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and beauty, that "the combination of the spirit of humanity, in its lowliest, tenderest form, with the consciousness of unrivalled and divine glories, is the most wonderful distinction of this wonderful character." It would be an awful and perilous gift to be entrusted with superhuman power. Who that knows his own nature would dare to accept of such a gift? What fantastic tricks, would not the wisest of us play before high Heaven? Yet how lowly, how self-denying, how temperate in the manifestations of this greatness, does Jesus appear? Even his beneficence is not excessive. You see more of the spirit of benevolence than of the outward act. There was no profusion of miracle affording outward relief. It has even been contended from this circumstance, that Jesus was acquainted with the principles which the modern science of political economy applies to the treatment of the poor. This is strained and injudicious; nevertheless it does manifest Jesus, with a singular wisdom and moderation, interfering as little as possible with the general course of God's Providence. He never violated in his miracles the spirit of his Father's natural administration of the Universe. Now this is a strong proof that the miracles are facts. If they had been fictions of the historians, would they have been conceived in such perfect keeping with all the rest of the character of Jesus? Would the natural and the supernatural have conspired to form such an harmonious image? How sublime appear the graceful features of Jesus, when we think of his extraordinary elevation above the outward necessities against which he bore himself so meekly. Those eyes which wept over Jerusalem, were illuminated with the unearthly light of prophecy! That hand, and those feet nailed to the cross, had dispelled disease, and walked upon the rushing wave! That voice which poured forth only affectionate remembrances and dying prayers, had rebuked the storm and called back the dead to life! Truly if we view Jesus apart from his great powers, we lose much of the moral sublimity of his mind. The wonderful contrasts of his character have a less ample delineation. The peculiar combination of circumstances amid which he had to work out his idea of perfection, was less difficult.

Why then, it will be asked, appear to be undermining the miracles, and at the same time asserting their importance? We answer, that to give them their due importance is not to undermine them, and that to give them an undue importance may be to undermine Christianity. Let them take their proper place as a part of that machinery which originated Christianity, and which secured its successful propagation. They belong to the philosophical question respecting the origin and causes of

Christianity. They have little connection with the far higher question of the essence and character of Christianity. How Christianity sprung up, not what Christianity is, is the question to which they apply. Even the miracle of the resurrection was far more a means of converting the Apostles, and spiritualizing their views of the Messiah, inspiring them to be faithful preachers of Jesus, than intended as a proof of the immortality of the human soul.

Let not the miracles now then, by a preposterous assumption that they are the very foundations of faith, prevent any mind, which may be constitutionally and hopelessly sceptical about them, from the delicious satisfaction of a moral trust in Jesus. The only great question is, has Christianity caught our spiritual sympathies? Has it given off to our souls an image of duty, which we take as our guide to God, and hold before us as our better conscience? Are its moral lineaments in possession of our entire veneration? Are its blended humanity and yet unquenchable aspirings, its minglings of sublimity and grace, our very ideal of a perfect human mind? Is Jesus, serene, affectionate, holy, unmoved by passions, rising without effort to encounter difficulties, entering always into the spirit of his Father, and having an inaccessible peace in the heaven of his mind, the grandest picture of our thought, our secret study, the most frequently contemplated, and the most deeply loved? Is our own power of conceiving such a character our strongest obligation to imitate it, and our most spiritual reason for believing that there must be a receptacle for spirits hereafter in a world where such goodness shall be realized? We refer now to those who are constitutionally and hopelessly sceptical of miracles. Let not that scepticism disturb their faith in moral and spiritual Christianity. If they believe in the things signified, let them not stumble at the sign. If their minds are so constituted that they find, after the most candid efforts and repeated trials, that miracles, whenever they intervene, present an insuperable obstacle to their rational and sympathetic apprehension of Jesus-then we would say, do not lose Christianity for their sakes-they are not, and they cannot be the essentials. Moral impressions, moral convictions, make the genuine faith. Love, venerate, imitate, sympathize with, follow the pure, meek, holy, benevolent, heaven-marked character of Jesus, and you are Christians. We know that others hold a different language; but we know not their warrant.

Schleiermacher has so admirably described this state of constitutional, and, we fear, with some, unavoidable scepticism with regard to miracles, with its remedies, that we shall endeavour to strengthen, by his words, our feebler statement :

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"Even at the present day, and we cannot ascribe it to hostility against the dealings of God with the human race through Christ,there are many well disposed persons anxious for the salvation of their souls, to whom the miracles of the Lord are a stumbling block. They say, If only these histories were not there,' which always give them a new puzzle, concerning which they can scarcely avoid the thought that they owe their origin to the credulity of the multitude; if only these histories were not there, and the form of the Redeemer, separated from all this, stood before them in the purity of his love, in the power of his word, in the sublimity of his thought, in the certainty with which he spoke of his relation to the father, and told to man what he had learned from God; if this alone had been presented to us, divested of all that is miraculous, how easy then,' say they, would have been our faith. But now we are always repelled anew by these things; we must suspect the whole narrative, because it is combined with so much that contradicts universal experience and its laws.'

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"This certainly is a great unhappiness for a time like our own,—that so many should be attracted on the one side by the needs of their inward experience, and repelled on the other by their judgment on a subject which falls entirely within the province of the understanding. But if this need be only genuine and deeply felt,—may not a soul to which the wished for salvation is presented overcome these merely apparent difficulties? Have you not,' I would say to such souls, have you not another history which you can set against this? Have you not the historical testimony of the effects which a living communion with the Redeemer has produced on those who lived with him and gave themselves to him? Have you not the wonderful history of the founding of a community through him, by means of such men,—almost without exception uncultivated in the ordinary sense of the word, familiar with no art or science, —as were the disciples of our Lord? Are you not compelled to believe this history, because it is connected with your present experience, because it stands before your eyes, because the whole condition of the world has been decided by its influence? Well, then, if you must believe in this, see that you cherish it. If even now, so far as you open your spiritual eye in love, you can obtain the testimony of those who were rescued from the deepest distress of mind, as soon as they entered into a living relation with the Redeemer of the world; if you can daily repeat this experience, then unlock your hearts, I pray; forget all the blind whose eyes he has opened, the lame whom he has made to walk, the deaf whose ears he has unsealed, the dumb, the bands of whose tongue he has loosed,-forget all the sick whom he has healed; and keep only to these separate histories of his unchangeable influence on the inner nature of man,-keep only to this one history, that the office of preaching reconciliation proceeded from him,-and then you will also be able to believe in the words of the Apostle, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. '

ART. VIII.-FATHER MATHEW.

IT has long been felt that no very extensive and permanent improvement could be effected in the moral and physical condition of Ireland, unless Capital were attracted abundantly to that country, whilst unfortunately the reckless and violent habits of the people have hitherto opposed an almost insurmountable obstacle to its introduction. The only class from whom a good deal might have been expected, the landholders, have unfortunately done but little. Capital might with comparatively little chance of loss have been employed in the improvement and more systematic cultivation of the land; but unfortunately most of the great Irish landlords, being at the same time English proprietors, have looked to their Irish estates as a source of revenue only, and, where they have employed any portion of their surplus means productively, have preferred their English property as a more convenient field for investment; whilst the smaller class of Irish proprietors have rarely found that their revenue was more than adequate to the expenses of their hospitable but profuse mode of living.

The consequence of this state of things has been most deplorable. The land has been cultivated in small plots by an almost countless multitude of small tenants, possessing but little skill or knowledge, and even if they had possessed these qualities, utterly unable from want of capital to make them available. From the irregular nature of their occupation, their mode of life has been the very opposite to one of quiet uniform industry, while their pecuniary reward has been reduced by competition to the very lowest point compatible with the bare support of animal life. It was scarcely possible that these circumstances should not have engendered habits of recklessness and intemperance. Shut out from all domestic comforts, and occasionally in danger of wanting the bare necessaries of life, the Irish peasant has obtained a temporary relief from the wretchedness of his condition by indulgence in physical stimulants; while frequent and unavoidable want of occupation, by multiplying the opportunities, has necessarily tended to strengthen the habit of intemperance. His frequent acts of violence may, with few exceptions, be traced either to intemperance, or to the fear of being driven by the urgent claims of his competitors for land into a state of absolute starvation.

Any direct attempt to increase the means of profitable employment in the various arts of civilized life, amongst a people

who for so long a period have been confirmed in habits of intemperance and violence, can only be very partially successful. The first step must necessarily be to effect a change in their moral habits, and those who have devoted themselves to this task are entitled to the highest praise; for if their efforts should be successful even on a single point, a first step will thereby be gained, from which all the succeeding ones must ultimately follow in a gradually accelerated progression. The smallest change for the better in the habits of the people gives some additional confidence to the possessor of capital, whilst the smallest addition to the productive capital, raises the condition of some portion of the people, and tends to strengthen and extend any moral improvement which may already have been effected among them.

No one who has attended to the course of events in Ireland, for some years past, can have failed to observe, that on two points, and those of great importance, some progress has been made; on one, the improvement has been slow, but it is likely to be permanent; on the other it has been more rapid, but perhaps (until we can speak from a longer experience) there is less certainty of its permanence.

All the peculiar evils of Ireland had for centuries been very seriously aggravated by a lax and partial administration of justice. Of late years the Government of Ireland has certainly not been obnoxious to that charge. The law has been, on the whole, fairly and impartially administered without any systematic leaning to this or that political party, to this or that religious creed. The people have thus been enabled to make one step in the first great lesson of civilized life, (a lesson, which if it be not taught them by their rulers, they can never learn at all,) to respect the law; and great and deserved honour will be given to those who, for an object of such paramount importance to the welfare of the people they were called upon to govern, have patiently submitted to much personal obloquy and misrepresentation. Without this first great preliminary step it seems a matter of doubt whether any attempt of a more direct kind could be successful.

The second great step has been gained for the people of Ireland by the efforts of an individual, who has effected his noble purpose without any aid from station, rank, or wealth. The success of Father Mathew in reclaiming the Irish peasantry from the immoderate use of ardent spirits, (the worst of their vices, because it is the principal source of all the others,) proves in a very striking manner how much may be accomplished by energetic perseverance in some one simple object of great and recognized utility. This now celebrated Parish Priest is a man of

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