Where he is true, he is excellent; where he is erroneous, he is ingenious. He has an unusual power of presenting the truth in concrete form, and bringing theology into the sphere of practical sense. The only difficulty is that his system is sometimes a little too arbitrary for even his successful management; in which case he appears to us, though probably not to himself, skillful in flinging out of sight the difficulties he would fail to solve.

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Thus, in the matter of "election," which he pronounces fessedly a great deep," he is careful to present the sunny side of God's arbitrary grace, but leaves in the background the night side of God's reprobating decree. "Election, instead of being our enemy, with an austere, forbidding look, is our friend." O certainly; election has a very pretty face, especially for those who imagine themselves to enjoy its "sovereign" smile; but how looks reprobation? Dr. A. takes care to indorse the maxim that "God foreordains whatsoever comes to pass ;" and so both the sins and the damnation of the reprobate, inasmuch as they "come to pass," are "foreordained" of God! He tells us it is "decreed that we shall be perfectly voluntary in our repentance and faith;" and so, per contra, it must be decreed that reprobates shall be "perfectly voluntary" in their impenitence and sin. Here comes the old eternal difficulty, the millstone on the neck of Calvinism, which no ingenuity can fling off.

Dr. A. presents in five points the "sunny side" of election; we will present what he has carefully omitted, the parallel "night side" of reprobation:

SUNNY SIDE.

"1. All men if left to themselves will continue to sin, and therefore will perish.

"2. God has resolved that he will rescue a part of mankind from perdition by persuading and enabling them to do their duty.

3. His influence on those who are saved is in perfect consistency with their freedom.

"4. No injustice is done to those who are left; salvation is consistently offered to them, and their state is no worse than though all, like them, had perished.

"5. God purposed from all eternity to do that which he has actually done and is to do."-P. 245.

NIGHT SIDE.

1. It is foreordained that all men "left to themselves shall continue to sin," and then that they shall be eternally damned for the foreordained sin.

2. God has foreordained that the part not rescued shall not do their duty, and that for doing as foreordained they shall go to perdition.

3. The freedom of those who are damned is foreordained to be so exercised as that such damnation shall be the result. Whatever sin they commit, it is decreed that it "shall be perfectly voluntary."

4. No injustice is done to those who are damned for committing the sins God foreordained; "salvation is consistently offered to them "by him who has decreed that they shall voluntarily reject it. 5. And God foreordained from all eternity that the sinner should be damned for doing what was foreordained that he should do.

Of what use in explaining our responsibility for a foreordained act is it for Mr. A. to tell us that "it is decreed that we shall be perfectly voluntary in" it; that "we shall act as of our own accord ?" Is a previously decreed volition any more responsible than a previously decreed intellection, or muscular spasmodic motion? If God decrees my necessary damnation, he may as well secure it through a hempen cord, an electric shock, a muscular movement, or any other necessary thing, medium, or operation, as a necessary volition. God may as well secure my damnation without anything voluntary, as secure it by securing the voluntary. Securing my volition in order that he may secure my voluntary sin and consequent damnation, is about the poorest piece of sneaking despotism that one could attribute to an omnipotent devil.

Nevertheless there is in this work a large amount of clear elucidation of religious truth. Nor is it easy to find in the same compass the doctrines of religion as held by our Calvinistic friends better presented.

The Pulpit of the American Revolution; or, the Political Sermons of the Period of 1776. With a Historical Introduction, Notes, and Illustrations. By JOHN WINGATE THORNTON, A. M. 12mo., pp. 537. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. New York: Sheldon & Co. Cincinnati: Geo. S. Blanchard. 1861.

Our history thus far presents two revolutions: the one of 1776, whose corner-stone was freedom; the one of 1861, whose cornerstone, according to the dictum of the eloquent Vice.President of the new "confederation," is slavery. This last revolution, strangely caricaturing the first, in attempt rolls back the wheels of human progress; we shall see whether or not it be one of the revolutions that "never go back."

If any man doubts whether or not the foundations of that first revolution were laid deep in the principles of natural right and eternal justice, proclaimed under the most solemn sanctions from the most holy place, let him read the magnificent sermon delivered by Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, in the West Church, Boston, on "the Lord's day after the 30th of January," (the anniversary of the death of Charles I.,) 1750. So early was "the morning gun" of the revolution fired; so long, as well as deeply, were the people of New England indoctrinated in the principles of religious and civil liberty before the first blow was struck. The first alarm came from the pulpit. The very first words of Mayhew's preface sound as if they were written during our last past ten years. What an outcry has been raised during that period at the various pulpit

testimonies against the sin of slavery, as being "political preaching!" See now how Mayhew answers it:

It is hoped that but few will think the subject of it an improper one to be discoursed on in the pulpit, under a notion that this is preaching politics instead of Christ. However, to remove all prejudices of this sort, I beg it may be remembered that "all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." Why, then, should not those parts of Scripture which relate to civil government be examined and explained from the desk as well as others? Obedience to the civil magistrate is a Christian duty; and if so, why should not the nature, grounds, and extent of it be considered in a Christian assembly? Besides, if it be said that it is out of character for a Christian minister to meddle with such a subject, this censure will at last fall upon the holy apostles. They write upon it in their epistles to Christian Churches; and surely it cannot be deemed either criminal or impertinent to attempt an explanation of their doctrine.

The sermon itself is a noble specimen of Saxon English, declaring doctrines well worthy our noble mother tongue. Following Mayhew are Dr. Chauncey in 1766, Mr. Cooke, 1770, Mr. Gordon, 1774, Dr. Langdon, 1775, Mr. West, 1776, Mr. Payson, 1778, Mr. Howard, 1780. Last of all, pealing like a victor's bugle, comes old Dr. Stiles, proclaiming "The United States exalted to glory and honor." This last discourse, like a crown, surmounts the work. It is an honorable monument to the eloquence, the patriotism, the foresight, the piety, and the enlarged Christian liberality of this memorable President of Yale. The predictions of the venerable preacher, though falsified in many of the details, have received in spirit, and as a whole, a wonderful fulfillment. His programme of the then denominational future possesses for us a historical interest, besides furnishing an illustration of the unexpected turn events will take. Says Dr. Stiles:

The

The United States will embosom all the religious sects or denominations in Christendom. Here they may all enjoy their whole respective systems of worship and Church government complete. Of these, next to the Presbyterians, the Church of England will hold a distinguished and principal figure. They will soon furnish themselves with a bishop in Virginia and Maryland, and perhaps another to the northward, to ordain their clergy, give confirmation, superintend and govern their Churches-the main body of which will be in Virginia and Maryland— besides a diaspora or interspersion in all the other states. The Unitas Fratrum for above thirty years past have had Moravian bishops in America, etc. . . . Baptists, the Friends, the Lutherans, the Romanists, are all considerable bodies in all their dispersions through the states. The Dutch and Gallic and German Reformed or Calvinistic Churches among us I consider as Presbyterian, differing from us in nothing of moment save in language. There is a considerable body of these in the States of New York, New Jersey, Penn-vlvania, and at Ebenezer, in Georgia. There is a Greek Church, brought from s.yrna; but I think it falls below these states. There are Westleians, Mennonists, and others, all which make a very inconsiderable amount in comparison with those who will give the religious complexion to America, which for the southern parts will be Episcopal, the northern, Presbyterian. All religious denominations will be independent of one another, as much as the Greek and Armenian patriarchates in the East; and having, on account of religion, no superiority as to secular powers and civil immunities, they will cohabit together in harmony, and, I hope, with a most generous catholicism and benevolence.

To this the editor furnishes the following judicious note. It illustrates the history of the "Westleians" here enumerated:

Twenty-one religious denominations are enumerated in the census of the United States for 1850, of which, counting the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregational, and Dutch Reformed, who are named in the order of their numerical ratio as of the Congregational type, there were 29,607 churches; and of all others, including Episcopal, Roman Catholic, Christian, and Friends, 8,045 churches-an aggregate of 37,652 churches-showing the ratio of the former to the whole as about 4 to 5. The total of church accommodations was 14,270,139, of which 10.664,656 were of the Congregational type as above, and 3,605,483 of the othersshowing the ratio of the former to the whole as about 3 to 4, or 14.6 per cent. of the whole. The Methodists had 13,338 churches; Baptists, 9,360; Congregationalists, 1,706; Episcopalians, 1,461; Roman Catholics, 1,227; Lutherans, 1,221. They are unequally distributed over the Union, and the relation of denominational to moral, educational, and social statistics offers a most inviting and instructive inquiry.

We are furnished in these pages with striking proofs of the contrast between the Revolution of 1776 and the pseudo-revolution of 1861, in the character of the favorite authors quoted in the argument. They are such as Locke, Milton, Harrington, Sidney, the fathers of the theory of English liberty, who founded just government upon the rights of man as man. Not in such text-books can we find the servile doctrines of Professor Bledsoe, Fitzhugh, and Dr. Smith, or the low politics of a Stephen A. Douglas and others, who have placed the alternatives of free soil and slavery upon a level of indifferentism.

The volume before us is both a literary curiosity and " a book for the times." The engravings and the fac-similes of the oldfashioned print are in excellent keeping with the nature of the work. The editor has done his part in a true sympathy with his subject. We rejoice, as we turn its pages, that in our own labors at this day we are, individually, maintaining the same principles of civil and religious freedom which Mayhew proclaimed, and in whose triumph Stiles so eloquently exulted.

History, Biography, and Topography.

History of Civilization in England. By HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. Vol. 2. 8vo., pp. 476. New York: Appleton & Co. 1861.

Mr. Buckle, as we r lerstand him, is a gentleman of means and leisure, endowed with a taste for omnivorous reading, and tending in thought to the principles of that school whose deity is Physik, whose demon is Metaphysik, and who venerate a square-built, muscular imp, endowed with a good stomach, and possessing a calculating machine in the place where there should be a conscience, for their Ethik. At an age when physical energy has not yet given place

to mental power, Mr. Buckle felt the promptings of a boundless ambition to take a survey of the history of the world, in which the great truths should shine perspicuously forth, that physical influences are all-powerful and moral nothing; in which it should stand demonstrated that the grand enemy of man is superstition, and the grand emancipator, skepticism; meaning always, by superstition, all notions of miracle or special revelation; and by skepticism the rejection of everything that Mr. Buckle does not believe. Of this stupendous project we do not know that there were to be any limits. Three volumes, noble octavo, at any rate, constitute the introduction; what the book itself would be, we have no trigonometry that can measure.

Mr. Buckle's first volume appeared, and was so generally noticed, that its author, from a very ordinary animal, became a lion. Such at the present day is the chivalry of the Church militant, that any champion of infidelity who can stand out as a mark of tolerable magnitude will rouse a small army of assailants, and grow famous as a point of concentric attack. A premium of factitious importance is thus conferred by the zeal of the advocates of established opinions upon their opponents. The solid body which floats with a current, floats as silent as the waves; whereas the obstacle that resists the flow is sure, like Mr. Buckle, to make a noise in the world. Had this gentleman written an essay, or a history, large or small, to show the power of moral causes; had he furnished an orthodox essay on religion or ethics, his writings would have possessed no merit sufficient to call out a full article in any existing quarterly periodical. There is wanting every power of thought or style, of accuracy of narration, of truthfulness of view, of grasp of reasoning, or of brilliancy of language, to rescue Mr. Buckle from the ranks of ordinary intelligent men of large reading.

The crude magnitude of his plan has a consistent counterpart in the crudeness of the execution. The present one third of his Introduction to a History of English Civilization is entirely occupied with Spain and Scotland. Between these two countries Mr. Buckle detects the unexpected parallelism, that both by physical conformation are inclined to superstition, and both the victims of religious despotism; and it is to proclaim this parallelism that his stately octavo was born. Now, in spite of Mr. Buckle's ingenuity, we are compelled to think that he has about reversed the entire system of facts. Spain, far south of the Pyrenees, is a magnificent sunny country, where heat and drought compel a large amount of lax indolence, and where a fertile soil tempts the people to luxury and looseness. In FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XIII. 44