THINKINGS, FROM OWEN FELLTHAM.

CONTENTMENT.-Those who preach contentment to all, do but teach some half to dwell in misery; unless you will grant content desire, and chide her but for murmuring. Let not man so sleep in content, as to neglect the means of making himself more happy and blessed: nor yet when the contrary of what he looked for comes, let him murmur at that providence, which disposed it to cross his expectation. I like the man who is never content with what he does enjoy; but by a calm and fair course, has a mind still rising to a higher happiness.

IMMORAL BOOKS.-The vicious author cannot offend alone. A corrupt book is an amphisbona: a serpent headed at both ends; one of which bites him that reads, the other stings him that writes: for if I be corrupted by his pen, the guilt grows his, as well as mine. I will not write so as to hurt myself and posterity. I will not read so as to hurt myself and predecessors. A foolish sentence dropt upon paper sets folly on a hill, and is a monument to make infamy eternal.

OSTENTATION.-Vain glory, at best, is only like a window cushion, specious without, and decorated with tasseled pendants; but within, nothing but hay, or tow, or some such trash, not worth looking on. Where I have found a flood in the tongue, I have found the heart empty. It is the hollow instrument that always sounds the loudest; and when the heart is full, the tongue is seldom liberal. CONSCIENCE.-It is the blushing part of the soul, that will colour and kick at every little crumb that goes awry against its swallow. And we can neither cozen it, nor be rid of it. It is a kind of inward Deity; it will be with us wheresoever we are, and will see us in whatever we do. It can give us rest, in unjust suffer

ings; and can whip us, in the midst of unjust applauses.

INTEGRITY OF CHARACTER.-He who is not morally honest, whatsoever gloss his religion bears, he wears it but in water-colours, which either a warm breath or a wet storm, will melt away or blemish.

COMFORT DERIVED FROM STUDY.-Virtuous study will relieve the tediousness of decrepit age, and the divine raptures of contemplation will beguile the weariness of the pillow and the chair. It makes him not unpleasing to the young, reverenced by the aged, and beloved of all. A grey head with a wise mind, enriched by learning, is a treasury of grave precept, experience, and wisdom. It is an oracle to which the lesser wise resort to know their fate. He that can read and meditate, need not think the evening long, or life irksome; it is, at all times, a fit employment, and a particular solace to him who is bowed down with years.

OF DANCING.-Doubtless, it was out of the jollity of nature, that this art was first invented and taken up among men. Bate but the fiddle; and the colts, the

calves, and lambs of the field do the same.

DRESS.-Every man's palate may as well be confined to one kind of cookery, as his fancy tied down in dress, to one kind of fashion.

ARROGANCE.-I never yet found pride in a noble nature, nor humility in an unworthy mind. It may seem strange to an inconsiderate eye, that such a poor violet as virtue, should ever dwell with honour: and that such an aspiring fame as pride should ever sojourn with baseness. It is certain, we seldom find the latter but in those who, being conscious of their own deficiency, think there is no way to get honour, but by boldly assuming it. It is he that has nothing else to recommend him, who would invade men's good opinions, by an unbecomiug haughtiness. you search for high and strained carriages, you shall, for the most part, meet with them in low men. Arrogance is a weed, which grows on a dunghill: it is from the rankness of that soil that she has her height and spreadings.

If

FAME. The noble acts of our predecessors, are as flaming beacons, which fame and time have set on hills, to call us to a defence of virtue, whensoever vice invades the commonwealth of man. Who can endure to skulk away his life in an idle corner, when he has the means of usefulness within him; and finds, how fame has blown about deserving names? In weak and base minds, worth begets envy; but in those which are magnanimous, emulation. Roman virtue, made Roman virtues lasting. A brave man never dies; but like the phoenix, others rise out of his preserved ashes.

Leicester.

It is a lovely morn! In majesty

Hood.

Sublime, the sun the cloudless east ascendeth.
I move amidst a kindling galaxy

Of dewy radiance! O'er yon flowery lea,

Bearing her teeming pails, the milkmaid wendeth.
Woodland to woodland whispers, elms and oaks
Wave their huge arms, and shake their dewy locks;
While music, breathed from hill and valley, blendeth,-
And echo the wild melody still mocks.

'Tis bright-yet clouds may rise, loud thunder-shocks
Pealing around be heard, before day endeth.
Man's life, at first so beautiful, is soon

O'ercast:-flow'rs fade with which his path is strewn:
Happy, when, drest in smiles, his sun at last descendeth !

WILLIAM JONES.

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SONG FROM BURGER.

The winter with his frosty hand

Has stripped the poplar tree:

Upon the lowly meadow land:

No summer green I see ;

No blossom blue, or white, or red,
In snowy garden lifts its head.

Yet not for these will I lament,
In mournful elegy;

I know a glance that downward sent,
Brings back the summer sky:

An eye more deeply blue, a face

Which red and white more sweetly grace

What care I 'mong the summer limes

The nightingale to hear;

My love she sings a hundred times

As sweet and silver-clear:

Her breath is like the breath of Spring,

'Mong hyacinth beds wandering.

Full on the lip and sweet the kiss
She sometimes gives to me,

Refreshing to the mouth, as is
The ruddy strawberry.

Oh May! Why should I sit and sing
To thee! With her abides the spring.

W. MOY THOMAS.

THE PASSIONS.-All the passions, in themselves simply considered, are neither good nor evil. Love, hate, hope, fear, joy, sorrow, and the rest, as they are parts of our nature, are things indifferent; but when they are fitly circumstantiated and ordered, they become morally good, and serve many excellent purposes; but when they are misplaced and extravagant, when they command us and are our masters, they then become morally evil, and the most troublesome things in the world both to ourselves and others.--Dr. Calamy's Sermons.

THE SUFFRAGE. According to my apprehension we might as well make the possession of forty shillings per annum the proof of a man's being rational as of his being free.— Major Cartwright.

CRITICAL EXEGESIS OF GOSPEL HISTORY,

ON THE BASIS OF STRAUSS'S 'LEBEN JESU.'

A SERIES OF EIGHT DISCOURSES; DELIVERED AT THE LITERARY INSTITUTION, JOHN STREET, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD, AND AT THE HALL OF SCIENCE, CITY ROAD, ON SUNDAY EVENINGS, DURING THE WINTERS OF 1848–9, AND 1849--50.

5. Involuntary Cures. Some of the most astounding accounts of miraculous healing, are given in the first three Gospels, in such passages as these: "And when they were gone over, they came into the land of Gennesaret. And when the men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent out into all that country round about, and brought unto him all that were diseased; and besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment; and as many as touched were made perfectly whole." (Matthew, 14 ch. 34, 35, 36 vv.)

"And a great multitude from Galilee followed him, and from Judea, and from Jerusalem, and from Idumea, and from beyond Jordan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him. And he spake to his disciples, that a small ship should wait on him because of the multitude, lest they should throng him. For he had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon him to touch him, as many as had plagues." (Mark, 3 ch. 7, 8, 9, 10 vv.)

"And when they had passed over, they came into the land of Gennesaret, and drew near to the shore. And when they were come out of the ship, straightway they knew him, and ran through that whole region round about, and began to carry about in beds those that were sick, where they heard he was. And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole." (Mark,6 ch. 53, 54, 55, 56 vv.)

"And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; and they that were vexed with unclean spirits; and they were healed. And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all." (Luke, 6 ch. 17, 18, 19 vv.)

What man who has arrived at the resolve to think for himself, can read these verses without a kind of consternation of the understanding? Who wrote these words-words of earthquake, if they relate facts? Is it possible that in in an age when Palestine was under Roman power, none of the philosophic intellects existing in the metropolis of the world could have heard of such swooping triumphs over the natural laws, if they had ever taken place? What! is it possible that an individual really walked this earth, but 1800 years ago who healed 'multitudes'—entire masses of diseased human beings-not by any expressed voluntary act, but by "virtue going out of him". "-virtue which pervaded his clothes, even the very 'hem' or 'border of his garment,' -and yet these events-which seem enough to move the earth out of its course with astonishment are only to be found recorded in writings of which no one can tell us the real authors? We can but wonder and pass on-for this is no evidence with which any process of investigation can deal. It is a relation of wonder, and we can say no more about it.

But, a detailed example of involuntary cure is given us, in the history of the woman who had the issue of blood. All the first three evangelists give this relation, and interweave it in a peculiar manner with the account of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, making Jesus cure the woman on his way to the ruler's house. (Matth. 9 ch. 20 v. Mark, 5 ch. 25 v.

Luke 8 ch. 40 v.) This interweaving is of importance, since it serves to identify the three narratives as relating to one and the same event for some critics have striven to show that there were two cures of women here related, and thus to account for the different expressions of the evangelists. Matthew simply relates that the woman came behind Jesus, and touched the hem of his garment, saying within herself 'If I can but touch his garment, I shall be whole;' and that Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said 'Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole—and the woman was made whole from that hour. Luke adds to Matthew's expression that the woman had an issue of blood for twelve years-—' which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any':-' And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse', says Mark—with his usual tendency to exaggeration for effect! Matthew, we have seen, states that Jesus pronounced the words 'Daughter, &c. and the woman was made whole from that hour. Mark and Luke, however, state that she was immediately healed when she had touched the garment of Jesus; and that he then turned about and asked who touched him that the disciples, wondering at his question, reminded him of the pressure of the crowd, and exclaimed And sayest thou who touched me! According to Luke, Jesus persists in his assertion; according to Mark, he looks enquiringly round him in order to discover the party who touched him: then, according to both Mark and Luke, the woman approaches trembling, falls at his feet and confesses all, whereupon Jesus gives her the tranquillising assurance that her faith has made her whole. This complex train of circumstances makes no part of Matthew's narrative. Why did plenary inspiration' fail to make him acquainted with it, and to inform him that the woman was healed before Jesus spoke to her?

But was the curative power of Jesus, then, like that of a magnetiser, who, in operating upon a nervous patient, is conscious of a diminution of strength? Could it go out from him without his volition, and without his knowing exactly who had been benefitted by it? Could he ask a question in uncertainty, or only appear to be in earnest in asking it? Or, is it to be understood that he knew the woman had been healed by the virtue which had gone out of him', and only asked to draw forth her confession? That is, clearly, not the conception of Mark and Luke: they evidently do not attribute the cure to the act of the will in Jesus, but to the believing touch of the woman; and they make Jesus attribute the cure to her faith: so that the materialistic character of their representation is still brought back, either to the domain of animal magnetism, or to the operation of imagination in the woman. But what a vast conception, either of Christ's magnetic power, or of the power of the imagination in a sick woman, is here demanded, by the opinion that either healed a disease of twelve years' duration ! Could we believe such a narrative, if it were given in any other book, even if written by a well-known author whose veracity was, in itself, an historic fact?

Let us not forget that this relation, together with the swooping relations of the cure of masses, are not the only narratives of the kind in the New Testament. In the Acts (19 ch. 12 v.) we are told of Paul, "that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases departed from them"; and in the same book (Acts 5 ch. 12, 15, 16 vv.) the narrative has even increased traits of the marvellous:

“And ̧by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the

people; insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, aud laid them on beds and couches, that at least the shadow of Peter passing by, might overshadow some of them. There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits, and they were healed every one"!

In the Apocryphal 'Gospels of the Infancy' are numerous narratives of cures wrought by means of swaddling bands of the infant Jesus, and by the water in which his mother washed him! "But we know that all that is legend," the the orthodox believer will reply. Of course, we do. But wherein are the handkerchiefs and aprons brought from the body of Paul to be distinguished from those wrought by the swaddling bands of the infant Jesus, as the more probable and historical? Not by their nature that is certain, and how by the testimony for them? Who is the author of either story? If the accounts of the eures by touching Christ's garments, or by receiving Paul's handkerchiefs, had not been in the canonical books-but in what the orthodox are pleased to call the apocryphal', of course they would not have been believed. But it is not the assumed authority of a book which makes a narrative credible it is from the nature of its narratives that we judge of the authority of a book,-in all other cases-and why not in this?

No relations in the Gospels and Acts are more palpably legendary than these. They betray the grossest tendency of superstition, at least its grossness is only surpassed by those later stories of the Dark Ages which attributed miraculous power to the bones of the saints when distributed as relics. All such stories have evidently their origin in a deformed veneration for the moral excellence of some remarkable person. They are not products of the mind in the person's life-time; but arise when his moral image has become dim by the lapse of time, and few pattern after it. "The less"-remarks Strauss, with pregnant meaning "the church retained of the words of Jesus, the more tenaciously she clung to the efficacy of his mantle; and the farther she was removed from the free spiritual energy of the Apostle Paul, the more consolatory was the idea of carrying home his curative energy in a pockethandkerchief."

(Commencement of the second Discourse on the Miracles in next number.)

Review.

A Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion. By THEODORE PARKER. (Watson, London: Joseph Barker, Wortley, near Leeds.)

Now that Mr. Barker has made this book so cheap, no working-man who is resolved to think on religious subjects should neglect to procure it. It evidences more soul than one hundred of the books, taken together, issued by ordinary religious writers in the course of a year. But this American is not an ordinary man. He writes with the true inspiration-that of genius, and with the severe and yet passionate love of verity. His heart sickens at false respectabilities. He must and will speak out against them. And yet his worship of moral beauty is expressed with all the ardour of the most devout religionist. This is a lesson which free-thinkers are slow in learning. And yet, they will never succeed in hastening the march of free-thought, till they have learnt it.

Mr. Parker's introduction, like an appropriate vestibule to a beautiful tem