God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come?" Place him before the King in his beauty; let him stand in the presence of the beatific vision; let him behold the one hundred and forty and four thousand standing before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands. And how can he, clad in torn and soiled and filthy garments, with a heart unclean, with guile in his mouth and blasphemy on his tongue, unite with the harpers harping with their harps, and singing, "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever?"

It is said that Lord Nelson once presented the pilot of a coal barge with a midshipman's commission as the reward of some signal service to the British fleet, and assigned him to duty on his own flagship. In a few days the young man came to Nelson and returned the commission. The admiral was amazed; for this rude and ignorant young man, the pilot of a coal barge, was declining an honor coveted for their sons by British noblemen, whose armorial bearings were won at Hastings or at Agincourt. To the inquiry why he threw up the commission, the pilot, in effect, replied: "On my coal barge I was happy, with equals for my companions; here I am miserable, for my companions are the sons of the wealthy and the noble. Their conversation is about the high descent, heraldic honors, and great estates of their fathers-about things in which I have neither share nor interest. Take the commission, and send me back to my boat." This young man, when in after life he recounted this incident, would tell how happy he was when he trod again the sooty deck of his barge. And just so would it be with the sinner were he taken to heaven in his sins. It would be to him more intolerable than hell. His cry would be, "Send me away to the blackness of darkness, with fiends and devils, with lost and damned spirits for my companions, where no purity shall ever pain my lascivious eyes, no anthems of the redeemed torment my sensual ears, no felicities of the blood-washed, no corroding memories of what I might have been, torture my guilty conscience."

Wherefore, since these things are so, follow holiness. There is a metaphor here taken from the pursuit of game. Follow

it, pursue it as eagerly as the huntsman pursues the fleeing quarry. Let the penitent at once enter on its pursuit. Let him offer the sacrifice of a broken heart, and cry, "God be merciful. to me a sinner." And though his sins be as scarlet they shall be. as white as snow; and though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Let the backslider return to the fountain for sin and uncleanness, that he may be cleansed from all his idols. Let the saint pursue it, remembering that eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him— things which he is ready to reveal to us by his Spirit. And. God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. A'll things are possible to him that believeth. If any man thirst, let him come to Christ and drink, and out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters. God has fixed no limits here to the capabilities of a soul restored to his image. Indefinite here as well as in eternity its growth in moral character and in knowledge. Behold the difference between the mind of a new-born babe, and the mind of John Milton or of Sir Isaac Newton. Witness the difference in moral character between the tyrants Caligula and Nero, and the philanthropists Howard and Wilberforce; between the apostates Judas and Julian, and the apostles St. John, the beloved disciple, and St. Paul, who was caught up into the third heavens. And yet these are but. feeble illustrations of what development the human soul, under grace, is capable of even here. Its development through the. eternal ages transcends all conception. For cycles on cycles of ages in the presence of God, growing more and more like him, and yet eternal ages more for indefinite growth. Let this thought ravish the soul, and give new strength to its wings in its flight heavenward after the absolute and the infinite. But O, almighty God, eternal Spirit-Spirit of holiness-how great the contrast between a soul restored to the divine image and still pursuing holiness, and a soul lost, polluted by sin, growing worse and worse here, and, through eternal ages, wandering farther and farther away from God! Wherefore let us follow holiness. As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, let us thirst for the living God, and never be satisfied until we behold his face in righteousness and awake with his likeness.

ART. VIII.—SYNOPSIS OF THE QUARTERLIES AND OTHERS OF THE HIGHER PERIODICALS.

American Quarterly Reviews.

BAPTIST QUARTERLY, April, 1877. (Philadelphia.)-1. Thomas Munzer. 2. Modern Evolution Theories. 3. Present Aspects of the Disestablishment Movement in England. 4. Dr. Dale on Baptism. 5. The Chronology of the Gospels. 6. Ancient Attica and Athens. 7. The Mendicant Orders. BIBLIOTHECA SACRA, April, 1877. (Andover.)-1. The First Book of Esdras. 2. Aristotle. 3. Revelation and Science. 4. Irenæus of Lyons. 5. Strictures on Revivals of Religion. 6. Recent Works Bearing on the Relation of Science to Religion.

CONGREGATIONAL QUARTERLY, April, 1877. (Boston.)-1. Orris Sanford Ferry. 2. Conference of the Elders of Massachusetts with the Rev. Robert Lenthal, of Weymouth, held at Dorchester, February 10, 1639. 3. A Church Creed: What Shall it Embrace? 4. Ought Congregational Churches to Dispense with Public Assent to their Creeds as a Prerequisite to Membership. 5. Agrippa's Reply. 6. Water as a Mirror of the Wisdom and Goodness of God. 7. Congregational Theological Seminaries in 1876-77. 8. Congregational Necrology. NATIONAL QUARTERLY REVIEW, March, 1877. (New York.)-1. The Impressions and Reminiscences of Edward I. Sears, LL.D. 2. The Science of Political Economy. 3. The Stellar Atmosphere. 4. The Comic Dramas of the Restoration. 5. National Art Education. 6. The Political Situation in the United States.

NEW ENGLANDER, April, 1877. (New Haven.)-1. Dean Stanley. 2. The Wagner Festival at Bayreuth. 3. Expository Preaching. 4. Principles of Domestic Taste. 5. The Apocryphal Period of Hebrew History in its Relation to Christ. 6. Woman's Right to Public Forms of Usefulness in the Church. QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH, April, 1877. (Gettysburgh.)-1. The Eldership of the New Testament. 2. Materialism and Pedagogy. 3. The Legacy of Iyeyas. 4. The Power of the Keys. 5. What Constitutes Qualification for Admission to Sacramental Communion? 6. The Sermon as a Work of Art. 7. A Few Words more about the Ministerium. 8. Conscience under Revelation and Grace. 9. History of the English Lutheran Church in New York. 10. Public Libraries in the United States. SOUTHERN REVIEW, April, 1877. (Baltimore.)-1. Plymouth Brethrenism. 2. Women of the Southern Confederacy. 3. Christian Consecration. 4. Life and Letters of George Ticknor. 5. The Sonnet. 6. Gregory's Christian Ethics. 7. Examination of Edwards on the Will. 8. Terms of Communion.

UNIVERSALIST QUARTERLY, April, 1877. (Boston.)-1. The Realm of the Practical. 2. Luther and Schliermacher as Preachers. 3. Dr. Crombie, a Universalist. 4. Universalist Conventions and Creeds. 5. The Study of Psychology. 6. Shall we retain the Bible in our Common Schools? 7. An Ethical Criterion. 8. The Divine Anger Compatible with the Divine Love.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, May-June, 1877. (Boston.) 1. The American Constitution. 2. Revelations of European Diplomacy. 3. Abraham Cowley. 4. African Explorers. 5. Soul and Substance. 6. The Relations of Debt and Money. 7. Harriet Martineau. 8. The Progress of Painting in America. 9. Political Reflections. 10. Recent Progress in Physical Science. We are frank to say that the emancipation of the North American Review from the nightmare of the Adams dynasty is an emancipation into life. Under that dynasty its Articles

were not only weighty, but heavy. Its numbers were a succession of icebergs, solid, perhaps crystalline, and frozen. Even in its atheistic period, under the sway of Charles E. Norton, it had more life. It has rounded the circle, and come near to the period of its youth, when the Everetts and Sparks were its graceful and scholarly, but not brilliant, Unitarian editors.

The first article, by Senator Morton, is brief but statesmanlike. Mr. Morton has rendered great services to his country, has maintained an unimpeachable record, has nobly earned the onslaughts of the New York "NATION," and the gratitude of the American nation. It is to be hoped that he will continue his labors for modifying the method of our presidential elections. Some mode by which that election may be a sure and peaceful expression of the national will is the great desideratum of our politics.

James Freeman Clarke gives us a fine article on the great, disjointed, and upset intellect of Harriet Martineau. Harriet was bred a Unitarian, grew very pious under an evangelistic teacher, became afterward a Materialist in accordance with Priestley, and finally a firm Atheist under the tuition of a Mr. Atkinson. Of the atheistic correspondence between this pair Mr. Clarke piquantly says: "They seem like two eyeless fishes in the recesses of the darkness of the Mammoth Cave, talking to each other of the absurdity of believing in any sun or upper world." What strikes us with wonder is, the satisfaction Harriet feels in attaining to this belief in no God, no soul, no future life. Of that satisfaction her death record leaves no doubt. She wrote to Mr. Atkinson :

I see every thing in the universe go out and disappear, and I see no reason for supposing that it is not an actual and entire death-and for my part, I have no objection to such an extinction. I well remember the passion with which W. E. Forster said to me, I had rather be damned' than annihilated." If he once felt five minutes' damnation, he would be thankful for extinction in preference.-Pp. 274.

And the year of her death she says:

Night after night I have known that I am mortally ill. I have tried to conceive, with the help of the sensations of my sinking fits, the act of dying, and its attendant feelings; and, thus far, I have always gone to sleep in the middle of it. And this is after really knowing something about it; for I have been frequently in

extreme danger of immediate death within the last five months, and have felt as if I were dying, and should never draw another breath. Under this close experience, I find death in prospect the simplest thing in the world, a thing not to be feared or regretted, or to get excited about in any way. I attribute this very much, however, to the nature of my views of death. The case must be much otherwise with Christians-even independently of the selfish and perturbing emotions connected with an expectation of rewards and punishments in the next world. They can never be quite secure from the danger that their air-built castle shall dissolve at the last moment, and that they may vividly perceive on what imperfect evidence and delusive grounds their expectations of immortality or resurrection reposes.-Pp. 274.

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This will hardly compare with the death of myriads of Christians; not only rapturous martyrs in the flames, but triumphant sufferers on the dying bed. It is at best dogged submission to the inevitable; and the feeling of insecurity lest there be is of a far more terrible kind. The atheist error, er be quite secure" that "damnation" is a fable; and if the Christian is mistaken he knows that the result can be nothing worse than the very annihilation that the atheist expects. If the unhappy Harriet was mistaken, it was a dire mistake; if the Christian is mistaken, he is as well off as Harriet at her best.

Akin to these thoughts is the tenor of a book-notice in this Review of the "Discussions" of Chauncey Wright. Some of Mr. Wright's articles in the North American Review have been noticed in our Quarterly. Mr. Wright was an extreme, an ultimate, sensationalist. He rejected the super-sensible, and so rejected not only God, but Herbert Spencer's unknown absolute, as a gigantic phantasm, and reduced all knowledge to sensible experimentalism. He was a genetic evolutionist, yet rejected the doctrine of "the survival of the fittest;" and so, also, rejected the beneficent idea of progress, which, in the reviewer's view, is necessary to a just deduction of theism from evolution. And to this "dreary landing-place" he was brought, as the reviewer thinks, by his "quest of truth."

Inferentially the reviewer then adds:

Few expressions have been more fanatically abused than the phrases, "An evil heart of unbelief," and "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." No doubt there have been many in ancient times who ignored a supreme Ruler because their deeds