Round a vaster Sun. "Our Father who art in Heaven." In all these worlds, illumining and illumined, He the high exalted One, Who alone can wholly know himself, Formed the proposed design For the bliss of all who inhabit his worlds. "For us may thy kingdom come." Well for them, that HE, not they, Ordered the present for them, and the future; Well for them, well! Well too for us! "Thy will be done "On earth, as it is in Heaven." He lifts with the stalk the ear on high; Ripens the golden apple, the purple grape; Feeds on the hillock the lamb, the roe in the forest; And yet his thunder rolls along; And the hailstone destroyeth On the stalk, on the branch, on the hill, and in the forest. "Give us this day our daily bread." Can it be, that high o'er the thunder's path, Sinners too, and mortals exist? ber of readers, even of novels and romances, that there is at present. Whitby's Last Thoughts are the matured convictions of a man, whose researches had produced a change in his religious belief, and whose candour and singleness of heart prompted an avowal of the change to the world. His Commentary on the New Testament has been before the public more than a century, and it is still considered one of the best which we have. When he published it, he was a believer in the doctrine of the Trinity, as many passages will show; but he afterwards was persuaded of the erroneousness of his sentiments, and was not backward in producing his arguments for what appeared to him a sounder faith. Let any one, therefore, who would support a belief in the Trinity by the authority of Whitby's Commentary, turn to the Last, and as we should say, better Thoughts, of the same writer, and see whether a contrary doctrine is not more powerfully supported there. Hare's Letter has been pronounced the best piece of irony in the language; and, being of a more popular character, is better known than its companion in this number, the work of Whitby. A PSALM. Translated from Klopstock. Round planets wander moons; Planets round suns; The armies of the suns do wander Round a vaster Sun. "Our Father who art in Heaven." In all these worlds, illumining and illumined, He the high exalted One, Who alone can wholly know himself, Wholly in himself rejoice, Formed the proposed design For the bliss of all who inhabit his worlds. "For us may thy kingdom come." Well for them, that HE, not they, Ordered the present for them, and the future; Well for them, well! Well too for us! "Thy will be done "On earth, as it is in Heaven." He lifts with the stalk the ear on high; Ripens the golden apple, the purple grape; Feeds on the hillock the lamb, the roe in the forest; And yet his thunder rolls along; And the hailstone destroyeth On the stalk, on the branch, on the hill, and in the forest. "Give us this day our daily bread.” Can it be, that high o'er the thunder's path, Sinners too, and mortals exist? That there the friend is changed to a foe? "As we forgive our debtors." Various paths conduct to the lofty end, On to felicity. Some of them bend through solitudes,- And the thirsty refreshes. "Lead us not into temptation, "But deliver us from evil." Worship to Thee, by whom the vaster sun With suns, and planets, and moons, was surrounded; Who spirits created; Their happiness ordered; The ear doth uplift; Who commandeth death; To the end through solitudes leadeth, refreshing the wanderer; Worship to THEE! "For thine is the power, and the kingdom, "And the glory. Amen." Plainness of the Christian Doctrines. From Whitby's Last Thoughts. Now, from this principle, that a rule prescribed by an all wise God, to teach the most simple, rude, and ignorant, as well as the wise and prudent, what is necessary for them to believe, and do, in order to salva tion, must be plain, and easy to be understood, by the most simple and illiterate, it follows, FIRST, That it is repugnant to the wisdom of God, to require any thing as necessary to be believed, which is dubious, and obscure in Scripture; since that would be to propound that as a means for obtaining an end, which he knew to be insufficient to obtain it; it being certain, that what is dubious and obscure in Scripture, cannot afford us a certain knowledge of our duty. SECONDLY, It also seems repugnant to the goodness of God, to perplex and confound weak minds with such subtilties, for the knowledge of which he has not given them suitable qualifications. Seeing, as St. Paul observes, "God accepteth, according to what a man hath and not according to that he hath not." 2 Cor. viii. 12. Now it is evident, from the continual clashings of our most learned divines about these subtilties, that the illiterate can have no certain knowledge of the truth or falsehood of them. THIRDLY, It seemeth inconsistent with the justice and righteousness of God, to require any man to believe what he does not, and cannot, understand; for no man can be said to believe, that is, assent to, what he does not understand; because assent is an act of the understanding, and we must understand the meaning of every term in a proposition, before we can assent to it, or dissent from it; for words of which we do not understand the meaning, are the same to us as if they had no signification at all. A righteous God puts upon no man the Egyptian task, "of making brick without straw," nor requires any thing of us in order to our salvation, which we cannot perform; that being in effect to require impossible conditions of salvation from us. |
