LETTER II.

"Because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon "the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers "with them." EPHES. V. 6, 7.

TO THE REVEREND MR ANDREW THOMSON.

SIR,

THE foregoing letter, which I have presumed to address to your reverend and excellent brother and friend, will supersede the necessity of a formal ceremonious approach to yourself. Like him you have combined the characters of the Scholar and the Divine, and have obtained no inconsiderable share of applause from the learned, and approbation from the good. To you, as to him, the of many are turned as to "a watchman unto the house of Israel," who will warn them of even the distant approach of danger,-as a man whose function has impressed him with much stronger convictions of duty than they are expected to attain, and extended his

eyes

views to the consequences of wickedness farther than their observation is supposed to reach,—as a leader whose steps they are bound to follow, but whose purity they will hardly be required to equal. Your exertions have not been confined to the pulpit; your published Discourses, and the pages of "The Edinburgh "Christian Instructor" have contributed to the propagation of piety, as powerfully as precept can do; and your example, I believe, has hitherto never been wanting to give to precept its due respect and efficacy. From the survey of such a character, it is truly painful to proceed to the consideration, that you are now represented to the public as pledged to countenance and assist the Magazine to which I have adverted in the preceding letter. Your Discourses, I perceive, are advertised on the cover of this work, and your assistance promised in the prospectus. You now see what it is that you are represented as approving, and expected to support and it remains with you to do, in this situation, what you may consider due to the public, yourself, and your own reputation.

I have learned with a mixture of satisfac→ tion and surprise that you, Sir, or Dr M'Crie, or both of you, did remonstrate in the strongest terms with the editor or publisher of this Magazine, against the insertion of the profane ribaldry which now disgraces its pages. That you should refuse to "count that gain " which virtue shuns to win," and should despise the most money-getting line that would make good men the foes of its author, is no more than might have been easily anticipated: but that you should have hoped for a moment to succeed in your remonstrance, and find your advice respected, seems to me as surprising as if you had quoted St Paul to a Turk, or Tom Paine in a sermon, or endeavoured to deter rats from your bacon by inscribing on the shelves of your pantry "Thou shalt not steal." It is said that the best way to make a pig go forward, is to pull him back by the tail: but you have cast your pearls before him, and you see how he has valued them and treated you. I am willing, however, to rejoice in this remonstrance, as an earnest of your's and Dr M'Crie's future conduct towards a publication that has

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so unhandsomely pilloried your names. You will not content yourselves with protesting, like Pilate, that wash your you hands from the scandal and impiety of a work which is countenanced by your names, and which your assistance contributes to circulate and sell. You will not join a party in which you may haply be found with those that fight against the faith;" nor will you place your chair beside that of the scorner, or give place to them that deride things sacred, "

an hour."

no, not for

I can readily foresee that the publisher of this Magazine, (who is also employed by you to publish the Christian Instructor and your own Discourses,) may state abundance of defences for his own share in the publication in question. He is doing nothing else than labouring in his vocation of scraping money; in which, I certainly know of no written law that can oblige him to be as much of a gentleman, and practise as much liberality as his competitor. That he should feel some antiperistaltic sensations at the sale and celebrity of his competitor's Magazine, and hate the cause of his bile, is not to be wondered at.

It is surprising what various and dissimilar views the private interests of different men will deduce from the same object. A tailor, surveying a field of battle, would probably find his heart bleed for the quantity of tailor's work he saw thus inhumanly destroyed; and the same critical and poetical excellence which has attracted public favour and patronage to the new series of the Scots Magazine, has only disordered the liver of its rival's publisher, by suggesting the handfuls of half-crowns that might have rung on his counter, if the monopoly of magazine-making had fallen to his lot. He has loudly exclaimed, that by the destruction of his monopoly, he has been most unhandsomely dealt with: but there are limits to the efficacy of the most artful outcry; and though, like Potiphar's wife, he has got the start of his adversaries in complaint, the facts have supported his story as ill as they did the story of the two elders who imputed their own incontinence to "Susanna." I would not for the world insinuate that so sober a tradesman would gratuitously prefer a profane parody to a more respectable article: on the contrary, I fully believe him so perfectly single mind