NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS, &c.

Mercator has been received.

A Friend to Sailors shall be gratified.

J. R., from Bermuda, has come to hand. An extract in the October PILOT.

B. D. has our best thanks.

C. WOOD, PRINTER, POPPIN'S COURT, FLEET STREET.

OR

SAILORS' MAGAZINE.

NEW SERIES.

FOR OCTOBER, 1837.

CHRISTIAN ZEAL.

An Essay, read at the Monthly Meeting of the Agents of the British and Foreign Sailors' Society, August 11th, 1837, by the Rev. Robert Ferguson, Secretary.

We are not alone in the belief that great misapprehension exists on the subject of Christian zeal. Unless a man keep within a certain prescribed line, or conform his course of action to a certain conceived standard, he is immediately charged with enthusiasm; as if enthusiasm were only another term for fanaticism, or moral frenzy,-the extremes of weakness and extravagance. In certain individuals, and under certain circumstances, it may be the quality of a pampered and disordered imagination; but in others it is the union of the most ardent feeling with the most correct judgment. There are those, the powers of whose minds have never been poised, never balanced,-have never possessed any thing like an equilibrium. Instead of the reasoning power being transcendant, and the power of feeling subordinate, the reasoning faculty is found far feebler than the power of imagination. The consequence is, that such a mind never examines and judges for itself, refuses to attend to any process of investigation, proscribes the spirit of inquiry, and scorns the pursuit of knowledge. Being destitute of those principles which are discovered and embraced as the result of most patient investigation,-being governed only by delicate feelings and impressions, it is not to be wondered that such a mind, like some lawless planet, should wander undirected and uncontrolled, reject the high dictates of judgment and reason, and follow the creations of its own fancy. And since religion, more than any other science, affords more enlarged scope for the play

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of the imagination, in this sublimest science we might have expected to witness the most extravagant manifestations of excitement. Revelation is favourite ground with the enthusiast; having silenced the voice of reason, he can there revel and luxuriate at pleasure. He sits enthroned amid his own creations, the sovereign of an ideal world, holding all minds unworthy of his notice, and every effort of enlightened reason as an invasion of his rights, or usurpation of his prerogative!

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But where there is no error of imagination,where there is no misjudging of realities,-where there are no calculations which reason condemns, the soul, in pursuit of its chosen object, may be on fire with the velocity of its movements. With all this passionate ardour, there is the most perfect intellectual sobriety. Reason is still the predominant faculty. Feeling is subordinate to judgment; and therefore no power, and no intensity of feeling, can be condemned, so long as reason maintains the ascendancy, occupies the throne, and governs the whole empire of the mind. There is then no enthusiasm in the sense which we have described, no approach to fanaticism, or a state of moral frenzy. All is sober, enlightened, rational, consisAnd in the sacred province of religion this is indispensable. Christianity, both in its principles and its duties, addresses itself to our reason; it is in the highest sense rational, and the homage which it demands is the homage of the mind, the mind with all its powers and susceptibilities. But since this homage will never be given till the whole mind is brought under the influence of evangelical principles, let not these principles be depreciated and condemned, if under their influence, the soul should kindle into one intense flame of holy ardour, and expend itself in pursuit of its chosen object. No degree of interest, and no warmth of feeling, can be too great, while the mind is governed by principle, and is devoted to an object which both reason and revelation is when the mind has lost its balance, and the feeling has become predominant, that men are seen to follow the merest vagaries, and embrace every species of extravagance both in sentiment and conduct.

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Christian zeal then is the direction of an enlightened mind to some specific and worthy object. There must, beyond all question, be some object in contemplation, either real or supposed, to enkindle the ardour of the mind. We cannot conceive of any man possessed of common

sense, following what he is convinced is only visionary,what he does not believe to have some positive existence. A fool may pursue his own shadow, and even weary himself in his efforts to embrace it; but a man of sound mind seeks to deal with something more tangible, more substantial and just in proportion to his conceptions of the object before him, will be his ardour in its pursuit. Surely, then, it becomes the Christian fully to inform himself of the object, to the attainment of which, all the great and deathless powers of his mind are to be devoted-the object in which his intensest feelings are to be awakened, and for which his. best energies are to be expended. Knowledge is essential to zeal. There is indeed the zeal of ignorance. Like the Athenians, who reared an altar to "the unknown God," there are men who are zealous for they know not what!or, if they have any thing definite before them, they have hitherto failed to view it through a true medium, and therefore have no proper knowledge of its character. When the great and devoted Jesuit, St. Francis Xavier, undertook his mission to the East, he had a definite object before his mind, the conversion of the Chinese from the philosophy of Confucius to the doctrines of Catholicism; but he was uninformed as to the actual difference which existed between his gorgeous popery and our simple. Christianity, and knew not, that had he converted all China to the faith of Rome, it would have required another and a separate mission to have turned them from the fatal errors of the man of sin, to the vital truths of the Son of God. This higher and more important information would indeed have diverted his mind from the immediate object of his pursuit, but it would not have quenched his zeal. It would only have led him to choose something, which, on the most impartial examination, was more worthy of such an expenditure. His zeal would only have been transferred from one object to another, and that new object, on the decision of an enlightened mind, in every sense superior and more desirable. It therefore follows, that we should avail ourselves of every means within our reach, to inform our minds as to what we undertake and attempt. If there be any possibility whatever of enlarging or correcting our information, we are not permitted to neglect it. In proportion as the mind is enlightened, will be its ardour in pursuit of its chosen object. In proof of this we might refer to those to whom we stand indebted for the discoveries of natural science. It was at no little expenditure of