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ATTESTATION..

HAVING accompanied my friend and pastor, Rev. Dr. Cox, on the occasion here described, I am constrained in duty to say that I view the account given of his interview with the Rev. Dr. Emmons as substantially true and correct. The admission of error I heard him make, as here it is correctly narrated. The singularity and impressive nature of the whole scene were fitted solemnly to impress me, as they certainly did at the time; and though fourteen years have since flown over us, I find my recollections sufficiently vivid to authorize me in this act as a witness.

LOWELL HOLBROOK.

Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 11, 1852. P.S. The coincidence is strange, but wholly undesigned, and was not known or observed till some time after the above was written, that fourteen years exactly, to a day, mark the period since the interview to the date of this document.

It is strange, too, for an author to anticipate doubt or impeachment to a fact which he avers and witnesses in this way; but stranger was the fact itself, and this may well account for the mode and the fact of anticipation.

SAMUEL H. Cox.

Brooklyn, New York, October, 1852.

INTERVIEWS

WITH

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

SEPTEMBER, 1825,

Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?-1 Cor. 1: 20.

The foolishness of God is wiser than men.-1 Cor. 1:25.

The depravity of men is total; since we are destitute, as fallen creatures, of all real virtue, till, obeying the Gospel, we are sanctified by the Spirit of God, and so conformed, in some degree and for the first time, to the law of God as the rule, and the glory of God as the end, of our actions; previous to which simple, but great and wonderful change, our depravity deceives us and others, working its spirituality of evil deceptively, latently, speciously, and not less efficaciously, to make us the voluntary captives and the desperate victims of dominant transgression and all its penal consequences. This is plainly the testimony of God in the Scriptures, though it is opposed enough by unregenerate men, and in all unreasonable ways enough, to increase, if possible, the proof that amply sustains that humiliating article of our faith.-Anon.

Other acquisitions may be requisite to make men great; but be assured the religion of Jesus is alone sufficient to make them good and happy: *** a religion which has been adorned with the highest sanctity of character and splendor of talents, which enrolls among its disciples the names of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, the glory of their species, and to which these illustrious men were proud to dedicate the last and the best fruits of their immortal genius.-Robert Hall.

No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.—Washington. True patriotism and true piety are very congruous, as well as ornamental, when seen united in an American citizen.-Anon.

Valet ima summis

Mutare, et insignem attenuat Deus
Obscura promens.-Hor.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

THE fame of this great man belongs to the American nation. Among her proceres of the Revolution, or, rather, of the age next after it, he figures as a star of the first magnitude. His lustre is original, characteristic, real. As a scholar, a statesman, a patriot, he belongs to the first class, and distinguished there in the constellation of our country's greatness. From March, 1825, to the same month, 1829, he officiated as the sixth President of the United States of America; and now, 1852, the thirteenth acting in the administration of the government, it may be said that a better informed reader, writer, and thinker, on the whole, never illustrated that high place of magistracy or occupied more luminously the seat of WASHINGTON.

All this, however, respects his secular character. We propose as CONSIDERATIONS, some of them, perhaps, implying each other, yet with a view to distinct reference in subsequent places, the following seven questions:

(1) What was his interior man?

(2) Was he a Christian?

(3) Was he a regenerated person, according to the conversation of the Son of God with Nicodemus ?-John, 3: 1-21 (4) What were his religious views and sentiments?

(5) Is he now in glory, among the ransomed of the Lamb? (6) What will be the influence of his memory on the Christian piety of his country?

(7) If not an infidel, like Jefferson, was he a sound Chris

216 ONE'S SECULAR OR SPIRITUAL CHARACTER.

tian, like Jackson,* before he left this probationary theatre and met the awful experience of the eternal world?

One's secular is as distinct from his spiritual character, as the ignorance of man compared with the knowledge of God. The two are, indeed, related; not identical. By one's spiritual character is meant-what man is in the sight of God, as related to the truth of revelation and the hope of immortality; as a lover of God, or as a hater of God; as obeying the gospel in the only right way, or as disobeying it, finally, in any way; and as prepared, on the whole, for the glory of heaven, or as not prepared for it.

The secular character is that which obtains among men, depending on outside views and human estimates, often triumphantly high-where the spiritual character is low and false, and incapable of the divine approbation and reward.

Of character here two things are to be remembered:
First. Its only proper arbiter is God.

Second. He will decide at last, absolutely and independently, according to his own truth, published to mankind; since he can not contradict himself, in time or in eternity.

Of the seven questions stated, this treatise refers mainly to the fourth alone. It is, indeed, related to all the others—as is each other to each of them; and the mutual relations of them all are intimate, though not alike in form legitimated to our inquiry or decision. As to the fifth, we must leave it entirely with God, and refer it, ex animo et mecum et tecum, with solemn reverence to the developments of eternal judgWe should remember, however, that there is no respect of persons, places, titles, or circumstances at the judgment-seat of Christ. This we shall, sooner or later, all know and experience. Nor do we omit to treat the fifth question because we view it as trivial, or as wholly unlawful, or as

ment.

* After retiring from public life, he professed the religion of Christ, and died happily, in full communion, as an honored member of the Presbyterian Church.

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