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The Thunder Storm.

POETRY.

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In the sun's tormenting rays.

O'er the sick and sultry plains,
Through the dim delirious air,
Agonizing silence reigns,

And the wanness of despiar;
Nature faints with fervent heat-
Ah! her pulse hath ceas'd to beat.
Now in deep and dreadful gloom,
Clouds on clouds, portentous spread,
Black as if the day of doom

Hung o'er NATURE's shrinking
head:

Lo! the lightning breaks from high-
GOD is coming! GoDis nigh!

Hear ye not his chariot wheels,

As the mighty thunder rolls! NATURE, startled NATURE reels,

From the centre to the poles; Tremble! ocean, earth and sky! Tremble! GOD is passing by! Darkness, wild with horror, forms

His mysterious hiding place; Should he, from his ark of storms, Rend the veil and show his face,

At the judgment of his eye,
All the universe would die.
Brighter, broader lightnings flash,

Hail and rain tempestuous fall;
Louder, deeper thunders crash,
Desolation threatens all;
Struggling Nature gasps for breath,
In the agony of death.

GOD of VENGEANCE! from above,
While thine awful bolts are hurl'd,
O remember thou art LovE!

Spare! O spare a guilty world!
Stay thy flaming wrath awhile,
See thy bow of promise smile!
Welcome, in the eastern cloud,

Messenger of Mercy still!
Now, ye winds, proclaim aloud,

"Peace on earth, to man good will!!
Nature!-God's repenting child,
See thy Parent reconcil'd!
Hark! the Nightengale, afar,

Sweetly sings the sun to rest,
And awakes the evening star

In the rosy tinted west:
While the moon's enchanting eye
Opens Paradise on high !
Cool aud tranquil is the night,

NATURE's sore afflictions cease,
From the storm, that spent its might,
Was a covenant of peace :
VENGEANCE drops her harmless rod;
MERCY is the POWER OF GOD!

OBITUARY.

DIED at Reading, October 3d, Mr. TURNER GILBERT, in the 28th year of his age. An appropriate discourse was delivered the Sunday following, by the Rev. Deacon Elijah G. Plumb, from Sam. iii. 32....But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies The marked composure and settled firmness, manifested by this during his long decline, evidently prove, that his faith was not the visionary young man phantom of an idle dream; but a reasonable and well grounded hope of happy immortality.

At Waterbury, Sept. 26th, in the 38th year of his age, of a sudden illness, RICHARD WELTON, Jun. He was a man of an agreeable, friendly and kind disposition. His friends who best knew him, can testify that a spir it of benevolence governed his heart, and appeared in his life: that he was unwilling to return evil, disposed to do right, and even gloried to overcome evil with good. He was indeed naturally diffident, yet still he ever manifested s firm attachment and love to the path of his duty. The only anchor of his hope was the merits of his Savior, and the rule of his obedience the word of God. The day subsequent, his funeral was attended by a large concourse of people, and a sermon preached on the subject of mortality, from Psalm xlviii. 14...For this God is our God forever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death.

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Memoirs of the Right Reverend Samuel Horsley, LL. D. F. R. and A. SS. late Lord Bishop of St. Asaph.

[Concluded from page 366.]

THE primary charge of the bishop to his clergy at Rochester, in 1796, was printed the same year, and contains a very striking picture of the times, particularly with regard to religion, and an exact delineation of the advantages, difficulties, and duties of the clergy. "We are fallen," says he, "upon times which, more perhaps, than any which the christian church hath seen, since its first struggles with the powers of darkness in the three first centuries, require in the preachers of the gospel, those two qualities in particular, which our Lord told the twelve he required in them, when first he invested them with their high commission, the policy "of the serpent united with the harmlessness of the dove."

In noticing the advantages of human learning, he repeats and amplifies what he had observed in his ordination sermon at Gloucester. "Learning," he says, "is to us the best substitute for that preternatural illumination of the understanding, which was the privilege of the first preachers."

There is one passage in this charge which deserves to be extracted, and very carefully to be considered by those ministers, who, by way of excusing their inattention to the studies peculiar to their function, gravely say, that they are engaged in the study of men.

"So far as it has fallen in my way," says the bishop, "to observe the good effects of this study of men, they amount not certainly to what those who addict themselves to the pursuit, tell us we might expect from it. I have never perceived among these juvenile di-. vines any extraordinary unction in the usual strain of preaching; nor have I discovered any thing more seemly, in the fashion of their lives, than the common polish of good breeding. Of all that wear the garb of clergymen, they have certainly the least about them, either of the policy of the serpent or of the harmlessness of the dove. And if the taste for this study of men, with a neglect of books, and the true study of men, should become general among our younger brethren, (which God avert!) the enemy in the next generation, will be likely to regain the advantageous post we have for centuries maintained."

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In this year, also, the bishop presented to the learned world, but without his name, a very elaborate disquisition, "On the prosodies of the Greek and Latin languages," dedicated, in warm terms of friendship, to lord Thurlow, whom he compliments on his taste and skill in the subject of this profound investigation.

The signs of the times seem to have strongly drawn the attention of Dr. Horsley to the subject of the prophecies of the old and new testaments; of the success of which application he published an excellent specimen in 1799, under the title of " Critical Disquisitions on the xviiith chapter of Isaiah, in a letter to Edward King, Esq." That respectable veteran in literature, had not long before published a treatise on the signs of the times, in which, though there are undoubtedly many valuable remarks, there is also, as in most of his writings, much of what is fancifully ingenious. This chapter in particular, which according to bishop Lowth, is one of the most obscure prophecies in the whole book of Isaiah," Mr. King considered not only as yet to be fulfilled, but as representing the restoration of the Jewish nation by means of France, which he supposed to be figured under the description of "a land shadowing with wings;" because the map of that empire, in his opinion, has something of that appearance. This notion is visionary enough to make one smile; but our learned prelate, who always lived on terms of intimacy with the worthy author, took up the subject in a grave manner, and has given us the best version and explanation of this difficult chapter, which can be found in language. He observes in the introduction, that, "first the prophecy, indeed, predicts some woeful judgment; but the principal matter of the prophecy is not judgment, but mercy, a gracious promise of the final restoration of the Israelites. Secondly, the prophecy has no respect to Egypt, or any of the contiguous countries. What has been applied to Egypt is a description of some people or another, destined to be the principal instruments in the hand of Providence in the great work of the re-settlement of the Jews in the Holy Land, a description of that people by characters by which they will be evidently known when the time arrives. Thirdly, the time for the completion of the prophecy was very remote, when it was delivered, and is yet future; being, indeed, the season of the second advent of our Lord."

What the country is which is to be the instrument in the hand of God for the restoration of Israel, the bishop does not attempt to determine; but he is decidedly of opinion, that "the atheistical democracy of France is not destined to so high an office;" it should seem, however, from the following passage, that he was not without an idea and hope, that the British Isles may be intended: "The country, therefore, to which the prophet calls, is characterized as one, which in the days of the accomplishment of this prophecy, shall be a great maritime and commercial power, forming remote allianees, making distant voyages to all parts of the world with expedition and security, and in the habit of affording protection to their friends and allies."

This important publication was followed in 1800, by a charge delivered at the second visitation of the diocese of Rochester, and which was printed at the request of the clergy. In this charge, the bishop

took a review of the confederacy formed and carried on against religion on the continent, and the consequent apostacy of the French nation from christianity; whence he inferred, that "this was but the begining of that apostacy, from which the great antichrist is to arise." Our prelate's opinion on the subject of antichrist, is farther given in his letter to Mr. King, and is so curious, and at the present moment becomes so interesting, that we shall give the description as drawn by his masterly hand.

"I confess I cannot discern any immediate signs of the fall of antichrist; I fear, I see too clearly the rise, instead of the fall of the antichrist of the west; or rather I fear, I see him rapidly advancing to full stature and ripe age. His rise, strictly speaking, the beginning of this monster, was in the apostolic age: for it were easy to trace the pedigree of French philosophy, jacobinism, and Bavarian illumination, up to the first heresies. But it is now we see the adelescence of that man of sin, or rather of lawlessness, who is to throw uff all the restraints of religion, morality, and custom, and undo the bands of civil society. The son of perdition, who is to arise out of an apostacy, not a constructive apostacy, never understood to be such by those to whom the guilt has been imputed, but an open, undisguised apostacy. The son of perdition, who shall be neither a protestant, nor a papist; neither christian, Jew, nor heathen; who shall worship neither God, angel, nor saint; who will neither supplicate the invisible Majesty of heaven, nor fall down before an idol. He will magnify himself against every thing that is called God, or is worshipped; and with a bold flight of impiety, soaring far above his precursors and types in the times of paganism, the Sennacheribs, the Nebuchadnezzars, the Antiochus's, and the heathen emperors, will claim divine honors to himself exclusively, and consecrate an image of himself. I doubt not but this monster will be made an instru ment of that pruning which the vine must undergo."

And thus in the charge, the bishop observes, "In the odious French Republic, aping the manners, gra ping the dominion, speak ing to friends and enemies the high vaunting language of ancient Rome, we seem to behold the dreadful apocalyptic beast, which, at the time of the desolation of the pagan whore, exhibited in vision to St. John, had been, but was not, but was to be again; we seem, I say, to behold in the French Republic this dreadful monster beginning to rise, in its ancient form, out of the raging sea of anarchy and irreligion."

The reason why the bishop was so particular upon this subject in his charge, he assigns to be the desire of impressing upon the minds of his hearers, the magnitude of the danger which threatens all christendom, and in urging upon them, the assiduity which the dreadful crisis required of them, in watching over the souls committed to their care.

He then calls their attention to the moral and religious condition of things at home, and he lays open the stratagems made use of by the enemy to revolutionize the country under the pretence of refor mation; but says he, "instead of divesting religion of its mysteries, and reducing it to a mere philosophy in speculation, and to a mere morality in practice; the plan is now to effect a great zeal for or

thodoxy; to make great pretensions to an extraordinary measure of the Holy Spirit's influence; to alienate the minds of the people from the established clergy, by representing them as sordid worldlings; without any concern about the souls of men; indifferent to the religion which they ought to teach, and to which the laity are attached; and destitute of the spirit of God. In many parts of the kingdom, new conventicles have been opened in great numbers, and congregations formed of one knows not what denomination. The pastor is often, in appearance at least, an illiterate peasant or mechanic. The congregation is visited occasionally by preachers from a distance. Sunday schools are opened in connection with these conventicles. There is much reason to suspect that the expences of these schools and conventicles are defrayed by associations formed in different places. For the preachers and schoolmasters are observed to engage in expences for the support and advancement of their institutions, to which, if we may judge from appearance, their own means must be altogether inadequate. The poor are even bribed, by small pecuniary gifts from time to time, to send their children to these schools of they know not what, rather than to those connected with the established church, in which they would be bred in the principles of true religion and loyalty."

This strong, but just representation, excited the indignation of the sectaries, and one illiterate teacher of the calvinistical cast, published a rude attack upon the bishop, which was re-echoed again, in an equally liberal manner, in that delectable vehicle of nonsense and fanaticism, the Evangelical Magazine.

In the following year, bishop Horsley favored the world with a new translation of Hosea, accompanied with an excellent dissertation and notes; but as an account was given of this valuable work in our first volume, we shall say nothing more upon it here, than that its reception was such as to occasion a second edition in 1804. To this edition the learned author appended a sermon on Christ's descent into hell, of which also a review was given in our seventh volume, page 51. In 1802, the bishop was translated to the see of St. Asaph, on the death of the amiable and pious bishop Bagot. In the preceding year he was thought of for the primacy of Ireland, vacant by the death of archbishop Newcome, but, after some consideration, he declined that station, to which Dr. Stuart, his successor at St. David's, was appointed.

The bishop sustained a heavy affliction in April 1805, by the death of his second wife, a woman of a most amiable temper, charitable, and devout, yet of lively manners, and very agreeable in conversation. She died of a dropsical complaint which had been accumulating several years, and which she bore with christian meekness and resignation. Her remains were deposited near the altar in Newington church, where soon after, the bishop placed a monument, on which he recorded her virtues, and his feelings, in an elegant Latin inscription.

In the summer of 1805, the bishop published an ingenious and scientific tract, "On Virgil's two Seasons of Honey, and his season of sowing Wheat. With a new and compendious method of investigating the Risings and Settings of the fixed Stars," addressed in an af

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