It amuses me much to see on what grounds they take themselves to be good, responsible Christians; or rather, I should say, it chills my blood to think what hosts of men are self-deceived, when I look to the nature of these awful tests. There are high-toned men, who make a joke of the meanness of Methodism, and call their churches a sort of shops, by contradistinction with other religious fabrics; there are a multitude more, who are taken with the wealth and splendour and state of religion, feeling solemn moods of mind under "fretted arches and long drawn aisles," and the parade of form and ceremony, and the touching influence of melodious sounds; but cannot find these solemn touches of soul, under the mean, unformal rites of other places. Now, I say, that these men cannot look, cannot seek to pass this awful muster of the judgment day. It is not Christ dismantled, but Christ invested, that they fondle; it is not Christ's hungry and thirsty members, but Christ's goodly raiments, that take them with rapture, and they would shun the first summons to visit a poor disciple in a prison-and they would scorn to worship Christ in a conventicle. Now, I must not be mistaken because I utter unpalatable truth, as if I looked sour on stately services or ample ceremonies. If they have a right meaning, and serve good ends of tuning the mind, let them be prized according to their worth. Neither do I disparage mere sublunary and moral accomplishments, but am much gratified wherever I find them to consist with honesty of heart. But I say that these will not pass the solemn tribunal, if we are to take the measure from these verses which are before us. There must be a strong and decisive attachment to Christ and to the cause of Christ, however meanly it may be arrayed, however loudly decried, however hardly mistreated.-pp. 224, 225.

The winding up of this part is in the very highest style of eloquence.

But I seem to myself to mince the matter with the world in my wish to embrace them with tlie brotherly tenderness of this argument. For upon looking at these virtuous avocations of men with a less complaisant and juster eye, I do perceive that they often exalt themselves into a head and leading against Christ, and become nestling-places for those high faculties of human nature which are too high to stoop to be counselled by him that is the Almighty. I do find your men of honour, arching their proud brows at the harmless glories of a Christian and your men accomplished in incorruptible honesty, presuming thereupon to claim a

free passage into heaven, and setting at nought our self-veiling doctrines; and your public-spirited advocates of good government, I do find sneering upon the self-government of the Christian, and screening private delinquency behind public spirit, dying in the faith that mere patriotism will save a man, and requiring the same sentiment to be sculptured on their tombs. And your philanthropists, (be Howard forever an exception, who appointed for the panegyric of his tomb," In Christ is my trust,") I do frequently find magnifying their deeds and making them honourable, and placing their everlasting confidence upon their charitable works. And for Knowledge-she is as vain as the plumed peacock, and stretcheth out her neck on high, and calleth to the stars of heaven to magnify her greatness. The sons of knowledge or fancy, having gotten a spark from heaven, or it may be from hell, make themselves gods, and say unto the populous world, What are ye without us? Truly these, when accurately examined, must be pronounced broadly out to be no better than wicked idolaters, each in his proper temple, of the idol that dwelleth therein, and despisers of the only living and true God. And we behove to speak to them in sterner language than we used above.

Hear, then, ye despisers, and perish! Is it a less crime for a philosopher, a man of wisdom and understanding, to despise God, than for an ignorant and unlettered man? Is it a less crime for a sceptred monarch to despise the King of kings and Lord of lords, than for a labouring peasant or a poverty-striken beggar, who earneth a poor pittance from providence? Is it a less crime for a speculative statesman, who knows and covets good government, to despise the government of God, than for a slave who knoweth only the government of the lash? Or for a man who knoweth the sacrifices of mercy, is it a less crime to despise the inestimable sacrifice of Christ for mercy's sake? or for a man who sitteth in his house at home at his ease, is it a less crime to neglect to study the ways of God, than it is for lowborn, hard-toiled, unenlightened men? Whence, then, in the name of sacred truth and justice, this whining, puling pity, that these sovereigns of their various spheres should be turned to the left with the throngs which they served to mislead? It is both bad philosophy and spurious sentiment, that the mind should shrink and misgive for their sakes, as if they were not the most privileged and therefore the most responsible of men. Nay, verily, I am for swaying the other way, and pitying the poor ignorant, misguided man; the unlettered, untutored rustic; the wretches born under evil stars of vice, and bred amidst the coutagions of evil.

them altogether, for the same reason that we do not turn hermits. We may study them in the same way, in which we read the sayings of Satan and of wicked men reported in the book of God-we may separate the admiration of the intellect of Satan, which the Creator curiously formed, from all feeling of communion with the impiety which he alone has caused;—but in human works of genius, it is not so easy to draw the dividing line, and surely in nothing is the principle of evil so awfully incarnate as in those immoral and anti-evangelical works of genius with which the literary world is inundated. They attract the young heart from the remembrance of its Creator-they fill up what should be hours of religious leisure in manhoodthey beguile old age out of its few remaining moments for repentancethey slay their tens of thousands. Now as we fully believe that as the millennium approaches, the influence of literature will increase, and the contest between religion and her enemies sharpen, and as this contest will be perhaps not carnal and bloody, like the first ten persecutions-but literary and spiritual, as Christianity humanizes the world, we think it of infinite importance that the friends of God and holiness and heaven should know their enemies-that the line of demarkation should be drawn broad and deepand that the silent general sentiment of the Church should affix the seal of approbation upon works of virtue and merit, and stain with endless reproach whatever is found to be of a contrary tendency. And then sway should be given to the apostolic precept and the appearance of evil be avoided, and the romancers and poets of the day left to the degree of oblivion which our forgetfulness can bestow.

Among all the exemplifications of human depravity, that seems to us the most conspicuous and fearful which can feed its pride out of the power of originating and adorning a blasphemous conception, and giving

it flight upon the four winds, and rejoicing that it shall be wafted down the track of time, and which cares not what deadly poison it may bear with it and spread far and wide, if only the label which tells the author's name be read, and the honors of an apotheosis be rendered to him, who has sold a lasting inheritance for the vain immortality which perishing men in their ignorance may chant over the soul of that fallen Lucifer to whom the all-knowing God may have already spoken irreversibly, "dying, thou shalt die." Among others, there is one poet of our dayPrince in the Satanic school, who appears to delight equally in blackening the character of his species and blaspheming his Maker. And we cannot express the concern with which we have seen how another, in our own land-although much farther distant from him in genius than in impiety— is running fast into the same course. We have in a former number said what we thought of this poet's genius, and glanced in the gentlest manner at his irreligion. We fear we shall not have done enough to discharge the duty of our station in simply warning the reader and the author that there are to be found printed in a second edition sentences which have almost made our blood to curdle. Of this second edition it seems not out of place to remark here that some at least of the subscribers, relying upon what they esteemed no doubtful pledge that it was to be an editio expurgata, never thought that a volume was to be presented to them containing lines which they desire their eyes may never a second time light upon. So far as genius goes we may say that nothing is of cheaper production than impiety, and on the score of interest, in the long run, nothing dearer.

Our limits oblige us to hasten to an end of our review of the very original and interesting volume before

us.

66

A large proportion of Part VII, on the issues of judgment," we think the least valuable section of the book, the author indulging in

many reveries as to the condition of souls, not authorized by the record, and in one place, at least, expressly contradicted by it. Compare the "new connubial ties," page 243, with the "neither marry nor are given in marriage," of the law of the resurrection, in the 20th of Luke. The representations here made at large, to our mind, lessen that dead despair which the scriptures leave to brood over the place of darkness.

Mr. Irving reasons the point, with great force, whether the punishments of the next world be everlasting, in the usual acceptation of the word; and proves it most conclusively from the literal expressions of scripture-from the fact that this only is a world of probation-from the air of importance with which this doctrine is enunciated-from the fact of the wretched condition of our race through whole continents, at present -from the Divine Nature-from the falsity of the opinion that all punishment is for the reformation of the offender-from the character of sin, and from the incessant change in the divine constitutions which the contrary idea supposes, which turns the Devil into chief reformer and sav iour, and ships off from the abode of darkness its loads of outcasts, to become heirs and tenants of the holy spheres of heaven.

If any man have the hardihood to entertain doubts upon this most fearful topic of revelation, we commend the latter half of this part to his study.

In the next section, in considering the only way to escape condemnation and wrath to come, the author discourses concerning sensual, intellectual, moral, and spiritual life-the three first kinds of life being confined to the earth and dying with it, the last only aspiring to God, as it is created by his Spirit through the instrumentality of the word.

"While the soul inhereth in the word, dwelling and feeding thereon, it ought to inhere in the Spirit of God, with whose

word it communeth; just as when you VOL. VI.-No. 4.

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hear a man speak, you do not separate his words from the soul which utters them, if you believe God to be, I pray you to unless you believe him a deceiver, which,

cast his word aside. For what are words? Words, if I may so speak, are a body to the soul; finer, more expressive, more varied than the fleshly body. By them she doth express her unseen emotions and passions to another soul, which, catching the meaning of the same, reacheth forth a kindred implement of being; they communicate with each other, they embrace each other, they rejoice in each other, they dwell in each other, they travel in company over spiritual and intellectual worlds by this airy vehicle of words. Oh, what a glorious invention is this of words! It makes enabling it to dwell in many places at the soul visible, tangible, impressible; once over the habitable earth; it preserv eth the soul upon the earth long after the body is dead in the grave; yea, it breaketh the bond of death, and touchoth the clayey lips of the deceased with their wonted fires. We converse with them, we live with them, we call them from their spheres; they come, they tarry, not till the dawn of morning, or the crowing of morning's messenger, like the spirit of superstition, but they stay with us days and nights and for ever; and we can gather a general assembly of departed worthies, we can have them in our closets, they will instruct us, they will exhort us; they will make us merry; they will make us great and good, and teach us to fulfil the same good and noble offices to those who follow

after us.

Such, even such, is the word of God, a link between the soul of man and the soul of God, a stage whereon heaven meeteth with earth, to bless her needy children. The spirit of man there communeth and consorteth with the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God hath also taken the artificial body of words, and putteth forth his feelings to call forth the feelings of man; and the feelings of man come forth to the embodied feelings of the spirit of God, even as they come forth to the embodied feelings of the spirit of man, because they are embodied after the same fashion and with equal favour. And so it cometh to pass, that communion with the Holy Ghost is engendered, and then the airy vehicle of words is nothing; but if the communion faileth, it must be resorted to again, as the only instrument given by heaven unto men for that sanctifying office. p. p. 299-300.

The IX. part reviews the whole argument and is an endeavour to bring it home to the sons of men.

We shall not attempt any formal summing up of the excellencies and

faults of this original and powerful writer-they are each equally obvious upon the face of the quotations we have printed. We think Mr. Irving a man sui generis, and should be sorry to see others endeavour to walk in his armour. Except in the case of Jeremy Taylor, we know no one who can so successfully copy without servile imitation as the Minister of the Caledonian Chapel; he holds the finest passages of our best authors in his mind's eye, as an original genius may have the models of statuary in his studies, and sometimes almost equals, and sometimes surpasses the objects of his emulation.-His learning is great, and it is all animated by a burning ardor of soul. We fear however that it is the radical fault of his book and his preaching, to presume too much upon intellectual prowess and to forget the direction contained in the apostolical example, given in the 2d Chapter of the 1st epistle to the Corinthians. And to correct this tendency, our advice will savour more of truth and piety, than of patriotism, even if there should be a large infusion of these qualities inciting us, if we venture to counsel Mr. Irving to abstinence for a season from foreign literati, that he may study our own home-bred, or rather heaven-bred President Edwards, than whom no man, though his deficiencies be many-(none of them in the department of reason) has shown him

self a scribe better instructed in the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and the manner in which they should be developed so as to win souls, and recover wandering stars to the order and brilliancy which beautify the firmament of God.

This will give a tone of simplicity and unaffected solemnity to Mr. Irving's ardour, and make his first advance into the field of christian literature, but as the seedling to the harvest. In all his march along the line of his exalted course, he has the best wishes, which hearts endowed with the only true philanthropy, the love of souls, can utter. The divine injunction is, "spare no arrows"—and our prayer is that speedily all who are gifted with intellect, or breathed upon by the genius of poesy, or lifted up to the responsibility of ruling nations, or confined down to the narrow sphere of mechanical employments, may be delivered by the ministers of the cross from the thraldom of the great Babylon to which the world in its present state is likened, and be taught to kiss the Son, lest he be angry and they perish from the way, when the voice of harpers and musicians and of craftsmen shall be heard no more at all, when the citizens of the New Jerusalem shall be enrolled, and all not found written in the book of life shall be cast into the lake of fire.

Professor Griscom, of New-York, has issued proposals for a new periodical publication to be entitled, "The Mechanic's and Manufacturer's Magasine," to be published monthly, and to be devoted to the Arts and Trades of the United States,

A new pocket edition of President Dwight's Theology, has been published in London, in six pocket volumes, with a copious life of the author, and a potrait by Romney. This edition is printed by T. & J. Allman.