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system must have less work in common, and more for the particular benefit of each laborer." No insurrectionary appeals against their former masters are allowed; "such a course might increase the trouble of organizing them into a peaceful and improving system, under a just and healthful temporary discipline; and besides that, it is a dangerous experiment to attempt the improvement of a class of men by appealing to their coarser nature."

We have preferred to collect these single points of testimony, showing what hope we may entertain for the African race. under these new influences, rather than give in any detail the history or the results of the Port Royal mission, for which the time seems hardly come. We have said enough to show our strong conviction of the importance of this experiment. It is impossible to overstate the consequences to our nation — nay, to civilization at large which may flow from a wise and successful handling of this matter. The question it opens is as wide as that touching the spiritual unity of mankind, the fitness of the inferior races of man to share in a Christian civilization, the meaning and the breadth of the phrase, Kingdom of God on earth.

Nor should we withhold a word of honor for those who have volunteered to this difficult service. It was no holiday task. It might be undertaken from a sentimental impulse; it could not be persevered in without courage and patient faith. "I have never known what self-denial and self-sacrifice were," is the testimony of one, "until I met a negro in South Carolina, and tried to associate with and teach him." Besides, the perils of waters and perils of the wilderness (ranging "from. fleas to small-pox"), there are the mischiefs of camp-life, the pain of seeing one's best work undone, the conviction that one is laboring for a harvest that cannot be gathered till another generation. "The regeneration of the blacks will date. from the time the last soldier leaves the island." Under such present discouragements, we take leave of those who have voluntarily embarked in this humane and noble task; fervently hoping that they may have had a share in laying that cornerstone, broad and deep, on which the grander structure of our future liberties shall rest.

VOL. LXXIII. – 5TH S. VOL. XI. NO. I.

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ART. VII. -REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE.

THEOLOGY.

Ir is some compensation for the disgrace which the prosecution of Dr. Rowland Williams has brought upon the English Church, that it has produced the noble plea of James Fitz-James Stephen for freedom of inquiry and the rights of the clergy.* The whole argument is masterly, in its grasp of principles, in its handling of details, in its clearness of statement, in its candor of admission, in its union of freedom, reverence, and courtesy, and its choice, terse, and vigorous diction. Nothing is strained; nothing is pressed unfairly; there is no appeal to the prejudice or to the fear of the court or the larger public outside, to whom, not less than to the court, the argument is addressed. There are even no rhetorical attempts, unless we reckon as such the magnificent closing paragraphs, which ring with the tone of protest, warning, and prophecy. Dr. Williams has no cause to be ashamed of his advocate, and can find nothing in this "Defence to explain away anything that he has avowed, or to deny anything that he has affirmed. He is not put upon the stool of penitence by his counsel, nor is he made to appear in the high ecclesiastical court as a supplicant, wishing to retain the emoluments of his place. All that the advocate asks for his client is justice. He does not think it necessary to disclaim sympathy with the heretic, or to apologize for any idea or expression of his client.

This thick duodecimo, of nearly 400 pages, gives the whole case, with nothing omitted, and yet nothing that could be spared. We have, first, an abstract of the sixteen counts of the indictment, with the references to passages in the Essay of Dr. Williams on which the charges were based; then, an abstract of the argument, of its general principles and their application to the specific charges; and lastly, the plea itself, arranged in four sections, according to the points treated and the days of delivery. The argument is a legal argument, yet it involves incidentally not a little theological discussion. And if this lawyer represents the thought and feeling of the English bar, the cause of sound learning has not much to fear from the malice and folly of frightened bigots. Whatever may be the verdict of his Lordship the Dean of the Arches, there can be no doubt that every reader of this plea will instantly acquit the brave culprit from the charges trumped up by his enemies. The reviewer of Bunsen has violated no oath of his consecration and no canon of the Church of England by his exposition of the opinions of the learned German. Mr. Stephen proves, by very numerous citations, that he has said no more than the great authorities of the English Church, dead and living, Chillingworth and Hooker and Tay

*Defence of the Rev. Rowland Williams, D. D., in the Arches Court of Canterbury. By JAMES FITZ-JAMES STEPHEN, M. A., of the Inner Temple, Barrister at Law, Recorder of Newark-on-Trent. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1862. 12mo. pp. xlviii., 335.

lor and Warburton and Watson and Whately, and a host of others, have said, even with more emphasis, again and again. He shows that a verdict against Dr. Williams is a verdict against those lights of the Church of which England makes such boast. Denying that there is heresy in any statement which Dr. Williams has made, he affirms that, if he is a heretic, his heresy is not new, that it was known at his consecration, and that he is a heretic in common with teachers whose orthodoxy has not been questioned. We might praise the ingenuity of this part of the plea, were not the spirit of the whole so broad and noble.

Will not the American publishers, who have favored us with the bulky volumes of "Replies " to the "Essays and Reviews," give us in a cheap form this splendid defence of that one of the Essays which gathers the greatest number of new views of theology into its compass? There are few books which the lovers of good logic would read with more delight.

15.

FEW writers have such persistence in writing unpopular and unsatisfactory books as Isaac Taylor. Of the two dozen volumes, more or less, that he has published, only the "Natural History of Enthusiasm" has really any permanent worth or interest. The provoking looseness and the studied obscurity of his style repel readers who would sympathize with his opinions, and the narrowness of his religious horizon hinders his lucubrations in theology from a large range or influence. Professing to be catholic in his toleration, he is really one of the most exclusive of dogmatists, and under the cloudiness of his words there is the ground-tone of positive bigotry. His scholarship, which is considerable, is everywhere hampered and hedged in by his prejudice; and his main skill as a writer seems to be in twisting, by a subtle sophistry, the facts which he discusses to his foregone conclusions. He leaves us at the end of his treatises uncertain of the meaning of his argument, but not by any means uncertain of his intention or of his real opinion.

These characteristics are signally exemplified in the volume entitled "Logic in Theology, and other Essays," which has recently appeared in an American edition. The first of these Essays we need not particularly notice. It appeared some years since as an Introduction to

an edition of Edwards on the Will. It is at once the ablest and the most sophistical piece in the volume. The second Essay is that cool and self-sufficient manifesto against Unitarianism which made such a stir at the time of its appearance in the Eclectic Review, about thirty years ago, in which the writer pretends to sketch the actual position of the Unitarian body, and to advise all wise men to forsake the falling house, and leave it to its sure destruction. The article, professedly kind and compassionate, was in reality malignant, and was justly regarded as a mean caricature; and its conclusion of the falsehood of Unitarian

Logic in Theology, and other Essays. By ISAAC TAYLOR. With a Sketch of the Life of the Author and a Catalogue of his Writings. New York: William Gowans.

theology, because Unitarian chapels were not generally thronged or fully attended, was a conclusion utterly unworthy either of a philosophic or a charitable mind. His republication of that libel, after an interval of thirty years, in which his prophecy of the downfall of Unitarianism in England has been so completely falsified, and his promise of another essay in the same vein, showing the present condition of the Unitarian sect, are evidence clear enough of the real spirit of the man. He is neither competent as a critic nor fair as a judge; and all through his exposition of the state of Unitarianism there runs a lordly contempt which is very disagreeable.

The other five Essays of the volume have not before appeared in print. Four of these are on texts from early Church history, but really treat of matters in the present age and nearer home. They are without point, and are dull enough reading. The closing Essay, of sixtyeight pages, in seven sections, is in some respects a remarkable production. It is entitled, "Without Controversy," and its purpose is to show what truths may be considered as so absolutely established that they cannot be disputed by any reasonable mind. Commencing by a statement that every leading theological dogma has been, and is, matter of controversy, and that it is not easy in the midst of this wide and various debate to find anything sure and fundamental, he goes on by a course of misty and circuitous logic to assert the very doctrines most controverted as those which are to be received as beyond dispute, - the original sin of man, the literal interpretation of Scripture, the Trinity, the Vicarious Atonement, and the rest. The incontrovertible things are the things which have been most controverted. The obscurity in which the reasoning of the Essay is involved prevents its contradictions and assumptions from appearing in relief, but the last impression is of a writer trying to deceive himself by his own dialectics.

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WE have already spoken of the very handsome and complete "Book of Worship" prepared by our friends in New York. The "Book of Vespers" is a portion of it, about half the volume, including the Hymns, and is published to meet a frequent call for it in a separate form. It is not easy to invade the traditions of a church, even one with so short a history as that for which these volumes have been prepared. But many who might not consent to alter the brief simplicity of Congregational forms have yet found a charm in what we have begun to know pretty familiarly now as " Vespers." In some places, it has been tried and found wanting, perhaps from some infelicity in method. To some persons it has seemed to belong more to the æsthetics of worship than to its spirituality, and to be a lame substitute for the sobriety of the service it superseded. Some may have fancied the title to be perilously Papistical. But those who have used it under favorable circumstances speak warmly and confidently of its success; and we are glad to find the result of their experience in this volume, rich both in material and suggestion for the sacred purpose it intends.

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*Book of Vespers; an Order of Evening Worship. With Select Psalms and Hymns. New York: James Miller. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co.

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

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YEAR by year there is added something to that collection of material, already great, which is to serve in explaining the progress and illustrating the results of that sudden development in thought and style, with which, now nearly a century ago, Germany began to vindicate its existence and its language; - leaping thus at once and forever into the front rank of the nations which now direct, and are at last to consummate, this new career of civilization. The work undernoted,* not yet completed, to the general reader mere rubbish, a waste of money and a trial of patience, - is one of the last contributions, pious and meagre, to the illustration of a remarkable age, to a nearer acquaintance with some remarkable men. The first volume contains only Herder's correspondence with Nicolai, author of romances, editor of periodicals, publisher of books, a vigorous campaigner in his day in the world of literature, who has left some marks of his existence, to be sure, for the curious, but is for the most of us a mere phantom now; and that, extending through thirty years, with "Father Gleim," or the "Prussian Grenadier," as they called him, simple, hale old man, running over with delight in the comforts of this world, greedy of praise and productive of poetry, such as it was, — very good often, because so exceedingly natural and breezy, who early recognized the great genius and long enjoyed the tender friendship of Herder. The second volume introduces us to Hartknoch, almost the earliest known to us of Herder's friends, who at the latter's suggestion established himself as a bookseller at Riga, and seems to have been kept always busy in publishing Herder's books, living long enough to see him whose struggles he had encouraged and shared emerge from the obscurity of a teacher in a barbarous province of Russia, to become one of the most illustrious men in Germany, and one of the greatest writers of his age. Herder's correspondence with Heyne, and with J. G. Eichhorn (father of the celebrated Karl Friedrich Eichhorn), some letters to Johannes Müller and from F. L. W. Meyer and August von Einsiedel, with a few trifles, make up the rest of the volume. Heyne's life has been best written by his son-in-law Heeren, and best stated and commented upon by Carlyle; - but the familiar letters thrown off in the busy hours of that long and crowded career show, better than the historian can describe or the philosopher analyze them, the honest, genial nature, the kindness which had ceased to be a habit of duty in becoming a quality of the heart, the strong affections, not chilled by the years or many books and many crosses, but fresh and fervent to the end; thus adding to other proofs, sometimes called for in history, this example also that the great scholar may likewise be a kindly man.

But it was of another person we meant chiefly to speak. Among the figures which walked the little Weimar stage, in the background, for the most part, with an identity unmistakable, yet a mere shadow

Von und an HERDER. Ungedruckte Briefe aus Herders Nachlass. Herausgegeben von HEINRICH DÜNTZER und FERDINAND GOTTFRIED Von Herder. Leipzig: Dyk'sche Buchhandlung. 1861.

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