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saviour. He spoke of the merits of Christ as a strong rampart against the wrath of God; but added that he had "demolished that bulwark with his own hands," and was now overwhelmed by the deluge. He urged those around him to beware of being "almost Christians," as he had been, and then broke out into vehement emotion indicative of his strong internal agony. "Give me a sword," he exclaimed. "Why? what use will you make of it?" "I cannot tell," he rejoined, " to what act my feelings may carry me, nor what I may do." He subsequently declared to Vergerio, when his friends began to take leave of him, “that he felt his heart full of cursing, hatred, and blasphemy against God," instead of being softened by the prospect of being left alone; and on the following day, he attempted self-destruction, without success. For eight weeks did he continue in this lamentable state, refusing nourishment, except as it was forced on him, and gradually becoming emaciated and haggard. He was constantly in dread, not of death, but of life; became by degrees his own executioner; pined away amid grief and horror; and died soon after returning to his own house from Padua,—a melancholy monument of the effects of unsteadfastness in the faith, and the fatal results of that fear of man which bringeth a snare.

It is not our province to pronounce any opinion on the state of Spira beyond the grave: his destinies are with the Lord, and we neither speculate nor dogmatize. Let us, however, just indicate the lessons to which his mournful history points us :—

See the effects of apostasy in the chafing misery of Spira's soul.

See the power of God's law, when the Gospel is turned from or misunderstood.

See what mankind would, sooner or later, have been, had there been no Days-man, no Mediator between God and man.

See the tremendous power of a roused conscience, when only irritated by a sense of wrath, not cleansed by the blood of sprinkling.

See the peril of the almost Christian,-the man who is a follower of Christ only with the understanding, not with a renewed heart.

See an appalling instance of the effects of wilful sin.

See the need of grace to sustain at all times, but specially when persecution arises because of the truth.

See the danger of philosophizing, as Spira vainly did, in the school of Christ, the origin, Calvin supposed, of his wretched fall.

See the worthlessness of human means to relieve the conscience without the blessing of the Holy Spirit.

See the fearful consequences of abandoning the truth to embrace Popery. Spira has been called a Popish Martyr. His apostasy led to Vergerio's conversion.

We conclude in the words of Calvin, regarding this apostate's case :-"May the Lord Jesus confirm our hearts in the full and sincere belief of his own Gospel, and keep our tongues in the uniform confession of him, that as we now join in one song with angels, we may at length enjoy, together with them, the blessed delights of the heavenly kingdom!" Such a prayer is not unneeded in a day when apostasy to Rome is rife. Again we say, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."-Christian Treasury.

GOLDAU-FALL OF THE ROSSBERG.

BY REV. J. T. HEADLEY.

As I descended the Righi towards Goldau, I had a clear and distinct view of the whole site of the Rossberg. This mountain, so renowned in history, is about five thousand feet high, with an unbroken slope reaching down the Goldau. The top of the mountain is composed of pudding-stone, called by the Germans Nagelflue, or nail-head, from the knobs on the surface. The whole strata of this mountain are tilted from Lake Zug towards Goldau, and slope, like the roof of a house, down to the village. The frightful land-slide, which buried the village and inhabitants of Goldau, was about three miles long, a thousand feet broad, and a hundred feet thick. The fissure runs up and down the mountain, and the mass slid away from its bed, till, acquiring momentum and velocity, it broke into fragments, and rolled and thundered down the mountain, burying the village a hundred feet deep. The afternoon of the catastrophe, the Rossberg gave ominous signs of some approaching convulsion. Rocks started spontaneously from its bosom and thundered down its sides; the springs of water suddenly ceased to flow; birds flew screaming through the air; the pine-trees of the forest rocked and swayed without any blast, and the whole surface of the mountain seemed gradually sliding towards the plain. A party of eleven travellers from Berne was on its way to the Righi at the time. Seven of them happened to be ahead, and the other four saw them enter the village of Goldau just as they observed a strange commotion on the summit of the Rossberg. As they raised their glass to notice this more definitely, a shower of stones shot off from the top and whirled like cannon-balls through the air above their heads. The next moment a cloud of dust filled the valley, while from its bosom came a wild uproar, as if nature was breaking up from her deep foundations. The Rossberg was on the march for Goldau with the strength and terror of an earthquake. The cloud cleared away, and nothing but a wild waste of rocks and earth was above where the smiling villages of Goldau, Bussingen, and Rothen stood before. One hundred and eleven houses, and more than two hundred stables and châlets, had disappeared, carrying down with them in their dark burial nearly five hundred human beings. The lake of Lowertz was half filled with mud, while the immense rocks traversed the valley its entire width, and were hurled far up the Righi, mowing down the trees like cannon-shot. The inhabitants of the neighbouring villages heard the grinding crushing sound, as of mountains falling together, and beheld the cloud of dust that darkened the air. Five minutes after, and all was hushed, and the quiet rain came down as before, and as it had done during the ruin, but no longer on human dwellings. It fell on the grave of nearly five hundred men, women, and children, crushed and mangled, and pressed uncoffined into their mother earth. Nothing was left of the villages and pasturages that stood in the valley but the bell of the church of Goldau, which was carried a mile and a-half from the steeple in which it hung. When the Lake of Lowertz, five miles off, received the torrent of earth into its bosom, it threw a wave seventy feet high clear over the island of Schwanau, and rolled up on to the opposite shore, bringing back, in its reflux, houses with their inhabitants. The friends whom their fellow-travellers had seen enter the village of Goldau, just as the mountain started on its march, were never seen more.-New-York Observer.

343

REMARKS ON THE THIRD EDITION OF SOUTHEY'S

"LIFE OF WESLEY." *

FROM THE CORNISH BANNER.

(Concluded from page 257.)

THE character and actions of John Wesley are not to be judged of by ordinary and modern standards. The times in which he lived, the circumstances in which he was placed, the state of religion in the Church of which he was a Minister, the spiritual condition of the entire nation, must all be reviewed and understood, if we would form a just estimate of the man. He who would delineate Wesley to our view should be at once a philosopher, a theologian, and a Christian; qualifications so rarely combined in one individual, as to render it by no means surprising that the different Memoirs which have been written of this eminent man should, in some respects, be defective. If we were allowed to prescribe, we should not send our readers to one publication merely for a faithful portraiture of Wesley; we would rather recommend the examination of several: first, and chiefly, the short but comprehensive Memoir by Richard Watson, a man who possessed every qualification for producing our beau ideal of a Life of Wesley; then, the volumes before us, in connexion with Watson's Observations on Southey; and afterwards, as the most correct delineation of all, his own "Journals." A careful perusal of these works will introduce the reader to an intimate acquaintance with one of the most extraordinary men that ever lived.

But our readers will be anxious to ascertain the character of the Essay which produced so decided a change in Dr. Southey's opinions. It is appended to this third edition, under the title of "Remarks on the Life and Character of John Wesley, by the late Alexander Knox, Esq.," and constitutes certainly the most prominent "new feature" which our reverend Editor has added to the original work.

We were prepared by what we had heard, and indeed by what had been previously published in Mr. Knox's name, for those high eulogiums on Wesley's moral character which the papers before us contain. The writer seems to have entertained the highest possible opinion of his excellence and worth; of his strict integrity, devoted piety, and earnest zeal; and, as to these particulars, speaks of him in terms sufficiently commendatory. As, for instance, in the following paragraph :

"His Journal affords such an entire and unreserved memorial, not only of his indefatigable labours, but of the disposition and temper with which he pursued them, as makes John Wesley one of the best-known individuals that ever acted on the stage of human life. While I, therefore, from my own personal knowledge of him, feel the conviction I have expressed, I would send others to that animated but most artless registry, to try if they can find a point of time in which his Christian vigilance appears to

"The Life of Wesley; and the Rise and Progress of Methodism. By Robert Southey, Esq., LL.D. Third Edition, with Notes by the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Esq.; and Remarks on the Life and Character of John Wesley, by the late Alexander Knox, Esq. Edited by the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, M.A., Curate of Cockermouth. In two vols., 8vo., 508, 550. London: Longmans.

1846."

relax, or his love of virtue to become less intense or less practical. I would ask, Is there one darkened hour which might be thought to indicate some secret self-reproach; or an intimation, for the last fifty years, (to say nothing of his earlier strictness,) that he did not live in daily peace with himself and with his God? Is he not uniformly the same man,—devoted to what he deemed his duty, alike regardless of privation or endurance, and yet beaming with happy cheerfulness, and glowing with unbounded philanthropy? I would say, in a word, Let a single spot be shown in the singularly-recorded course of John Wesley's thoughts and feelings, as well as of his actions and habits, where suspicion could find footing, or calumny insert a sting." (Vol. ii., p. 425.)

On the point at issue between Mr. Knox and Dr. Southey,—the supposed ambitiousness of Wesley's character,—the former writes in a manner worthy of himself and of his subject. There is so much of justness and sound philosophy in many of his remarks, that we are not surprised at the impression which their perusal produced on Dr. Southey's mind. The following sentiments affords a fair specimen of the manner in which this charge of ambition is refuted by the writer :

" I may farther remark, that the prevalent tempers and habits of Mr.

Wesley's mind appear to have been perfectly inconsistent with ambitious feelings. It is inconceivable that a man who aimed at self-aggrandizement should not be sometimes chagrined; that he should not be disturbed by opposition, annoyed by disappointments, or occasionally feel anxiety for the success of measures. But, probably, there never was a human being less accessible to care, of whatever kind, than John Wesley: sensible as he was both to pleasure and pain, and intensely as he desired the happiness of his disciples, still the impression made on him by adverse occurrences, though no doubt often sharp, was always transient. Be the exigence what it might, after adopting what appeared the best measures, he dismissed it from his thoughts. This happy faculty secured to him, through his long life, unbroken rest by night, and unclouded cheerfulness in the day : but it was a faculty which, I conceive, he could not have possessed, had not his views been perfectly pure and disinterested. The emotions of a generous and upright heart, however strong, imply no thraldom; but as soon as the feeling becomes selfish, the power of surmounting it is proportionally lost. I should think this is a fair test; and if so, the mind of John Wesley stands acquitted from every suspicion of selfishness: for, certain it is, that as far as could consist with mortality, his life was a course of constant self-possession and uninterrupted self-enjoyment; the past being unreservedly committed to God's gracious reckoning, and the future no less simply left to his unerring providence." (Vol. ii., pp. 431, 432.)

Having said thus much, we cannot refrain from expressing our surprise and regret at the manner in which Mr. Knox has sought to undervalue the intellectual character of Wesley. If the introduction of such a sentiment had been but incidental, we should have allowed the matter to pass without reference. But it is not so: the entire "Essay," or "Critique," is framed on this principle; this depreciatory spirit pervades his "Remarks" from the beginning to the end; it impregnates every page. The writer has presented us with a sketch of Mr. Wesley more heterogeneous in its character than that of any other of his numerous biographers, not excepting even Dr. Southey. He raises him to the highest pinnacle of moral greatness, and then hurls him almost to the lowest grade of intellectual frailty! This he does by turns he literally plays with "the good old man," as a fond parent

tosses his infant, first, suspending it in his arms above his head, and then rolling it at his feet!

Our readers shall themselves judge of the truth of this accusation. The writer speaks of Mr. Wesley's " anomaly of mind," of his "confident conclusions from scanty and fallacious premises," and of "his intellectual frailty." He informs us that he "was not blind to his weaknesses,” and contrasts his "misconceptions of intellect" with his moral integrity. In Mr. Knox's opinion, it is "the moral radiance that so often breaks forth in Mr. Wesley's writings, which can alone compensate an unprejudiced reader for the shallow reasonings and unsupported conclusions into which his natural temperament, his favourite theories, and his peculiar circumstances, conspired to betray him." "Several weaknesses," he again says, "threw a shade over his better qualities." "From uncertain and scanty premises, he rapidly formed the most confident and comprehensive conclusions." It would be easy to extend these quotations to a considerable length; but we shall content ourselves with subjoining the following short paragraph :—

"It appears to me, that had my good old friend possessed a sounder understanding, and more cautious disposition, he might have been proportionably disqualified for his special destination; and much as I disapprove and dislike the tempestuous ardour of his first addresses, and still more the astounding effects produced by them, I am not sure that a more sober commencement might not have failed in bringing an individual into such universal notoriety. I am therefore disposed to apply to those very revolting phenomena which attended Mr. Wesley's earlier labours, that same notion of providential permission, and mysterious adjustment, by which weakness of mind and faultiness of conduct have been so often and so variously made to subserve the purposes of omniscient Goodness.” (Vol. ii., p. 464.)

What, we ask, is the doctrine which is here taught, but that it was Wesley's weakness of mind and faultiness of conduct, among other things, which were made to subserve the purposes of "omniscient Goodness" in that revival of religion, of which, during "his earlier labours" especially, he was the instrument?

Mr. Knox's line of remark is so utterly at variance with the course pursued by all his predecessors, that it becomes necessary to inquire, who he was? In what circumstances was he placed so favourable, and what qualifications did he possess so adequate, to the formation of a correct judgment of this eminent man?

He shall speak for himself:

"During the period of my occasional intercourse with Mr. Wesley, I passed from childhood to youth, and from youth to manhood; not without some material changes in my mind and habits. At an early age, I was a member of Mr. Wesley's society; but my connexion with it was not of long duration. Having a growing disposition to think for myself, I could not adopt the opinions which were current among his followers; and before I was twenty years of age, my relish for their religious practices had abated. Still my veneration for Mr. Wesley himself suffered no diminution; rather as I became more capable of estimating him without prejudice, my conviction of his excellence, and my attachment to his goodness, gained fresh strength and deeper cordiality." (Vol. ii., p. 416.)

While we readily admit that these circumstances rendered Mr. Knox an impartial judge of Wesley's moral worth, we, at the same time, contend that they considerably lessened his qualifications for forming a correct

VOL. III.-NEW SERIES.

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