ness, and force, of the Christian life throughout. The bad fruits of the system, in this view, stare us in the face from all sides. Our theology is sickly, lame and lean. Our piety is angular and hard, running much into narrow technicalities and traditionary forms. Every denomination has its own small world of theory and experience, which it affects to regard as universal Christianity, without the least account of the other little worlds of like sort, with which it is surrounded. It is gross falsehood, to say that the influence of sects on one another is wholesome, and favorable to the general cause of Christianity. Their emulation is not holy; and any gain that may seem to come of it, is no better than "the hire of a whore or the price of a dog" brought into the house of the Lord, which he has declared to be an abomination in his sight (Deut. xxiii. 18). It is not by any such rivalry and strife, that the glorious gospel may be expected to prevail in the world. All zeal for religion is rotten, and will be found at last to stink, that springs not from a true interest in religion for its own sake. Our sects do not love each other. Their relation to each other, at best, is one of indifference. To a fearful extent, it is one of quiet malignity and hatred. What sect takes any active interest in the welfare of another, rejoices in its prosperity, sympathizes with its griefs and trials, makes common cause with it in its enterprises and works? Every body knows, rather, that the charity of sects stops short for the most part with the lines of circumvallation that surround for each one its own camp, and that it is cold as winter towards all that lies beyond. The jealousies and collisions of sects, not loud, mainly, but in the form rather, of quiet still fanaticism, are the source of endless religious mischief throughout the land. Altogether the system is a plague that calls for mourning and lamentation in every direction.

12. For one who has come to make earnest with the church question, and who has courage to face things as they are in the way of steady firm thought, the whole present state of sect christianity is full of difficulty and discouragement. In the first place, it is not possible for him to identify any one sect with the idea of the whole Church. Whether he be a Methodist, or a Presbyterian, or a Lutheran, or of any other denomination, he sees clearly that it is a desperate business to think of making out a full agree *36

VOL. I.-NO. VI.

ment with primitive christianity in favor of his own body. He owns too, at any rate that other bodies are included in the Church, as it now stands. Of course, his own is but a part of the Church, not numerically only, but also constitutionally. Hence it must be regarded, when taken by itself, as a one-sided and defective manifestation of the Christian life; and so the consciousness, or state of mind, which it serves to produce, and in which distinctively it stands, can never be rested in as evangelically complete. It is not possible thus for a true church consciousness, and the particular sect consciousness, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, or any other, to fall together as commensurate spheres of life; the first is something far more wide and deep than the second, and cannot be asked to yield to this as ultimate in any way, without the sense of incongruity and contradiction. Then again, it becomes impossible, of course, to acquiesce in the denominational position as final and conclusive. No position can be so regarded, that is not felt to be identical with the absolute idea of Christianity, the true sense of it as a whole. What earnest minded man now seriously expects that his particular denomination, Methodist, Presbyterian, or any other, is destined to swallow up at last all other types of Christianity, and so rule the universal world? Nor is the case relieved at all, by imagining the different sects, as they now stand, to continue collectively in permanent force. It is not possible at all for a truly thoughtful spirit, to settle itself in this as the legitimate and normal state of the Church. The very sense of sect, as related to the sense of the Church, requires that the first should pass away. The whole sect system then is interimistic, and can be rightly endured only as it is regarded in this light. And yet the system itself is opposed to every such thought. It cannot will its own destruction. Every sect demands of its members a faith and trust, as we have already seen, which imply that it is to be taken as absolute and perpetual. It plays, in its place, the part of Christ's one universal Church. Here, then, is a difficulty. To cleave to the sect as an ultimate interest, in the way it requires, is to be divorced in spirit necessarily, to the same extent, from the true idea of Christ's kingdom, whose perfect coming cannot possibly be in such form. To become catho lic, on the other hand, is necessarily to rise above the standpoint

of the mere sect, and to lose the power thus of that devotion to its interests, separately considered, which it can never fail to exact notwithstanding, as the test and measure, in such relation, even, of universal Christianity itself. How much of embarrassment and confusion is involved in all this, the more especially as the sect system has no tendency whatever to surmount its own contradiction, but carries in itself the principle only of endless disintegration, many are made to feel at this time beyond what they are well able to express.

J. W. N.

ART. XL.-UNIVERSAL HISTORY-ANTEHISTORIC PERIOD THE CHINESE.

[IN the last number of the Review was published the introduction to a Manual of Universal History, originally prepared for the use of Marshall College, by the Rev. Mr. Mann, of Philadelphia, and designed to be used as a text-book in that Institution. It contains a general outline of the principles which are illustrated in detail in the succeeding parts of the work. The introduction itself cannot be fully understood unless studied in connection with the historical facts narrated in the history of the different nations treated of. No final sentence, either of praise or dispraise, can be justly passed upon its merits, before an opportunity may be afforded for the perusal of the entire Manual.

The history itself is divided into three grand divisions: 1. The Antehistoric period; 2. The most important nations before the birth of Christ; 3. The most important nations after the birth of Christ. Under these leading divisions are arranged, in systematic order, the several nations, ancient and modern, which have in any way contributed to the progress of society towards its final end. As Christ himself is regarded as the centre of the world, ancient history must be considered as a preparation, in all its parts, for the great mystery of the Incarnation; and modern, as an expansion of it. In the department of Ancient History, great pains are taken to show how the political, social, artistic, and scientific activity of the human family, in its final tendencies, strove to effect a lasting union between God and man,

but without success. Still, as struggles after emancipation from the thraldom of sin and the attainment of spiritual freedom, they must not be regarded as void of meaning. They demonstrate, beyond the possibility of contradiction, that our common human nature, in consequence of its original constitution, hungers aud thirsts after a living union and communion with the fountain of Light and Life, with the Great God himself. Such a union, however, could not have been accomplished in a sudden, abrupt way. In accordance with the law of our life, which is a law of progressive growth, history moves forward through a period of 4000 years before the Incarnation—that greatest of all facts-took place. When now men had been prepared for his reception by a systematic course of education, conducted by Providence, in conjunction with human agencies, the Word became Flesh. The new life thus introduced into the very heart of the world, constitutes the governing principle of Modern History; and it is the business of the historian to point out the influence which it exerted on society at large.

That the readers of the Review may be enabled to obtain a clearer conception of the character of this Manual, it has been thought proper to continue the publication of extracts from it.]

PART 1. The Ante-historic Period.

§ 1. A cloud of impenetrable darkness overshadows the primitive state of man. Neither Sacred nor Profane History furnishes us sufficient and authentic materials for the formation of clear and definite opinions concerning the condition and character of the earliest society. This uncertainty arises not only from the absence of proper data and the meagreness of the chronicles we may possess, but springs immediately out of the idea of history itself. In nature the ripest bloom of vegetation and the richest fullness of the most beautiful forms of its existence, are preceded by a state of chaotic confusion, when the elemental powers are struggling in the birththroes of creation. In the idea of life is implied a progressive advance from lower to higher stages of perfection. Its beginnings, involved in a process of formation, escape the ken of the acutest observer, and successfully defy detection. In the department of nature, order succeeds to disorder, light to darkness, beauty to deformity.

Nor does this law of life terminate its activity within the narrow bounds of nature; it displays its presence in a higher form, in the province of human existence. But history is the summary of the various manifestations of mind, as they have been successively revealed at different periods, in the onward march of time. As, therefore, the beginning of our common human life lies hid from common observation, and becomes visible only after it has attained to a

certain point in its growth, so in history, its earliest appearances are not characterized by any distinctive features. It is only after man has advanced to a certain position in the scale of civilization, that the certainty of history increases and its materials become authentic. § 2. According to the Scripture account, He who in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, made man in his own image, surrounded him with Paradasaic happiness, and invested him with sovereign authority over the inferior orders of creation. It is impossible to determine with precise accuracy the locality of the beautiful garden of Eden-the blooming cradle of our first parents, and the gloomy sepulchre of their pristine innocence. Nor can any adequate solution be given to the question which on the very vestibule of history enforces its claims upon our attention, how the human race which, according to the Biblical narrative, sprung from the same stock, could have branched out into so many distinct families, differing from each other in color, in physical organization, and in mental and spiritual endowments.

In opposition to the Pantheistic cosmological speculations of heathen antiquity, which either ascribed to matter an eternal co-existence with God himself, or regarded it as a voluntary emanation of his being, the Bible teaches that the world sprang into existence out of nothing, at the command of Jehovah, whose good pleasure it was, in this way, to reveal his Omnipotence, his Wisdom, and his Love.

Various theories have been advanced respecting the abode of our first parents. The simple fact that Mesopotamia was rendered fruitful by artificial irrigation, overthrows the hypothesis which assigns it to that country. Others bestow this honor upon Canaan, because it abounds the whole year round in palatable fruits. Numerous arguments tend to prove, that the elevated but warm and lovely Cashmere, enjoyed the privilege of nourishing our progenitors. Vide 1 M. ii., 8, 10-14.

All profound philosophers, who have made man the subject of their special study, acknowledge with one accord that the differences of color and of mind which characterize the several races, spring not so much from the influence of climate and the gradual deterioration effected by unnatural intermarriages, and other causes, as from the operation of immoral principles introduced into our nature by the Fall. This diversity consists not only in the variety of color and of size, in the formation of the skull and in the physical appearance generally, but principally and mainly, in the relative