acted unwisely and ungratefully; that we have crucified our Redeemer afresh, and brought darkness, if not despair, into our own minds.

"This uneasiness under conscious guilt will not abate till we are again enabled with true contrition to repent, to pray, to plead the merits of our Redeemer, and to obtain strength from above against the recurrence of temptation. Yet still there will remain a wound; the remembrance of the past will be grievous; and though the peaceful consciousness of a latent hope in God's mercy will distinguish this genuine penitence from that sorrow of the world' which worketh death, yet abundant cause will be left for renewed humility and watchfulness. Indeed, without these the power of religion cannot survive; for when we are unguarded in our religious frame we are inevitably exposed to the attacks of our spiritual enemies. The man who enjoys any thing of the power of his holy profession will aspire after a more humble and dependent frame of mind; he will long to be clothed with humility,' knowing from experience that pride, especially spiritual pride, is not only hostile to the whole tenor of the Gospel which he professes, but invariably lays a snare before him, and causes him to fall. So far, therefore, from his superior privileges rendering him proud, they will serve to promote humility, by reminding him every moment of that free and unmerited grace which alone made him to differ from the mere formalist and Pharisee. Thus his very graces and conquests over sin increase his circumspection, and self-abasement, and prayer. The less power the world has over him the more he is afraid of its allurements; the less susceptible he is of temptation the more he avoids its influence; for it is not a mark of strong faith, but of very weak faith, or rather of none whatever, to sport on the brink of temptation, and to dally with those spiritual enemies whom we are commanded most anxiously to avoid.”. (Vol. i. p. 192—195.) ·

"The true and false repose in death" forms one of the most interesting parts of this work, and of this part some very useful pages are taken up with comments on the declarations, and spiritual state of our great English moralist at the conclusion of his important life. After reading and hearing about this very eminent person almost to satiety, we have to thank Mr. Wilks for giving to this part of his history a new and peculiar interest. His facts and observations are so truly discriminative and edifying, and are withal so entertaining, that we are tempted to extract the whole very able detail, long as it is.

"A few practical remarks upon the subject of the last hours of this illustrious man will not only be a forcible comment upon the foregoing propositions, but will tend to shew that what Dr. Johnson's best friends and biographers have been almost ashamed to confess, and have industriously exerted themselves to palliate, constituted, in truth, the most auspicious circumstance of his life, and was the best proof of his increase in religious knowledge and holiness of mind.

"Whoever considers with a Christian eye the death of Dr. Johnson ill readily perceive that, according to the usual order of Providence,

it could not have been free from agitation and anxiety. Johnson was a man of tender conscience, and one who from his very infancy had been instructed in Christian principles. But he was also, in the strict judgment of revealed religion, an inconsistent man. Neither his habits nor his companions had been such as his own conscience approved; and even a short time before his end we find one of his biographers. lamenting that "the visits of idle and some worthless persons were never welcome to him" on the express ground that "these things drove on time." His ideas of morality being of the highest order, many things which are considered by men at large as but venial offences appeared to him as positive crimes. Even his constitutional indolence and irritability of mind were sufficient of themselves to keep him constantly humbled and self-abased; and though among his gay or literary companions he usually appears upon the comparatively high ground of a Christian moralist, and the strenuous defender of revealed religion, yet compared with the Divine standard and test of truth, he felt himself both defective and disobedient.

ness.

"Together with this conscientious feeling he had adopted certain incorrect, not to say superstitious, ideas respecting the method of pla cating the Deity. He seems, for example, to have believed that penance, in its confined and popish sense as distinguished from simple penitence, is of great avail in procuring the Divine favour and forgiveThus when his conscience distressed him on account of an act of disobedience to his parent, we find him many years afterwards. remaining a considerable time bare-headed in the rain, exposed in the public streets to the ridicule and the conjectures of every spectator. As far as filial affection and true amiableness of mind are concerned, the actor in such a scene deserves and ensures universal veneration and esteem. Even while we smile at the somewhat ludicrous nature of the action, we instinctively feel a sympathy and respect which perhaps a wiser but less remarkable mode of exhibiting his feelings might not have procured. But Johnson seems to have performed this humiliation from higher considerations than mere sorrow for the past; for he emphatically adds, " in contrition I stood, and I hope the penance, was expiatory.

"If these words really mean any thing-and when did Dr. Johnson utter words without meaning?-he must have intended by them to express his hope that the previous fault was really atoned for, in a religious sense, by the subsequent act of self-denial; or, in other words, that God accepts human penance as an expiation for human sins; a doctrine to which revealed religion gives no sanction whatever. Johnson's system appears at this time to have been, as it were, a sort of barter between himself and Heaven, and consequently his chief fear was lest the equivalent which he presented should not be sufficient to entitle him in the Divine mercy to the pardon of his transgressions.His trust on the Redeemer, though perfectly sincere, does not appear to have been either exclusive or implicit; for though all his prayers for mercy and acknowledgments of blessings were offered up solely through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, he seems, in point of fact, for many years to have viewed the atonement, rather as a

medium through which God is pleased to accept our imperfect services, and to make them adequate, by the conditions of a remedial law, tos the purchase of heaven, than as a sacrifice by which alone heaven is fully secured and freely given to the believing penitent. Dr. Johnson's line of reading in Divinity was perhaps unfavourable to a full percep tion of Christian truth. The writings of Mr. Law in particular, which he had studied with some attention, were by no means well adapted to his peculiar case. For a thoughtless, a frivolous, or an impenitent sinner, the "Serious Call" might have been eminently useful in exciting a deep consciousness of guilt, a salutary remorse for the past, and holy resolutions for the future; and as far as these elements of religion extend, the perusal of this celebrated book might doubtless have had some good effect upon the mind of Dr. Johnson. But in the consolatory parts of the Gospel, in the free and undisguised exhibition of a Redeemer, whose sacrifice is perfect and all-sufficient, in the inculcation of the gracious promises of a reconciled Father to the returning prodigal, Law, and other writers of a similar school, are undoubtedly defective, and the same defect seems to have characterized for many years the views of our illustrious moralist. He lived in a perpetual dilemma by trusting to works which his well-informed conscience told him were not good, and yet on the goodness of which, in conjunction at least with the merits of Christ, he placed his dependance for eternity.

"To give therefore comfort to the mind of such a man as Dr. Johnson there were but two modes; either by blinding his conscience, or by increasing his faith; either by extenuating his sins, or by pointing out in all its glories the sufficiency of the Christian ransom. The friends who surrounded this eminent man during the greater part of his life were little qualified to perform the latter, and therefore very naturally resorted to the former. They found their patient, so to speak, in agony; but instead of examining the wound and applying the remedy, they contented themselves with administering anodynes and opiates, and persuading their afflicted friend, that there existed no cause of danger or alarm.

"But Johnson was not thus deceived. The nostrum which has lulled its millions to a fatal repose, on him, by the mercy of God, had no effect. His convictions of sin were as lasting as they were deep; it was not therefore until he had discarded his natural and long-cherished views of commutation and human desert, and had learned to trust humbly and exclusively to his Saviour, that his mind became at peace."

Mr. Wilks then pursues his subject through several of the recorded circumstances of Johnson's latter end; in which he very pleasingly evinces the Scriptural correctness of his feelings, and the inadequacy of those palliatives with which his superficial comforters vainly endeavoured to give repose to his conscience.

"Let us view some of the recorded circumstances of the transac tion, and in so doing we shall, as Christians, have much more occasion

to applaud the scriptural correctness of Johnson's feelings respecting the value of his soul, the guilt of his nature, and the inadequacy of man's best merits and repentance, than to congratulate him upon the accession of such miserable comforters' as those who appear to have surrounded his dying pillow.

"Finding him in great mental distress, I told him,' remarks one of his biographers, of the many enjoyments of which I thought him in possession, namely, a permanent income, tolerable health, a high degree of reputation for his moral qualities, and literary exertions,' &c. Had Johnson's depression of mind been nothing more than common melancholy or discontent, these topics of consolation would have been highly appropriate; they might also have been fitly urged as arguments for gratitude and thanksgiving to the Almighty on account of such exalted mercies. In either of these points of view the piety of Dr. Johnson would doubtless have prompted him to acknowledge the value of the blessing, and the duty of contentment and praise. But, as arguments for quieting an alarmed conscience, they were quite inadequate; for what would it have profited this distinguished man to have gained all his well-merited honours, or, even were it possible, the world itself, if, after all, he should become, as he himself afterwards expressed it, a cast-away?'

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"The feelings of Dr. Johnson on this subject were more fully.evidenced on a subsequent occasion. "One day, in particular,' remarks Sir John Hawkins," when I was suggesting to him these and the like reflections, he gave thanks to Almighty God, but added, that notwithstanding all the above benefits, the prospect of death, which was now at no great distance from him, was become terrible, and that he could not think of it but with great pain and trouble of mind.' Nothing assuredly could be more correct than Dr. Johnson's distinction. He acknowledges the value of the mercies which he enjoyed, and he gratefully gave thanks to Almighty God' for them; but he felt that they could not soften the terrors of a death-bed, or make the prospect of meeting his Judge less painful and appalling. Hawkins, who could not enter into his illustrious friend's more just and enlarged views of human guilt and frailty, confesses himself to have been very much surprised and shocked at such a declaration from such a man,' and proceeded therefore to urge for his comfort the usual arguments of extenuation. He reports that he told him that he conceived his life to have been a uniform course of virtue; that he had ever shewn a deep sense of, and zeal for religion; and that, both by his example and his writings, he had recommended the practice of it; that he had not rested, as many do, in the exercise of common honesty, avoiding the grosser enormities, yet rejecting those advantages that result from the belief of Divine Revelation; but that he had, by prayer and other exercises of devotion, cultivated in his mind the seeds of goodness, and was become habitually pious.'

"This was the rock on which numberless professed Christians have fatally split; and to the mercy of the Almighty must it be ascribed that the great and good Dr. Johnson did not add one more to the melancholy catalogue. For what was the doctrine which the narrator at

tempted to inculcate but this? that his friend, like the Pharisee in the Gospel, ought to place his confidence upon his being more meritorious than other men, and instead of attributing the praise to Him who had 'made him to differ,' was to sacrifice to his own net, and burn incense to his own drag.' Can we wonder that with such flattering doctrines constantly sounding in his ears, Dr. Johnson was suffered to undergo much severe mental discipline, in order to reduce him in his own esteem to that lowly place, which as a human, and consequently a fallen being, it was his duty, however high his attainments or his talents, to Occupy.'

After a variety of very judicious remarks in the same strain, the author proceeds to cite some more passages from one of Johnson's biographers, in which he unconsciously brings out into striking relief the Christian feelings of that extraordinary man.

"In a visit which I made him in a few days, in consequence of a very pressing request to see me, I found him labouring under very great dejection of mind. He bad me draw near him, and said he wanted to enter into a serious conversation with me; and upon my expressing my willingness to join in it, he, with a look that cut me to the heart, told me that he had the prospect of death before him, and that he dreaded to meet his Saviour. I could not but be astonished at such a declaration, and advised him, as I had done before, to reflect on the course of his life, and the services he had rendered to the cause of religion and virtue, as well by his example as his writings; to which he answered, that he had written as a philosopher, but had not lived like one. In the estimation of his offences he reasoned thus: 66 Every man knows his own sins, and what grace he has resisted. But to those of others, and the circumstances under which they were committed, he is a stranger. He is therefore to look on himself as the greatest sinner that he knows of." At the conclusion of this argument, which he strongly enforced, he uttered this passionate [impassioned] exclamation: Shall I who have been a teacher of others, be myself a castaway?'

"In this interesting passage-interesting as detailing the religious progress of such a mind as Dr. Johnson's-how many important facts and reflections crowd upon the imagination! We see the highest human intellect unable at the approach of death to find a single argument for hope or comfort, though stimulated by the mention of all the good deeds and auspicious forebodings which an anxious and attentive friend could suggest. Who that beholds this eminent man thus desirous to open his mind, and to enter into a serious conversation' upon the most momentous of all subjects which can interest an immortal being, but must regret that he had not found a spiritual adviser who was capable of fully entering into his feelings, and administering scriptural consolation to his afflicted mind?

"The narrator informs us in this passage, that he could not but be astonished at such a declaration' as that which Dr. Johnson made. But in reality, where was the real ground for astonishment? Is it astonishing that an inheritor of a fallen and corrupt nature who is about to quit the