not been able to increase materially; but, in other respects, he must have labored under a great embarrassment of riches. The manuscript documents of which he has made use are of the utmost importance, and their publication in full will be awaited with great interest. His narrative is clear, exact, and minute, and is free from prejudice or unworthy bias. Yet the author's strong admiration of Warren and his associates is never concealed; and we are never left in doubt as to his opinion of the transactions narrated, or the measures passed in review. In respect to fulness and accuracy of statement, and impartiality of view, Mr. Frothingham's volume leaves nothing to be desired.

Joseph Warren was born in Roxbury in June, 1741, and was killed in the battle of Bunker Hill in June, 1775, in the full vigor of early manhood, and universally lamented as one of the principal advocates of the popular cause. He had been educated in the common schools of his native town; had entered college at an early age, and graduated with distinction; had taught school for a short time, and afterward studied medicine; had acquired a lucrative practice; had taken a warm interest in the disputes between the Colonies and the mother country; had twice been selected to deliver the oration in commemoration of the Boston Massacre; had been a member of the Committees of Correspondence, of Donations, and of Safety; was President of the Provincial Congress; had been appointed a major-general; and when it was announced that the British troops were preparing to assault the hastily constructed intrenchments on Bunker Hill, he had hastened to the field to serve as a volunteer, prepared to find that the post of danger was still the post of honor. Thus dying at the early age of thirty-four, one of the first martyrs of the Revolution, he had crowded into a brief career a various and fruitful experience, had rendered important public services, and left a name which will be forever held in honor. The life of such a man deserves to be written with all that fulness of detail and breadth of treatment which are now possible; and it is this that Mr. Frothingham has done. Every fact which the most patient industry could discover has been brought to light; and everywhere Warren is the central figure on his page. investigations, as we learn from the Preface, extend over a period of sixteen years; and it is not probable that future students of our history will be able to add anything which has escaped notice in this long study of the subject.

But in subordination to the purely personal part of the work, as we have intimated, there is a minute and luminous account of the Revolutionary movement in the town of Boston from 1767, when Warren began to take an active part in politics, down to 1775; and nowhere

else has the subject been so elaborately treated. The same high praise, which we have bestowed on the biographical portion of Mr. Frothingham's labors must be awarded to this part of his volume. His account of the Boston Massacre and of the destruction of the tea, in particular, may be noticed as striking examples of minute and luminous narrative: they need only the attraction of a more animated and picturesque style to insure for them a permanent place among the best historical monographs. Every important transaction, however, is described in the same careful and judicious manner; and no one can fail to be impressed by the thoroughness with which Mr. Frothingham has treated every part of his subject.

6.- History of Congregationalism, from about A. D. 250 to the Present Time. By GEORGE PUNCHARD. Second Edition. Rewritten and greatly enlarged. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1865. 2 vols. 12mo.

THE rise of Congregationalism, as a polity recognized by that name, properly dates from about the close of the sixteenth century; and the title adopted for this book is open to the objection of being a somewhat presumptuous appropriation, in the interest of Congregationalism, of the honor which belongs to a long line of noble vindicators of truth and freedom, who knew nothing of Congregationalism as such, and who cannot fairly be claimed as the supporters of that specific polity. But the author is perhaps sufficiently justified in his use of the title, in view of the very striking identity of spirit manifested in many of the various forms of what may be called early religious dissent with that of Congregationalism.

One prominent characteristic of the chief of the so-called heresies of the first fifteen centuries was the uniform practice of making appeal steadfastly to the Bible, as the ultimate authority in all matters of church government and order. On this position they all stood firm, however great their diversities in other points. Whether known by the name of Novatians, Donatists, Arians, Waldenses, Wickliffites, Separatists, Nonconformists, or Independents, these sects were one in the adoption of this principle; and owed their measure of success, in the main, to the tenacity with which they clung to it as a fundamental principle. The resemblance between Congregationalism and these dissenting sects. does not, it is true, involve a complete parallelism. It is hardly close enough to justify the Congregationalist in claiming for his polity anything like an unbroken "Apostolical succession." He must be content

to allow that what he claims as the polity of the Apostolical churches had for many ages no practical embodiment in an organized form, and that it was not fairly resuscitated for many long centuries. But independent of each other, to a great extent, as they were, these struggles bear witness to the irrepressible tendency of the human mind, under the impulse of the higher sentiments, in the direction of a free and simple system of church government; and Congregationalism has a fair title to the honor of being the matured result of this long-continued resistance against ecclesiastical tyranny. The history of Congregationalism is, therefore, essentially the history of the Reformation itself in its unchecked development. Le Bas, an English churchman, in summing up his account of the character and tenets of Wickliffe, remarks: "At all events, it must plainly be confessed that there is a marvellous resemblance between the Reformer, with his poor, itinerant priests, and at least the better part of the Puritans, who troubled our Israel in the days of Elizabeth and her successors. The likeness is sufficiently striking almost to mark him out as their prototype and progenitor; and therefore it is that every faithful son of the Church of England must rejoice with trembling that the work of her final deliverance was not consigned to him." And what is here said of Wickliffe might, with some qualification, be affirmed of the earlier portion, also, of that list of the apostles of freedom whose names find a place in this work. "The likeness" to the immediate founders of Congregationalism "is sufficiently striking to mark them out as their prototypes and progenitors."

Mr. Punchard deserves well of Congregationalists, and of all the friends of religious liberty, for the work he has undertaken. His conception was one of great interest. Well carried out, it would accomplish more than any mere discussion of principles towards recommending and perpetuating this simple and Scriptural form of church order. Although the author has by no means wholly failed in the execution of his plan, there are, however, two very evident faults which detract seriously from the literary merit of the work, and greatly diminish its value.

A wholly disproportionate space is given to the history of events antecedent to the origin of Congregationalism as a distinct polity. Two volumes, each of more than five hundred pages, are devoted to this preliminary part; while the whole that remains is to be comprised in a single volume. The story of those thirteen centuries of brave struggle against the tide of prevailing corruption and abuse of power is worthy, it is true, of faithful delineation, and deserves to be attentively read. But, for all the legitimate need of a history of Congregationalism, one half of the space here allotted would be amply sufficient.

Our second criticism relates to the manner in which these details are

laid before us. They are thrown together with little regard to any order but that of time simply. The author has collected a large mass of valuable material, and would seem to have been faithful in his investigation of authorities, and generally correct in his conclusions. But in a book like this we have a right to demand of the author something beyond the simple painstaking of a careful compiler. The views of the various sects and individuals whose history is here chronicled are set before us with a good degree of distinctness; and we are told that the sentiments of this and that one are — to use the author's expression 'pretty fair Congregationalism." But there is a want of definiteness in tracing the particular points of resemblance. The result is, that the impression left on the reader's mind is too vague. Too large a part of the task which was fairly to be expected of the author is left to be performed by the reader for himself. The work has thus an unfinished character. There is a want of elaboration, of art. The material is there, but it is not worked up. The citations, also, are unreasonably long and needlessly multiplied; and the reader is wearied by the succession of unimportant details copied so lavishly from works not difficult of access.

We will not dwell upon minor faults of style further than to notice one blemish which is somewhat characteristic of a certain class of religious writers, and by which these pages are too often disfigured. We refer to the habit of applying to the Roman Church and its dignitaries such appellations as "the Beast," "the Mystery of Iniquity," "the Man of Sin,"-expressions for which there is indeed a Scriptural warrant, according to the view of many Protestant interpreters; but which, when employed as epithets, partake of a tone more likely to foster prejudice than to lend substantial aid to the cause of Protestantism, and which are too much the provincialisms of a party to befit the diction of the ecclesiastical historian.

7.-1. Essays on Some of the Difficulties in the Writings of the Apostle Paul, and in other Parts of the New Testament. By RICHARD WHATELY, D. D., Archbishop of Dublin. From the Eighth London Edition. Andover: Warren F. Draper. 1865. 12mo. pp. 376. 2.- A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, with a Revised Translation. By Rt. Rev. CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. With an Introductory Notice by CALVIN E. STOWE, D. D., Professor of Sacred Literature in Andover Theological Seminary. Andover: Warren F. Draper. 1855. 8vo. pp. 183.

3.- A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, with a Revised Translation. By CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, B. D., Dean of Exeter, and Professor of Divinity, King's College, London. Andover: Warren F. Draper. 1865. 8vo. pp. 190. 4.- A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, with a Revised Translation. By Rt. Rev. CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, D. D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. Andover: Warren F. Draper. 1865. 8vo. pp. 263.

5.-A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles to the Philippians, Colossians, and to Philemon, with a Revised Translation. By Rt. Rev. CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, D. D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. Andover: Warren F. Draper. 1865. 8vo. pp. 278.

6.A Critical and Grammatical Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians, with a Revised Translation. By CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, B. D., Dean of Exeter, and Professor of Divinity, King's College, London. Andover: Warren F. Draper. 1865. 8vo. pp.

171.

THE Scriptures of the New Testament lie before the critical inquirer like any other ancient writings, to have their genuineness determined and their contents ascertained by the ordinary rules of evidence and the recognized canons of exegesis. They are not to be approached, as sacred books, with peculiar reserve and timidity; for their specifically sacred character is not a fact which we have a right to assume at the outset, though it may be a corollary of our investigations. If they are not the works of the men to whom, or at least of the age to which they are generally attributed, if they are either spurious, or formed by successive accretions, we can place no reliance either on their historical details or on their dogmatic statements, except so far as they are verified by our own consciousness and experience. If, the question of authorship being settled satisfactorily, their contents are either self-contradictory, or absurd, or inconsistent with well-known truth or fact, we are constrained to regard them as curious monuments of antiquity, and nothing more. They are their own evidence. Their sacred character -the divine element in their authorship, or the divine inspiration of their authors can be inferred only from the phenomena of their external history and from the materials — narrative, didactic, and imaginative which they embody. We may find ourselves spontaneously treading with unshodden feet, as on holy ground, before we have gone far; but to take off our shoes at the gate is the part of superstition rather than of enlightened reverence.