with the plea, that the rule pro- terion. For we may be deceiv ed, by the mere semblance of goodness; we may account those good, who are mere hypocrites and formalists in worship, and selfish time servers in morality. Beside, if the example of really good men in this imperfect state, were to be made the standard of action, we might select from the falls of one, and the foibles of another, an example for every vanity; yea, for every crime under heaven. No; the truth is, that there is no universal test and safe criterion of conduct, but the one furnished by our text; and the man, who shrinks from an investigation of his character by this standard, and refuses to regulate his practice according to this rule, has not devoted himself without reserve to the service of God; whatever he may profess, he is not a Christian; his religion is vain; his faith is dead; he is yet in his sins; his hope will be finally cut off and perish. Christians, make this rule, I beseech you, the test of all your conduct; of the appropriation of your time; of the employment of your property; of every practice, in which you engage, and every action, which you perform. The thoughtless and vain may assume some different standard of moral conduct; but whatever it may be, it will probably prove a snare to their souls. You may stop short in your inquiries concerning a particular practice, by saying, "It is the fashion; it is a common practice; it has existed Once more, therefore, let me for ages; great men, and even exhort all, who pretend to be good men, have sanctioned it by Christians, to bring their charactheir example." All these are ters, their habits, their practices, dangerous and delusive stand- their employments, yea, all their ards. Do you make general pursuits, to this standard. Be custom your rule of action? The not deceived, I intreat you, by command of Heaven is, Thou the delusive standards of the shalt not follow a multitude to do thoughtless, and the fallacious evil. Do you allege the author- glosses of the crafty. Let not ity of great men, to justify your the unmeaning epithets of innopractice? Great men are not al- cent amusements, and harmless ways good; nay, the Scripture recreations, draw you into those saith, Not many wise, not many practices, which you cannot jusmighty, not many noble are call-tify; which your hearts condemn; Do you appeal, for your which, you are persuaded, will justification, to the example not glorify your God and Reof those, who have been esteem deemer. Remember the woe ed good men-pious and bene v pronounced upon those, who call olent? Here too, to say the least, evil good, and good evil. Porget you fix on a very imperfect cri- not that you are accountable ed. creatures, and that every action will be brought into judgment, with every secret thing. RecolTeot that you are not your own; that you are bought with a price; that you are therefore bound to glorify God in your body and Final spirit, which are God's. ly, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovcable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Amen. MISCELLANEOUS. LIFE OF NELSON. To the Editor of the Panoplist. Sir, I send for publication, if you think proper, a few remarks on the Life of Nelson, as an antidote to the fascinating. but pernicious influence of such a char acter upon the minds of young men. L. HORATIO NELSON, the son of a clergyman, entered the navy in a ship commanded by his uncle; and, though of a feeble constitution, rose by his own merit to be the greatest admiral of whom England has ever boasted. Till he fought himself into notice, he often experienced, as he conceived, great neglect and injus. tice; and repeatedly resolved to abandon the service for ever. From this resolution he was dissuaded by his friends; and he determined that he would have a gazette of his own, which - should tell the world his deeds, without dependence on the caprice of any man. He was engaged in about one hundred and twenty battles, and lost, in the service of his country, an eye and his right arm. Among the victories gained by him was one under the command of Lord St. Vincent, of which his Lordship took the honor, and Nelson was scarcely named. The battle of the Nile, the bat- tle of. Copenhagen, and the battle of Trafalgar;--three as splendid victories as were ever won upon the sea;—brought as much honor to Nelson, and as much solid benefit to his country, as were ever the result of naval skill and bravery in any British admiral. He possessed a mind of the first order;-quick, clear, comprehensive, of great decision and much correctness. He saw intuitively in every emergency what was proper to be done; decided instantly; and executed his decisions with an ardor of mind a promptitude and courage, which nothing could resist. Such ardor, decision, and boldness, in a mind less intuitively correct, would have been rashness. But Nelson was not rash; he saw all that could be done up to the very point of rashness; and decided upon the highest practicable achievement, with much precision, coolness, and confidence, as he could have done, if his soul had not been on fire. He seldom failed in any attempt, which he planned, and in which he commanded. It is. to the above traits in his character, that all his victories are to be ascribed. These traits constituted his greatness. His mind illumined a vast circumference, within which all things lay ex 63 as posed to perfect view. While others reconnoitred, he saw by a blaze of intuition. While others deliberated, he decided. While they loitered to wait for the coincidence of circumstances, he compelled circumstances to his aid and conquered. I came, saw, and conquered, is the laconic language, which Nelson might have employed as well as Cæsar, in giving the account of his victories. In the above view of his character, and so far as a mere military character can with propriety be admired, I have never been more gratified with the character of any man In his whole course, no painful disappointments intervene to excite unavailing regret. No opportu nity is lost. Wherever Nelson is, all is done that you expect; ali that you can desire, so far as it depends on him. Few such minds are found; for a few only are enough to save or to destroy nations, as they are made by Heaven the instruments of salva tion, or the ministers of divine anger. Pitt and Nelson were instruments of salvation; while Bonaparte alone was sufficient to execute the wrath of God upon guilty nations. Nelson's natural disposition, was affectionate and amiable: his moral character was in some respects good, in others very defective. His honesty was inflexible. Money was not indeed his object; but if it had been, there is reason to believe he never would have stooped to knavish practices to obtain it. He was not envious. Though glory was the supreme object of his desire, he sought it not by diminishing the lustre of another's name, but by surpassing him in illustrious actions. He was alsó patriotic and incorruptible. But he was guilty of profaneness; a sin which no greatness, and no lustre of glory, can cancel or hide. Horatia He was incontinent. Nelson, a child about five years old at the time of his death, was supposed to be his daughter by an illicit connexion. He suffered his affections to be diverted from an affectionate wife, and became attached to infatuation to Lady Hamilton, a woman of great accomplishments, and of a mind, as to vigor, not unlike his own. He separated from his wife, on account of his alienated affections, and spent all his time on land in the society of Lady Hamilton. His biographer suspects, that there was no criminal Intercourse. But had he been a Christian, this inspired interro gation, Can a man take fire in hië bosom and his clothes not be burne ed? might have led him to suspect, that such unlawful ardent affection did not content itself with professions, and mere acts of courtesy. It has been rumored, that Nelson was a pious man; and it is with deep regret I am obliged to say, that no evidence appears of the fact; but much to the contrary The most that can be said is, that he was a believer in Revelation, and in the particular providence of God; that he offered up prayers to Him be fore battle, and returned thanks after victory; and, on some occasions, used the language of resignation to his will. But it is manifest to demonstration, that his supreme object was glory➡ personal glory;--that his great moral principle was patriotism His the love of his country more than the love of God, and the love of country as identified with himself, and as the means of promoting his glory. Dissolve that association, and leave out his supreme hatred of the French;-let the only guarantee be his real love to God or real benevolence to man, and in the tempest of passion and temptation he would have been like a ship without anchor, rudder, or compass, driv. en about of fierce winds moral character is also incompatible with piety, and there is not in his whole life, in none of his prayers, any recorded confession of sin, any apparent sense of sin, or any penitential feelings. There is no recognition of the atonement. no mention even of the name of the Savior, and no allusion, from which it would be inferred, that he had even heard of Savior. His death was by no means, even in appearance, the death of a good man. Not a word do we hear in this solemn moment about par don, or mercy, or heaven. "I have done my duty," he exclaimed often, by which it is too obvious he meant his duty to his king and country as a good subject, rather than to God as an accountable creature. His mind is occupied with thoughts of Lady Hamilton, his daughter, and the victory which was deciding in his favor; and from the pinnacie of worldly fame, in the fuil blaze of terrestrial glory, he went to judgment to receive his eternal destination according to the deeds done in the body. The tendency of his example, and of his biography, will be doubtless to excite in the breast of thousands the throbbings of ambition; to inspire the same kind of patriotism which he felt, and to exalt and perpetuate the prow ess of the British navy. As, however, he uniformly disobeyed the orders of his superiors, when he judged the good of the nation demanded it, and always judged correctly, and covered himself with glory by doing so, in consequence of his peculiar intuition and decision, I should imagine the example would be dangerous, and, i imitated, extensively ruinous, when attempt-> ed by minds less infallible than his own. The moral tendency of the life of Nelson is, on the whole, to make heroes and patriots of the Roman school, but pot of the school of Christ; and to render moral character itself a trifling consideration, the want of which may be compensated by greatness of intellect, and splen did achievements, and workily glory. Should any youthful bosom be inflamed by such unhallowed fire in reading his life, it is a providential favor that we have from his own lips a disciosure, which ought in a moment to extinguish it. "There is no true happiness in this life, and in my present state I could quit it with a smile. Believe me, my only wish is, to sink with honor into the grave; and when that shall please God, I shall meet death with a smile. Not that I am insensible to the honor my king and country have heaped upon me; so much more than any officer couid desire. Yet am I ready to quit this world. of trouble, and envy none but those of the estate six feet by two."* This was written soon after the battle of the Nile. * Vol. ii, THE ancient philosophers, who made critical observations upon the powers and pursuits of man, pronounced it to be his most uncommon acquirement to be come acquainted with himself. Hence arose that admired precept of antiquity, "Man, know thyself;" and hence the enlarged aphorism of a Christian poet, "Man, know thyself: all wisdom centres there." We may penetrate into the characters of those who surround us; we may learn the habits, dispositions, and languages of foreign nations; we may become acquainted with all the properties of the globe that we inhabit, --the course of its rivers, the height of its mountains, the treasures that are concealed in its secret caverns; we may gain a knowledge of the deeds of blood that in past and present ages have stained its surface; we may follow science, as she soars to the heavens, find the places of the stars, call them by their names, compute their distances, magnitude and periods of rotation; yet, if we span the whole circle of the universe, we may return, and find mysteries in the little empire within, to perplex our researches, and baffle our keenest penetration. We have heard and felt much of the monitor within; but whoever attempts to trace his actions to their first spring, and his designs to their real source, will be convinced that he has also an advocate within. When this advocate perceives the eye of the mind turned inward, it strengthens it self to repel the pursuit; but if it finds indications of a resolute search, it casts obstacles in the way; it spreads a veil over what is sought to be investigated; softens errors into virtues; presents crimes as inadvertences; endeavors to pervert the firmness of reason, the judge, and to silence the voice of conscience, the accuser. All this results from the natural selfishness of the human heart; it assumes as many shapes, as fancy can devise; it flies from reproof, and will not come to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved. Its object is to keep the soul ignorant of herself, to deceive her into compliance; to force her into submission. But both our duty and happiness require, that this dominion should be broken, and the first step towards it, is to think humbly of ourselves. We are beings who have received much, and are accountable for it; who are placed in a state of trial, a law of rectitude before who are subject to many afflictions, liable to many errors, bearing within us much which needs to be regulated, reformed, or taken away, and bound to an eternal destination of happiness or misery. What is there in this description to awaken pride, or to justify vanity? Every thing around excites us to watchfulness; every thing within to hu mility. We should esteem it a great unhappiness to have a friend, whose real sentiments were sedulously concealed from us, and whose character we could not decypher; how much more uncomfortable and dangerous to th |