891 



CHRISTIANITY. 



be endured the pain which every mind mutt suffer in the 

 et of renouncing its old habits of conci ption. We call 

 upon our rvdrri to have manhood id philosophy 

 enough to nuke a similar sacrifice. It is not enough, 

 that the Bible be acknowledged us the only authentic 

 source of information respecting the details of that moral 

 economy, which the Supreme Being has instituted for 

 the government of the intelligent beings who occupy this 

 globe, hi authenticity must be something more than 

 acknowledged. It must be felt, and, in act and obedi- 

 ence, submitted to. Let us put them to the test. " Ve- 

 rily I MV unto you," Mjrs our Saviour, " unit.'.) a man 

 hall be b rn again, he shall not enter into the kingdom 

 of God." " By grace ye are saved through faith, and 

 that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." ' Justi- 



fied freely by his grace through the redemption that is <~hr 

 in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propi- lv - 

 tiation through faith in his blood." We need not mul- 

 tiply quotation* ; but if there be a:iy repugnance to the 

 obvious truths which we have announced to the reader in 

 the language of the Bible, his mind is not yet tutored to 

 the philosophy of the subject. It may be in the way, 

 but the final result is not yet arrived at. It is still a slave 

 to the elegance or the plausibility of itsold speculations ; 

 and though it admits the principle, that every previous 

 opinion must give way to the supreme authority of an 

 actual communication from God, it wants consistency 

 and hardihood to carry the principle into accomplish- 

 ment. (T. c.) 



Cbrii uuv 



Hid', 



c H R 



CHRISTIANSTADT, a town of Sweden, and the 

 capital of the province of r-chonen or Scania, was built 



rj - in 1614 by Chilian IV. king of Denmark, but ceded 

 *V-' to Sweden by the treaty of Roschild in 1658. " The 

 town," says Mr Coxe, " is small, but neatly built, and is 

 esteemed the strongest fortress in Sweden. The houses 

 are all of brick, and mostly stuccoed white. It stands 

 in a marshy plain, close to the river Helge-a, which flows 

 into the Baltic at Ahus, at the distance of twenty miles, 

 and is navigable only for small craft of seven tons bur- 

 then. English vessels annually resort to this port for 

 alum, pitch, and tar. The inhabitants have manufac- 

 tures of cloth and silken studs, and carry on a small de- 

 gree of commerce." Kuttner represents Christianstadt 

 t a wretched disagreeable place, containing none of the 

 ^rood houses which are seen in the Swedish towns, and 

 exhibiting none of that opulence which manufactures 

 generally diffuse. The chief public buildings arc the 

 arsenal, the governor's house, the principal church, and 

 the bridge. Population 1980. According to a trigono- 

 metrical survey, it is situated in 14 10' East Long, and 

 .56 1' 15" North Lat. See Coxe's Travel* in Poland, 

 Huttia, and Sweden, vol. iv. p. 289; Kuttner's Travel* 

 through Denmark, Sweden, Lett. X. ; Reichard's Guide 

 dcM Foyageurt, ffc. vol. i. p. 99, 4th edit. () 



CHRISTINA, in biography, a celebrated queen of 

 Sweden, the daughter and only child of the great Gus- 

 tivus Adolphus. When her father fell in the battle of 

 Lutzen, in 1632, she was only five years of age. The 

 uffairs of her kingdom, however, went on prosperously 

 under the superintendance of the Chancellor Oxcnstiern, 

 and by the conduct and bravery of the able generals who 

 at that time commanded in the Swedish armies. By this 

 means, the preponderancy which Sweden had acquired 

 in the Protestant league, under the reign of Gustavus, 

 was preserved ur. diminished during the minority of Chris- 

 tina. 



At a very early age, this princess discovered an invin- 

 cible antipathy for the employments and conversation of 

 her own sex, of which she takes notice in her memoirs ; 

 and she had the natural awkwardness of a man, with re- 

 spect to the little occupations which are appropriate to 

 females. On the other band, she was passionately fond 

 ef violent exercise, and the amusements which consist in 

 feats of strength and agilitv. Her studies, too, were 

 of the masculine order ; and she made no mean profi- 

 ciency in the abstract sciences, and in the learned lan- 

 guages. At an early age, the was venant in legislation 



C H R 



and government, and able to read the Greek historians ' iiritioa. 

 in the original. As she advanced in years, the love of ^y"' 

 letters seems to have become her ruling passion ; and had 

 a powerful influence on the fortune of her future life. 



The general peace of Westphalia, in 1648, restored 

 tranquillity to Europe ; and was concluded on terms 

 which were sufficiently honourable to Sweden, at that 

 time in the zenith of its military reputation. A fexv 

 years previous to this event, Christina had assumed the 

 reins of government at the early age of eighteen, and 

 proved herself fully able to conduct the affairs of a 

 powerful kingdom. It is not, therefore, to be wonder- 

 ed at, that about this period almost all the princes of 

 Europe aspired to the honour of her hand. Among 

 others were the kings of Spain and Poland, the king of 

 the Romans, the prince of Denmark, the Elector Pala- 

 tine, the elector of Brandenburg, Don John of Austria, 

 and Charles Gustavus, Count Palatine, her own first cou- 

 sin, and heir-apparent to the crown. She was deaf, how- 

 ever, to all their proposals, as well as to the anxious so- 

 licitations of her people ; pleading as the motives of her 

 refusal, diversity of political ieterests, of manners, or of 

 religion. When pressed more closely by her subjects, 

 she made no scruple to avow an insuperable aversion to 

 matrimony 5 declaring, that there were certain duties 

 required by the nuptial ceremony, with which she could 

 not persuade herself to comply." Her high spirit, pro- 

 bably, could not brook that subjection which is entailed 

 by the matrimonial tie upon the female sex. To prove 

 how much she was in earnest in her resolution, she so- 

 lemnly appointed Gustavus her successor ; but without 

 admitting him to any participation in the rights of the 

 crown during her own life. Her vow of celibacy in no 

 degree diminished the attachment which, at this period, 

 she received from her subjects ; and which was power- 

 fully evinced, by the general expression of joy at a nar- 

 row escape which she made from assassination by the 

 hand of a madman, as she was assisting at a public act 

 of devotion in the chapel of the castle of Stockholm, 

 which was in a great measure due to her own intrepidity 

 and presence of mind. Not long after, the life of the 

 queen was exposed to a no less imminent danger by an 

 accident, from which she also had the good fortune to 

 escape unhurt. Having given orders for some ships of 

 war to be equipped at the port of Stockholm, she went 

 to inspect them when they were finished j but as she 

 was going on board, across a narrow plank, the foot of 

 her conductor, Admiral Fleming, slipped, and in his fall 



