scheme, and the question is discussed with great moderation and candour; but it is rather a plea for a system of national education than the establishment of a national religion. He inquires, indeed, whether there might not be established a religion consistent with the just liberties of mankind, and practicable with every form of civil government. He thinks that officers should be appointed by the State to explain and enforce the great duties and sanctions of morality, and that the citizens should be compelled to receive such lessons as are unquestionably at the foundation of a national well-being, the welfare, strength, and support of the State, and that such teachers, as public benefactors, should be sustained at the charge of the State.

The secret learned To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take The wind into his pulses.

Johnson quotes a passage from Mr. Dyer, charging Watts with confounding the idea of space with empty space, and that he did not consider that though space might be without matter, yet matter, being extended, could not be without space. But in reply to this, it may be remarked that this is the whole question, and extended matter falls rather beneath the denomination of substance. It appears certainly the case that Watts, in his discussion, deals with infinite space, or say, certainly, indefinite space--that is, extension abstracted from phenomena. Such space Sir Isaac Newton reverently regarded as the sensorium of God. Newton was so essentially reverent even in thought that it was not possible for him to indulge an idea which was capable of depraving religious conceptions; but all minds, even religious minds, have not been equally reverent. Hence some have gone on to regard space as the immensity of God, as a property of God. But it would follow from this that as space is extended, so God, too, must be extended; and whatever tends to conform God with nature, or to place Him in contact with it, in any other way than as in relation to His wisdom and His will, is essentially unscriptural, and it is a dangerous proclivity below which yawn the fearful gulfs of Pantheism and Atheism. In these discussions our writer anticipated many of those shadows which in the course of a few years were to project themselves over the whole domain of philosophy and theology; and, indeed, only a few years before, in the great work of Spinosa, ominous indications had been given; and the second part of the "Living Temple" of John Howe bore immediately upon the coming questions. Watts' essay penetrates into the stronghold of Pantheism. Newton and Pascal, both looking up into the infinite spaces, felt their nature called on to reply to the questions suggested. The silence terrified Pascal; Newton's calmer nature gathered up even infinite space into the great idea, that it was but a mode, or attribute, of God. Some such doctrines govern the Essays of Watts: Space, he argues, cannot be God; we cannot indeed conceive that infinite space ever began to be, we have an idea of it as eternal and unchangeable; according to Watts it seems to contain what existence it has in the very idea, nature, or essence of it, which is one attribute of God, and whereby we prove His existence. It appears to be a necessary being and has a sort of self-existence, for we cannot tell how to conceive it not to he. It seems to be an impassible, indivisible, immutable essence, and therefore according to the ghastly pantheistic philosophy it is argued that space is God. This idea Watts concisely set aside, because it involves the absurdity of making the blessed God a Being of infinite length, breadth, and depth, and ascribing to Him parts of this nature measurable by inches, yards, and miles. Perhaps this is not so clear to all readers as it was to the writer himself; but the close seems more satisfactory when he says, "Strongest arguments seem to evince this, that it must be God, or it must be nothing." Watts, then, was an Idealist, and the remark of Johnson arises from a misapprehension of the drift of the essay. He argues that space is only the shadow cast by substance--we are sure that shadow or darkness is a mere nothing, and space is nothing but the absence of body, as shade is the absence of light, and both are explicable without supposing either to be real beings: it is therefore merely an abstract idea, or, as we should say, a "thought-form;" it will follow from this that such an idea of space dissolves one of the charming illusions of Pantheism, and that there rises from the midst of this universe of unidentical being the personality of man.

That about the philosophic essays which interests us is their freshness, and the clear, easily lucid, and charmingly illustrated style in which the doctrines are conveyed. They assuredly are a very happy commentary upon Locke, from whom he often separates, as in the essay on "Innate Ideas;" he agrees with Locke in the main, and then proceeds to discourse upon many simple ideas which are innate in some sense. His essay to prove that the "Soul never Sleeps," and "On the Place and Motion of Spirits, and the Power of a Spirit to move Matter," are interesting; that on the "Departing and Separate Soul" is a sublime piece of writing, and on the "Resurrection of the same Body," and on the "Production and Nourishment of Plants and Animals." Few persons now, it may be supposed, even know of the existence of these essays; they seem to us pieces of truly delightful reading, most instructive, suggestive, and entertaining, singularly free from hard and unpleasant lines of dogmatism, full of delightful and suggestive pictures; take the following:

SUNBEAMS AND STARBEAMS.

"What a surprising work of God is vision, that notwithstanding all these infinite meetings and crossings of starbeams and sunbeams night and day, through all our solar world, there should be such a regular conveyance of light to every eye as to discern each star so distinctly by night, as well as all other objects on earth by day! And this difficulty and wonder will be greatly increased by considering the innumerable double, triple, and tenfold reflections and refractions of sunbeams, or daylight, near our earth, and among the various bodies on the surface of it. Let ten thousand men stand round a large elevated amphitheatre; in the middle of it, on a black plain, let ten thousand white round plates be placed, of two inches diameter, and at two inches distance; every eye must receive many rays of light reflected from every plate, in order to perceive its shape and colour; now, if there were but one ray of light came from each plate, here would be ten thousand rays falling on every single eye, which would make twenty thousand times ten thousand, that is, two hundred millions of rays crossing each other in direct lines in order to make every plate visible to every man. But if we suppose that each plate reflected one hundred rays, which is no unreasonable supposition, this would rise to twenty thousand millions. What an amazing thing is the distinct vision of the shape and colour of each plate by every eye, notwithstanding these confused crossings and rays! What an astonishing composition is the eye in all the coats and all the humours of it, to convey those ten thousand white images, or those millions of rays so distinct to the retina, and to impress and paint them all there! And what further amazement attends us if we follow the image on the retina, conveying itself by the optic nerves into the common sensory without confusion? Can a rational being survey this scene and say there is no God? Can a mind think on this stupendous bodily organ, the eye, and not adore the Wisdom that contrived it?"

And the following is not only most interesting, but anticipates, with much strength, a line of argument important to the sceptical philosophy of our own day. The German Buchner binds up his atheistic philosophy between the two covers of Force and Matter; and many in our own country follow in the same train of singularly forgetful thought: forgetful because force and matter are really not sufficient to constitute a universe; the regulative and directive power which controls force and manipulates matter to its will is assuredly as essential a factor as either force or matter. Thus Dr. Watts argues in his remarks:

THE DIRECTION OF MOTION A PROOF OF DEITY.

"Yet, after all, I know it may be replied again, that gravitation is a power which is not limited in its agency by any conceivable distances whatsoever; and therefore, when these starbeams are run out never so far into the infinite void by the force of their emission from the star, yet their gravitation towards the star, or some of the planetary worlds, which sometimes, perhaps, may be nearer to it, has perpetual influence to retard their motion by degrees, even as the motion of a comet is retarded by its gravitation towards the sun, though it flies to such a prodigious distance from the sun, and in time it is stopped and drawn back again and made to return towards its centre. And just so, may we suppose, all the sunbeams and starbeams that ever were emitted, even to the borders of the creation, to have been restrained by degrees by this principle of gravitation till, moving slower and slower, at last they are stopped in their progress and made to return toward their own or some other planetary system. And if so, then there is a perpetual return of the beams of light towards some or other of their bright originals, an everlasting circulation of these lucid atoms, which will hinder this eternal dilation of the bounds of the universe, and at the same time will equally prevent the wasting of the substance of the lucid bodies, the sun or stars. Well, but if this power of restraining and reducing the flight of starbeams be ascribed to this principle of gravitation, let us inquire what is this gravitation, which prevents the universe from such a perpetual waste of light? It cannot be supposed to be any real property or natural power inhering in matter or body, which exerts its influence at so prodigious a distance. I think, therefore, it is generally agreed, and with great reason, that it is properly the influence of a Divine power upon every atom of matter which, in a most exact proportion to its bulk and distance, causes it to gravitate towards all other material beings, and which makes all the bulky beings in the universe, viz., the sun, planets, and stars, attract the bodies that are near them towards themselves. Now this law of nature being settled at first by God the Creator, and being constantly maintained in the course of His providence, it is esteemed as an effect of nature, and has a property of matter, though in truth it is owing to the almighty and all-pervading power of God exerting its incessant dominion and influence through the whole material creation, producing an infinite variety of changes which Ave observe among bodies, confining the universe to its appointed limits, restraining the swift motion of the beams of light, and preserving this vast system of beings from waste and ruin, from desolation and darkness. If there be a world, there is a God; if there be a sun and stars, every ray points to their Creator; not a beam of light from all the lucid globes, but acknowledges its mission from the wisdom and will of God, and feels the restraint of His laws, that it may not be an eternal wanderer. But I call my thoughts to retire from these extravagant rovings beyond the limits of creation. What do these amusements teach us but the inconceivable grandeur, extent, and magnificence of the works and the power of God, the astonishing contrivances of His wisdom, and the poverty, the weakness, and narrowness of our own understandings, all which are lessons well becoming a creature?"

CREATION OR CONSERVATION.

"It has been a very famous question in the schools, whether conservation be a continual creation, i.e., whether that action, whereby God preserves all creatures in their several ranks and orders of being, is not one continued act of His creating power or influence, as it were, giving being to them every moment? Whether creatures, being formed out of nothing, would relapse again into their first estate of nonentity if they were not, as it were, perpetually reproduced by a creating act of God? How there is one plain and easy argument whereby, perhaps, this controversy may be determined, and it may be proposed in this manner. In whatsoever moment God creates a substance, He must create with it all the properties, modes, and accidents which belong to it in that moment; for in the very moment of creation the creature is all passive, and cannot give itself those modes. Now if God every moment create wicked men and devils, and cause them to exist such as they are, by a continued act of creation, must He not, at the same time, create or give being to all their sinful thoughts and inclinations, and even their most criminal and abominable actions? Must He not create devils, together with the rage and pride, the malice, envy, and blasphemy of their thoughts? Must He not create sinful men in the very acts of lying, perjury, stealing, and adultery, rapine, cruelty, and murder? Must He not form one man with malice in his heart? Another with a false oath on the tongue? A third with a sword in his hand, plunging it into his neighbour's bosom? Would not these formidable consequences follow from the supposition of God's conserving providence being a continual act of creation? But surely these ideas seem to be shocking absurdities, whereas, if conservation be really a continued creation, the modes must be created together with their substances every moment, since it is not possible that creatures, who every moment are supposed to be nothing but the immediate products of the Divine will, should be capable in every one of those very moments in which they are produced or created to form their own modes in simultaneous co-existence with their subjects. I own there are difficulties on the other side of the question; but the fear of making God the author of sin has bent my opinion this way. We must always inviolably maintain it for the honour of the blessed God, that all spirits, as they come out of His hand, are created pure and innocent; every sinful act proceeds from themselves, by an abuse of their own freedom of will, or by a voluntary compliance with the corrupt appetites and inclinations of flesh and blood. We must find some better way, therefore, to explain God's providential conservation of things than by representing it as an act of proper and continual creation, lest we impute all the iniquities of all men and devils, in all ages, to the pure and holy God, who is blessed for evermore."

There are two other pieces well worth a study--his remarks on Mr. Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding," and a "Brief Scheme of Ontology." The essay on ontology, like that on logic, is a most interesting handbook and guide to thought. Watts thought so clearly that it often seems as if he were only putting things neatly. Sometimes, as in his "Philosophic Essays," and in his pieces on the Trinity, he is eminently translucent; you see that there is light behind. This is the impression conveyed by his dissertation on "Space," "Substance," and "Concerning Spirits, their Place and Motion;" but in his Ontology and Logic he is transparent, the objects are brought distinctly into view. When he presents before you his greater thoughts his style is indeed clear, but you feel that it is as when "morning is spread upon the mountains" before sunrise, or as when evening lingers in the soft and rosy light after sunset, there is something somewhere behind, some orb of light which spreads out all that roseate glow; in his Ontology and Logic he is concise and distinct, as we have said; you may almost call him a neat writer. He has a wonderful power of accumulating particulars, a singular felicity in discriminating ideas. This gives to him a very nice sense of words, as he says, "We must search the sense of words. It is for want of this that men quarrel in the dark, and that there are so many contentions in the several sciences, and especially in divinity." His power of discrimination is so nice that it often becomes as amusing as it is instructive; regarded thus, his Logic is a most interesting book, we suppose quite the most delightful to read of any treatise on logic in our language. Of this amusing cumulative power let the reader take the following:

NAMES AND NAMING THINGS.

"Do not suppose that the natures or essences of things always differ from one another as much as their names do. There are various purposes in human life for which we put very different names on the same thing, or on things whose natures are near akin; and thereby oftentimes, by making a new nominal species, we are ready to deceive ourselves with the idea of another real species of beings, and those whose understandings are led away by the mere sound of words fancy the nature of those things to be very different whose names are so, and judge of them accordingly. I may borrow a remarkable instance for my purpose out of every garden which contains a variety of plants in it. Most of all plants agree in this, that they have a root, a stalk, leaves, buds, blossoms, and seeds: but the gardener ranges them under very different names, as though they were really different kinds of beings, merely because of the different use and service to which they are applied by men, as for instance those plants whose roots are eaten shall appropriate the name of roots to themselves, such as carrots, turnips, radishes, etc. If the leaves are of chief use to us then we call them herbs, as sage, mint, thyme; if the leaves are eaten raw they are termed salad, as lettuce, purslane; if boiled they become pot-herbs, as spinage, coleworts; and some of those same plants which are pot-herbs in one family are salads in another. If the buds are made our food they are called heads or tops; so cabbage heads, heads of asparagus, and artichokes. If the blossom be of most importance we call it a flower, such as daisies, tulips, and carnations, which are the mere blossoms of those plants. If the husks or seeds are eaten they are called the fruits of the ground, as peas, beans, strawberries, etc. If any part of the plant be of known or common use to us in medicine we call it a physical herb, as cardamus, scurvy-grass; but if we count no part useful we call it a weed, and throw it out of the garden; and yet perhaps our next neighbour knows some valuable property and use of it, he plants it in his garden and gives it a title of an herb or a flower. You see here how small is the real distinction of these several plants considered in their general nature as the lesser vegetables, yet what very different ideas we vulgarly form concerning them, and make different species of them, chiefly because of the different names given to them."

CLASSIFICATION OF CAUSES.

A SCALE OF BLESSEDNESS.

"Can we ever imagine that Moses the meek, the friend of God, who was, as it were, His confidant on earth, His faithful prophet to institute a new religion, and establish a new Church in the world, who, for God's sake, endured forty years of banishment, and had forty years' fatigue in a wilderness; who saw God on earth face to face, and the shine was left upon his countenance: can we suppose that this man has taken his seat no nearer to God in Paradise than Samson and Jephthah, those rash champions, those rude and bloody ministers of Providence? Or can we think that St. Paul, the greatest of the apostles, 'who laboured more than they all,' and 'was in sufferings' more abundant than the rest; who spent a long life in daily services and deaths for the sake of Christ, is not fitted for, and advanced to a rank of blessedness superior to that of the crucified thief, who became a Christian but a few moments at the end of a life of impiety and plunder? Can I persuade myself that a holy man, who has known much of God in this world, and spent his age on earth in contemplation of the Divine excellences, who has acquired a great degree of nearness to God in devotion, and has served Him, and suffered for Him, even to old age and martyrdom, with a sprightly and faithful zeal: can I believe that this man, who has been trained up all his life to converse with God, and is fitted to receive Divine communications above his fellows, shall dwell no nearer to God hereafter, and share no larger a degree of blessedness, than the little babe who has just entered into this world to die out of it, and who is saved, so far as we know, merely by spreading the veil of the covenant grace, drawn over it by the hand of the parent's faith? Can it be that the Great Judge who 'cometh and His reward is with Him, to render to every one according to his works,' will make no distinction between Moses and Samson, between the apostle and the thief, between the aged martyr and the infant, in the world to come? And yet, after all, it may be matter of inquiry, whether the meanest saint among the sons of Adam has not some sort of privilege above any rank of angels by being of a kindred nature to our Emmanuel, to Jesus the Son of God."

THE TRINITY.

"The Father is so intimately near the Son and Spirit, that no finite or created natures or unions can give a just resemblance of it. We talk of the union of the sun and his beams, of a tree and its branches: but these are but poor images and faint shadows of this mystery, though they are some of the best that I know. The union of the soul and the body is, in my esteem, still farther from the point, because their natures are so widely different. In vain we search through all the creation to find a complete similitude of the Creator.

"And in vain may we run through all parts and powers of nature and art, to seek a full resemblance of the mutual propensity and love of the Blessed Three towards each other. Mathematicians, indeed, talk of the perpetual tendencies and infinite approximations of two or more lines on the same surface, which yet never can entirely concur in one line: and if we should say that the Three Persons of the Trinity, by mutual indwelling and love, approach each other infinitely in one Divine nature, and yet lose not their distinct personality, it would be but an obscure account of this sublime mystery. But this we are sure of, that for three Divine Persons to be so inconceivably near one another in the original and eternal spring of love, goodness, and pleasure, must produce infinite delight. In order to illustrate the happiness of the Sacred Three, may we not suppose something of society necessary to the perfection of happiness in all intellectual nature? To know and be known, to love and to be beloved, are, perhaps, such essential ingredients of complete felicity that it cannot subsist without them. And it may be doubted whether such mutual knowledge and love, as seems requisite for this end, can be found in a nature absolutely simple in all respects. May we not then suppose that some distinctions in the Divine Being are of eternal necessity, in order to complete the blessedness of Godhead? Such a distinction as may admit, as a great man expresses it, of delicious society. 'We, for our parts, cannot but hereby have in our minds a more gustful idea of a blessed state, than we can conceive in mere eternal solitude.'

"And if this be true, then the three differences, which we call personal distinctions, in the nature of God, are as absolutely necessary as His blessedness, as His being, or any of His perfections. And then we may return to the words of my text, and boldly infer, that if the man is blessed who is chosen by the free and sovereign grace of God, and caused to approach, or draw near Him, what immense and unknown blessedness belongs to each Divine Person, to all the Sacred Three, who are by nature and unchangeable necessity so near, so united, so much one, that the least moment's separation seems to be infinitely impossible, and, then we may venture to say, it is not to be conceived: and the blessedness is conceivable by none but God!

"But when we have fatigued our spirits and put them to the utmost stretch, we must lie down and rest, and confess the great incomprehensible. How far this sublime transport of joy is varied in each subsistence; how far their mutual knowledge of each other's properties, or their mutual delight in each other's love, is distinct in each Person, is a secret too high for the present determination of our language and our thoughts: it commands our judgment in silence, and our whole souls into wonder and adoration."

He frequently indulged in a warmth of expression; he did not disdain ornament, although all was held in a wise check, and indeed with a severe rein, and his sermons were not less practical than beautiful. They abound in such passages as the following, in which he so sweetly and mildly expostulates with

CENSORIOUS CHRISTIANS.

"Be not too severe in your censures, you who have been kept from temptation, but pity others who are fallen, and mourn over their fall. Do not think or say the worst things you can of those who have been taken in the snare of Satan, and been betrayed into some grosser iniquities. When you see them grieved and ashamed of their own follies, and bowed down under much heaviness, take occasion then to speak a softening and a healing word. Speak for them kindly, and speak to them tenderly. 'Have compassion of them, lest they be swallowed up of over much sorrow.' And remember, too, O censorious Christian, that thou art also in the body. It is rich grace that has kept thee hitherto, and the same God, who for wise ends has suffered thy brother to fall, may punish thy severity and reproachful language by withholding His grace from thee in the next hour of temptation, and then thy own fall and guilt shall upbraid thee with inward and bitter reflections, for thy sharp censures of thy weak and tempted brother. This life is the only time wherein we can pity the infirmities of our brethren, and bear their burdens. This law of Christ must be fulfilled in this world, for there is no room for it in the next: 'Wherefore bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil ye the law of Christ.' This world is the only place where different opinions and doctrines are found amongst the saints; disagreeing forms of devotion, and sects, and parties, have no place on high: none of these things can interrupt the worship or the peace of heaven. See to it then, that you practise this grace of charity here, and love thy brother, and receive him into thy heart in holy fellowship, though he may be weak in faith, and though he may observe days and times, and may feed upon herbs, and indulge some superstitious follies while thou art strong in faith, and well acquainted with the liberty of the Gospel. Let not little things provoke you to divide communions on earth: but by this sort of charity, and a Catholic spirit, honour the Saviour and His Church here in this world; for since there are no parties, nor sects, nor contrary sentiments among the Church in heaven, this Christian virtue can never find any room for exercise there. This kind of charity ends with death."

Whose lamp at midnight hour Is seen in some high lonely tower, Where he may oft outwatch the Bear With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato, to unfold What worlds or what vast regions hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook.

But to this order of mind Watts added that which altogether changed it; he possessed in an eminent degree the love of books and thought, lofty imaginations, and excursions through the far-off continents of knowledge; but he added to the volitions of genius, and the accumulations of the scholar, the doing "all for the glory of God;" few lives so useful and even so obvious seem to have been so sanctified from every human passion and selfish isolation; and hence with powers which might have found their gratification had he chosen to move like some remote and solitary planet in an unilluminating orb, he preferred rather to be a satellite, shedding a useful lustre on his serene way, and in the language of a well-known writer, "singing while he shone." The amiable critic to whom we have already referred says that the whole lesson of Watts' life might be condensed into the apostolic injunction, "Study to be quiet and mind your own business;" and the estimate is greatly true. He was a firm Nonconformist, but he was no agitator; he lived and wrought laboriously in his vocation, and that vocation was to bring about "the union of mental culture and vital piety." As he did not write pamphlets to expose the evils of the hierarchy, or the defects of his own ecclesiastical system, so neither did he attempt to rebuke in print such assailants as Bradbury. He was the first in England who set the Gospel to music; and many who knew not the meaning of the words yet found their hearts melted by the melody of genius. There is a saintly dignity and peaceful purity about his life which it is not invidious to say gives to him, even in writers of his own order, a high pre-eminence. He seems to have been one whom "the peace of God which passeth all understanding" kept. And surely he has won a place in the universal Church--no Church repudiates him; his eulogy has been pronounced, and his life recorded, by Samuel Johnson, and Robert Southey, and Josiah Conder. If his hymns crowd the "Congregational Hymn Book," they are to be found in the "Hymns Ancient and Modern;" and, as we have seen, his monument adorns not only the "conventicle" but the cathedral.

Ages differ, and men differ with their age. This is the place neither to compare nor to contrast; but in an eminent sense Watts appears to have fulfilled himself. He drank deep from every kind of learning: we have seen that he wrote upon every kind of subject; and although it is the fashion now to pass him by, and even to underrate many of those pieces in prose and verse which were long held as the most cherished heirlooms of the Church, we shall have to search long and far to discover a more ample and consecrated intelligence, a more conscientious and laborious worker, than the mild, the modest, yet majestic hermit, philosopher, and sweet singer of Theobalds and Stoke Newington.

FOOTNOTES

"Dr. Isaac Watts," a Lecture by Hermann Carlyle, LL.B., seventh minister of the church of which Dr. Watts' father was for forty-eight years a deacon.

It is interesting to remember that Isaac Watts the elder was the first local trustee to Robert Thorner's munificent bequest, which is now the grandest of all the Southampton charities, and has made the name of Thorner in that town a household word.

The soil of Southampton seems to have been favourable to the production of the lyrical faculty, although it is not probable that many of those whose hearts have been stirred by the holy strains of Watts have been acquainted with the melodies of one of the most national of English song-writers, the laureate of sailors, also a townsman of Southampton, Thomas Dibden.

See Appendix.

Walter Wilson's "Life of Defoe," vol. i. pp. 26, 27.

"The Improvement of the Mind," chap. iv. of "Books and Reading."

Afterwards, says Dr. Gibbons, Dr. Daniel Scott. He was a very learned and amiable man. After he had studied under Mr. Jones he removed to Utrecht for further education; there he took the degree of doctor of laws. In the year 1741 he published a new version of St. Matthew's Gospel, with critical notes, and an examination of Dr. Mills' various readings. He published, also, in the year 1745, an "Appendix to H. Stephens' Greek Lexicon," in two volumes.

The interested reader consulting that singular monument of patient and painstaking industry, "The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting-Houses in London, Westminster, and Southwark," by Walter Wilson, will probably feel astonishment, not less at their number than at the singular places in which they assembled.

Matt. xviii. 20.

Originally Mart Lane.

"Quarterly Review," vol. lxxxix. pp. 303, 304.

"Ode to Mr. Pinhorne." Translated by Dr. Gibbons.

Lord Lytton, in "Devereux."

"Quarterly Review," No. 222, April, 1862. Art. Hymnology.

"British and Foreign Evangelical Review," 1865.

"The Psalter and the Hymn Book." Three Lectures by James Hamilton.

See Crosbie's "History of the English Baptists" , vol. iii.

"Quarterly Review," vol. xxxviii. Art. Psalmody.

"Letter to Rev. S. F. Macdonald," by James Martineau, 1859.

"Old Town Folk," chap. iii.

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