a regenerate man may be outwardly, as grievous as that of an unconverted person. No sin, except one involving final apostacy, is too heinous to be committed by a real child of God. Yet the righteous and the wicked are not in all respects alike as to indwelling sin. Indeed, the difference between them is immense. The regenerate, far more than unrenewed men, see their own sins against God. The former are considerably enlightened on this point; while the heart of the latter is like a foul room, into which the light shineth not at all, or very dimly. The saint is a sick man who knows his own plague. The sinner is sick, but his disease is very flattering. The nearer he is to death, the better he thinks he is. Any just view of his sins surprises the wicked. He is not familiar with the truth on this weighty matter. He is the anti-type of the Pharisee, but the saint is habitually like the Publican, and he cries, "God be merciful to me a sinner." On the subject of sin, the unregenerate man has but one mind, and that is, to hold it fast; while the converted man has two minds respecting it, one inclining him to it, the other leading him to abhor it. The sinner often has a contest within him, but it is a war between conscience and inclination, or between one sinful desire and another. Yet towards sin his heart is undivided. It is always sweet to him, and holiness is always distasteful to him. Not so the righteous. As the pious old Hebrews expressed it, he has a heart and a heart, or, as our Bible has it, a divided heart. He is carnal, having been sold under sin; yet he hungers and thirsts after righteousness. When he would do good, evil is present with him; yet he does good. The evil that he hates, that he does. The sinner never really wills to do good. His heart is never truly engaged in God's cause. He would do the very evil which he does. His heart is fully set in him to do evil. He frames his doings to that very end. He intends to live as he pleases, whether it pleases God or not. In unregenerate men, sin has the mastery, is the strong man armed, and keeps his goods in peace. All the wicked are the slaves of corruption. They are led captive by the devil at his will. And they love to have it so. If no penal consequences, no shame, no fear, no pain, no death followed transgression, the wicked would never be moved. They often dread the fruit of their evil doings; but they love to do evil. The righteous are not so. Sin has not dominion over them. They do not consent to take sin for a master. They are not workers of iniquity. They do not make a trade of sin. Wickedness is neither their habit, nor their choice. The ungodly sin allowedly, habitually, and because their hearts go after folly. They do nothing else but sin. They may have seasons of remorse, but none of true repentance. They are never betrayed into an act of genuine devotion. Their iniquities grant them no holidays. If they are not serving one strange lust, they are another. They do sell themselves to commit iniquity. The reason is, they have no taste for the things of God, no relish for holiness; while the righteous have not so great a zest for any thing as for God, his word, his favour, and his service. The highest delights of a sinner are the pleasures of the world, or of sin. The exquisite, soul-ravishing enjoyments of a child of God, are in divine things. His heart enters into them with warmth and life. He does truly and greatly delight in them. They are his meat and drink. But the wicked have no heart for them, but are always going out after their covetousness, their pride, their ease, their lusts. The sinner loves the world and the things of the world; but the more a child of God finds himself resting on the things of time, the more is he displeased with himself. So it comes to pass that the wicked do not truly mourn for sin. It is not an abominable thing in their eyes. They love to have vain thoughts lodge within them. To all the wicked, sin in some shape is a sweet morsel under their tongue. To them, stolen waters and forbidden fruit are sweet. Not so with the righteous. They weep for nothing so much, or so bitterly, as for sin. In view of it, Job said, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes;" David said, "My moisture is turned into the drought of summer;" Isaiah said, "Wo is me! for I am a man of unclean lips;" and Paul cried out bitterly, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" In a renewed man, there is a war between grace and corruption, holiness and sin. In the wicked, the current always runs one way. The believer also looks to Christ for deliverance, and says, what should I do but for such a Saviour? while the poor sinner, blinded in unbelief, sees no beauty in Christ, why he should desire him, no fitness in his offices, and no necessity for his aid. One glories in Christ as a Saviour from sin. The other glories not in him at all. To one he is a precious foundation stone; to the other he is a rock of offence. One could do nothing without him; the other feels no need of him. The great hope of the righteous is, that after they have been refined and their dross burnt up, they will cease from sin, and attain to spotless perfection, and so to endless bliss. The wicked have no such hope. Indeed their great fear is, that after this life closes, their joys will all be gone. They have heard that the pleasures of sin are but for a season. They really desire no heaven inconsistent with their strong corruptions. They would sooner live on earth and do as they please, than go to heaven and be subject to Christ. Truly, he who has eyes may discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not. The saint and the sinner are not more alike than sheep and goats, wheat and tares; not more alike than Abel and Cain, Ishmael and Isaac. One is the friend of God; the other is the friend of the world. One is an heir of God, and shall inherit glory; the other is an enemy of God, and shall inherit shame. W. S. P. THE CHRISTIAN WARFARE. Mr. Editor-The following lines are so striking, and so appropriate to every one that would "live godly in Christ Jesus," whether minister or layman, that I enclose them for the pages of the " Presbyterian Magazine," in the hope that, as they speak so stirringly of duty, danger, privilege, and reward, they may leave salutary impressions on the minds and hearts of many of your readers. THE CHRISTIAN WARFARE. Soldier, go-but not to claim Mouldering spoils of earth-born treasure; Not to dwell in tents of pleasure.- Soldier, rest-but not for thee Spreads the world her downy pillow; Foes thou canst not name or number, Soldier, rise the war is done : Triumph!-all thy foes are banished, KOSSUTH, LIBERTY, AND PROTESTANTISM. We unite with true-hearted American citizens in welcoming the noble Magyar to our shores. Louis Kossuth is the representative of Liberty of injured Liberty in the continent of despots and of Protestantism-injured Protestantism in the realms of anti-Christ. All hail to the champion of political and religious freedom! There are three or four points connected with the political history of Hungary, which may be profitably recalled at the present time. 1. A long series of wars has been maintained by Hungary against Austria, in defence of its own constitutional monarchy. The house of Hapsburg has for the last three centuries made aggressions upon Hungarian liberty. Its encroachments have been artful and persevering, until at length it wielded an influence in the Diet, hostile to Hungarian prosperity, and subversive of constitutional power. 2. During the last twenty-five years, some of the leading men of Hungary have been attempting measures of reform; and the crisis of this contest was reached in 1848, under the influence of the talents, eloquence, and zeal of LOUIS KOSSUTH. This gentleman was born in 1804, at Monok, in the upper part of Hungary. He early showed an interest in public affairs, commenced the practice of the law, attended the meetings of the Diet, and skilfully reported its proceedings. His zeal for liberal principles cost him three years' imprisonment by Austria; but he returned from captivity with a heart more inflamed with the love of liberty, and more hostile to Hapsburg dominion. He soon became the leader in the Hungarian struggle, and gave shape to the legislation which ended in the Revolution. The Diet of 1847-8, of which he was the master spirit, announced officially the following programme: "We hold it our duty, openly and clearly to point out the principal questions, whose prompt solution we believe necessary for the good of the country. 1. The equal distribution of the public burdens. 2. Participation of the non-nobles, of the inhabitants of the royal cities, and of the districts, in legislative and municipal rights. 3. Equality before the law. 4. The abolition of the urbarial dues, with indemnity to the landed proprietors. 5. Security given to credit and property by the abolition of the imperial dues. We shall strenuously labour to call into life all that can tend to the material and intellectual development of the country. We shall endeavour to give to popular education, that powerful engine of national development, such a direction as shall form able and patriotic citizens, that the people may, by this means, likewise attain to personal independence." General Klapka, in his memoirs of the war which ensued, thus describes the aims and measures of the reformers: "All the energies of the true patriots were directed to a measure which they had long advocated, but in which they had been uniformly foiled by the intrigues of the Vienna Cabinet, viz: to the liberation of the peasantry from feudal burdens; to the legal equality of all; and the right of every citizen to acquire and to hold landed property. "In the Parliament of 1847, before the outbreak of the great European Revolution the Hungarian peasantry were emancipated and relieved from all urbarial burdens." These laws were passed by the Diet in March, 1848, and obtained the reluctant sanction of the Emperor on April 11th. Thus were the measures of constitutional reform triumphantly successful through the influence of Louis Kossuth.* 3. The stirring news of the French revolution having reached Vienna at this period, the Emperor was compelled to issue a manifesto on March 4th, 1848, making large concessions to popular rights. The Sclavonic races in Hungary seem to have preferred Austrian rule, under a government of their own, to a continued union with the Hungarian Diet, which was under the influence of the Magyars. This hostility of the races led to the invasion of Hungary by the Croats under Jellachich; and Austria insidiously promoted the contest, if it did not originate it,† for the purpose of recovering the rights already conceded to Hungary. Austria soon became involved in the war, taking sides with the Croats and other Sclaves against the Magyars; but the latter gained victory after victory over both Croats and Austrians, and in the spring of 1849 drove the invaders from their soil. In April the independence of Hungary was declared, and LOUIS KOSSUTH, the master spirit of constitutional reform, as well as of the military campaign, was Governor of the kingdom. 4. On the 1st of May, 1849, so thoroughly had the Hungarians beaten Austria, that the Imperial edict announced that an appeal for aid had been made to Russia, and that the Czar "had readily * The historian Alison says, "by unanimous votes of both houses, the Diet not only established perfect equality of civil rights and public burdens amongst all classes, denominations, and races in Hungary and its provinces, and perfect toleration for every form of religious worship, but, with a generosity perhaps unparalleled in the history of nations, and which must extort the admiration even of those who may question the wisdom of the measure, the nobles of Hungary abolished their own right to exact either labour or produce in return for the lands held by urbarial tenure, and thus transferred to the peasants the absolute ownership, free and for ever, of nearly half the cultivated land in the kingdom, reserving to the original proprietors of the soil such compensation as the Government might award from the public funds of Hungary. More than five hundred thousand pезsant families were thus invested with the absolute ownership of from thirty to sixty acres of land each, or about twenty millions of acres amongst them. The elective franchise was extended to every man possessed of capital or property to the value of thirty pounds, or an annual income of ten pounds to every man who has received a diploma from a university, and to every artizan who employs an apprentice. With the concurrence of both countries, Hungary and Transylvania were united, and their Diets, hitherto separate, were incorporated. The number of representatives which Croatia was to send to the Diet was increased from three to eighteen, while the internal institutions of that province remained unchanged, and Hungary undertook to compensate the proprietors for the lands surrendered to the peasants, to an extent greatly exceeding the proportion of that burden which would fall upon the public funds of the province. The complaints of the Croats, that the Magyars desired to impose their own language upon the Sclavonic population, were considered, and every reasonable ground of complaint removed. Corresponding advantages were extended to the other Sclavonic tribes, and the fundamental laws of the kingdom, except in so far as they were modified by these acts, remained unchanged. † Kossuth says that "one of the chief political manœuvres of Metternich was ever and ever to oppress one nation by another." VOL. II. No. 1. 3 |