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length unanimous. I cannot believe that a British House of Commons will give its sanction to the continuance of this abominable traffic-the African slave trade. We were for a while ignorant of its real nature; but it has now been completely developed, and laid open to your view in all its horrors. Never was there, indeed, a system so big with wickedness and cruelty; it attains to the fullest measure of pure, unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and scorning all competition or comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undisputed possession of its detestable preeminence.

But I rejoice, sir, to see that the people of Great Britain have stepped forward on this occasion, and expressed their sense more generally and unequivocally than in any instance wherein they have ever before interfered. I should in vain attempt to express to you the satisfaction with which it has filled my mind to see so great and glorious a concurrence, to see this great cause triumphing over all lesser distinctions, and substituting cordiality and harmony in the place of distrust and opposition. Nor have its effects among ourselves been in this respect less distinguished or less honorable. It has raised the character of Parliament. Whatever may have been thought or said concerning the unrestrained prevalency of our political divisions, it has taught surrounding nations, it has taught our admiring country, that there are subjects still beyond the reach of party. There is a point of elevation where we get above the jarring of the discordant elements that ruffle and agitate the vale below. In our ordinary atmosphere, clouds and vapors obscure the air, and we are the sport of a thousand conflicting winds and adverse currents; but here, we move in a higher region, where all is pure, and clear, and serene, free from perturbation and discomposure

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

Here, then, on this august eminence, let us build the temple of benevolence; let us lay its foundation deep in truth and justice, and let the inscription on its gates be "peace and good-will toward men." Here let us offer the first fruit of our prosperity; here let us devote ourselves to the service of these wretched men, and go forth burning with a generous ardor to compensate, if possible, for the injuries we have hitherto brought on them. Let us heal the breaches we have made. Let us rejoice in becoming the happy instruments of arresting the progress of rapine and desolation, and of introducing into that immense country the blessings of Christianity, the comforts of civilized, and the sweets of social life. I am persuaded, sir, there is no man who hears me, who would not join with me in hailing the arrival of this happy period; who does

not feel his mind cheered and solaced by the contemplation of these delightful scenes.1

NOMINAL CHRISTIANS.

Servile, and base, and mercenary, is the notion of Christian practice among the bulk of nominal Christians. They give no more than they dare not withhold: they abstain from nothing but what they must not practise. When you state to them the doubtful quality of any action, and the consequent obligation to desist from it, they reply to you in the very spirit of Shylock, "they cannot find it in the bond." In short, they know Christianity only as a system of restraint. She is despoiled of every liberal and generous principle: she is rendered almost unfit for the social intercourses of life, and is only suited to the gloomy walls of a cloister, in which they would confine her.

LITTLE RELIGION NO COMFORT.

"Drink deep, or taste not," is a direction fully as applicable to religion, if we would find it a source of pleasure, as it is to knowledge. A little religion is, it must be confessed, apt to make inen gloomy, as a little knowledge is to render them vain: hence the unjust imputation often brought upon religion by those whose degree of religion is just sufficient, by condemning their course of conduct, to render them uneasy; enough merely to impair the sweetness of the pleasures of sin, and not enough to compensate for the relinquishment of them by its own peculiar comforts. Thus, then, men bring up, as it were, an ill report of that land of promise, which, in truth, abounds with whatever, in our journey through life, can best refresh and strengthen us.

THE SUPPORTS OF RELIGION.2

When the pulse beats high, and we are flushed with youth, and health, and vigor; when all goes on prosperously, and success seems

1 On the final triumph of the bill for abolishing the Slave Trade, the vote was 283 to 16. Several comrades went home with Wilberforce after the house was up. "Well, Henry," said he to his friend Thornton, "what shall we abolish next?" "The lottery, I think," was the answer. William Smith said, "Let us make out the names of these sixteen miscreants, I have four of them." "Never mind," said Wilberforce, who was kneeling on one knee st the table, writing a note, and looking up as he spoke; "never mind the miserable sixteen: let us think of our glorious 283." As for himself, all selfish triumph was lost in unfeigned gratitude to God. "How wonderfully," he writes in his Journal of March 22, 1807, the providence of God has been manifested in the Abolition Bill! Oh what thanks do I owe the Giver of all good, for bringing me in his gracious providence to this great cause, which at length, after almost nineteen years' labor, is succes-ful!"

2 Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint upon the wicked; whoever therefore wants to argue or laugh it out of the world, without giving an equivalent for it, ought to be treated as a common enemy."— LADY M. W. MONTAGU.

almost to anticipate our wishes, then we feel not the want of the consolations of religion: but when fortune frowns, or friends forsake us; when sorrow, or sickness, or old age comes upon us, then it is that the superiority of the pleasures of religion is established over those of dissipation and vanity, which are ever apt to fly from us when we are most in want of their aid. There is scarcely a more melancholy sight to a considerate mind than that of an old man who is a stranger to those only true sources of satisfaction. How affecting, and at the same time how disgusting, is it to see such a one awkwardly catching at the pleasures of his younger years, which are now beyond his reach; or feebly attempting to retain them, while they mock his endeavors and elude his grasp! To such a one gloomily, indeed, does the evening of life set in! All is sour and cheerless. He can neither look backward with complacency, nor forward with hope; while the aged Christian, relying on the assured mercy of his Redeemer, can calmly reflect that his dismission is at hand; that his redemption draweth nigh. While his strength declines, and his faculties decay, he can quietly repose himself on the fidelity of God; and at the very entrance of the valley of the shadow of death, he can lift up an eye, dim perhaps and feeble, yet occasionally sparkling with hope, and confidently looking forward to the near possession of his heavenly inheritance, "to those joys which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man." What striking lessons have we had of the precarious tenure of all sublunary possessions! Wealth, and power, and prosperity, how peculiarly transitory and uncertain! religion dispenses her choicest cordials in the seasons of exigence, in poverty, in exile, in sickness, and in death. The essential superiority of that support which is derived from religion is less felt, at least it is less apparent, when the Christian is in full possession of riches, and splendor, and rank, and all the gifts of nature and fortune. But when all these are swept away by the rude hand of time or the rough blasts of adversity, the true Christian stands, like the glory of the forest, erect and vigorous; stripped, indeed, of his summer foliage, but more than ever discovering to the observing eye the solid strength of his substantial texture.

But

One extract from his private Journal, as a specimen of the spirit of the whole, it is due to his memory to make, as showing his spiritual-mindedness and habitual self-examination. It is written at the close of the year 1802:

FROM HIS JOURNAL.

How many and great corruptions does the House of Commons discover to me in myself! What love of worldly estimation, vanity, earthly-mindedness! How different should be the frame of a real Christian, who, poor in spirit, and feeling bi

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pilgrim on earth, is looking for the coming of his Lord and Saviour; who longs to be delivered from the present evil world, and to see God as he is! I know that this world is passing away, and that the favor of God, and a share in the blessings of the Redeemer's purchase, are alone worthy of the pursuit of a rational being: but, alas! alas! I scarcely dare say I love God and his ways. If I have made any progress, it is in the clearer discovery of my own exceeding sinfulness and weakness. Yet I am convinced it is my own fault. Let me not acquiesce then in my sinful state, as if it were not to be escaped from. Thanks be to God, who giveth us Yes, we may, I may, the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. become holy. Press forward then, O my soul. Strive more vigorously. God and Christ will not refuse their help. And may the emotions I have been now experiencing be the gracious motions of the divine Spirit, quickening my dead heart, and bringing me from the power of Satan unto God.

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SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 1772-1834.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "the most imaginative of modern poets," was the son of the Rev. John Coleridge, vicar of Ottery, and was born at that place, in the year 1772. Losing his father in early life, he obtained, by the kindness of a friend, a presentation to Christ Church Hospital, London. "I enjoyed," he says, "the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a very severe master, the Rev. James Bowyer, who early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid, &c." He made extraordinary advances in scholarship, and amassed a vast variety of miscellaneous knowledge, but in that random, desultory manner which through life prevented him from accomplishing what his great abilities qualified him from achieving. His reputation at Christ Church promised a brilliant career at Cambridge, which university he entered in 1790, in his nineteenth year. In 1794, he became acquainted with the poet Southey, then a student at Baliol College, Oxford, and a warm friendship soon ripened between them; and at Bristol they formed the resolution, along with a third poet, Lovell, of founding what they termed a Pantisocracy, or a republic of pure freedom, on the banks of the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania. In 1795, the three poets married three sisters, the Misses Fricker, of Bristol, and thus the whole pantisocratie scheme was upset.2

After his marriage, Coleridge settled at Clevedon, near Bristol, and projected many plans of industrious occupation in the fields of literature; but he soon became tired of this retreat, and removed to Bristol, where he was materially aided

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in his designs of publication by that most generous and sympathizing publisher, Joseph Cottle. He first started a weekly political paper, called the "Watchman," most of which he wrote himself; but from his indolent irregularity, the work stopped at the tenth number. Failing in this, he retired, in the latter part of 1796, to a cottage in Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, on the grounds of his friend and benefactor, Mr. Poole, and near Mr. Wordsworth. He was at this time in the habit of contributing verses to one of the London papers, as a means of subsistence; and it was while residing here that the greater part of his poems were composed, though many were not published till later: these were his "Lyrical Ballads," "Christabel," the Ancient Mariner," and his tragedy of "Remorse." In 1798, he was enabled, through the munificence of Mr. Thomas Wedgewood, to travel in Germany, and to study at some of its famed universities. He was very industrious in the study of the literature and philosophy of that country, and may be considered as the introducer of German philosophy to the notice of British scholars. After his return from Germany, Coleridge settled with his family at Keswick, in Cumberland, near the "Lakes," in which region Wordsworth and Southey resided, and hence the appellation of "Lake Poets," given to these three individuals. In the mean time, his habit of opium-eating, into which he had been seduced from its apparent medicinal effects, had gained tremendously upon him, and had undermined his health. There is no portion of literary history more sad than that which reveals the tyrannical power which that dreadful habit had over him, and his repeated but vain struggles to overcome it. It made him its victim, and held him, bound hand and foot, with a giant's strength. In consequence of his enfeebled health, he went to Malta in 1804, and returned in 1806. From this period till about 1816, he led a sort of wandering life, sometimes with one friend and sometimes with another, and much of the time separated from his family, supporting himself by lecturing, publishing, and writing for the London papers. The great defect in his character was the want of resoluteness of will. He saw that his pernicious habit was destroying his own happiness, and that of those dearest to him, entangling him in meanness, deceit, and dishonesty, and yet he had not the strength of will to break it off.

In 1816, he placed himself under the care of Mr. Gilman, a physician in Highgate, London, and with his generous family he resided till his death. Most of his prose works he published between the years 1817 and 1825-the two "Lay Sermons," the "Biographia Literaria," the "Friend," in three volumes, and the "Aids to Reflection," and the "Constitution of the Church and State." After his death, which took place on the 25th of July, 1834, collections were made of his "Table Talk," and other "Literary Remains." 2

Read the painfully interesting account in "Cottle's Reminiscences," and the most faithful Christian letter of Cottle to Coleridge, together with the answer of the latter.

A few months before his death, Mr. Coleridge wrote his own humble and affectionate epitaph:

Stop, Christian passer-by! Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he;-

Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S. T. C.!
That he, who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death!
Mercy for praise, to be forgiven for fame

He ask`d, and hoped in Christ. Do than the case.

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