CHRISTIAN, AND MERE POETIC BENEVO-I have moved at all; and their usefulness to the poor LENCE, CONTRASTED.

BY THOMAS CHALMERS.

(Extracted from a discourse before the Edingburgh Society

for the relief of the Destitute Sick.)

would have been reduced to a very humble fraction of what they have actually done for them. What is this but to say, that it is the business of a religious instructor to give you, not the elegant, but the true representation of benevolence-to represent it not so much as a luxurious indulgence to the finer sensibilities of the mind, but according to the sober declaration of Scripture, as a work and as a laboras a business in which you must encounter vexation opposition, and fatigue; where you are not always to meet with that elegance which allures the fancy, or with that humble and retired adversity, which but as a business where reluctance must often be interests the more tender propensities of the heart; overcome by a sense of duty, and where, though oppressed at every step, by envy, disgust, and disappointment, you are bound to persevere, in obedience to the law of God, and the sober instigation of principle.

The benevolence of the gospel lies in actions. The benevolence of our fiction writers, in a kind of high-wrought delicacy of feeling and sentiment. The one dissipates all its fervor in sighs and tears, and idle aspirations-the other reserves its strength for efforts and execution. The one regards it as a luxurious enjoyment of the heart-the other, as a work and business of the hand. The one sits in indolence, and broods in visionary rapture, over its schemes of ideal philanthropy-the other steps abroad, and enlightens by its presence, the dark and pestilential hovels of disease. The one wastes away in empty ejaculation-the other gives time and trou

The man who considers the poor, instead of slumbering over the emotions of a useless sensibility among those imaginary beings whom poetry and romance have laid before him in all the elegance of fictitious history, will bestow the labour and the attention of actual business among the poor of the real and the living world. Benevolence is the burden of every romantic tale, and of every poet's song. It is dressed out in all the fairy enchantments of imagery and eloquence. All is beauty to the eye and music to the ear. Nothing seen but pictures of felicity, and nothing heard but the soft whispers of gratitude and affection. The reader is carried along by this soft and delightful representation of virtue. He accompanies his hero through all the fancied varieties of his history. He goes along with him to the cottage of poverty and disease, surrounded, as we may suppose, with all the charms of rural obscurity, and where the murmurings of an adjoining rivulet accord with the finer and more benevolent sensibilities of the mind. He enters this enchanting retirement, and meets with a picture of distress, adorned in all | the elegance of fiction. Perhaps a father laid on a bed of languishing, and supported by the labors of an affectionate family, where kindness breathes in every word, and anxiety sits upon every countenance -where the industry of his children struggles in vain to supply the cordials which his poverty denies him-where nature sinks every hour, and all feel able to the work of beneficence-gives education to gloomy foreboding, which they strive to conceal, and tremble to express. The hero of the romance enters, and the glance of his benevolent eye enlightens the darkest recesses of misery. He turns to the bed of languishing, tells the sick man that there is still hope, and smiles comfort on his despairing children. Day after day he repeats his kindness and his charity. They hail his approach as the footsteps of an angel of mercy. The father lives to bless his deliverer. The family rewards his benevolence by the homage of an affectionate gratitude; and, in the piety of their evening prayer, offer up thanks to the God of Heaven, for opening the hearts of the rich to kindly and beneficient attentions. The reader weeps with delight. The visions of paradise play before his fancy. His tears flow, and his heart dissolves in all the luxury of tenderness.

the orphan-provides clothes to the naked, and lays food on the table of the hungry. The one is indolent and capricious, and often does mischief by the occasional overflowings of a whimsical and ill-directed charity-the other is vigilant and discerning, and takes care lest his distributions be injudicious, and the effort of benevolence be misapplied. The one is soothed with the luxury of feeling, and reclines with easy and indolent satisfaction-the other shakes off the deceitful languor of contemplation and solitude, and delights in a scene of activity. Remember, that virtue, in general, is not to feel, but to do-not merely to conceive a purpose, but to carry that purpose into execution-not merely to be overpowered by the impression of a sentiment, but to practise what it loves, and to imitate what it admires.

To be benevolent in speculation, is often to be selfish in action and in reality. The vanity and the indolence of man delude him into a thousand incon.

Now, we do not deny that the members of the Destitute Sick Society may at times have met with some such delightful scene to soothe and encourage them. But put the question to any of their visitors,sistencies. He professes to love the name and the and he will not fail to tell you, that if they had never moved but when they had something like this to excite and gratify their hearts, they would seldom

semblance of virtue, but the labor of exertion and of self-denial terrifies him from attempting it. The emotions of kindness are delightful to his bosom

but then they are little better than a selfish indul- life and action which he demands of his followers. gence—they terminate in his own enjoyment—they It professes to adore the tremendous Majesty of are a mere refinement of luxury. His eye melts heaven, and to weep in shame and in sorrow over the over the picture of fictitious distress, while not a sinfulness of degraded humanity, while every day it tear is left for the actual starvation and misery with insults heaven by the enormity of its misdeeds, and which he is surrounded. It is easy to indulge the evinces the insincerity of its wilful perseverane in imaginations of a visionary heart in going over a the practice of iniquity. This Antinomianism is gescene of fancied affliction, because here there is no nerally condemned; and none reprobate it more sloth to overcome-no avaricious propensity to con- than the votaries of fine sentiment-your men of taste trol-no offensive or disgusting circumstance to al- and elegant literature-your epicures of feeling, who lay the unmingled impression of sympathy which a riot in all the luxury of theatrical emotion, and who, soft and elegant picture is calculated to awaken. It in their admiration of what is tender, and beautiful, is not so easy to be benevolent in action and in re- and cultivated, have always turned with disgust from ality, because here there is fatigue to undergo-there the doctrines of a sour and illiberal theology. We is time and money to give-there is the mortifying may say to such, as Nathan to David, "Thou art the spectacle of vice, and folly, and ingratitude, to en- man." Theirs is to all intents and purposes Antino. counter. We like to give you the fair picture of mianism-and an Antinomianism of a far more danlove to man, because to throw over it false and fic-gerous and deceitful kind, than the Antinomianism titious embellishments, is injurious to its cause.- of a spurious and pretended orthodoxy. In the AnThese elevate the fancy by romantic visions which tinomianism of religion, there is nothing to fascinate can never be realized. They embitter the heart by or deceive you. It wears an air of repulsive bigotry, the most severe and mortifying disappointments, and more fitted to awaken disgust, than to gain the adoften force us to retire in disgust from what heaven | miration of proselytes. There is a glaring deformity has intended to be the theatre of our discipline and in its aspect, which alarms you at the very outset, preparation. Take the representation of the Bible. and is an outrage to that natural morality which, dark Benevolence is a work and a labor. It often calls and corrupted as it is, is still strong enough to lift its for the severest efforts of vigilance and industry-loud remonstrance against it. But in the Antinoa habit of action not to be acquired in the school mianism of high-wrought sentiment, there is a deof fine sentiment, but in the walks of business, in ception far more insinuating. It steals upon you the dark and dismal receptacles of misery-in the under the semblance of virtue. It is supported by hospitals of disease-in the putrid lanes of great the delusive colouring of imagination and poetry. cities, where poverty dwells in lank and ragged It has all the graces and embellishments of literature wretchedness, agonizing with pain, faint with hun- to recommend it. Vanity is soothed, and conscience ger, and shivering in a frail and unsheltered tene- lulls itself to repose in this dream of feeling and of indolence.

ment.

You are not to conceive yourself a real lover of Let us dismiss these lying vanities, and regulate your species, and entitled to the praise or the re- our lives by the truth and soberness of the New ward of benevolence because you weep over a fic- Testament. Benevolence is not in word and in titious representation of human misery. A man may tongue, but in deed and in truth. It is a business weep in the indolence of a studious and contempla- with men as they are, and with human life as drawn tive retirement; he may breathe all the tender aspi- by the rough hand of experience. It is a duty which rations of humanity; but what avails all this warm you must perform at the call of principle, though and effusive benevolence, if it is never exerted-if it there be no voice of eloquence to give splendonr to never rise to execution-if it never carry him to the your exertions, and no music or poetry to lead your accomplishment of a single benevolent purpose-if willing footsteps through the bowers of enchantit shrinks at activity, and sicken at the pain of fament. It is not the impulse of high and ecstatic tigue? It is easy, indeed, to come forward with the emotion. It is an exertion of principle. You must cant and hypocrisy of fine sentiment-to have a go to the poor man's cottage, though no verdure heart trained to the emotions of benevolence, while flourish around it, and no rivulet be nigh to delight the hand refuses the labor of discharging its offices you by the gentleness of its murmurs. If you look -to weep for amusement, and to have nothing to for the romantic simplicity of fiction, you will be spare for human suffering but the tribute of an in- disappointed; but it is your duty to persevere, in dolent and unmeaning sympathy. Many of you must be acquainted with that corruption of Christian doctrine which has been termed Antinomianism. It professes the highest reverence for the Supreme Be-for the hand to execute. ing, while it refuses obedience to the lessons of his It must now be obvious to all of you, that it is not authority. It professes the highest gratitude for the enough that you give money, and add your name to sufferings of Christ, while it refuses that course of the contributors of charity-you must give it with

spite of every discouragement. Benevolence is not merely a feeling, but a principle-not a dream of rapture for the fancy to indulge in, but a business

POEMS BY CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH.

So

THE SOUL-FLOWER.

Far down-all alone,

deep, there was not a sound or motion,
Nor a sea-beast's ear to catch the groan

Of the upper sea in its strife.

judgment. You must give your time and your attention. You must descend to the trouble of examination. You must rise from the repose of contemplation, and make yourself acquainted with the objects of your benevolent exercises. Will he hus- I dreamed of a Flower that bloomed in the ocean, band your charity with care, or will he squander it away in idleness and dissipation? Will he satisfy himself with the brutal luxury of the moment, and neglect the supply of his more substantial necessities, or suffer his children to be trained in ignorance The and depravity? Will charity corrupt him by lazi. ness? What is his peculiar necessity? Is it the want of health or the want of employment? Is it the pressure of a numerous family? Does he need medicine to administer to the diseases of his children? Does he need fuel or raiment to protect them from the inclemency of winter? Does he need money to satisfy the yearly demands of his landlord, or to purchase books and to pay for the education of his offspring?

To give money is not to do all the work and labour of benevolence. You must go to the poor man's bed. You must lend your hand to the work of assistance. You must examine his accounts. You must try to recover those debts which are due to his family. You must try to recover those wages which are detained by the injuries or the rapacity of his master. You must employ your mediation with his superiors. You must represent to them the necessities of his situation. You must solicit their assistance, and awaken their feelings to the tale of his calamity. This is benevolence in its plain, and sober, and substantial reality, though eloquence may have withheld its imagery, and poetry may have denied its graces and its embellishments. This is true and unsophisticated goodness. It may be recorded in no earthly documents; but if done under the influence of Christian principle-in a word, done unto Jesus, it is written in the book of heaven, and will give a new lustre to that crown to which his disciples look forward in time, and will wear through eternity.

RECOMPENSE.

BY W. G. SIMS.

Not profitless the game, even though we lose;
Nor wanting in reward the thankless toil :
The wild adventure that the man pursues
Requites him, though he gathers not the spoil:
Strength follows labour, and its exercise

Brings Independence-fearlessness of ill-
Courage and pride-all attributes we prize-
Though their fruits fail, not the less valued still.
Though fame withholds the trophy of desire,

And men deny, and the impatient throng
Grows heedless, and the strains, protracted, tire-
Not wholy vain the minstrel and the song,
If, striving to arouse one heavenly tone
In others' hearts, it wakens up his own.

green waves were noiseless and harmless as
sleep.

And a dim light struggled to pierce the deep,
But all was cold and shadowless,
And all was void and motionless,
For here there was no LIFE,
Saving of this one flower.
O 'twas a starlike thing,
A vision of calm, undying power;
Bell-like and deep, like an urn of pearl,

With anthers all golden and glittering,
And slowly its petals of white did unfurl;
A marble flower, yet living and growing;
Sweet and pure as a seraph's dream.
O dim are the diamond and ruby's gleam,,
And the myriad gems that are glowing,
When I think on the light of this lonely flower,
Far down in its silent and dim sea-bower.
The storms of the upper waves raged on,

But here was no tempest or noise to dread;
Huge wrecks and bodies of men came down,
But they hung drifting far over head,
They sank not down to the sacred bower
Where bloomed the peaceful ocean-flower.
The sea-snake and whale in their giant race,
Were lost when they sought for this lonely

place,

And all the bright-colored things that gleam And dart through the deep, were like meteors that stream

Through a summer sky; while the sea-stars shone,

Some in clusters, and some alone,

Whose far off twinklings feebly sent
A light through the vast dim element.

And I know whenever this dream comes back,
That there is a flower like this, on earth;
It hath not here its place of birth,

And seldom may we track

The path that leads to the inner shrine
Where its glories spread and shine.
Yet ye need not roam from star to star;
Ye need not seek this flower afar;

It blooms deep down in the human heart;
It hath no peer in the pride of art,

It blooms in the breast of the wise and pure,
But withers a sinful heart within,
For its amaranth beauty cannot endure
The blighting atmosphere of sin.