principle; and in this case more especially, as his recent appointment to the only chair of moral teaching in the gift of the general government, in the military school at West Point, will doubtless give both authority to Doctor Adams' opinions, and currency to his work. In that school at least it will unquestionably become the text-book: - neither there nor elsewhere may its errors find currency.

10.-Great Britain, France, and Belgium, a Short Tour in 1835. By HEMAN HUMPHREY, D. D., President of Amherst College. New York: Harpers. 1838. 2 vols.

THESE Volumes are from the pen of a clever, and generally rightminded man; intelligent, candid, and independent on all new questions, but bound up with many prejudices and narrow notions on all old ones. Where he is right, we see much to admire where he is wrong, we see the error springing, not from malice, but ignorance, and therefore good cause for pardon. Such is our general opinion of the work. For how well, pleasingly, and justly he can write, we refer our readers to chapters fifteen, sixteen, &c. on the national character and social habits of England: for how blindly he can appreciate things, when he looks at them through the veil of prejudice, we refer to his set chapter and occasional flings at the Established Church and its influence; and lastly, for how wildly he can sometimes rave, we recommend them to his unbounded admiration, when compared with English coldness, of the glorious revivals of religion in his own country, "those extraordinary outpourings of the spirit (to use his own language) which have so often been enjoyed, within the last forty years, almost throughout the length and breadth of this land.' (p. 84.) And to this latter category we must add his "tee-totalism" mania; "therefore it is," says he, "that we go for tee-totalism, the whole of teetotalism, and nothing but tee-totalism." (p. 40.) It were not easy to believe, except from the frequent instances we have of monomania, that the same pen endited such sentences as the frequent, just, and beautiful ones in which he depicts the quiet domestic virtues and good sense habits of our common "father-land." us, at least, such furnishes the only explanation. In this matter, we would not be harsh; but what other language can be held towards a man of sense and a christian minister, who dares to claim for such measures of man, as that just lauded by him, the high attributes of revelation. "The old pledge," that is of total abstinence from distilled spirits, except for medicinal purposes-this has become, in his eyes, but a preparatory ordinance, "a covenant of works ;" he has got beyond it. This," says he, "was the

To

first temperance dispensation, and I have no doubt it was from heaven;" (p. 32;) and again, (p. 35,)" the first temperance dispensation in Great Britain seems, if it has not 'waxed old,' to be 'ready to vanish away;' " and before, (p. 6:) "I was soon convinced that the great majority of the clergy in England were still under the first dispensation." Now, if this be serious, it is nothing short of blasphemy and insanity; or if meant but as a flourish of words, save us, we say, from the taste that can relish it, or the piety that can approve it. Among the inconsistencies of christian practice in England, in the matter of temperance, he observes, that "it is no uncommon thing for one part of a family to be seated at a communion table, whilst another part is engaged at home serving out intoxicating liquors to their professing brethren, (p. 25.) We have underscored the word which saves the established church from But to look a little at his having furnished him with this censure.

direct and intended censures of that church, these evince with evident honesty of purpose, as already hinted, much pardonable ignorance, and still more of very natural, but not very creditable, prejudice. "I feel constrained to say," is his language, "that my visit to England confirmed the impression which I had long had, that in breaking off from popery, Elizabeth and her successors stopped half way between Rome and Geneva. I may be mistaken, but, &c." (p. 25.) Now, in the name of common sense, we ask, what kind of reasoning is this? Has he proved Geneva to be heaven, or Calvin to be Christ, that he would make that our haven, and him our conclusive teacher; and yet all this must be done, "before stopping half way" is to be charged, as he charges Such is the logic of those who begin it, with being grievous error. with prejudice-who take for granted the very thing to be proved. It is, indeed, the natural logic of ignorance and weakness-it should therefore not be that of Dr. Humphrey. One of his questions to the church savors of the ludicrous, coming as it does from the mouth of an independent preacher: "Is it apostolical in its ministry?" What! he who maintains his own ground to be " jure," does he ask for title deeds? If, indeed, he is willing to put it on that plea, the question would soon be settled. We should "deduction of title." His be glad to see, in that last objection to the church, which, as he observes, is "of a more general, but not of a less serious, character," relates to its old "It preserves its ancient edifices, customs and ancient usages. the names of its ancient parishes, priests, and deacons, and forms of conferring orders, which agree in most respects with the form prescribed by the Roman pontifical. It preserves also the clerical habits and gowns, the pastoral crooks and crosses," (p. 65.) Now, if Dr. Humphreys will explain to us where he was troubled with "pastoral crooks and crosses" in the ceremonial of the English church, we will take the trouble to explain to him how inno

cause,

NO. V.-VOL. III.

his own

21

suo

cent are those names and ceremonials which she actually does retain, and endeavor, moreover, to satisfy him how much more convenient, as well as venerable, are those "ancient edifices," in all their pristine beauty, of which he complains, to the desecrated ruins which, in Scotland, mark the reforming hand of Knox and his followers. In this manner, too, does our author venture to speak of twelve thousand laboring clergy, of whom, perhaps, he scarcely knew one: "If we may judge of them by their fruit, they are mere men of the world in a canonical dress. They are so far from wishing to be thought to have ever experienced any other than baptismal regeneration, that hardly any thing would give them more uneasiness than the apprehension of lying under such a methodistical stigma." (p. 57.) Our answer to this, is what are, and have been, the fruits of the English church, we may safely leave christendom to acknowledge; while what are the inward "wishes" of the hearts of her sons, we must be contented to leave to that day when alone they will be revealed. Christian charity forbids our taking them on the "showing" of Dr. Humphrey.

Our author appeared in England as the "American delegation [delegate ?] to the congregational union of England and Wales." It was, therefore, natural he should speak well of his own, and, doubtless, what he says of their worth, talent, and devotion to duty, is well deserved, and we rejoice at it; but when we find all his praises reserved for what he terms the "bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh," we and others then feel that we have a right to complain, that he who speaks to the public, should thus forget the rights of the public and that he should not make drafts on his readers at large, which are current, and will be honored, only within his own pale.

The traveller, we say, who can visit England without recognizing the christian blessings that have been secured to it by its established church, must be, in our opinion, both blind to the present, and deaf to the voice of the past. If he cannot see that dissent, in proportion as it has wandered from that fold, has wandered also into the wilderness of heresy and schism, he looks at the facts before him with other eyes than we do. It is, we think, in the shade and shelter alone of the establishment, that dissenters have found their safety. We will not put to Dr. Humphrey the case of the independents of England-their condition is a question too near home; but we will ask him what is the picture he himself has given of the presbyterians, the quakers, and the methodists. Of the first, he acknowledges that they are "chiefly unitarians;" to which we would add their own acknowledgment, in open court, in their late application for a share in Lady Hewley's benefaction, that, at the period of her death, that is, within fifty years after their secession from the established church, their departure from its orthodox faith was matter of such common notoriety, that she could not but have been cognizant of it; and as she did not notice it, it could not therefore, as they reasoned, have intended their exclusion. But our business is only with the facts.

Of the quakers, he says, that there as here, "a separation is approaching, and on the same grounds;" that is, a denial of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Of the methodists, too, he gives the following lamentable picture of that curse of schism which is daily working out in them its necessary fruits; we wish we could add, its sufficient cure. Wesley, during his life, kept his followers safe by keeping up his connexion with the church; but Dr. Humphrey goes on to add, "since his death, the Wesleyan connexion have receded still further from the establishment in their forms of worship and church polity." ... "Besides these, (the new connexion and the Wesleyan association,) there are some other off-shoots from the parent methodist stock, consisting in the aggregate, it is supposed, of seventy or eighty thousand; as the Kishamites, the primitive methodists, the independent methodists, the Bryamites," &c. &c. (pp. 70, 71.)

We will quote but one other passage in the way of blame, though that is too strong a word-it is but to show the contradictory workings of our author's liberal spirit and his narrow literary creed. In reference to the writings of Sir Walter Scott, he exclaims in holy condemnation: "could I safely put them into the hands of my children without note or comment? I wish I could, &c. But my conscience will not allow me to do it," (p. 89.) Such is his ex-cathedra decision; it is the voice of the artificial not the natural and true man, for when he comes to Loch Katrine his heart opens, and pours forth with taste and energy the appropriate passages from the Lady of Lake, which frequent perusal had doubtless made familiar to himself, and we will trust also to his children. But we have

he

done with censure. We close with his eloquent eulogium upon England, and one in which we fully accord; we approve of the sentiment, and admire the expression :

་

"Finally, England is an exceedingly proud nation, and it would be the greatest moral anomaly in the history of the world if she were not-for never had any nation so much to be proud of. England! whose morning drum beat,' to adopt the beautiful sentiment of our own Webster, keeping pace with all the hours of the day, never ceases to proclaim her martial glories! She is proud of her own little island, and the more so because it is so little and yet so mighty. She is proud of her London, her Liverpool, her Manchester, and all her great manufacturing towns and districts. She is proud of her princely merchants, of her immense commerce, of her enormous wealth, and even of her national debtfor what other nation on the globe, she exultingly demands, could pay the interest of such a debt without any perceptible check to her prosperity? She is proud of her navy, of her dock yards, of her arsenals, and of her Greenwich palace for invalid pensioners. She is proud of her vast foreign possessions and dependencies, of her Quebec and her Gibraltar, of her tributary princes and her emancipated islands. She is proud of her parliament, her Westminster Hall, and Westminster Abbey of her Drakes and Nelsons, and Marlboroughs and Wellingtons; of her statesmen and orators and poets; of her Coke, her Littleton, her Bacon, her Newton, her Butler, her Locke, her Davy, her Arkwright, and a thousand other illustrious names that adorn the pages of her history. She is proud of what she has been, proud of what she is, proud of the anticipated verdict of posterity in her favor. And last, though not least, she is beginning to be proud of her once wayward daughter on this side the Atlantic, though she is still too proud very openly to confess it."―pp. 189, 190.

11.- Baccalaureate Discourse, delivered in Ross Chapel, Gambier, to the Senior Class of Kenyon College, on the Sunday immediately preceding the annual commencement, September 6, 1837. By the Reverend CHARLES P. M'ILVAINE, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Ohio, and President of the College. Gambier, 1837. pp. 16.

THIS discourse, like all others from this right reverend prelate, is a strong and direct enforcement of christian duties upon christian principles. The occasion, too, is one that alike justifies and rewards such an appeal. The moment of passing from the college into the world, is one of deep feeling to every right-minded youth, and impressions there made may, and often do, under the grace of God, operate for eternity as well as time; we therefore wish that such discourses were more frequent than they are from the heads of our colleges, on such occasions, and that commencement day should be one of advice received by the young as well as given. With these views we cordially wish that the present may serve as an excitement, though not, we must add, in all respects as a model. In affectionate earnestness, there can be none better; but in an academic discourse from the president of a college, we would require (what the manifold duties of the episcopal head of Kenyon College forbid him to give) more of thought, labor, and finish. He should appear as was said of Chrysostom, Εν φιλοσοφε σχηματι τὸ Θεῖὸν διδασκων.

12.- The Necessity of Religion to the Prosperity of the Nation-a Sermon preached on the day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer appointed by the Governor of Ohio, in the Chapel of Kenyon College. By the Right Reverend C. P. M'ILVAINE, D.D., December 14, 1837. Gambier, pp. 31.

THERE are few productions from the pen of our gifted author that we should be inclined to rank above this. It is a clear and forcible argument on a vital and all important question, and one on which the public mind greatly needs instruction. The question here put is, "whether it be true that no religion, christian or any other, is recognized and espoused in the principles, framework, and laws of this republic." The affirmative of this proposition, that is, the denial of religion as the basis of our social system, is the fearful assumption against which he contends. After an eloquent expression of thankfulness for the official recognition of religion, involved in the appointment of the day and its purposes; the