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piness, the centre of all providential plans, and of all divine perfections, Dr. K. makes no reference!

There is a long and highly figurative sentence, p. 3. which we could wish to quote, by way of caution to young writers, against suffering a diminutive thought to be trampled down and destroyed, by a crowding train of ill-sorted and lawless metaphors. It is worthy the attention of any lecturer on rhetoric and style.

Dr. K. proceeds to praise the Chapel, and humbly hopes, that "the divine architect will also pronounce that it is good." He then sets up "a cold hearted objector" to ask, very foolishly, What is the necessity for any more places of worship? With the cruel wantonness of a kitten, Dr. Knox suspends the fate of this objector, while he catches another. Against the new one, he proves irrefragably, that it is very meet and right to set apart time and place for the worship of God, who, as we are here assured, "has deigned to shew a predilection for religious edifices, and for modes of worship, adorned and recommended with all that the art of man can contrive, or his dexterity execute, the finest productions of mechanical ingenuity, the melody of music, the pathos of poetry, the sublimity of architecture, the pencil's blazonry, and the highwrought decorations of the chisel." If this should not be sufficient to prove, that Dr. Knox is a perfect Cicero,' he adds, "I might conduct your imaginations through the ailes of the abbey, and point to the concave dome of the cathedral; I might bring before you the vivid images of the sculptured marble on the wall, the painted canvas at the altar-piece, the storied illuminations of the window, the rich embellishments of the shrine, and all the graces of Gothic and Grecian architecture," (i. e. might say the same things over again;) all this, too, he might do, without convincing a single person, that earthly attractions have been recommended by the lawgiver of Christians, as tending to place the affections on things above, and to spiritualize religious worship, or that the exhibition of human ingenuity, in its noblest triumphs, is likely to cherish humility and contrition of heart.

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Now, return we to that poor quaking objector; to whose utter confusion, Dr. Knox thus demonstrates, in a compendious way, the propriety and necessity of building a chapel in St. George's Fields. He affirms that in many parts of the country, a very small church is situated, at the top of a high hill, at the extremity of a parish twenty or thirty miles in length, so that pious people have never entered their own lawful place of worship, except at their baptism and their burial; and even at those times, not without expence, labour, and difficulty:" This is truly a pitiable case; what! a person cannot go to his VOL. III. Dd

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own lawful place of worship, even on such emergencies as to be baptized and buried, without labour and expense! Now if this plain tale of a crying grievance, does not prove, as Dr. Knox means it should, the propriety of building a chapel, for the use of the Philanthropic Society, in St. George's Fields, we beg to ask, what can? After this, it was idle to hint at the advantage of keeping the children within the walls of this excellent institution; this was a kind of argument, which any simpleton might have used, but only Dr. Knox could ever have thought of the other.

Dr. Knox says, that "tens of thousands, (from the want of parish churches) are condemned to live and die in the darkness of heathenism." This, with submission, we think seditious; a declaration of grievances is, in our opinion, scarcely to be distinguished from a petition for reform.

Dr. Knox farther hints, that the paucity of parish churches, tends to increase the number of places of worship unfriendly to the establishment; but he says, that he will not utter, on this occasion, those invectives against dissenters and methodists, which he thinks it his duty to recite before his own congregation; he will abstain in tenderness to some present. Did he abstain? We have heard of a person, who, on such an occasion, did not scruple to stigmatize these instructors of their neglected brethren, as mountebanks and fanatical empirics to compare their places of preaching to a stage, and the holy truths which they teach to deleterious nostrums; to represent them as dangerous men, the circumvention of whose designs was the purpose for which more churches were chiefly desirable; and, finally, to exclaim with daring patriotism, "The Church is in danger!" We cannot revere the integrity, nor envy the feelings, of the man who could thus profane the pulpit; but we must admire the prudence of Dr. Knox, who has not suffered any expressions of this sort to stain the sermon now before us.

As a specimen of the Dr.'s best manner, we select a paragraph most artfully wrought up, with a design to melt the hearts of the audience, and empty their pockets. Referring to the worthy and humane patrons of this charity, he says,

They traced with the keen sagacity of affectionate, philanthropic ardour, the footsteps of affliction, marked as it was by tears! to her hiding place, in the obscurest outskirts of the great city. They caught a view of the pale, emaciated, squallid infant; pining with pestilence, inhaling putridity, clothed in rags, ghastly, sickly, full of sores; not only unknowing where to find a medicine for his sickness and a salve for his sores, but even sustenance, the little pittance nature wants for the passing day-therefore tempted (but it was through HUNGER) to pilfer a morse

*Will Dr. K. take the trouble to mention a place of worship, that is not lawful? there are persons who would take his information,

of bread, but it was only a morsel; or through COLD (and bitter blew the blast), a covering; (but it was a tattered covering) or some vile, neglected article, (dreadful expedient !) to barter for either; and instantly seized for the theft, and held fast by the iron grasp of justice.'

It is easy to see in what sense Dr. K. understands the cele brated maxim,-that if he wished to affect his auditors, he must appear extremely affected himself. And if this picturesque, parenthetical, and most touching history, broke, as we will suppose, by sighs and sobs, did not penetrate their relentless bosoms,-it must at least excite their astonishment.

We have dwelt too long on these points; we have seen enough of Dr. Knox's taste as an orator, and something of his catholicism as a clergyman; the serious reader will naturally inquire' for the solemn appeal to the consciences of all his hearers, for his exhortations to the rich, for his instructions to the young, and especially for his cautions against that pride and presumption, which commonly arise in the heart of man, when he has made some petty sacrifice at the altar of charity. We assure the reader, that nothing of all this is to be found in the whole sermon, except what is contained in a recommendation to the audience to be" PROUD" of their character as Englishmen, and in the following sentence, which crowns the various pleas to their liberality:

There is an hour coming to us all, when the very best of us will be glad to look back to any good, however little, we may have done in this short life, hoping to propitiate the great Judge at the awful tribunal!! p. 23.

We no longer wonder at Dr. Knox's antipathy to the Enthusiasts, Fanatics, and (to sum up all the atrocities of religious zeal in one term of extreme reproach) the Methodists. They, indeed, preach another Gospel; they would preach, that all men have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; that by the deeds of the law no flesh living can be justified; that, on the contrary, we must be justified freely by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; and after recommending benevolence toward the poor and the destitute, as our indispensable duty, enforcing it on the grounds of obligation and gratitude to the Redeemer, and urging it as a necessary evidence of love to him, and of a share in the dispositions and blessings of his gospel, like him, they would bid us confess, We are unprofitable servants. Now this is absolutely hostile to that mongrel religion, half pharisee and half pagan, which dares to assert, that Englishmen generally are as good as theyshould be, and that giving money toward reforming little boys and girls, is an effort of supererogatory excellence, that will purchase the connivance of the great Judge, for all the iniquity and rebellion which prevail in the unregenerated heart. It is not surprising, that the advocate of this delusion should abhor the

preachers of those truths; or that we, who believe them, should pity and lament his awful infatuation.

The discourse has no specified arrangement; but the fol lowing is obviously the real one; 1. Flattery to the chapel 2. Flattery to the institution; 3. Flattery to the audience. It is a wearisome procession of pompous words, parallel phrases, cumbrous periods, and antiquated imagery, whose vacancy of sense is happily set off by the gaudiness of their attire, and the stateliness of their motion. Destitute, as it is, of every me rit which a sermon ought to possess, we hesitate to say, among its characteristic faults, which is more worthy of contempt and censure, the adulation, or the self-conceit; the poverty of thought, or the profusion of tasteless and pedantic ornament; the exclusion of all evangelical sentiment and useful admonition, or the dissemination of false hopes and antichristian error. Dr. K., however, has not chosen to give us an opportunity of adding to this list of his offences, that of printing a libel on zealous and disinterested Christians..

Art. XVI. A Complete Pocket Dictionary of the English and German Lan¥ guages. By the Rev. W. Render, D. D. 12mo. pp. 1040. Price 17. 15. Symonds, 1807.

A Complete dictionary of any two languages, is more than we

ever have seen, or expect to see. Few people, if any, are completely acquainted with the language in which they have al ways been accustomed to converse: how much less with any other! Such a work, therefore, the public have no right to demand; but they may justly object to a title-page, in which it is announced.

The German language is, in every respect, worthy of more general attention, than it has yet obtained in our country. The numerous and excellent publications which it comprises, its great purity and antiquity, its force and copiousness, and especially its intimate relation to the English language, render the study of it an important object of liberal education among us. Our acquaintance with it is certainly increasing; but it may be doubted whether it is indebted, for this honour, to any of these recommendations. If a mer chant's clerk, who understands German, did not find it of pecuniary advantage to him, all its other attractions, very probably, would fail to excite notice.

It is chiefly to mercantile readers, or to young students of the language, that a work of this kind, is adapted to be useful. Every school-boy knows the advantages of a small dictionary over a large one; and every linguist knows its comparative deficiencies. These, however, in some manual lexicons, are much greater than in others; and we cannot but regard it as one of

considerable importance in Dr. Render's present publication, that he has omitted to indicate the parts of speech, to which either the English, or the German words, in his dictionary, be long. This defect is indeed partially supplied by the addition of the articles to the German substantives; the genders of which, also, are thus denoted: but we think it rather a hardship on a learner, that he should have no farther help to distinguish between a substantive and a verb, than the following laconic intimation:

"Comb, der Kamm, kammen."

He will, however, be much worse off in some instances. If he wishes to learn how the verb to taste, and the different senses of the nom Taste, should be expressed in German, he will obtain no other reply from the present oracle, than the single word kosten. Indeed, Dr. Render's plan seems to have betrayed him into the omission of many common English words. In vain would a hungry lad ask for a meal of victuals, if he used Dr. Render's only term for meal. His acquisition would probably be a handful of flour (das Mehl.) Yet while necessary words are left out, more than one half of the articles on the first page are utterly superfluous. A list of these will shew them to be mere incumbrances on a pocket dictionary. Abacot, Abacted, Abactor, Abalienate, Abalienation, Abannition, Abaptiston, Abarcy, Abare, Abarticulation. We cannot suppose, that during the fourteen years in which Dr. R. has taught the German language to English people, he has ever found occasion for these words. We can assure him, after conversing in English four times as many years, that we never used, or heard, one of these words, in our lives.

To the German and English part of the work, Dr. R. has prefixed directions for pronouncing the sounds of the German al phabet. Most of these are just: but some of them, as in almost every similar attempt, are likely to mislead a learner. We were surprised to find no other guide to the sound of the long German a, than that of the English a in father; or of the short German a than that of the English in glass. If the former does not more nearly resemble our sound of aw, and the latter our short 0, our cars most grossly deceived us, when conversing for some years with well educated natives of Upper and Lower Saxony. The long German i is explained by the English i in ship, the short one by the same in fig. Quere, how does Dr. R. pronounce ship, in order to create his distinctions betwen the long and the short sounds?

We are told that the i in the English words shirt and bird, have (has) a striking similarity with "(oe). We confess hav ing never been struck with the similarity of these sounds. The

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