We have a full church at St. Mary Woolnoth, and a very serious congregation. Few of the hearers however, comparatively, are my pa rishioners. They find their way from all parts of London and its environs. As I am a sort of middle man, not a High Churchman, nor a Dissenter, not a high speculative Calvinist, nor an Arminian, my auditory consists of moderate people of almost every religious denomination and party. By avoiding Shibboleths, and by preaching the truths of the Gospel rather in an experimental than a controversial way, I seem to please and suit them as well as if they were all of a mind. The chief points I aim at in preaching are, 1st, To set forth the glory and grace of God in the person of the Saviour. 2dly, To shew the danger and folly of a form of godliness without the power-of a mere talking speculative profession. 3dly, To persuade, if possible, those who love the Lord Jesus Christ to love one another; to lay much stress upon the things in which they are agreed, and little upon those in which they differ. Through mercy we walk in peace, and we have more than a few amongst us, who I think are first-rate Christians, and who perhaps would have been deemed such, had they lived in the times of the Apostles. It is true, Sir, as you observe, I am "a wonder to many." I wish I was more a wonder to myself; but I hope I have some sense how unworthy I was and am, of the mercy I obtained. The Lord literally brought me out of the land of Egypt, and the house of bondage. I was not only a daring blaspheming infidel, and a hardened licentious profligate, but my situation on the coast of Africa was such, that my recovery from thence to be within the reach of ordinary means, seemed morally impossible. I sometimes consider myself in this respect as a unique in the annals of the church. The grace of God, which is exceed ingly abundant, may have pardoned and reclaimed some who have gone equal lengths of wickedness, (though I have reason to think few of my years and opportunities ever went beyond me in that dreadful career,) but the manner of my deliverance from Africa, not only undeserved but undesired, and the subsequent path into which the Lord was pleased to lead me, seem peculiar to myself. When I thought of the ministry, I met with so many difficulties and discouragements before I was admitted, that I at length gave up all application. I hoped that the Lord graciously accepted the desire which he himself had put into my heart, as he did David's purpose of building the temple. But as in his case it was added, "Thou shalt not build me an house, because thou hast been a man of blood;" so I apprehended that although I meant well and the Lord was not displeased with me for desiring to serve him in the Gospel, it was an honour that could not be permitted to one who had been so openly vile and slanderous as I; yet in his best time, after six years waiting, and when I had given up the expectation, I obtained my desire with the greatest ease. When Olney, (the first place allotted for my service,) was ready, the door of entrance was set wide open. There I found a poor and afflicted, but simple and gracious few who were appointed to teach me, while I endeavoured to teach them. Olney was a good school, and though I was a dull scholar, yet I trust I learnt something in the sixteen years I was there, which contributed in some measure to qualify me for my more public station in London, where I have been fourteen years, and goodness and mercy have followed and accompanied me every day. I have been favoured with much acceptance and with some usefulness. I have many friends, and am surrounded with comfort. The removal of the partner, and alas! the idol of my heart in the year '90, was a heavy trial; though she had been spared to me above forty years. But the occasion afforded of my life. men. me such a proof of the faithfulness give us at length a happy meeting a and all-sufficiency of God, as I could with his redeemed before the throne. not have learned from books. To I am respectfully, dear Sir, this bour I feel the stroke little less Your affectionate and obliged sensibly than on the day she left ine, Servant and brother, and I shall probably feel it to the end John NEWTON. But I cannot say I have had one uncomfortable day or night from the first. I have been favoured For the Christian Spectator. with something more than submiss Parallel between Owen and Leighion; an acquiescence in the will of ton. Him who does and appoints all things wisely and well. But having lost my Perhaps it is not a very natural or right hand, I cannot but miss it. By obvious association which brings tothis event, however, I am set free gether the names of these celebrated from a thousand anxieties and cares Ranged with the worthies of which formerly distressed me, and I different denominations, and thrown hope my attachment to this poor world widely asunder by original diversity is still more weakened. I am willing of character, there is little beside their to live my appointed time for my high reputation for personal sanctity, profession and ministry's sake, and I their preeminent services in behalf of rely on the Lord's goodness to make the best interests of religion during me willing to depart whenever the their lives, and the common aim and summons shall arrive. My times are tendency of their most valued wriin his hands. May I live to-day, and tings, to suggest the two inen simulleave 10-morrow and all its coucerus taneously to the mind. But when with hiin. they are thus suggested, one who is If till the 4th of August, I conversant with their works, and inshall enter my sixty-ninth year. But terested in obeserving the exhibition I do not feel any considerable dimi- of piety as modified by the peculiar nution of powers, either of body or cast of the intellectual character, is mind, in my public services. My easily led to pursue a parallel between health is firm, my spirits are good, them. and I seldom feel pain. My appe- And in doing this he is struck at tite and sleep are much the same as the outset with the indications of nawhen I was much younger. So that tive talents of an unusually high orthe whole of my history on the Lord's der in both. In both he perceives a part is made up of mercies and fa- universality of mental power, a capavours. On my own part I have daily city for every mode and measure of multiplied causes for shame and hu- excellence, which decidedly estabmiliation. It is my desire to live as lishes the claims of each to the posbecometh saints; and it is my hope session of genius. Of this endowthat I shall die as becometh sinners, ment, Leighton perhaps had more rejoicing in Christ Jesus, and renoun- than Owen, but then the latter excelcing all confidence in the flesh, and led in strong powers of reasoning and saying with the dying thief, “ Lord extent of learning. Both however remember me." I neither have nor were men of vast and varied learning, wish to have any better or other plea and in both we perceive an entire asthan this. cendency of native talents over their I beg a remembrance in your prayers, attainments, the elastic energy of their and hope not to be unmindful of own minds not being, as is often the you and your brethren. Give my case, crushed or crippled by the inlove to all who love and preach the cumbent mass of erudition. But there Gospel. May the Lord bless you in was a striking diversity in the nature your heart, house, and ministry, and of the impulse which led the two men to the acquisition of human knowl edge. Owen had always a definite present object in view which stimulated his investigations and of which he never for a moment lost sight. He resorted to the stores of ancient erudition in order to confirm his reasonings by all accessible authority, and baffle the champions of error upon their own ground, and with their own weapons.-The consideration of immediate utility, the Cui bono fuerit? so far at least as it regarded a present purpose, weighed less with Leighton, though his attainments were perhaps in the end turned to equal account. But his genius being naturally of a philosophical cast, he was led to seek and intermeddle with all wisdom." A kindred spirit moved him to hold converse with the ancient sages, and he seems to have taken a melancholy pleasure in surveying those monuments of unsanctified mind which they have left behind them. Not that their fabrics of stupendous delusion engaged his admiration, for the darkness in which they were reared was past and the true light shone upon his own soul. But he saw in them the vestiges and mementos of a high and more perfect state from which our nature had fallen. Amid the wreck of a primitive condition of superior grandeur, here and there a precious relic was found, with which he loved to beautify the Temple of Truth. To drop the figure,Leighton delighted to clothe religion in the garb of philosophy, and with unparalleled felicity he has united all that is truly venerable in the one, with all that is holy and heavenly in the other. Again; so peculiar was the structure of Leighton's mind that he seems to have been directed as by a sort of instinct to all that was singularly striking, pointed, and exquisite in human productions. Instantaneously separating whatever was crude or gross, his mind appears to have fed upon the pure pulp of knowledge. This will be evident to his reader from the pungency, the beauty, and the brilliancy of the quotations interspersed through his works, and from the dency to sparkling conceits in his own style; which, by the way, though somewhat marred by this species of affectation, combines in a remarkable manner the perfect simplicity and the venerable grandeur of the Scripture model.-Owen was a man of another mould. Endowed by nature with a more athletic constitution of mind, his strong and healthy assimilation converted all manner of substances into solid nutriment, which in the end fenced his intellectual frame about with bones and sinews of gigantic firmness. The infinitely superior importance of truth, and the indomitable vehemence with which he argued his point, whatever it might be, probably rendered him indifferent to the arts and graces of composition, but we always find vigour, and not unfrequently we meet with sentences and paragraphs in which he rises to a strain of impassioned eloquence that few writers in any language have reached. Other points of contrast in the mental character of the two men might be dwelt upon, but we pass to a subject of more interest, the estimate of their practical writings. It is obvious that many circumstances would conspire to stamp a peculiar and distinctive character upon the respective aims of such writers to unfold the genius and inculcate the faith of the Gospel. Their main design would of course be the same: but then the peculiar structure of their minds; the train of their personal religious experience; the predominant objects of their other writings, as being polemical or expository; the state and character of the times in which they lived, and the part which they might have taken in affairs of a public nature, would all go to modify the general aspect of their strictly practical, or, as we may say, experimental writings. Of the influence of external circumstances we perceive more traces in Owen's treatises than in Leighton's. The latter, whether from an original predilection for retired and quiet scenes; or from his being disgusted with the world in consequence of the turbulence and din of the stormy period in which he lived, and the fruitlessness of his own personal exertions to effect any change for the better; or from the reading of the works of Thomas â Kempis and the Jansenists, for whom he seems to have entertained a warm admiration, and by whom he may have been in spired with a fondness for a life of still contemplative devotion-whatever was the cause, he passed his latter years in pious privacy, weaned from the world and breathing after heaven. His works partake of the tranquil tenour of his life. And considering the station he for sometime held, and the active part which he was reluctantly compelled to take during the unhappy agitations of his day, it is somewhat surprising that we see no indications of ferment or ruffle in his own serene soul. A mild and placid spirit pervades his works, which we should scarce expect from one who had ever been in contact with the tumultuous world.-Owen was a man of a different temper. A certain irrepressible ardour of soul urged him to action. His burning zeal for the interests of truth would not suffer him to abstract himself from the scene, where these interests were endangered. He could not sit down in the stillness of cloistered devotion while the hosts of heresy were desolating the garden of the Lord. He clad himself in the panoply of the Gospel, and in the name of the living God entered into the midst of the conflict. His arm was felt. The ranks of the enemy were troubled.The truth was victorious. And the name of Owen will never cease to be revered by the church as one of the ablest defenders of the genuine Gospel. We allude to his controversial writings, however, merely for the purpose of accounting for one or two striking peculiarities in his strictly practical works. We think no attentive reader can have failed to observe a strong predilection for a very systematic manner of treating subjects which seem scarcely susceptible in their own nature of such a form of discussion. The scholastic air that pervades his method of considering the various operations of the renewed and unrenewed heart; and the almost mathematical precision which he studies in treating even of the affections, exhausting the modes of their exercise by numerous divisions and subdivisions, arose undoubtedly from logical habits of mind induced by his polemical writings. Perhaps too, somewhat of the impassioned tone of vehemence running through his works, may have been caught from the honest ardour and holy indignation with which a good man of his constitutional temperament would vindicate the truth from the foul and ruinous perversions of its enemies. But in whatever light we view these peculiarities, the sterling excellence of his various treatises on points of experimental piety is universally confessed. He is distinguished for an unparalleled insight into the workings of sin in the soul of man. With the most untiring ardour of pursuit he traces the subtle corruption of the heart through all its intricate windings; detects it in its disguises; unearths it, as it were, from its burrowing places; and pours the light of day upon its dark mazes. Perhaps no uninspired pen has more strikingly pourtrayed the nature of the spiritual warfare; and christians of every different degree of attainment and experience, cannot fail to be profited by a perusal of his works. While we say this, however, con cerning Owen, we believe that all who are acquainted with both, will agree in pronouncing the writings of Leighton to be best adapted to established Christians. While the former detects the hypocrite, the latter edifies the saint. Leighton unfolds to his readers a richer vein of holy experience, Owen a larger fund of religious knowledge. Owen, to use one of Leighton's quaint distinctions, breathes throughout his works more brightness in his last work, The glo- Keview of New Publications. The application of Christianity to the Commercial and ordinary affairs of life.-BY THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. Minister of St. John's Church, Glasgow. Third American Edition: Hartford: 1821: pp. 216. This volume, the author tells us in his preface, can be regarded in no other light, than as a fragment of a subject, far too extensive to be embraced within such narrow limits. He has, in his own opinion, taken only a partial survey of the actions, which are current among those, who are engaged in merchandise; and has scarcely touched upon the morality of the affections, which constitute the real character of man in the sight of his Maker, and give a sort of feverish activity to the pursuits of worldly ambition. What Dr. Chalmers here styles the morality of the affections, is certainly a subject of pre-eminent impor tance, and we shall wait with something more than the eagerness and impatience of mere Reviewers, for the result of his meditations upon it, which, if we rightly understand him, the public may ere long expect from bis pen. In the mean time, we desire to express our thankfulness for the "fragment" before us; and we pledge ourselves, not to quarrel with any author, who may send us such fragments from beyond the water, though he should never produce any thing under a more imposing title. It would be difficult for Dr. Chalmers to write, without being known. Every page of the volume before us, contains his "image and superscription." There is something so unique in his style, there is such a sculpturelike prominence both in the beauties and faults of his composition, that if these commercial discourses had appeared without a name, or been picked up in the deserts of Siberia, |