no doubt, slightly differing plans, that the present volume is compiled. No editorial labour can save a work of this kind from a certain degree of confusion. In the exposition of a very extended and very complicated subject, nothing is more necessary than an absolute unity of design. The several portions of the argument must be kept perfectly distinct; there must be no mixing of them up, and no repetition of ground once passed over; the reader must feel that in each lecture he has taken a step forward, and is so much, a certain definite degree, nearer his object than when he started. Another source of confusion to the general reader lies in the very candour of the author's mind, and the abundance of his materials. Dr. Carpenter was not a man to look at any question on one side. He would look all round it, before he made up his mind, gathering up with the most conscientious scrupulousness every fragment of the arguments bearing upon it. The Editor says, that the "notes in his possession cover twenty folio pages closely written in shorthand, containing an abstract of the works he consulted on the subject, and of his investigation into the ritual of the Jewish law, and other parts of the sacred Scriptures; and exhibit a mass of theological research which would astonish one who simply forms his opinion from the results, without having regard to the investigations by which those results have been obtained." And the fullness and exactness which characterized his investigations, accompanied his statements, and he never therefore could give that clear, penetrating impression of the cogency of his argument which a writer or preacher who only presents one phase of it, at a time, may often succeed in imparting. His learning suggests over-abundant material, and his candour prescribes the incessant parenthesis and qualification. The very qualities which we admire in the man and in the reasoner, and which make him all the more trustworthy as a guide, take off from the effective character of his statements when addressed to minds of more limited capacity, or inferior knowledge of the subject.

The

The argumentative strength of the volume before us consists in its parts; its moral strength pervades the whole. thorough honesty and sincerity of the author's mind shine throughout it with an unquenchable light. You see that there is not in the whole of it a single trace of the special pleader. There is no contrivance, no trickery, no evasion. Every argument is met with the boldness of a man who has too much honesty to mislead others, and too much information to be misled by them. The perusal of it cannot but leave a most VOL. VI. No. 23.-New Series.

G

favourable impression of the worth of the advocate, and the genuineness and beauty of his views, on the mind of every reader, even though he be opposed to him in religion. Dr. Carpenter has been sometimes thought to lay too great a stress on the separate words and phrases of Scripture, and to found more upon them than many Unitarians would now think justified by the nature of the several books of the Scripture, or the mode of their composition or compilation. But if he did so, it was from no timidity, but from entire conviction, and any one who desires to see how bold is his rejection of any portion of the received canon which he does not regard as possessed of apostolic or evangelical authority, will do well to consult the beginning of the Fourth Lecture on the authenticity of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which he entirely rejects. Indeed the Fourth Lecture as a whole seems to us the most successful in effect, from having the most simplicity and oneness in design.

C. W.

THE SCOTTISH ISLES.

Here, Nature, would I hold converse with thee
Amidst thy solitudes immense and wild,
Where rocks on rocks, fantastically piled,
Embraced for ever by the sounding sea.
Unceasing chorus raise; I love to be

Near to thy naked majesty, beguiled

Of anxious thought and care, and as a child,
Learn how thou workest when alone and free.

This heaving main, these rugged rocks were made
For man, that here, enraptured, he might find,
If not a Home, a Temple, where, displayed,

Wisdom and Power and Love appear combined,
And Grandeur where imagination quails,

And the big heart beats high, and utterance fails.

ART. VI.—A DISCOURSE ON THE CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF REV. WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, D.D. By ORVILLE DEWEY, Pastor of the Church of the Messiah in New York. New York: 1843.

OUR January Number of 1843 contained our tribute of reverence and sorrow to the memory of Channing; we are glad that in our anniversary Number of 1844 an occasion recalls us to a name that, to borrow from Dr. Dewey's text, should be held amongst us "in everlasting remembrance." Dr. Dewey was in Europe when his distinguished friend and countryman died. Prevented from joining with his brethren in the universal mourning, he offers this individual tribute, on the anniversary of his death. We missed at the time the forcible delineation and fervid utterance of one so sure to fix his eye at once on the simple elements of greatness in the friend he knew so well,but it is better that, after the interval of a year, the subject should be restored to all its freshness by a master's hand, now that the first throb is over, and time has been given for the calm and final judgment to be formed. Dr. Dewey's Discourse is characterised accordingly by this mellowed ripeness of full and earnest, but unimpassioned feeling.

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Dr. Dewey states that the mission and ministry of Channing was to set forth the True, the Right, the Godlike; and to portray its loveliness and majesty." The Discourse traces the various forms this work assumed in his preaching, in his writings, in his conversation, and in his character. We shall follow Dr. Dewey through these several divisions of his great theme. Here is Dr. Channing's idea of Preaching:

'He did not think that a good sermon was a simple exhortation ; that it was a bare repetition, however fervent, of truisms and common places; that it was enough to say to the people, 'be good.' He did not mistake; as some seem to do, the aged John's traditional saying in the Assembly, 'Dear children, love one another,' when he was too feeble to say any thing else; he did not mistake that for preaching. He did not listen to those who said, 'labour not the matter so much, the Gospel is a simple thing;' forgetting that it was a deep thing, too."

*

Preaching never seemed to him for an instant, the discharge of a mere professional duty, the fulfilment of a formal task. It was the great action of his life. He felt that never Demosthenes nor Cicero, that never Burke nor Chatham, had a greater work to do than he had on every Sunday. He poured into this office his whole mind and heart. The preparation for it was a work of consecrated genius : it was

as if, every week, he had made a poem or oration. No wonder that he often sank under it."

In speaking of Dr. Channing as a Controversialist we rejoice to find our view of his peculiar influence confirmed by Dr. Dewey.

'It was most fortunate, I think, that the great leader in this controversy should have been the fervent worshipper of the loveliness of religion, rather than an abstruse metaphysician, or a barren critic. And certainly, to my thought, religion was never invested with such a charm in this country, as in the glowing page and speech of Channing. I remember one of his hearers and parishioners saying, many years ago, 'Mr. Channing has a great idea of God!' How remarkably true, and how significant was the observation, all who have listened to him must be sensible. His idea of the Father' came nearer to that of the great Teacher, than that of any person I ever knew. And then the grandeur of the filial relation to Him,-the brotherhood of all men, and the glory of the spiritual man eclipsing all other glory,-what living themes were these in all his preaching, and in all his writings? I cannot doubt, and I have heard it admitted by those of other communions, that they have produced an effect upon the whole Theology, preaching, and religion of the country. That these central ideas often occur, and indeed are constantly repeated, in his writings, is not only undoubtedly true, but it is a peculiarity of which he was very well aware, and for which he had, as he conceived, a sufficient defence. It is so only, that the moral philosopher, the preacher of spiritual truth, can make an impression of himself upon the age in which he lives. Versatility should be the attribute of the dramatist, the essayist, the writer of fiction; but the strength, the significance of the Reformer, lies in concentration; the stamp of the Apostle is unity."-p. 18.

Dr. Channing's great power as a controversialist has always appeared to us to lie in this, that he spoke the word of God as it was revealed to him, in its purest forms, and so, filled the heart with its light and loveliness to the necessary exclusion of all unharmonizing views. His spirit of Freedom, his profound and lowly trust in Truth, his sympathy with Goodness, were the parents of his forms of belief; and the offspring did not kill the parent; the creed did not destroy the spirit of free thought from which it had been derived, but rather, sensible of its derived narrowness, of the necessary limitation of opinion, he reverenced individual Liberty as the perennial fountain, the teeming mother of all truth and progress.

It has been said that the first act of all true inquiry, as of all true worship, is the purification of the inquirer. Dr. Channing had purified his Mind from prejudice, self-interest, and fear, that

God's light might act purely,—come to him, in Bacon's phrase, as dry light, unbiassed and undamped by the acquired errors and partialities of our human will. It was this simplicity, this severe and faithful preparation of his mind that constituted the power of his conviction, and the greatness of his character. We never read a page of his writings without being reminded of the beautiful sentiment of the Apocryphal writer: "Wisdom entering into holy souls maketh them friends of God and prophets." He seemed to speak of his convictions as if they were no farther his, than that he had not interfered to obstruct them; that having purified himself and looked for light, presenting his unsoiled mind like a mirror, God had imaged such and such sentiments upon his soul. Hence was he so much of the Prophet, so little of the Doctor of Divinity. The Prophet renews, creates, touches afresh the springs of life: the Priest or the Minister gives an outward and conventional expression to traditionary feelings. Dr. Channing never could have been a mere commentator on other men's inspirations; an expounder, to crush out the fixed significance of texts. God had spoken to his own soul; he was a prophet himself; he had something to tell of his own inspirations. And this was the difference between him and ordinary men. Most of us speak as if Christianity was only an historical matter,-a thing to be read of and explained out of books, but not to be individually realised, as if there was our source of inspiration, instead of with the living God. Dr. Channing thought the highest office of Christ and the Christian Scriptures was to bring him to the Father, and to leave him there;-that he too might feel the inspirations of a soul directly moved, and speak as one to whom God had spoken. Hence the life which he breathed into truths which we are all uttering. With him they were as God speaking through him,— with us they are entailed property, inherited possessions: we speak of them as if they were not our own. His was no traditional, historical faith: flesh and blood had not revealed it unto him, he too had communed with God, and his own soul was Christian. And how simple are the elements of greatness,truly believing, knowing, what all men are professing! He was so wonderful, because he taught the religion of Jesus Christ as if it was a reality. Alas, that the greatest, the most unrealised of all ideals, should still be Human Brotherhood, and the kingdom of God, the reign of a Father's spirit upon Earth!-and the divinest amongst men, he who speaks of these things as facts!

It was from this fulness of individual conviction that even his Sectarianism, that is, such peculiarities as belonged to his