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If he professes to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts,' this is no small step. He may still require to be convinced that it is by the grace of God teaching him.' Here the two ideas expressed by your term of grace, and his of virtue, are brought into united action, with this difference, or, if you please, with this agreement, that yours being the cause, and his the effect, the Christian character attains its consummation between you. You must, however, endeavour to convince him, that though the greater includes the less, the reverse cannot be true; that faith and grace in the Christian sense involve virtue and rectitude; but virtue and rectitude, in the philosophical sense, desire to be excused from any connection with faith and grace. But the offence taken at terms creates hostility at the outset, blocks up the avenues to each other's heart, and leads men to be so filled with the things in which they differ, as to keep them in the dark as to the things in which they agree.

"The more strict disputant will, perhaps, continue to insist that no such terms as virtue and rectitude are to be found in any Evangelist. Granted.-Neither do we find there some other solemn words expressive of the most awful verities of our religion. The holy Trinity and the satisfaction made by the death of Christ, are not, I believe, in any part of the New Testament, expressed by these terms, which were first used some ages after in the Byzantine church. But can it be said that the things themselves are not to be found there? They are not only conspicuous in every part of the gospel,' but make up the sum and substance of what it teaches.

"While each disputant, then, contends for his own phrases, let not the one suspect that grace and faith are the watch-words of enthusiasm; nor the other conclude that infidelity skulks behind. virtue, and pagan pride behind rectitude. St. Paul expressly exhorts his converts to add to their faith virtue,' and if the inverted injunction was never given, it was not because faith was unnecessary where virtue previously existed, but because virtue, Christian virtue, never could have existed at all without previous faith. In enjoining virtue, the apostle, upon his own uniform principle, supposes the Christian to be already in possession of faith; this he ever considers the essential substance, virtue the inseparable appendage. Thus the divine preacher on the Mount, in his prohibition of an hy. pocritical outside, does not say, give alms, fast, pray; he concluded that his followers were already in the practice of those duties, and on this conviction grounded his cautionary exhortation, when thou doest alms, when thou prayest, when thou fastest. He taught them to avoid all ostentation in duties, to which he alluded as already established. Be it observed-by the Saviour himself no attribute is so constantly enjoined or commanded as faith. His previous question to those who resorted to him to be cured, was not if they had virtue, but faith; but never let it be forgotten, that as soon as the cure was performed, the man of faith was enjoined, as the surest evidence of his virtue, to sin no more."

We confess we never heard the true practical and pervasive operation of religion more justly, and more discriminatively, set forth than in the beautiful extract to which we again implore the attention of our readers of every class and denomination, of every age, and of either sex, for it speaks to all in words above rubies in their price and lustre.

"Propriety and order, virtues in themselves, obtain for them the reputation of still higher virtues; all that appears is so amiable, that' the world readily gives them credit for qualities which are supposed to lie behind, and are only prevented by diffidence from appearing. They carry on with each other an intercourse of reciprocal, but measured flattery; this serves to promote kindness to each other, and esteem for themselves. Self-complacency is rather kept out of sight by the delicacy of good-breeding, than subdued by religious conviction. They are rather governed by certain of the more sober worldly maxims, than by the strictness of Christian discipline. Though they fear sin, and avoid it, yet it is to be suspected they must carefully avoid those faults which are most disreputable, and that its impropriety has its full share with its turpitude in their abhorrence.

"As to religion, they rather respect than love it. They seem to intimate, that there is something of irreverence in any familiarity with the subject, and place it at an awful distance, as a thing whose mysterious grandeur would be diminished by a too near approach. Another reason why they consider religion rather as an object of veneration than affection, is because they erroneously conceive it to be an enemy to innocent pleasure.

"If they are not perfectly good Christians, it is not because they are good Jews, for they do not talk of the words' which where commanded under that dispensation, when they sit in their house, and when they walk by the way, and when they lie down, and when they rise up. Religion engages their regard somewhat in the way in which the laws of the land engage it, as something sacred, from being established by custom and precedent; as a valuable institution for the preservation of the public good; but it does not interest their feelings; they do not consider it so much a thing of individual concern, as of general protection. Of its establishment by authority they think more highly, than of its business with their own hearts; of its influence in maintaining general order, than of its efficacy in promoting in themselves peace and joy. In short, they carve out an image of religion not altogether unorthodox, but which, like the uninformed statue of the enamoured artist, though a beautiful figure, is without life, or power, or motion.

"The more obvious duties being discharged, they are little inclined to think, that too considerable a portion of their time and talents are left at their own disposal. Large intervals of leisure are rather assumed to be a necessary repose and refreshment from right em

ployments and benevolent actions, and as purchased by their performance, than as having any specific application of their own. In short, things which they call indifferent, make up too large a portion of their scheme of life, and in their distribution of time.

"The class we are considering are apt to be very severe in their censures of those who have lost their reputation, while they are rather too charitable to those who only deserve to lose it. This excessive valuation of externals is not likely to be accompanied with great candour in judging the discredited and the unfortunate. Errors which we ourselves have had no temptation to commit, we are too much disposed to think out of the reach of pardon; and, while we justly commend innocence, we give too little credit to repentance.

"The misfortune is, they do not so much as suspect that there is any higher state of being, any degree of spiritual life, beyond what they have attained. They consider religion rather as a scheme of rules, than a motive principle, as a stationary point, than a perpetual progress. They consider its observances rather as an end, than a means. It is not so much natural presumption which roots them where they are, for, in ordinary cases, they are perhaps diffi dent and modest; it is not always conceit which prevents their minds from shooting upwards: it is the low notion they entertain of the genius of Christianity; it is the inadequateness of their views with its requirements; it is their unacquaintedness with the spirit of that religion which they profess honestly, but understand indistinctly. This ignorance makes them rest satisfied with a state which did not satisfy the great Apostle. While they think they have made a progress sufficient to justify them in believing they have already attained,' his vast attainments served only to prevent his looking back on them, served only to stimulate him to press forward towards the mark. Some good sort of people, on the contrary, act as if they were afraid of being different from what they are, or of being surprised into becoming better than they intended.

Among the many causes which concur to keep them at a sort of. determined distance from serious piety, a not uncommon one is, their happening to hear of the injudicious exhibition of religion in one or more of its high but eccentric professors: these they affect to believe, are fair specimens of the so much vaunted religious world. Instead of inquiring what is the true scriptural view of Christianity, that they may make nearer approaches to it, they are far more anxi ously concerned to recede, as far as possible, from persons who falsely profess to be its best representatives. They conclude, and, in some instances, but too justly, that the profession of these people has not transformed their hearts, but their connections; that they have adopted a party rather than a principle, and embraced an opinion, instead of a rule of conduct; and they observe that they are unjust in their enmities to other classes, in proportion to the violence of their attachment to their own.

It

is no wonder if, with their partial view of the subject, they should be deterred, when they see these persons act as much below their system, as they themselves not seldom live above their own.

"But they do not act thus on other occasions. If they meet with an incompetent but blustering lawyer, or an unskilful but presumptuous physician, instead of calumniating the two learned fa culties, instead of resolving to have no more to do with either, they avoid the offending individuals, and look out for sounder practitioners. Hence, indeed, it is to be remarked by the way, there arises a new and powerful motive, why all who make a high profession of religion should not only be eminently careful to exhibit an even and consistent practice, but should studiously avoid in their conversation all offensive phrases, and repulsive expressions; why they should not be perpetually intimating, as if preaching the Gospel was a party-business, and a business entirely confined to their own party."

Let the reader now judge from what succeeds whether Mrs. More has or has not correct ideas of repentance and grace, and whether any unsound doctrines in respect to conversion, experiences, assurances, and sudden illumination, seem to have place in her sober yet fervent bosom.

"It is a proof that the Apostle considered conversion in general a gradual transformation, when he spoke of the renewing of the inward man day by day; this seems to intimate that good habits, under the influence of the Spirit of God, are continually advancing the growth of the Christian, and conducting him to that maturity which is his consummation and reward. The grace of repentance, like every other, must be established by habit. Repentance is not completed by a single act, it must be incorporated into our mind, till it become a fixed state, arising from a continual sense of our need of it. Forgive us our trespasses would never have been enjoined as a daily petition, if daily repentance had not been necessary for daily sins. The grand work of repentance, indeed, accompanies the change of heart; but that which is purified will not, in this state of imperfection, necessarily remain pure. While we are liable to sin, we must be habitually penitent.

"A man may give evidence of his possessing many amiable qualities, without our being able to say, therefore, he is a good man. His virtues may be constitutional, their motives may be worldly. But when he exhibits clear and convincing evidence, that he has subdued all his inveterate bad habits, weeded out rooted evil propensities; when the miser is grown largely liberal, the passionate become meek, the calumniator charitable, the malignant kind; when every bad habit is not only eradicated, but succeeded by its opposite quality, we would conclude that such a change could only be effected by power from on high-we would not scruple to call that man religious. But, above all, there must be a change wrought in the secret course of our thoughts; without this interior improve

ment, the abandonment of any wrong practice is no proof of an effectual alteration. This, indeed, we cannot make a rule by which to judge others, but it is an infallible one by which to judge our selves. Certain faults are the effect of certain temptations, rather than of that common depravity natural to all. But a general rectification of thought, a sensible revolution in the secret desires and imaginations of the heart, is perhaps the least equivocal of all the changes effected in us. This is not merely the cure of a particular disease, but the infusion of a sound principle of life and health, the general feeling of a renovated nature, the evidence of a new state of constitution."

We lament that it is not in our power to extract the whole character of Candidus in the second volume, which, if Mrs. More had written nothing besides, would entitle her to be distinguished among the best and ablest supporters of Christian morality, religious discretion, and orthodox zeal.

ART. XXVI.-Outlines of a Plan of Finance proposed to be submitted to Parliament, 1813.

The Substance of the Speech of W. Huskisson, Esq. in the House of Commons, in a Committee of the whole House, upon the Resolutions proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer respecting the State of the Finances and the Sinking Fund of Great Britain, on Thursday the 25th March, 1813.

WE are willing to take the earliest opportunity of bringing under the notice of our readers the important change which has lately been made in one of the most valuable and popular branches of the financial system of this country. Any attempt to alter the sinking fund system of Mr. Pitt has been considered in this country as a species of sacrilege; and we cannot but feel a considerable degree of surprise at seeing that so bold an innovation as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has ventured to propose should have been carried triumphantly through both Houses with so little discussion within the walls of parliament, or of controversy out of doors.

In the House of Commons (after the first general statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which could only lead to 'some incidental remarks,) only two debates took place, and one alone of them embraced any discussion of the political and financial considerations arising out of the plan; the other turning solely on the technical arguments furnished by the several acts of parliament relating to this subject, and on the question of good