discipline was continued for several months. But it does not appear that the lady was altogether purified sufficiently to fulfil the duties which the character of Mr. Hall's wife naturally imposed upon her, for we find, on all occasions when company was present that Mrs. Hall did not grace the table. On these occasions the husband used to say, "My wife, sir, is quite well: but she is a perfect Martha, careful and cumbered about many things." Mr. Hall may have seen reason to be contented with this state of relation between himself and his wife, but in our humble judgment the proper place at the head of her table was foolishly forfeited by Mrs. Hall; and we have no hesitation in saying, that it was highly culpable in her husband to have permitted her habitual absence. Another of the most important changes in Mr. Hall's life now succeeded: we mean, his appointment to a baptist chapel in Leicester. Here he laid the foundation of that substantial renown which attaches to his name, and which is sure to be eternal. His talents, his energies, his simple and sincere piety, here had their fullest scope; and at the period when the missionary societies were first put in operation, Mr. Hall supported them with the most earnest zeal. He paid the most particular attention to the various parts of the missionary system; and by every means in his power sought to establish rules of general application, which the ministers might take as the guide of their proceedings. With respect to the manner of introducing the gospel to the heathen, Mr. Hall has given some very judicious directions. It should be done, he says, inoffensively, and with the greatest simplicity, by gentleness and forbearance, and with a feeling as if the missionary were not so much engaged in encountering error as in .establishing truth. "I would not," he declares, and we beg the attention of the missionary societies to his remarks,-" I would not advise you to devote much time to an elaborate confutation of the Hindoo or Mahometan systems, which is calculated to irritate and disgust; but let your instruction be in the form of a testimony. Let it, with respect to the mode of exhibiting it, though not to the spirit of the teacher, be dogmatic, testifying' repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." And again, "when you denounce the wrath of God against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, great mildness and affection are requisite, to prevent such representations from exciting disgust. What is awful and alarming in Christianity should be softened and tempered by a persuasive tenderness of address. Let it be your care to divest religion of whatever is unlovely and repulsive, that it may appear not only pure, but gentle, not only majestic, but amiable, equally favourable to the enjoyment and the communication of happiness." 6 Having amply described Mr. Hall in his public capacity, Mr. Morris devotes a considerable portion of this work to an account of the reverend gentleman in his personal and domestic character. Mr. Hall is represented as being uniformly and ardently on the popular side in politics; and one of the last public documents which he signed was a Bristol petition in 1831, which prayed for vote by ballot. The gentleman who gave this fact to Mr. Morris added, that Mr. Hall would not be content with a verbal explanation of the nature of the petition from those who called on him for his signature, but that he rose from his sick bed, and, eagerly perusing the petition, when he came to the expression "vote by ballot,”"aye, that's right," said he, and wrote his name with apparent satisfaction. Mr. Hall's life was characterised by great attention to the poor. To administer consolation of the spiritual or pecuniary kind, he was ever ready to make sacrifices. No one interested himself more in the history of destitute families, and no one knew better how to supply their necessities with better skill and greater delicacy than this minister. The manner of Mr. Hall in reading the Scriptures was peculiar. He employed no cadences, and instead of letting his voice fall at the end of a sentence, he kept it up at the full pitch, and indicated the conclusion of a period by a pause. In justifying this practice, Mr. Hall was in the habit of quoting the authority of the professor at Aberdeen, who always urged the boys to continue the same elevation of voice to the end of the sentence, as it was best calculated to render the closing words audible at a distance. The principle of the professor is certainly a rational one, and so well is it understood by the experienced class of senators and barristers, that these, under particular circumstances, often raise the voice considerably at the termination of each sentence. Though liberal and forbearing in his general practice, still Mr. Hall made it an invariable regulation to declare that the union of any member who absented himself from communion for twelve months was dissolved with the church. But then no stigma was sought to be affixed on the excluded member. Mr. Hall, notwithstanding the good sense and moderation which distinguished his ministry, could not, nevertheless, exempt his church from the corruption of discord; and it ultimately became the destiny of Mr. Hall to return to Broadmede, near Bristol. Here his exertions, which were enthusiastically appreciated, were cruelly impeded by the return of his malady. It would seem that Mr. Hall was well versed in miscellaneous literature; and a curious conversation at an evening party is given by Mr. Morris, in which the celebrated preacher delivered a variety of criticisms, proving how intimately he was acquainted with some of the most remarkable works of the day. Of Mrs. Hannah More, he declared that her style was exceedingly faulty, and exhibited a constant affectation of point; that she too servilely followed Dr. Johnson's rule about contrast, and fatigued her readers with an eternal round of antithesis, which, after all, were merely figures of words, rather than ideas. With respect to the poor lady's conversation, Mr. Hall estimated it at nearly the same price, saying that she looked to be always lying in wait for opportunities to make some pointed, sententious remark; still he admitted that the manners of Mrs. More were perfectly proper, and that nothing eccentric or affected could be discovered in her behaviour. Poor Miss Edgworth came in for a considerable share of Mr. Hall's pious hostility. " She is the most irreligious writer I ever read, Sir," said the reverend critic, "not so much from any direct attacks she makes on religion, as from a universal and studied omission of the subject. In her writings you meet with a high strain of morality. She delineates the most virtuous characters, and represents them in the most affecting circumstances in life; in distress, in sickness, and even in the immediate prospect of eternity, and finally sends them off the stage with their virtue unimpaired; and all this without the remotest allusion to religion. She does not directly oppose religion, but makes it appear unnecessary, by exhibiting a perfect virtue without it. No works ever produced so bad an effect on my own mind. I did not expect to find any irreligion in Miss Edgworth's writings. I was off my guard-their moral character disarmed me. I read, Sir, nine volumes of them at once; but I could not preach with any comfort for six weeks after reading them. I never felt so little ardour in my profession, or so little interest in religion. She was once called to account for the character of her works, and asked her reasons for representing a mere ideal morality, without attributing any influence to religion. She said, that if she had written for the lower classes, she should have recommended religion; but that she had written for a class to whom it was less necessary. How absurd, Sir! She seemed to think that the virtues of the higher orders of society needed no assistance from religion, and that it was only designed as a curb and a muzzle for the brute." Mr. Hall, it seems, underwent the ordeal which seems to be the unavoidable intermediate purgatory of all great men in literature, namely, the question, "Who was Junius?" The inclination of the mind of Mr. Hall upon this subject was, that Philip Francis must have revised these letters, but that he never could have written them; neither did he believe that they could have been the production of Burke. He owned, at last, that the authorship of Junius was a mystery still difficult to solve. The observations of Mr. Hall on Barrow's Sermons are particularly judicious: these productions are fine dissertations on moral philosophy; but a man may read them for ever without receiving the least glimpse of his own situation as a sinner, or comprehending the nature of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. Barrow is very accurately represented as having limited himself entirely to an appeal to the reasoning powers, never scarcely employing the means which are calculated to break down the impediments to the admission of truth to the heart, and which lie principally in the affections, the passions, and the imagination. 66 Of Mr. Irving's first publication, entitled "The Oracles of God," Mr. Hall very coolly said, Well, if these orations are really eloquent, we are all wrong; our standard of eloquence is wrong; all the great masters were wrong: Demosthenes, and Cicero, with Fox, Burke, Sheridan, &c. were egregiously mistaken in their views of oratory. The deportment of Mr. Hall in the pulpit. was always solemn, and appeared to be modified by a deep sense of the presence of some awful power. He announced the text in a feeble and rapid manner, and was sometimes inaudible to the greater portion of his audience. The general topic was then announced; but the preacher hesitated, sometimes introduced a voluntary cough or two to obtain time. He had no oratorical action, and the movements to which he was impelled at no period exceeded those of an occasional lifting or waving of the right hand, or an alternate retirement to and advance from the back of the pulpit. His countenance became finely expressive in his impassioned moments. As there was nothing particularly persuasive in his mere elocution, the effect produced on his audiences must have been altogether attributable to his language; and we are told that his style, which was simple, and occasionally varied by skilfully introduced imagery, particularly attracted the more intelligent portion of his hearers. Mr. Hall expired on the 21st of February, 1831. ART. IX.-A Popular History of Priestcraft in all Ages and Nations. By WILLIAM HOWITT. 1 vol. 12mo. London: E. Wilson. 1833. We were always taught to believe that the Society of Friends consisted of members whose whole glory consisted in imitating the philosophical lives of the primitive Christians; that they especially laboured to eradicate from their own bosoms all hatred, envy, malice, and hostility, of whatever sort; and that they were the chosen race, amongst whom should be preserved in all its inviolate delicacy the meek spirit of Christian charity. What can it be that has so completely revolutionized the feelings of this remarkable fraternity? Is it from the warmth of the excessive partiality of the government for them, that certain unseemly and noxious vapours are beginning to rise from their quarter? Is it indeed that, like the vulgar herd of mankind, they are intoxicated with indulgence, and unconsciously abuse the kindness which for its disinterestedness should only have excited their gratitude? We cannot ourselves answer these questions, and at present we are only capable of attending to the astounding fact, that a more insolent and wanton attack than this Quaker's history of priestcraft on the several religions which are adopted in these countries, never polluted the press. Our opinions on the impolicy, or rather the unspeakable folly, of establishing any alliance between the religion of any country and its state, have been too frequently repeated to justify us in supposing that they are unknown to the newest of our readers. If, therefore, we feel offended by the impudence of the calumniator before us, it is not surely because he agrees with us in opposing the principle of an established church; but it is because the spirit and execution of the attack, the circumstances under which it is made, and the quarter from which it is directed, combine to prove it to be as illtimed as it is unjust and malicious: it is on this account, we say, that Mr. Howitt deserves the reprobation of every well-constructed mind. At such a period as this, when the general sense of mankind has taught us the extent of the disadvantages which religious divisions have been so fertile in producing; at such a time as this, when the judgment of men is freed from the trammels of passion and prejudice, and treaties and terms of amity are ratified between communities which were hitherto disunited; at such an auspicious juncture, for any man to cast his firebrand amongst the miscellaneous multitude, with the view of generating confusion in the throng, is an act which cannot be contemplated without the most poignant regret. Did Mr. Howitt take cognizance of what was around him? Did he remember how the Protestant Assembly of the House of Commons humbled itself even to his Quaker sensibilities, and sacrificed almost it smost cherished principles with the object of accommodating the exquisitely fastidious conscience of Obadiah? How gratefully has Mr. Howitt recompensed this demonstration of Christian charity in his favour, for whilst his sense of liberality, and his conviction of what was the right of every man, prompted the Protestant to modify the laws of the country merely to comply with the humours of the Howitts; yet the condescension was met not by a token of grateful feeling, but by an ungenerous and malicious calumny; the natural enormity of which was aggravated by its being directly the reverse of the heroic act which really appears to have provoked it. We do not believe that the annals of religious controversy contain any performance in which bigotry assumes an aspect more ferocious, than it does in this production of the nineteenth century. It must be allowed, however, that Mr. Howitt is perfectly impartial, for almost every kingdom, every society, of which any record has been handed down to us, falls indiscriminately under the edge. of his destroying sword. The poor Greeks and Romans, the Jews, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, Syrians, Druids, Hindoos, Celts, and Scandinavians; all the races of men, in short, from the Deluge to the present hour, have, more or less, felt the curse of priest craft and kingcraft. The horrors of kingcraft, he tells us, are on the face of every nation; its annals are written in gore in all civilized climes; and where pen never was known it has scored its terrors in the hearts of millions, and left its traces in deserts of everlasting VOL. II. (1833) NO. III. 2 c |