providential destruction, or that of murderers? But what else can we draw from sinking ships, or a youth betrayed to death by the hands of assassins? These examples imply, not a mere dipping, and up again; an immersion immediately followed by an emersion: but a continued and permanent immersion; a remaining under water. And every thing, which is thus said to be made to sink, is understood to continue in that state, unless,

like a bladder, it should rise again by its own buoyancy. It is impossible, then, to apply such examples as a rule for Christian Baptism."-pp. 42-44.

We must again warn the reader that our critique can give no adequate idea of the reasonings of this work. The passages selected by us are necessarily weakened in their force, by being detached from their connexion; while much is omitted, which is necessary to their being clearly understood. We are greatly pleased with some of Mr. Ewing's remarks on Dr. Campbell, whose authority, as a critic, has often been quoted by Antipedobaptists. We apprehend some things said in this volume will tend greatly to weaken the strength of that authority. It is not what Campbell or any body else says, that we are bound to receive, but what he brings evidence to support. This we apprehend he has failed to do, in support of such strange and uncouth phraseology as immersion in the Holy Ghost.

The value of Dr. C.'s assertion I wish not to depreciate. I have long admired his superior abilities and acquirements. Wherever his mind was thoroughly engaged in his subject, his inquiries appear to have been conducted with the greatest possible accuracy. But on several articles of revealed religion, he has evidently written with an indulged negligence. I have always had little confidence in his making a conscientious confession of the whole counsel of God. With regard to Baptism in particular, he seems to have had a vanity in patronizing what he did not practise. The passage on this subject, in his Lectures on Systematic Theology and Pulpit Eloquence, (very naturally quoted by Dr. Ryland in his Candid Statement,) is nothing but a specimen of the easy confidence with which he could impute dog

matism to others, while he was dogmatizing himself with the most giaring liceuse. Remarks so uniformly partial,

and at the same time so erroneous and

careless, as those which he every where makes on Baptism, cannot pass without

animadversion from some even of tus

greatest admirers."-pp. 87-89.

The ex

No part of this volume has pleased us more than the observations on Rom. vi. 4. pression, "buried with Christ in Baptism," has gone a great way to proselyte many to immersion baptism. Mr. Ewing has examined the passage with great attention, and has completely succeeded, as we conceive, in establishing a very different view of it. He considers the scriptural manner of being buried-the manner in which Christ was buried-the union with Christ in his burial, which is signified by our baptism, and the design of the Apostle in reminding us of this sign of that union. After having collected the statements of Scripture, respecting the circumstances which properly constituted the burial of the Saviour, the author proceeds

"Let me beg my reader to familiarize this historical narrative to his mind. A wealthy neighbour has in his garden a mount consisting of solid rock. In the side of this rock he hewed out a tomb, which he intended for the reception of his own body. But a remarkable occurrence induces him to alter his purpose. His dearest friend suffers for his sake an accursed death; and, on the very day of the execution, he obtains leave to dispose of his friend's dead body. He determines to bury him in his own new tomb, with the highest honours. But the Sabbath, which is at hand, must suspend the performance of the rites. All that can be done, in the mean time, is to make a commencement, which shall preserve the body from decay. This done, it is carried into the new tomb in the side of the mount, which is in the garden. There it is placed on the stone table in the centre, or on one of the stone benches by the side of the apartment. It is not interred; for those who are to proceed with the funeral rites see the body, and how it is laid, and are satisfied, that nothing but getting the door opened will be necessary to their having access to the body, after the Sab

bath is over. The door is fastened, and

all retire. On the return of the embalmers, on the third day, the door is open, and the body is gone. Reader, scrutinize my representation. Have Í suppressed any thing which the history mentions or suggests? Have I added any thing which the history does not express or imply? Is there a conception which the rest of the scriptures, the classical historians, and the most en

lightened travellers into the Holy Land, do not confirm? Is there any colouring, any artifice; or any inadvertence, any mistake? If you detect any thing of this kind, deduct it from my argument, and place it, if necessary, on the other side of the question. But when ail is done, tell me, may I not turn to the advocates of immersion Baptism, and say, "Is there a single point of resemblance, between the burial of Christ and your method of baptizing? Is there one shadow of proof, or even of possibility, that the history of the one should enjoin, or so much as countenance the practice of the other?" The inference so frequently drawn from the passage before us, is a fair specimen of many cases, in which a superficial glance seems perfectly decisive on one side, while a thorough investigation proves really decisive on the other."-pp. 102, 103.

We should be very glad to follow our author through the rest of the work, but we must forbear. We wish particularly to call attention to his discussion, respecting the mode of Baptism. On the other part of the subject he has also offered many things worthy of attention, and calculated to show that the subject is still deserving of consideration, and more connected with other parts of truth than many seem to think. The mode, we are aware, is generally considered the least important part of the discussion. In some re spects it certainly is so. But when it is maintained that baptism by pouring is not baptism, that, though thus performed, even on an adult profession, it must be repeated by immersion, when epithets of contempt are frequently employed, respecting this mode of celebrating the sacred institution, the matter ceases to be unimportant. Many persons we know have been more stumbled by the

arguments in favour of immersion than by those against the infant subjects of this ordinance, and many, after first doubting about the mode, have been led afterwards to relinquish infant baptisin entirely. Besides, it is not every Christian, or Christian minister, who is able to treat this part of the controversy with the learning and ability which are displayed by Mr. Ewing. On this account, we again renew our hearty commendations of the Essay, and our sincere wishes, that, if it do not terminate the discussion, the argument may be carried on in the same Christian manner.

The Christian and Civic Economy of large Towns. By Thomas

Chalmers, D. D. Vol. 2. 8vo. 8s. 6d. London: Whittaker, 1823.

HOWEVER close may be the connexion between the Christian and Civic - distinguishing the latter from municipal regulation-economy of towns, they are, in their elements, distinct; the first relating to religious instruction, and the latter, so far as the subject immediately before us is concerned, providing for the exigencies of the destitute poor. We have already given a general outline of Dr. Chalmers's educational system, and we should now proceed, in course, to detail and discuss his plans for the amelioration or rather the abolition of pauperism. We have, however, several reasons for declining to pursue this line of inquiry to any considerable extent. We shrink from the encounter of a subject which takes in so large a field of experimental investigation, and admits such a host of uncertain speculations; we are, moreover, deterred by the consideration of the disproportionate space, which must be occupied by a regular disquisition on these knotty and doubtful points. If we were

inclined to take side in so complicated a question, our leaning would be to the views of the abolitionists, with exceptions in favour of age, disease, and orphan infancy. Our review of this second volume of a work, in many respects most admirable and useful, will, therefore, be confined to generalities; but, previously to any further comment, we must be permitted again to touch upon the statements of our former article. Our readers will remember that in our last number we extracted, from the first volume of the present work, a brief account of the successful exertions of an individual who had appropriated to himself a small district, and introduced into it the almost pastoral discipline recommended by Dr. Chalmers. We have no doubt that the following interesting details have reference to the same case, though the mention of the Saltmarket might seem to connect it with a meritorious association which has undertaken the moral culture of that demesne.

"That district of the Saltmarket, which is referred to in the second chapter of this work, has now, for several years, been under the superintendance of the same teacher who originally assumed it. In respect of poverty, we should regard it as rather beneath the average state of our operative population; and, accordingly, it was proposed, at the outset, that all the expenses of the little institution which has been reared in it, including the rent of the room, with the cost of the fuel and candles, and a small library of books, should be defrayed by the subscriptions of the charitable. But this had not been prosecuted with vigour enough to meet all the charges of this humble concern, and the teacher resolved to throw himself on the good-will and resources of the parents themselves. It is true, that by a small monthly payment, which is most cheerfully rendered on the part of his scholars, he has been enabled to overtake and to overpass all the expenses of his little seminary. The materiel, it may be thought, of this free-will offering is so insignificant as to prove nothing. But the alacrity wherewith it was rendered; the conscious ability that was indicated for the required sacrifice,

and for a great deal more; the additional each was thus led to regard it as a interest that was felt in the school, when nursling and a dependant of his own; the unexpected support that was given, not one family being deficient of its quota, though the very poorest of the territory had to share in it; the certain air and consequence of patronage wherewith this proposal invested all the contributors; the delight expressed by them at their own independance, not unmixed, perhaps, with somewhat of a generous disdain towards any obligation of the sort from their betters in society,—these were the tokens of a sufficiency and a spirit that still remain with the very humblest of our peasantry, and are enough to indicate such elements of moral greatness, as only need to be called back again from the dormancy into which they had been cradled by the hand of pauperism, when they shall rear anew, and in the bosom of our community, all those guarantees for the sustenance of our people that this cruel foster-mother has destroyed.

good an example is now beginning to be "We are glad to understand that so copied, and that about ten of the Sabbath school districts, in that neighbourhood of the town, have been recently laid under the same system of management. There is a most willing concurrence, in them all, on the part of the population; and fitted as such an economy is, both to honour them, and to fasten, more tenaciously than before, the roots of each little association, among the families that are thus admitted to nourish and to uphold it, we would earnestly recommend the same practice to every other local teacher, who may have obtained a sufficient intimacy with the people, to have made sure of their confidence, and of the satisfaction which they feel in the kindness and usefulness of his labours." pp. 79-81.

There can, unhappily, be no doubt of the injurious effect of a legislative system of pauperism on the morals of a people. It at once separates society into two classes, not those of the patron and the client, not those of the liberal sympathizer with misery, and the grateful receiver of a freely bestowed bounty, but those of the taxed and amerced contributor, and the fierce and jealous claimant on the ground of right. It dams up the generous stream of beneficence, and gives plausibility to the cold and selfish plea of

avarice. The fine feelings both of charity and of independence are destroyed; the parish dole becomes an estimated item in the anticipated resources of married life, and, in England at least, we believe that many a wretched union is formed, on the mere calculation that, let poverty and idleness bring in what ills they may, the overseers' allowance will, at least, shut out the evil most to be dreaded, that of absolute starvation. The system is, moreover, every way unequal in its operation; it taxes the means of those in mere circumstances of competency, more heavily than it does the abundance of the wealthy; it crushes landed property, while it does not touch the interest of money or mercantile profits. But there is little necessity for recapitulating the inflictions of a scourge concerning which it may be said that all feel it, all would wish it removed, but few are agreed as to the mode or the practicability of its extirpation.

In Scotland the public provision for the relief of the poor, in smaller communities, arises from voluntary contribution only; in large towns compulsory assessments have been superadded. Dr. Chalmers contends that the latter are unnecessary, and injurious, and that the former, under an enlightened superintendence, is amply sufficient. It would be little to the edification of our readers were we to go through the different gradations of management by which the Scottish system is distinguished. The Kirk Session, the General Session, the Town Hospital, have each their distinct office and jurisdiction, but notwithstanding the imposing aspect of an ascending scale of inspection and control, the plan seems to us, from its complication, even less effective than the exist ing law of England. In lieu of all this, Dr. Chalmers would substitute a system of local know

ledge, vigilance, and kindness, yielding nothing to rapacity or indolence, but providing for the absolute necessities of poverty, and leaving every thing else to the unfettered impulses of neighbourly charity.

"When one applies for admittance, through his deacon, upon our funds, the first thing to be inquired into is, if there be any kind of work that he can yet do, so as either to keep him altogether off, or, as to make a partial allowance, serve for his necessities. The second, what his relations and friends are willing to do for them. The third, whether he is a hearer in any dissenting place of worship, to his relief. And, if, after these preand whether its Session will contribute vious inquiries, it be found, that further relief is necessary, then there must be a strict ascertainment of his term of residence in Glasgow, and whether he be yet on the funds of the Town Hospital, or is obtaining relief from any other parish.

"If, upon all these points being ascertained, the deacon of the proportion where he resides, still conceives him an object for our assistance, he will inquire whether a small temporary aid will meet the occasion, and states this to the first ordinary meeting. But, if instead of this, gular allowance, he will receive the ashe conceives him a fit subject for a resistance of another deacon to complete and confirm his inquiries, by the next ordinary meeting thereafter, at which time, the applicant, if they still think him a fit object, is brought before us, and received upon the fund at such a rate of allowance as, upon all the circumstances of the case, the meeting of deacons shall judge proper."-pp. 151, 152. The effect of his system is thus described.

"We have now breathed in both these

elements-that of a parish, whose supplies for the poor were enforced by stout legality; and that of a parish where this way of it has been totally superseded by the gratuitous system. and, certainly, our feeling is, that the air in which we now move, is of a softer and more benignant quality than before. Nor is it difficult to comprehend why, in this new state of things, many asperities ought to have subsided. When a people are more thrown upon themselves, they soon find, that, as it were by expression, they draw additionally more out of their own proper resources, than they ever drew from public charity-so as to be positively in circumstances of greater comfort and

sufficiency than ever. But more impor

tant still: whatever of intercourse there is between the rich and the poor under this reformed economy, is purified of all that soreness and bitterness which attach

to the ministrations of charity, so long as the imagination of a right is made to adhere to it. There no longer remaineth this freezing ingredient, either to chill the sympathies of the one party, or the gratitude of the other. And, on the whole, there is nothing more certain, than that when compulsory pauperism is abolished in any parish, and the interest it would provide for is left to the operation of spontaneous charity, then does the tone of this little commonwealth become less harsh and less refractory than it was -a kindlier spirit is felt throughout; and it soon becomes palpable as day, under which of the two systems it is that we have the more humanized, and

under which of them it is, that we have the more hard-favoured population.' pp. 163-165.

"Coldness, and cruelty, and hardihood, are the inseparable associates of legal charity, and it is under the weight of its oppressive influences that all the opposite characteristics of our natureits tenderness, and gentleness, and compassion, have been so grievously overborne. These, however, are ready to burst forth again in all their old and

native efflorescence, on the moment that

this heavy incumbrance is cleared away from the soil of humanity. It is indeed strange, that the advocates of pauperism should have so reproached its enemies for all those stern qualities of the heart, wherewith it is the direct tendency of their own system to steel the bosoms of its hard and hacknied administrators; or, because the latter have affirmed that the cause of indigence may safely be confided to those spontaneous sympathies which nature has implanted, and which Christianity fosters in the bosom of man, they should therefore have been charged by the former with a conspiracy to damp and to disparage these sympathies-with an attempt to eradicate those very principles on which they repose so much of their dependence, and to the power of which, and the importance of which, they have rendered the award of a most high and honourable testimony."-pp. 158, 159.

The plan of Dr. Chalmers appears to have been adopted in Glasgow to a considerable extent. The General Session has resigned to the different Kirk Sessions the management of the collections, while two out of ten parishes have,

by giving up all connexion with the Town Hospital, placed themselves out of the range of compulsory assessment, and three others have partially adopted the same system.

In his plans for the alteration, and ultimately for the entire repeal of the English Poor Laws, Dr. Chalmers is fully alive to the expediency of proceeding cautiously, and of allowing sufficient time for a fair trial of the change of system. He proposes that the General Act should in the first instance be framed so as to provide for three distinct objects. 1. The substitution of gratuitous for legal charity in any parish of which a given majority shall petition for licence to adopt the free system. 2. While preserving their actual rights to all such poor as have a claim under the present laws, it would be expedient to take away both the jurisdiction of the magistracy, and the parochial power of making a rate, and to give a fresh constitution to the vestry. 3. It would be necessary to appoint a Parliamentary Commission, to watch over the progress, and determine the efficiency of the new system.

Dr. Chalmers is sanguine in his He is so expectations of success. far from any apprehension of defalcation in the fund of voluntary charity, that he anticipates a surplus applicable to the important work of general instruction, and thus multiplying the securities

"against pauperism, by widening, through education, the moral distance between the habits of the people, and a condition so degrading. And there is something more to be taken to account than the eventual good of such a destination. It lends a most important facility

to your present administration. It en

ables you to meet every applicant for relief, with an argument that will moderate the tone of his demand, and perhaps shame him altogether away from it. You can then tell him, that, by his forbearance, he leaves you in better condition for the relief of families still more