The primitive Republican. (Columbus, Miss.) 18??-1852, 1851-05-01

Monday
Tor nc Ri lisa",
MeldlI, Morning Gossip about aa'als e.
* rHlL. reNrrr
JOHN FOSTER coSorsbp
Thcmost deliberately prepared d soy among
the four published BY Mr.. Foster il bis debut
ante volume, is that On the cause of aver
siouin Memo Of taste, to Evangelical Re- gion.
tits annasterly production, and ofitself would
have made him immortal as an author
Conceding throughout the article, that
primary cause, Of the evil, is the inheran
corruption Of human nature, which render
men strongly indisposed to any eonmunica.
ton from heaven" he presents 4 number d
subordinate" causes, among the most prom
met Of which, are, the fact that religion,
considered in the evangelical sense Of the
term, is the religion Of many weak and un.
cultivated minds, 2 and the peeuliarity Of
language, adopted IN tLesIiia and books
3f its teachers, q ieal
form. Of diction, and the irofusion 81 words
and phrases, which are u 4 technical and sys-
tematical cast" On this subject We would
like to indulge in long gossip; but have our
fears Of becoming garr1lous to WEAKNESS.
Thoughts it, that we most heartily subscribe
to the doctrine, that not until there is a re-
yivescence of thought on the paTtof preach
ers every wherein entering into the con-
test for profound knowledge; not until the
pulpitcomesforth from the swaddling clothes,
in which bigohy, and prejudice, and sloth-
fumes, have too long bound it, and walks
forth boldly upon the high places of great
thought, and eminent purity: not until reli-
gious literature is dispossessed of the 'wrink-
led and withered skin of an obsolete sectari-
anism, and puts on intelligence as a garment"
can we hope for that success among the pro-
foundly-thinking men of the country, which
might else be had There are those we know,
who esteem the gospel dishonored, and relig-
ion degraded, where the one is delivered by
the preacher in the yestments of rich imagi-
nation, and the other recommended in the
strains of a sanctifed poetry. This class of
pious abhorrors, never discriminate between
that imagination, which like the Minerva Of
is Jove born, s. those sickly pueril-
tiles Of thought, and those pedantic bastard
lings of brain, whose Interior is, the exhibi-
ton of a clerical coxcomb, and whose certain
effect upon all cultivated fminds, is feeling
Of disgust for the pulpit Fedspt, and of loath-
ing forthe spawn Of vanity, belised by him,
as the gospel Itmatters not with these OBJ
jeetors, if the Imagination be kindled at the
altar Of God-the fancy softened and beau
titled, and spiritualised by the light wherein
angels bask-and the figures sliced upon, be
the same, as the sublime Isaiah, the weeping
jeremiah, the terrible Ezekiel of the old
and the brilliantly-argumentatiye Paul, the
loving John, and the stern, and grim, yet
grand, Peter, of the New Testament, have
left burning and glowing, with an unquench-
ed heat, and an uneclipsed brightness, on the
pages Of Ged' truth Itisenough, and more
than enough, for these stereotyped editions
of common-place-ism-these Oliver Old
schools, that there are figures at all With
them, it is all departure from the way our
clerical ancestry did the business, and sadly
in proof of a forgetfulness of the cross, in
the poor preachers super-aboundingrecollec
ton of self While we are on this subject,
with which, we sometimes feel1urcleaed, we
would ask the directors to recall the grand
utterances of the Prophet bards of Israel, /"
and the treat preachers of yore, who were
wont to lift up the soul, through mighty sub
limities into communion with the Eternal
Spirit" They should crouch themselves,
beneath the shadow of Sinai, and muse in
awful thought IF indeed they are. susceptible
of such thought) over me sublime deserip-
ton Of the interview between Moses and the
Almighty, where, benea b. the fury Of over
hanging clouds the quailing of solid noun
tains, and the gfmmerin of celestial fires
he communed with the I A9t. They should