child, worship God, by loving peace-it is not your humanity to pity a beggar by giving him food or raiment-1 can do that; that is the charity of the humble, and the unknown-widen you your heart for the more expanded miseries of mankind— pity the mothers of the peasantry who see their sons torn away from their families-pity your poor subjects crowded into hospitals, and calling in their last breath upon their distant country and their young queen-pity the stupid, frantic folly of human beings who are always ready to tear each other to pieces, and to deluge the earth with each other's blood; this is your extended humanity-and this the great field of your compassion. Extinguish in your heart the fiendish love of military glory, from which your sex does not necessarily exempt you, and to which the wickedness of flatterers may urge you. Say upon your death-bed, I have made few orphans in my reign-I have made few widows-my object has been peace. I have used all the weight of my character, and all the power of my situation, to check the irascible passions of mankind, and to turn them to the arts of honest industry: this has been the Christianity of my throne, and this the Gospel of my sceptre; in this way I have strove to worship my Redeemer and my Judge.' I would add (if any addition were wanted as a part of the lesson to youthful royalty), the utter folly of all wars of ambition, where the object sought for-if attained at all-is commonly attained at manifold its real value, and often wrested, after short enjoyment, from its possessor, by the combined indignation and just vengeance of the other nations of the world. It is all misery, and folly, and impiety, and cruelty. The atrocities, and horrors, and disgusts of war, have never been half enough insisted upon by the teachers of the people; but the worst of evils and the greatest of follies, have been varnished over with specious names, and the gigantic robbers and murderers of the world have been holden up, for their imitation, to the weak eyes of youth. May honest counsellors keep this poison from the mind of the young queen. May she love what God bids, and do what makes men happy! I hope the queen will love the national church, and protect it; but it must be impressed upon her mind, that every sect of Christians have as perfect a right to the free exercise of their worship as the church itself-that there must be no invasion of the privileges of other sects, and no contemptuous disrespect VOL. III.-16 of their feelings-that the altar is the very ark and citadel of freedom. Some persons represent old age as miserable, because it brings with it the pains and infirmities of the body; but what gratification to the mind may not old age bring with it in this country of wise and rational improvement? I have lived to see the immense improvements of the Church of England; all its powers of persecution destroyed-its monopoly of civil offices expunged from the book of the law, and all its unjust and exclusive immunities levelled to the ground. The Church of England is now a rational object of love and admiration-it is perfectly compatible with civil freedom-it is an institution for worshipping God, and not a cover for gratifying secular insolence, and ministering to secular ambition. It will be the duty of those to whom the sacred trust of instructing our youthful queen is intrusted, to lead her attention to these great improvements in our religious establishments; and to show to her how possible, and how wise it is, to render the solid advantages of a national church compatible with the civil rights of those who cannot assent to its doctrines. Then again, our youthful ruler must be very slow to believe all the exaggerated and violent abuse which religious sects indulge in against each other. She will find, for instance, that the Catholics, the great object of our horror and aversion, have (mistaken as they are) a great deal more to say in defence of their tenets than those imagine who indulge more in the luxury of invective than in the labour of inquiry-she will find in that sect, men as enlightened, talents as splendid, and probity as firm, as in our own church; and she will soon learn to appreciate, at its just value, that exaggerated hatred of sects which paints the Catholic faith (the religion of two-thirds of Europe) as utterly incompatible with the safety, peace and order of the world. It will be a sad vexation to all loyal hearts and to all rationally pious minds, if our sovereign should fall into the common error of mistaking fanaticism for religion; and in this way fling an air of discredit upon real devotion. It is, I am afraid, unquestionably the fault of the age; her youth and her sex do not make it more improbable, and the warmest efforts of that description of persons will not be wanting to gain over a convert so illustrious, and so important. Should this take place, the consequences will be serious and distressing-the land will be inundated with hypocrisy-absurdity will be heaped upon absurdity—there will be a race of folly and extravagance for royal favour, and he who is farthest removed from reason will make the nearest approach to distinction; and then follow the usual consequences; a weariness and disgust of religion itself, and the foundation laid for an age of impiety and infidelity. Those, then, to whom these matters are delegated, will watch carefully over every sign of this excess, and guard from the mischievous intemperance of enthusiasm those feelings and that understanding, the healthy state of which bears so strongly and intimately upon the happiness of a whole people. Though I deprecate the bad effects of fanaticism, I earnestly pray that our young sovereign may evince herself to be a person of deep religious feeling: what other cure has she for all the arrogance and vanity which her exalted position must engender? for all the flattery and falsehood with which she must be surrounded? for all the soul-corrupting homage with which she is met at every moment of her existence? what other cure than to cast herself down in darkness and solitude before God -to say that she is dust and ashes-and to call down the pity of the Almighty upon her difficult and dangerous life? This is the antidote of kings against the slavery and the baseness which surround them-they should think often of death-and the folly and nothingness of the world, and they should humble their souls before the Master of masters, and the King of kings; praying to Heaven for wisdom and calm reflection, and for that spirit of Christian gentleness which exalts command into an empire of justice, and turns obedience into a service of love. A wise man struggling with adversity is said by some heathen writer to be a spectacle on which the gods might look down with pleasure-but where is there a finer moral and religious picture, or one more deserving of divine favour, than that of which, perhaps, we are now beginning to enjoy the blessed reality? A young queen, at that period of life which is commonly given up to frivolous amusement, sees at once the great principles by which she should be guided, and steps at once into the great duties of her station. The importance of educating the lower orders of the people is never absent from her mind; she takes up this principle at the beginning of her life, and in all the change of servants, and in all the struggle of parties, looks to it as a source of permanent improvement. A great object of her affections is the preservation of peace; she regards a state of war as the greatest of all human evils, thinks that the lust of conquest is not a glory but a bad crime; despises the folly and miscalculations of war, and is willing to sacrifice every thing to peace, but the clear honour of her land. The patriot queen, whom I am painting, reverences the national church-frequents its worship, and regulates her faith by its precepts; but she withstands the encroachments, and keeps down the ambition natural to establishments, and, by rendering the privileges of the church compatible with the civil freedom of all sects, confers strength upon, and adds duration to, that wise and magnificent institution. And then this youthful monarch, profoundly but wisely religious, disdaining hypocrisy, and far above the childish follies of false piety, casts herself upon God, and seeks from the Gospel of his blessed Son a path for her steps and a comfort for her soul. Here is a picture which warms every English heart, and would bring all this congregation upon their bended knees before Almighty God to pray it may be realized. What limits to the glory and happiness of our native land, if the Creator should in his mercy have placed in the heart of this royal woman the rudiments of wisdom and mercy; and if, giving them time to expand, and to bless our children's children with her goodness, He should grant to her a long sojourning upon earth, and leave her to reign over us till she is well stricken in years? What glory! what happiness! what joy! what bounty of God! I of course can only expect to see the beginning of such a splendid period; but when I do see it, I shall exclaim with the Psalmist,"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." THE LAWYER THAT TEMPTED CHRIST. A SERMON PREACHED IN The Cathedral Church at St. Peter, York, BEFORE THE HON. SIR JOHN BAYLEY, KNT., ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S JUSTICES OF THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH, AND THE HON. SIR JOHN HULLOCK, KNT., ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S BARONS OF THE COURT OF EXCHEQUER, LUKE X. 25. 'AND, BEHOLD, A CERTAIN LAWYER STOOD UP, AND TEMPTED HIM, SAYING, MASTER, WHAT SHALL I DO TO INHERIT ETERNAL LIFE?""" 66 THIS lawyer, who is thus represented to have tempted our blessed Saviour, does not seem to have been very much in earnest in the question which he asked: his object does not appear to have been the acquisition of religious knowledge, but the display of human talent. He did not say to himself, I will now draw near to this august being; I will inform myself from the fountain of truth, and from the very lips of Christ; I will learn a lesson of salvation; but it occurred to him, that in such a gathering together of the Jews, in such a moment of public agitation, the opportunity of display was not to be neglected full of that internal confidence which men of talents so ready, and so exercised, are sometimes apt to feel, he ap |
