this terrible curse. Shall I tell you how many of my classmates and cotemporaries learned here to brave the wine cup, and have perished by intemperance?-one of them under circumstances. so appalling, after so protected a childhood, that one would think it lawful, not only to bind the inexperienced by a pledge, but in fetters of iron, rather than expose him to the slightest hazard of so fearful a catastrophe. If that case could be brought before you, in all its sad and loathsome details,—and you could be assured that there was now sitting among you one who was destined to pass through the same abandonment to the same end—you should not be told who -you should only know it to be one whom you daily meet and welcome who has father and mother now sitting at home talking of him, planning for him; and sisters, whose own sweet hands at nightly toil provide for his support and comfort here; and it should be told to you that he, meantime, unwarily beginning here, shall go on step by step to the extremity of that deep damnation ;suppose that all this were revealed to you; - I believe that you would rise up as one man, and pledge yourselves with an oath to taste only water while life remains, that so he might be delivered. I can fancy that I already see you with glistening eyes offer yourselves to the act.

more

Would you do this for that one? And do you not know that there are sitting on those seats, - if we may judge the future by the past, in all human probability more than one, than two, more than five, upon whom that sad fate will fall? You could hardly be more certain of it, if an angel told you from heaven. But you can save them. Their fate is in your hands. You have but to rise up, as others around you are doing, and forswear the ruinous indulgence, and you thereby save them, beyond all peradventure, from the threatening ruin.

Will you not do this? Will you not, in the spirit of the Apostle, take up his magnanimous resolution, and abide by it steadfastly to the end? MY LIBERTY SHALL NEVER BE A STUMBLING-BLOCK IN A BROTHER'S WAY. IF ANY INDULGENCE OF MINE WOULD LEAD A BROTHER TO OFFEND, I WILL TASTE IT NO MORE WHILE THE WORLD STANDS, LEST I CAUSE A BROTHER

TO OFFEND.

I

CRITICAL NOTICES.

The Prelatical Doctrine of Apostolical Succession Examined, and the Protestant Ministry Defended against the Assumptions of Popery and High-Churchism, in a Series of Lectures. By THOMAS SMYTH, Pastor of the Second Congregational Church, Charleston, S. C. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. 1841. 8vo. pp. 568.

THIS work, as the author is careful to inform us, is not intended to be an attack on Episcopacy, strictly so called, but on the ultra doctrines of the "Prelatists," especially as represented by the divines of the Oxford school. The writer is himself a Presbyterian, though not a bigoted one, and he expects to carry along with him the sympathy not only of all "Non-Episcopal and Evangelical Communions," but of all " Evangelical or Low-Church Episcopalians," who, from duty and interest, are equally concerned with the former, in opposing what he calls "the exclusive assumptions of Popery and High-Churchism." The object of the work is thus more particularly stated in the introduction.

"The subject-matter of the following volume is the Prelatical doctrine of Apostolical succession, or the exclusive claims of High-Churchmen and Romanists, to be the ONLY true Church of Jesus Christ; his ONLY true and valid ministers; and the only sources of efficacious ordinances and covenanted salvation. This doctrine, and not Episcopacy, is the subject of our animadversion. The principles involved in this assumption and not the character and standing of the Protestant Episcopal Church - we condemn.

High-Churchism, in contradistinction to Low-Churchism; Prelacy considered as being the ultraism of Episcopacy; the exclusive, bigoted, and intolerant assumptions of the hierarchy, in their wide separation from the peaceful and equal claims of the Episcopal denomination; this, we wish it to be distinctly understood, is the object of our reprobation, whether the arguments, by which the Episcopal form of Church government is sustained, are valid, or of greater strength than those produced for Presbytery, is another question, which we may have occasion to consider. This, however, is not our present inquiry. That inquiry is simply and in substance, this: :- - Is the Prelacy the only Church of Christ, in this or in any other country, and the only source of covenanted mercy and efficacious grace? And, are Presbyterian, and all other denominations, which claim to be Churches of Christ, having ministers and ordinances according to his appointment, are they impostors, who only deceive ignorant people, to their great, and serious, if not fatal injury? This is the question to be answered, - plainly, candidly, either in the affirmative or in the negative." - pp. ix., x.

Among other inducements to engage in the work, the author mentions facts within his own experience, as "the manifestation of alienation of feeling; of haughty reserve; of high-toned exclusiveness; of reluctance to associate with him, or in any way to acknowledge him as a minister; and the open declaration of sentiments at war with all charity, and which threw him out of the pale of Christianity at various times and by various persons." There has been, he says, for many years, a growing interest in the subject he proposes to discuss, which has been greatly augmented of late by the publication of the Oxford Tracts, which have been reprinted, and, as he tells us, industriously circulated, and noticed in terms of praise and exultation," in this country, where they are exerting a wide influence.

As it

Whether or not the writer overrates this influence, is a question on which we shall not now enter. He has been annoyed, it seems, by the officiousness of some over-zealous champions of Prelacy; and, no doubt, their pretensions would be provoking enough, were it not that their absurdity tempts a smile. is, we apprehend no great danger from them. The "Divine right" of Prelacy, like the "Divine right" of kings, is an outworn and obsolete superstition; it is in direct antagonism with the spirit of the age, and it will require something more than the Oxford divines and their coadjutors on either side of the water to resuscitate it. The plain good sense of the American people, their love of liberty, their matter-of-fact shrewdness, and the blessings they have so long enjoyed under their free administration of religion, will pretty effectually secure them, we suspect, against the inroads of the old and stale theory of hierarchical power and transmitted sanctity.

In saying this, we by no means intend to intimate that the work before us is ill-timed or superfluous. Such is not our opinion. We believe it will do good. It will meet the new phase of the controversy, and supply what, we have no doubt, is, in some parts of our country, a pressing want. Even the greatest absurdities, "iterated and re-iterated," in a tone of unblushing confidence, will gain some adherents. Besides, the old treatises on the subject are, in a manner, inaccessible to the general reader, and were they to be had, a fresh production will be more read, and will produce a deeper impression, even if it be not more applicable, which in ordinary cases it will be, to the state of the times.

The present volume we regard as not only suited to the times, but in itself a production of no trifling merit. It indicates great industry, and no little research on the part of the writer, and its statements appear, from such examination as we have been

able to give it, entitled to confidence. The style is not particularly pleasing, and perhaps the arrangement might in some instances have been better, and parts more condensed; but there is an earnestness, good temper, and thoroughness, which mark the work, which we like, and we can very cordially commend it to the attention of all who feel an interest in the subject.

If there must be an uninterrupted succession, the author drily insinuates, (we believe it is the only joke he perpetrates throughout the volume,) that the best mode of securing it may be that of the Calmuck Tartars, "whose successive priests drink, each in turn, a cup wherein are mingled the ashes of his predecessor."

The Letters of John Adams addressed to his Wife. Edited by his Grandson, CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. Boston Little &

Brown.

1841. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 286 and 282.

We have already spoken of the letters of Mrs. Adams, published a few months ago. A volume containing letters of her daughter has been since given to the public by her daughter, Mrs. De Windt, and we have now from the hands of the editor of the first-named publication, two volumes of the letters of John Adams, the second President. These are the first and the last, especially, valuable additions to our historical library. Many more such volumes, we trust, are yet to make their appearance. Rich materials must exist, hitherto untouched, among the papers of the descendants of the founders of the Republic in every part of the country, at the South as well as 'the North. They ought not to be allowed to perish. It matters comparatively little whether such letters shall possess great merit as specimens of the epistolary form of writing. This is a very inferior consideration. Few publications could have less claim to distinction on that account than the volumes before us; we mean by this that there is nothing like elegant writing in them; nor

if that be considered out of place in letter-writing- is there anything of that full, graceful flow of thought and language, which is laid down as the fittest characteristic of this form of composition. It would be enough that they came from a mind of native vigor we could want no others and were a sincere expression of the feelings and opinions, experience and observation, of such a mind. They would then present us with those minute and vivid sketches, drawn from the life, of a particular period, for which we ask in the formal history, but never find, not even in the picture-painting Carlyle. The Washington letters by Mr. Sparks, with his running commentary in the form of notes, con

stitute such a history as we speak of, of our Revolution-the best that has been written, and probably the best that will be written. There is one other form of publication of a corresponding kind and value, of which we should like to see an example, from which a quite equal light would be thrown on the times of which it should treat. We mean volumes gathered from those day-histories those (we do not speak ironically,) those truest of histories, the newspapers of any stirring period, made up not merely of regularly appearing essays, such as those of the "Federalist," but of much more miscellaneous and less pretending matter, yet as pertinent to the end in view; editorial articles, namely, items of news, communications of correspondents, reports of meetings, even flying rumors and advertisements, from which, wisely culled, and arranged simply in chronological order, there would come a life-like picture, done with the very colors of nature, that would impress the mind more vividly with the true character of the times, than any other more elaborately wrought out afterwards by the annalist or historian.

Mr. Adams was never meant for a letter-writer. He evidently disliked the labor, and wrote at all only because he must. It was a duty he owed to others, and he performed it, as he did his other duties, with scrupulous fidelity. Mrs. Adams, indeed, seems to have complained at times of remissness, but most unreasonably, if we may judge by his warmhearted and eloquent defences in some of his letters from Paris. He never dilates upon a subject; his impatience of words will allow him only to touch it, and be off. He is rapid, bold, impetuous, says what he must say, in the fewest words possible, but those words, when the theme excites him, were words of fire

thunderbolts. He is by consequence never what can be called an agreeable, pleasing writer. Such epithets are utterly inapplicable to him. They are too feminine. He appears in his letters much such a person as he must have been in society, if we may reason from the character he gives of himself. "There are," he says, very few people in this world with whom I can bear to converse. I can treat all with decency and civility, and converse with them when it is necessary on points of business. But I am never happy in their company. This has made me a recluse, and will one day make me a hermit." This was said in '75. Doubtless, longer intercourse with the world made of him at last more of a world's man; but such a person would be the last - modified as he might have been by circumstances from whom to look for an hour's idle talk, or a letter of three or four pages of mere elegant writing or literary chit-chat. Some of these letters are of very little value; they have no merely agreeable qualities-nor distinctly, any other-and only serve as