in the mansions of his house; has wrapped us in the Divine immensity without fear, and bid us claim the warm sun in heaven as our Paternal hearth, and the vault of the pure sky as our protecting roof.

We have spoken of Christ's personal representation, in his own character and practical life, of the spirit of the Divine Mind, and have explained how in this way we believe that he has "shown us the Father." This however is not all. His direct teachings, perfectly in harmony with his life, confirm and extend its lessons; and we listen, with venerating faith, to his inimitable exposition of all divine truth. Purity of soul makes the most wonderful discoveries in heavenly things; and is indeed the pellucid atmosphere through which the remoter lights of God are "spiritually discerned." As we have said, the knowledge of him which any mind (be it of man or of angel) may possess, is just proportioned to its sanctity: and our Messiah, having the very highest sanctity, was enabled to speak with the highest and most authoritative knowledge; and was inspired to be our infallible guide, not perhaps in trivial questions of literary interpretation, or scientific fact, or historical expectation, but in all the deep and solemn relations on which our sanctification and immortal blessedness depend. And both to his person and to his teachings, do the miracles of his life, the tragedy of his crucifixon, and the glory of his resurrection, articulately call the attention of all ages, as with the voice of God. In every way we discern in Christ the transcendant revelation of the Most High. We are told, that this is to dishonour Christ. We think it however a more glorious honour to him, to be thus indissolubly folded within the intimacy of the Father's love, than to be blasted by the tempest of his wrath; nor could we ever trust and venerate a God who,-like the barbarians in the judgment-hall,-could smite that meek lamb of heaven with one rude blow of vengeance.

V. But we hasten to observe, finally, that we have faith in human Immortality, as exemplified in the heavenly life to which Jesus ascended. To assure us of this great truth, it were enough that Jesus assumed and taught it; that it was his great postulate, essential to the development of his own character, and to all his views of the purposes of life; an integrant part of his insight into human responsibility and his version of human duty. For if he did not teach the reality of God in this matter, sure we are that none else has ever done so ; and most of all, that the sceptics who doubt the heavenly futurity have no claim to take his place as our instructors. For if this hope were a delusion, who would the mistaken be? Will any one tell me, that

the voluptuary, who, from abandonment to the body, cannot imagine the perpetuity of the spirit;-that the selfish, who, looking at the meanness of his own nature, sees nothing worth immortalizing;-that the contented Epicurean, who in prudent quietude of sense and sympathy finds adequate satisfaction in this mortal life; that the cold speculator, who looks at the fouler side of human nature, and, showing us on its features the pallor of sensualism or the hard lines of guilt, deems it less fit for the duration of the angel than for the extinction of the brute;-that these men are right; while Christ, who walked without despair through the deepest haunts of sin, with faith that succumbed not to wretchedness and wrong, but stood up and conquered them; who embraced our whole nature in his love, and displayed it in its perfectness; who lived and died in its utmost service, with prayers and tears, and blood; to whom our most binding affections cling almost with worship as the holiest glory of our world;-that he could be under a delusion here? that when, sinking in trustful death, he laid his meek head to rest on the bosom of the Father, he was cast off, and dropped on the cold clod? that he sobbed into the Infinite by night with a vain love that met no answer? that God rather takes part in his Providence with the mean-souled, the cynic, the morbid, the selfish? There is no greater impossibility than this, on which evidence can fall back. Nay, we confess that, even apart from his doctrine, the mere mortal history of Christ would have settled with us the question of futurity. For, the great essential to this belief is, a sufficiently elevated estimate of human nature: no man will ever deny its immortality who has a deep impression of its capacity for so great a destiny. And this impression is so vividly given by the life of Jesus,-he presents an image of the soul so grand, so divine, as utterly to dwarf all the dimensions of its present career, and to necessitate a heaven for its reception. At all events it is allowable to feel this, when we see that this natural sequel was actually and perceptibly appended; that this "Holy one of God could not see corruption;" but rose, above the reach of mortal ill, to the world where now he welcomes the souls of the sainted dead. That other life we take to be a scene for the mind's ampler and ampler development, apart from those animal and selfish elements which now deform and degrade it by their excess. And this alone, if there were nothing else, would render it a life of awful retribution. For to the wicked, what is this loss of "the natural man," but total bereavement and utter death of joy?—what to the good, but a glad and sacred birth ?-to the one, a Promethean exile on a mid-rock in the ocean of night, under the bite of a re

morse that gnaws impalpably, felt always but never seen;-to the other, a welcome to the loving homes of the blest, amid the sunshine of the everlasting hills? Yet precisely because we believe in Retribution, do we trust in Restoration. The very abhorrence with which a man's better mind ever looks upon his worse, while it inflicts his punishment, begins his cure: and we can never allow that God will suspend this natural law impressed by himself on our spiritual constitution, merely in order to stop the process of moral recovery, and specially enable him to maintain the eternity of torment and of sin. And so, beyond the dark close of life rise before us the awful contrasts of retribution; and in the further distance, the dim but glorious vision of a purified, redeemed, and progressive universe of souls.

Here then are our five points of Christianity, considered as a system of positive religious doctrine: viz. 1st, The truth of the Moral Perceptions in man,-not, as the degenerate churches of our day teach, their pravity and blindness; 2ndly, The Moral Perfection of the character of God,-in opposition to the doctrine of his Arbitrary Decrees and Absolute Self-will; 3rdly, The Natural awakening of the Divine Spirit within us,— rather than its Præternatural communication from without; 4thly, Christ, the pure Image and highest Revelation of the eternal Father, not his Victim and his Contrast; 5thly, a universal Immortality after the model of Christ's heavenly life; an immortality, not of capricious and select salvation, with unimaginable torment as the general lot,-but, for all, a life of spiritual development, of retribution, of restoration. To the Moral doctrine which, in our view, the gospel conjoins with this religious system it is impossible for us at present to advert. Suffice to say that, with Paul, we exclaim," not Law, but Love:"-love to God, to Christ, not simply for what they have done for us, but chiefly for what they are in themselves ;-nothing like the narrow-hearted gratitude for an exclusive salvation, but a moral affection awakened by their holiness, rectitude, truth and mercy,-by the sublimity and spirituality of their designs, and the sanctity and fidelity of their execution: love also to man, looking to him not merely as a sentient being who is to be made happy, but as a child of God, who is to be raised into some likeness to the Divine image; as a brotherspirit noble in nature, even though sinful in fact, glorious as an immortal in the eye of God, though disfigured by this world's hardship or contempt.

Does any one ask, where we get our system of faith and morals? What are the principles of reasoning which we apply to nature and scripture to extract it thence? The reply would

require a volume of exposition. Suffice to say, that we think we have full warrant for this belief from the scriptures of the New Testament, with which alone we conceive that Christians have any practical concern; that in interpreting these Scriptures, we follow the same rules which we should apply to any other books; that not even could their instructions make us false to that sense of right and wrong which God has breathed into us; that if they taught respecting him anything unjust or unholy, we should not accept it but reject them; and that as to the points of faith on which we have dwelt, some receive these truths because they were taught by Christ; others receive Christ, because he taught these truths.

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On this faith we desire to take our stand, with the firmness, and without the ferocity, of the first Reformers. Opposing churches tell us, we are so frigid !"-Why, 'tis the very thing our own hearts had often said to us; for there is nothing that so promptly rebukes the coldness of our nature as the warmth of our faith. We do not however much admire this mutual criticism of each other's temperature; and strongly suspect the reality of that earnestness which prides itself on its own intensity. We must not propose to assume any artificial heats, in order to spite and disprove this frequent accusation; but be resolved, in an age diseased with pretence, to remain realities; to profess nothing which we do not believe, to withhold nothing whereon we doubt, to affect nothing which we do not feel, to promise nothing which we will not do; holding, with Paul, that simplicity and sincerity are truly the godliest of things. With heaven's good help, may we bear our testimony thus: deeming it a small thing to be judged by man's judgment; and with such light and heat as God shall put into our hearts, delivering over our portion of truth to generations that will give it a more genial welcome. There is greatness in a faith, when it can win a wide success or make rapid conquest over submissive minds. There is a higher greatness in a faith that, when God ordains, can stand up and do without success;-unmoved amid the pitiless storms of a fanatic age; with foot upon the rock of its own fidelity, and heart in the serene Infinite above the canopy of cloud and tempest.

M.

ART. VII.-A DISCOURSE ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF THE REV. JOSEPH TUCKERMAN, D.D.-Delivered at the Warren Street Chapel, on Sunday Evening, Jan. 31, 1841, by WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D.D. Boston: William Crosby and Co. London: John Green, 121, Newgate Street.

sermons.

We must unburthen ourselves of something of what we have felt in reading this delightful effusion. It has been long since we have read anything that has given us such pleasure. This discourse must not be confounded with what are commonly called funeral Neither is it a funeral oration, or a panegyric. It belongs to none of them, and yet it touches upon them all. It is the Moral Portrait of a Christian by the first living Christian Master. The lines are struck forth with equal firmness and freedom; the colours are laid on with as much brilliance as delicacy; and the expression of the whole-that indefinable and indispensable something, by the presence of which genius is proved, and by the kind and degree of which it is tested-is so affectionate and endearing, so truly benign and beautiful, so clear with truth, and so radiant with holiness and love, that we should imagine it impossible for any one to lay down this little record without saying to himself, "And I too am a Christian! Why is this man's life so unlike my own?"

This power of imparting the love of what he loves is, we think, a very peculiar and distinctive quality of Dr. Channing's writings. He found little to love in Napoleon's dazzling character; and, accordingly, we rise from the perusal of his estimate of it without any dangerous glow of enthusiasm for the Man of Austerlitz and of Lodi. But his reverence for Milton was a settled passion of his soul; and his analysis of the great poet's life and genius communicated, not only the conception, but the participation of his feelings. His sympathy for the character of the gentle and noble Fenelon was obviously a portion of his own heart and life; and he imparted it accordingly,—he multiplied the lovers of Fenelon with every copy of his calm yet glowing delineation. And in treating of a character yet superior to them all, to which Napoleon's greatness is imbecility, which eclipses in act the sublimities of Milton's song, and which rises above even the last delightful character by a superiority so vast, that even Fenelon's love seems human, when compared with the love of CHRIST,-in treating of this, the heavenliest character of Earth, he has, we think, preserved the same high peculiarity,