THE RELIGION OF THE POETS.

WHA

THOMAS MOORE

HAT were Moore's religious principles?—and what was his religious life, as exhibited in his poetry? In seeking an answer, we may safely follow the friendly verdict of Lord John Russell: he would be dead to genius, to the beautiful in poetry, to the exquisitely pathetic in sentiment, or the melodious in rhythm, who can for a moment deny to Moore one of the highest places among our sons of song. Lord John is not averse to place him side by side, though in a separate sphere, with Byron, Burns, and Scott, and we do not dispute the decision. Brilliant talents, ever-sparkling wit, an affection to those whom he loved, whether parent, wife, child, or friend, which refused to be damped by adversity, or diminished by distance, all signalized Thomas Moore. The man who could write to his mother twice each week during his whole public life, as Moore punctiliously did, must have been possessed of an affection as deep as it was persistent; and one loves him for that, far more than for the beauty of his verses, or the exhaustless fertility of his genius. His independence also, of which his friendly biographer says that he "would not sully its white robe for any object of ambition or of vanity," commands our homage, especially when we know that he was often pressed by poverty, and had not seldom to purchase by the labors of the brain what was needed for the wants of the body. That much conceded, however, we fear that we have nearly exhausted our praise. Throughout his life we miss the fear of God; we cannot see the recognition of the great remedial system, and the principles which spring from it. We trace a generous and a gifted nature through its meanderings on earth toward eternity; but the everpresent One in whom we live, and move, and have our being, has not his place in that heart. Amid all that is beautiful in affection, or exquisite in taste, God is an exception, the Redeemer does not appear; all proceeds much as if he had never alighted on our world to take away sin, and guide men to purity and virtue.

But hear his noble biographer speak of the poet's "strong feelings of devotion, his aspirations, his longings after life and immortality, and his submission to the will

of God;" of "his love of his neighbor, his charity, the Samaritan kindness for the distressed, his good-will to all men." Hear Lord John continuing, "In the last days of his life, he frequently repeated to his wife, Lean upon God, Bessy; lean upon God.' That God was love, was the summary of his belief; and that a man should love his neighbor as himself, seems to have been the rule of his life."

:

Now, in all this, it would appear that the poet of Ireland was much in the habit of keeping the first, and the great commandment-love to God; and the second, which is like unto it-the love of our neighbor as ourselves and did facts warrant the conclusion, O, who would not rejoice in the verdict! But do facts warrant the decision? Ah, no. We follow Thomas Moore from land to land, and see him through decade after decade of his life. We see him amid the tropical glories of Bermuda, and the grandeur of some of the noblest scenes in North America. We accompany him to Italy, and the sunny South-the lands which have "the fatal gift of beauty." We notice how he luxuriates amid such scenes: how he weeps for very joy at sunset among the Alps; or stands in awe, as if "the fountains of the great deep had been broken up," before Niagara. Everywhere he is captivated with

"The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills;" and everywhere he pours forth poetry beautified all over with exquisite versification, with deep passion, and with eager patriotism. Lord John Russell may be right when he speaks of his "longings after life and immortality;" but it does not appear that it was the life and immortality brought to light in the gospel.

And it is just here that faithfulness to the truth of God commands us to enter a solemn protest against what passes so often for devotion, especially among our poets. It is not by the poetry of religion that men are prepared to grapple with the ills, or master the temptations of life; it is by the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ: and wherever that simple truth is ignored, the Christian will lodge his protest, even though the error be held by a genius like that which exalted Moore among the sons of fame.

And we notice that the religion of sen

timent, or poetry, is utterly insufficient to fortify man for the rude onset which virtue must sustain in life. Nay, the most exquisite of our poets, the men whose "feelings of devotion" were the deepest, or in whom "the poetry of religion" was the presiding power, were alternately the victims and the dupes of something far worse than folly. This was notoriously the case with Burns, with Byron, and many more; and the poet Moore is no exception to the general law. His noble biographer attempts, indeed, to defend his licentiousness; but surely a Christian child can understand the strange incongruity between confessed "licentiousness" and deep "feelings of devotion." It may be true that Horace was very licentious, and that, notwithstanding, he is "the delight of our clerical instructors;" but what has the heathen Horace to do with a professing follower, as Moore was, of the holy Saviour of the lost? Or was it safe in one breath to confess that some of Moore's poems "should never have been written, and far less printed ;" and in the next breath to palliate their licentiousnesstheir offense against all that is pure and holy-by gently "classing them with those of other amatory poets who have allowed their fancy to roam beyond the limits which morality and decorum would prescribe." A strange concession that, regarding one whose devotion was so deep, whose charity to all men was so like the good Samaritan's! Even Moore himself has confessed to the wildness of his verses; and we must ask again concerning such "melodious advocates of lust," in the name and for the honor of true devotion, can it coexist with a licentiousness which modesty dare not quote, a wildness which even self-love cannot disguise? To argue on that supposition is to do all that man can to degrade devotion; it is to mingle the heavenly and the human, the pure and the polluted; it is to insnare the ignorant and efface the eternal distinction which God has appointed between the religion which comes from heaven, and the religion which originates in the heart of man. Another poet has said that "the man, woman, or child, who is not delighted with the songs of Burns, be their virtues what they may, must never hope to be in heaven;" and it is not an uncommon sentiment, we fear, that the poetic temperament, with its "fine

frenzy," and its "longings after life and immortality," is a preparative for heavena substitute for that holiness of nature and of life which the holy God requires, and has made rich provision for imparting to

man.

We are aware of the aversion which many feel thus to uncover the sins of the gifted, and we feel it. We are alive to the appeal not to drag their frailties from their dread abode. But truth has stronger claims than the memory of gifted men. Against all attempts to vindicate them at the expense of truth, or upon its ruins, we must again and again protest; and when the man who is thus defended could vindicate his attacks upon religion as Moore did, by quoting Pascal, and saying, "There is a wide difference between laughing at religion, and laughing at those who profane it by their extravagant opinions," we must beware lest that be the name by which worldly men assail the true religion of God, the truth which the Saviour taught, which Paul and John taught, the very truth which came from heaven to guide men to its glory and its God.

If we turn to Moore's own views of purity, we find him saying in his preface to "The Loves of the Angels," that he had "tried allegorically to shadow out the fall of the soul from its original purity, the loss of light and happiness which it suffers in the pursuit of the world's perishable pleasures, and the punishments both from conscience and divine justice with which impiety, pride, and presumptuous inquiry into the awful secrets of heaven are sure to be visited." And since Moore has told us so, we must believe that he meant what he said. But has he done what he attempted? Nay, does not the very poetry to which these words form a preface, rank among the most impure and seductive in our tongue? Have not the licentious quoted them, and felt their licentiousness increased? Has not the libertine gloated over them, and deemed his libertinism excused? Such productions, indeed, emanating from one who is eulogized for his devotional feelings, and his longings after life and immortality, are only a fascinating way of scattering firebrands, arrows, and death. It is Satan in the garb of an angel of light; the meretricious, the polluting, and the gross, vailed with the flimsy covering of

But this man, the summary of whose creed is said to have been "God is love," and the rule of whose life was good-will to all, has enabled us to judge by another test besides his poetry. He once fought a duel; and there are incidents connected with that transaction which shed a very lurid light upon his feelings of devotion. When preparing for his work, which might have been one of blood, and which was so in the eyes of God, it does not appear that he was checked by any consideration but the state of his finances. He was too poor to rush on the instant to assail his antagonist, or he says he would have done it. And when he sat down to write his challenge, he is careful to tell that he couched it in such phrase as made compromise or apology hopeless. "You are a liar; yes, sir, a liar," were the words which one, whose creed was, "God is love," hurled against the man who had accused Moore of attempting to corrupt his fellow-men by his grossly licentious poetry. For the duel he bought ammunition, he says, "for a score ;" and after the combatants became the laughing-stock of a kingdom, Moore deliberately says, "Though the business were to be gone through again, I should feel it to be my duty to do it." My duty, he unconsciously means, to shed blood; my duty, to run the risk of appearing before my God charged with a double murder-my own, and that of a fellow mortal. Nay,

"My bosom's lord sits lightly in its throne," were the boastful words which Moore quoted on a review of the whole. O how deep the delusion which blinds the heart of man, if things like these be deemed compatible with a creed whose summary is "GOD IS LOVE!"

In the thirty-one poems which Moore has called his "Sacred Songs," what hint is there to tell the soul of the way to pardon and to peace? The religion of emotion is there; but where is the foundation, truth? Truth is named. The gospel is likened to sunrise; and we are told in lines worthy of Moore, that

"As fresh the dreaming world awoke,
In truth's full radiance then :"

but withal, we find nothing to which the earnest soul can cling for one moment of

ers, not upon truth; it is regaled with poetry, not with the good tidings of great joy; and the question, "How shall man be just before his God ?" or, "Who shall bring a clean thing out of an unclean ?" disposes forever of all the beauties which so brilliantly sparkle in the "Sacred Songs." Were man only a mourner, and not a sinful mourner, Moore might soothe; but there are sorrows which lie too deep for his appliances. It is the Spirit of God that is the Comforter, as it is the Son of God that is the Saviour; and to neither the one nor the other does the author of the "Sacred Songs" even once distinctly point us.

It is not a little instructive to read in the same volume with the "Sacred Songs," certain malicious lampoons upon Sir Andrew Agnew, in connection with his endeavors to secure the rest of the Sabbath inviolate to man. One of them begins

"As snug in his easy chair of late, On a Sunday evening Sir Andrew sate, Being much too pious, as every one knows, To do aught of a Sunday eve but doze, He dream'd a dream, dear holy man, And I'll tell you his dream as well as I can." Another begins :

"Puir, profligate Londoners, having heard tell, That the deil's got amang you, and fearing 't is true,

We hae sent you a man that's a match for his

spell,

A chiel o' our ain, that the deil himsel Will be glad to keep clear of-one Andrew Agnew."

The man who discharged such verses against one of our truest patriots is said, we repeat, by his noble biographer to have been signalized by his "feelings of devotion," and a "Samaritan charity."

It is too apparent how ineffectual the poetry, or the mere sentiment of religion, must ever prove in repressing the sinfulness of man's heart. It may trim the exterior; it may adorn the coffin; it may place gaudy trappings on the hearse; but it cannot cleanse the sepulcher: and when the light of God's truth is admitted into the dark chambers, then, like the action of the solar microscope upon a drop of water, it brings to light many hideous, monstrous, and misshapen things. But do we pronounce any verdict on the dead, while we thus unmask the insufficiency of their religious opinions? Nay, they stand or fall to their own Master. In Moore,

for instance, we judge the poetry, the opinions, not the man. Tried he often was by poverty and crosses of many kinds. Things took place in his history which he says, "might have put the nine Muses to flight;" and his closing hours were clouded with many woes. Death after death bereft him of those whom he loved with all the ardor of his nature; and as blow after blow descended, he seemed to feel and to love what he had formerly sung :

"O Thou who dry'st the mourner's tear,
How dark this world would be,
If, when deceived and wounded here,
We could not fly to thee!"

Amid these crowding sorrows, who dare say that He who is full of grace was not sought and found? We are far from daring to say it; but this we must say, that judging from the whole tone of his poetry, Moore was one of those who exercised a blighting influence on the morals of his country. The phase of his religion or devotion was spurious, because it was not Scriptural. It was destitute of the basis of truth; he is, in short, a beacon to warn

heaven was that of holy happinesswhile to the mind of Owen, heaven's glory was regarded as consisting in the unvailed manifestation of Christ. The conceptions, though varied, are all true; and Christ, fully seen and perfectly enjoyed, will secure all the others. Let us now trace the few remaining steps that conducted Owen into the midst of this exceeding weight of glory.

Lord Wharton was one of those noblemen who continued their kindness to the Nonconformists in the midst of all their troubles. His country residence at Woburn afforded a frequent asylum to the persecuted ministers; just as we find the castles of Mornay and De Plessis in France opened by their noble owners as a refuge to the Huguenots.

During his growing infirmities, Owen was invited to Woburn, to try the effects of change of air; and also that others of his persecuted brethren, meeting him in this safe retreat, might enjoy the benefit of united counsel and devotion. It appears that while here his bodily infirmities increased upon him, and that he was un

shines.

THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN OWEN.

pen,

HE last production of Owen's THE (observes Dr. Thomson,) was his "Meditations and Discourses on

the

Glory of Christ." It embodies the holy musings of his latest days, and in many parts of it seems actually to echo the praises of the heavenly worshipers.* We may apply to Owen's meditations, as recorded in this book, the words of Bunyan in reference to his pilgrim,-" Drawing near to the city he had yet a more perfect view thereof." It is a striking circumstance that each of the three great Puritan divines wrote a treatise on the subject of heaven, and that each had his own distinct aspect in which he delighted

to view it. To the mind of Baxter the most prominent idea of heaven was that of rest; and who can wonder, when it is remembered that his earthly life was little else than one prolonged disease?—to the mind of Howe, ever aspiring after a purer state of being, the favorite conception of

"Weakness, weariness, and the near approach of death, do call me off from any further labor in this kind."-Preface to Reader.

the time that he had hoped; and a letter written to them from this place gives a vivid reflection of the anxieties of a period of persecution, and a most interesting specimen of Owen's fidelity and affection to his people in the present experience of

suffering, and in the dread of more.

His infirmities increasing, he soon after removed from London to Kensington, for country air: occasionally, however, he was able still to visit London; and an incident which happened to him on one of these visits presents us with another picture of the times. As he was driving along the Strand, his carriage was stopped by two informers, and his horses seized. Greater violence would immediately have followed, had it not been that Sir Edmund Godfrey, a justice of the peace, was passing at the time, and, seeing a mob collected round the carriage, asked what

was the matter. On ascertaining the circumstances, he ordered the informers, with Dr. Owen, to meet him at the house of another justice of the peace, on an appointed day. When the day came, it was

found that the informers had acted so irregularly, that they were not only disappointed of their base reward, but severely reprimanded and dismissed. Thus

once more did Owen escape as a bird from the snare of the fowler.

Retiring still further from the scenes of public life, Owen soon after took up his abode in the quiet village of Ealing, where he had a house of his own, and some property. Only once again did persecution hover over him, and threaten to disturb the sacredness of his declining days, by seeking to involve him and some other of the Nonconformists in the Rye-House plot; but the charge was too bold to be believed, and God was about, ere long, to remove him from the reach of all these evils, and to hide him in his pavilion, from the pride of man, and from the strife of tongues. Anthony Wood has said of Owen, that "he did very unwillingly lay down his head and die;" but how different was the spectacle of moral sublimity presented to the eyes of those who were actual witnesses of the last days of the magnanimous and heavenly-minded Puritan! In a letter to his beloved friend, Charles Fleetwood, on the day before his death, he thus beautifully expresses his Christian affection, and his good hope through grace:—

"DEAR SIR,-Although I am not able to write

one word myself, yet I am very desirous to speak one word more to you in this world, and do it by the hand of my wife. The continuance of your entire kindness, knowing what it is accompanied withal, is not only greatly valued by me, but will be a refreshment to me, as it is, even in my dying hour. I am going to Him whom my soul has loved, or rather who has loved me with an everlasting love,-which is the whole ground of all my consolation.

The passage is very irksome and wearisome,

through strong pains of various sorts, which are all issued in an intermitting fever. All things were provided to carry me to London to-day, according to the advice of my physicians; but we are all disappointed by my utter disability to undertake the journey. I am leaving the ship of the Church in a storm; but whilst the great Pilot is in it, the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable. Live, and pray, and hope, and wait patiently, and do not despond; the promise stands invincible, that he will never leave us, nor forsake us. I am greatly afflicted at the distempers of your dear lady; the good Lord stand by her, and

support and deliver her. My affectionate respects to her, and the rest of your relations, who are so dear to me in the Lord. Remember your dying friend with all fervency. I rest upon it that you do so, and am yours entirely,

"J. OWEN."

The first sheet of his "Meditations on the Glory of Christ" had passed through the press under the superintendence of the Rev. William Payne, a dissenting minis

ter at Saffron-Walden, in Essex; and on that person's calling to inform him of the circumstance on the morning of the day he died, he exclaimed, with uplifted hands and eyes looking upward, "I am glad to hear it; but, O brother Payne! the longwished-for day is come at last, in which I shall see that glory in another manner than I have ever done, or was capable of doing in this world." Still it was no easy thing for that robust frame to be broken to pieces, and to let the struggling spirit go free. His physicians, Dr. Cox and Sir Edmund King, remarked on the unusual strength of the earthly house which was about to be dissolved; while his more constant attendants on that consecrated hour were awe-struck by the mastery which his mighty and heavensupported spirit maintained over his physical agonies. "In respect of sicknesses, very long, languishing, and often sharp and violent, like the blows of inevitable death, yet was he both calm and submiss under all." At length the struggle ceased; and with eyes and hands uplifted, as if his last act was devotion, the spirit of Owen passed in silence into the world of glory. It happened on the 24th of August, 1683, the anniversary of St. Bartholomew's Day;-a day memorable in the annals of the Church of Christ, as that in which two thousand Nonconformist confessors had exposed themselves to poverty and persecution at the call of conscience, and in which heaven's gates had been opened wide to receive the martyred Protestants of France. Eleven days afterward, a long and mournful procession, composed of more than sixty noblemen, in carriages drawn by six horses each, and of many others in mourning-coaches and on horseback, silently followed the mortal remains of Owen along the streets of London, and deposited them in BunhillFields, the Puritan necropolis.

PAUL was a man as strong in natural and acquired parts as any living, and he knew how to word it and to carry it in as lofty strains as any that breathed; yet who more plain in his preaching than Paul? It hath many a time made my heart sad, to think how those men will answer it, in the day of Christ, that affect lofty strains, high notions, and cloudy expressions-that make the plain things of the gospel dark and obscure.—Brooks.