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than between England and the Southern There is ten times as much English blood and spirit in New England as in Virginia, the Carolinas, &c. Nevertheless, such has been the force of the interests of commerce, that now, and for some years past, the people of the North hate England with increasing bitterness, whilst, amongst those of the South, who are Jacobins, the British connection has become popular. Can there ever be any thorough national fusion of the Northern and Southern states? I think not. In fact, the Union will be shaken almost to dislocation whenever a very serious question between the states arises. The American Union has no centre, and it is impossible now to make one. The more they extend their borders into the Indians' land, the weaker will the national cohesion be. But I look upon the states as splendid masses to be used, by and by, in the composition of two or three great governments.

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There is a great and important difference, both in politics and metaphysics, between

all and the whole. The first can never be ascertained as a standing quantity; the second, if comprehended by insight into its parts, remains for ever known. Mr. Huskisson, I thought, satisfactorily refuted the shipowners; and yet the shipping interest, who must know where the shoe pinches, complain to this day.

January 7. 1833.

NINTH ARTICLE.-SIN AND SINS.-OLD DIVINES. - PREACHING EXTEMPORE.

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"VERY far gone," is quam longissime in the Latin of the ninth article, as far gone as

possible, that is, as was possible for man to go; as far as was compatible with his having any redeemable qualities left in him. Το talk of man's being utterly lost to good, is absurd; for then he would be a devil at once.

One mistake perpetually made by one of our unhappy parties in religion,—and with a per

is to

nicious tendency to Antinomianism, confound sin with sins. To tell a modest girl, the watchful nurse of an aged parent, that she is full of sins against God, is monstrous, and as shocking to reason as it is unwarrantable by Scripture. But to tell her that she, and all men and women, are of a sinful nature, and that, without Christ's redeeming love and God's grace, she cannot be emancipated from its dominion, is true and proper.

No article of faith can be truly and duly preached without necessarily and simultaneously infusing a deep sense of the indispensableness of a holy life.

How pregnant with instruction, and with knowledge of all sorts, are the sermons of our

"What are

* In a marginal scrap Mr. C. wrote: the essential doctrines of our religion, if not sin and original sin, as the necessitating occasion, and the redemption of sinners by the Incarnate Word as the substance of the Christian dispensation? And can these be intelligently believed without knowledge and steadfast meditation? By the unlearned, they may be worthily received, but not by the unthinking and selfignorant, Christian.” — ED.

old divines! in this respect, as in so many others, how different from the major part of modern discourses!

Every attempt, in a sermon, to cause emotion, except as the consequence of an impression made on the reason, or the understanding, or the will, I hold to be fanatical and sectarian.

No doubt preaching, in the proper sense of the word, is more effective than reading; and, therefore, I would not prohibit it, but leave a liberty to the clergyman who feels himself able to accomplish it. But, as things now are, I am quite sure I prefer going to church to a pastor who reads his discourse: for I never yet heard more than one preacher without book, who did not forget his argument in three minutes' time; and fall into vague and unprofitable declamation, and, generally, very coarse declamation too. These preachers never progress; they eddy round and round. Sterility of mind follows their ministry.

January 20. 1833.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

WHEN the Church at the Reformation ceased to be extra-national, it unhappily became royal instead; its proper bearing is intermediate between the crown and the people, with an inclination to the latter.

The present prospects of the Church weigh heavily on my soul. Oh! that the words of a statesman-like philosophy could win their way through the ignorant zealotry and sordid vulgarity of the leaders of the day!

February 5. 1833.

UNION WITH IRELAND.

IF any modification of the Union takes place, I trust it will be a total divorce a

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