"They may have been thoughtful, and engaged in religious duties and exercises for years; but they have not felt prepared for joining a church. You dare not come to the Lord's table, nor enter into so solemn a covenant.

"Now, I shall not undertake to remove all your scruples and doubts in the way you may wish. It would be of little profit. I suspect you are deceiving yourself.

"You feel unfit, unprepared to come to the Lord's table. You cannot now enter into such a solemn covenant. And have you not said so many times? And do you think you are any more fit and prepared now, than you were when you first made this excuse? Are you striving constantly to be prepared? Do you read, do you search the Scriptures? Are you in the habit of praying? Have you prayed, and do you fervently pray to the Father that he may give you his holy spirit? You are afraid to make any engagement or promise, lest you should not keep it. It would appear by this, that you had a very tender conscience. But is this the fact? Have we any evidence of it in your life? Have you been striving to multiply and deepen good impressions? to increase your knowledge of God and of the Saviour, and of your duties to them? Have you grown more watchful over your heart and life? Have you made any advances in virtue and piety? Must you not confess, that the reason you are not fit and prepared is, that you have been negligent? that the blame is altogether your own? and, if so, then where is your tender conscience? Have you acted like one wishing to believe in Christ and be his friend? What is the cross you cannot take and bear? What are your besetting sins to which you are so enslaved? About what are you in suspense ? Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward.'"-pp. 133, 134.

One more extract must suffice, in which, speaking of sickness and the care of the sick, he observes,

"Be judicious in your choice of a physician, when you can choose; and then be very scrupulous and exact in attending to his prescriptions. Many nurses are very stupid and faithless; and in this way they greatly injure the reputation and usefulness of the physician, and multiply the dangers of the patient.

"Let those who have the care of the sick, beware how they indulge the feelings and taste of the patient to the neglect of the orders given them.

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Keep the sick as cleanly, and in as large, warm, and wellaired a room, as you can; and let it be as remote from noise as possible. Generally, let none enter the room but those whose business it is to be there.

"Have no long stories, whispering, whining, sighing, crying. Let friends and relatives suppress their feelings, if they really desire the recovery of the sick. Ask the patient but few questions; and do not sit or stand staring at him. Be careful how you weary and alarm him.

"Be not light, coarse, clownish, dark, and doleful; but be mild, affectionate, and respectful. Say but few words, and then retire very soon. Do not fill the family with forebodings. Many persons who visit the sick prove to be tormenters, rather than comforters. They stay too long; they are noisy; they are talkative; they are meddlesome; they frequently express by their words, tones, and looks, fears which should be either concealed, or disclosed with great prudence.

"If the sick person have neglected religion till now, let none converse with him, on this important subject, but his minister and a select few of his intelligent and pious friends. But do not this without the knowledge and advice of his physician.

"Have no long reading, praying, or exhortation. Think of his feeble state of body and mind. Consider whether the disease be not of such a nature, that it is impossible for him to do any thing in regard to faith and repentance. If it is, be not so foolish and cruel as to attempt to fix his heart and thoughts on religion then.

Pray for him frequently and fervently, and embrace the earliest opportunities, when recovering, to urge religion upon his attention.

"There are many disorders which so weaken and derange the system, that you can indulge no reasonable hope of his being converted then. Still, we can pray in secret, or silently, that his life may be prolonged, and that his sins may be forgiven, and then bow with awful reverence to the will of a righteous and good God.

"O that every sinner would deeply consider these things, long before he is brought into such a distressing condition.

Reader! reader! are you prepared for a sick and a dying bed? And are you prepared to see your near and dear friends in such a situation? O give your heart, and devote your life to your Saviour and to your heavenly Father now. Thousands in such circumstances have wished they had been religious before. But no one at such a season has regretted that he had been a humble follower of Jesus Christ, O may this warning voice be heard, felt, and obeyed." — pp. 137 – 139.

Mr. Farr says, in the Preface, "I indulge the hope, that not a few of the prosperous, enlightened, and benevolent,

if this work should meet their approbation, will second these humble efforts by the purchase and distribution of the volume among the children of sorrow." We hope that this suggestion will be acted on; for we can hardly conceive of a charity more godlike, than that which, failing in its endeavours to prevent or remove human suffering, assists in supplying and diffusing the means of bearing it with meekness and filial trust.

ART. IV. - A Vindication of Dr. Paley's Theory of Morals from the principal Objections of Mr. Dugald Stewart ; Mr. Gisborne; Dr. Pearson; and Dr. Thomas Brown. With an Appendix, containing Strictures on some Remarks of Dr. Whately, Principal of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford. By the REV. LATHAM WAINEWRIGHT, M. A., F. S. A., of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Rector of Great Brickhill, &c. London. 1830. 8vo. pp. 204.

It has been so much the fashion, of late years, to decry Paley's doctrine of expediency, that one is disposed, from that principle in our nature which inclines us to favor the weaker party, to hail the writer who undertakes its vindication. Besides, the vindication, if successful, will relieve those of our colleges and public and private seminaries, which still use Paley's treatise as a text-book in moral and political philosophy, from the charge of exposing unnecessarily the minds of the young to the influence of principles, which, as has been supposed, are not only false, but of a bad and dangerous tendency. A careful perusal of Mr. Wainewright's work has convinced us, that the task which he has assumed could hardly have fallen into abler hands; uniting, as he does, to a proper interest in the subject, and the necessary ingenuity and scholarship, that candor and urbanity which take from controversy all that is objectionable. All that we propose to do at this time, is to give a rapid sketch of his argument, with some extracts, and leave them to affect our readers as they may.

Beginning with Dugald Stewart, he says, and, as it seems to us, with justice:

"I cannot help thinking, that Mr. Stewart is chargeable with some degree of unfairness in placing Dr. Paley in the same class of moralists with Hume and Godwin, and thus associating one of the most powerful advocates of Christianity, with two of its most insidious and determined enemies, because they appear to agree in regarding utility as the principle which renders virtue obligatory on mankind. I say appear to agree; for if no other distinction could be discovered between writers, who, in reality, possess so little in common with each other, it would be quite sufficient to point out the difference of meaning affixed by these two parties to the same term. In the one

case, utility is considered as the sole obligation; in the other, as the rule or standard, to which we are to refer, whenever the rectitude of an action becomes doubtful. According to the former system, the views of the agent are confessedly limited to the present life; according to the latter, he is directed to look forward to a state of existence beyond the grave. It is not to be denied, however, that Dr. Paley's language is often defective in precision, and that a few instances of obvious inconsistency may be pointed out in different parts of his work. Of this an apposite exemplification is furnished in the first of the passages quoted by Mr. Dugald Stewart: 'Whatever is expedient is right. It is the utility of any moral rule alone which constitutes the obligation of it,'* &c. But still it is abundantly evident from the context, and the general purport of his work, that what he means to inculcate is, that utility is merely the rule or criterion of virtue, and is then only to be followed as our guide, when certainty is not to be obtained from the language of Scripture. In a more limited sense, utility might nevertheless be described as the obligation, since there is unquestionably a distinction between the motive which immediately influences the conduct, and the ultimate motive. Nor is the reality of the latter to be disputed, because it is not always present to the mind, and because inducements less remote in their operation may be sufficiently influential in the ordinary transactions of life. On this account, what has been observed by some writers concerning the divine will, might be applied to expediency. It might be made the rule and the motive at the same time; and we might in this manner vindicate the language of Dr. Paley, when he asserts that the utility of a rule constitutes the obligation of it. But, in truth, it would have been more consistent with the author's former explanation, to substitute the term criterion for that of obligation, as we find that he has done in the very next page. Hence we

"Prin. of Mor. Phil. Vol. I. p. 70."

may regard the expression as it here occurs, as nothing more than a verbal inaccuracy, by no means affecting the general reasoning of the work." pp. 6–8.

The passage which suggested these animadversions occurs in Mr. Stewart's "Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind." In the latest of his publications, "The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man," he goes more fully into the discussion, and insists upon it as a capital and fatal objection to Paley's theory, that it mistakes and misrepresents the origin of our moral judgments and feelings. Paley and Stewart agree in believing, that there is an essential difference between right and wrong, and that men, in point of fact, and often long anterior to the exercise of the reasoning powers, possess the faculty of discerning and feeling this difference. The only important question properly at issue between them is this: The latter maintains, that this faculty is simple and original; the former, that it is complex and acquired. On this controversy Mr. Wainewright observes:

"It appears to me, I confess, that the question respecting the origin of our moral feelings does not possess that importance which Mr. Stewart and others are so anxious to attach to it. Scarcely any person, I imagine, who has attentively exercised his observation, can be found, who would deny that the major part of mankind are placed in circumstances, which, at an earlier or a later period, give rise to the moral sentiments in the breast, and that these sentiments possess, on the whole, a great degree of uniformity, subject nevertheless to exceptions and variations which a difference of external condition, and consequently of mental culture, will satisfactorily explain. Whether these moral perceptions and feelings are to be deemed instinctive, or whether they derive their origin from the more rational process described by Locke, Hartley, and Paley, the practical results are precisely the same, and the essential distinction between virtue and vice remains unaltered and hence it cannot but excite surprise, that the latter opinion should have been opposed with a degree of warmth so little justified by the occasion. When we can account for any striking phenomena, whether physical, mental, or moral, from causes which are acknowledged by all parties to be constantly in operation, it is surely, to say the least, highly unreasonable to resort to some other cause, which is not only superfluous and undefinable, but of which the very existence is a subject of dispute. It is not to the mere use of the words