it does that which nothing else can do and which is especially important to be done. We may give a young person instruction upon intellectual points, and furnish his mind with a great many ideas on religious subjects, and yet produce but a very inconsiderable and unworthy development of his religious nature. And it is the expansion of his soul which is needed, rather than the information of his intellect ;-indeed the latter is of great value no farther than it is connected with the former. If we can make a child's heart glow with piety to God, and benevolence to his fellow-children, it is far better than if we should delight his eager curiosity by showing unto him all mysteries and all knowledge.

The religious instructor, who is satisfied because his pupil can freely repeat chapters from the Bible, can hardly have for himself any distinct idea of that process of growth which takes place in the immortal nature when the spirit of truth has been infused into it and is quickening it in every part. And we shall far better guard the young man against the specious objections of the infidel, as well as give him a far more rapid progress towards the world of spiritual life and joy, by persuading him to take unto himself the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, than by carrying him through a long and laborious process of training as to those external supports of Christianity which are of an inferior and incidental character, and informing him of all the battles, small and great, which, in the history of the church and of infidelity, have been fought around those supports.

The trait we have remarked upon as distinguishing the book before us appears again in the remarks made upon the character of Christ, the description of which he concludes in the following strain.

"Whence such a character as this? Was it from earth or heaven? If from earth, where can we look for its great archetype? Not surely in the Gentile world; for it infinitely surpassed the ideal models which were laid down by the purest and most enlightened of its philosophers. Not in the Jewish world, for even its most cherished patriarchs were chargeable with innumerable imperfections; and in the days of Jesus of Nazareth, the great body of the nations were peculiarly degraded, both as it respected the acquirements of the understanding, and the habits of the life and conduct. Whence, then, this mysterious and wonderful personage, this Being so unlike all the generations of men who had preceded him or who have followed after him, yet clothed in a human form, possessed of human sympathies, and subject to human woes? No wonder that Rousseau, in his exquisite and well-known contrast between Socrates and Christ, should feel himself constrained to remark, that the inventor of such a personage would be a more astonishing character than the hero.'" pp. 70, 71.

Although we admire the sentiments with which our author speaks of Christianity, we cannot approve of the indiscriminating severity with which he speaks of the infidel. There is a bitterness in some of his remarks which, even were it deserved by all infidels, as, at the hazard, perhaps, in these intemperate and intolerant times of being called apologists for infidelity, we think it is not, we are most thoroughly persuaded that it is not calcu lated to reclaim the unbeliever from the error of his thoughts, or the error of his ways. When shall we be persuaded that, in raising men from earth to heaven, that course is not most successful which tends to stir up the bad passions of a bad heart!

Our author needlessly draws in at the close of his work a trea tise on the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, in which he supports, in the most rigid form, the doctrine of their verbal inspiration. His arguments appear to us to be of a very verbal kind. In commenting on that passage, in which Christ charges those who reject him with not having the word of God abiding in them, he speaks as follows.

"Here several things are to be noticed. In the first place, the Scriptures of the Jews, which did not abide in them through their unbelief are distinctly recognised as the word of God.

In the third place they are spoken of emphatically as the writings, evidently including them all, and leaving no room to dispute the divine origin of their diction any more than of the doctrines they contained"!

Again, in proof of the verbal inspiration of the prophecies he quotes the passage— Holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." He accounts for the difference of style in the different books of Scripture, by saying that "the Spirit of God was as capable of influencing the mind of a prophet or an apostle in coincidence with his own tastes, predilections, and education, as in opposition to them." A defence of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, consisting of such arguments, may, we trust, be safely left to itself. If the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures were necessary to the purposes of faith and worship, alas for the world. If the inspired words make an essential part of the Holy Book, the Bible is every day and moment slipping farther and farther from our grasp.

If this book should fall into the hands of any unbeliever, we would beseech him deeply to consider the nature of that internal argument for Christianity which it sets forth, that argument which, were no other argument within our reach, would still make Christianity the religion of the greatest, the wisest, and the holiest of our race.

C. A. B.

Letters to the Young. By MARIA JANE JEWSBURY. From the third London edition. Perkins, Marvin, & Co., Boston. 1834. pp. 264.

WE should think the authoress of these Letters is not the mere copyist of what others have said and written. She pours out her sentiments and thoughts with a freshness and force which indicate that they have been fully realized in her own mind and heart. The style is marked by naturalness and simplicity, and not unfrequently, and seemingly without the slightest effort, it rises to eloquence. Little turns of beautiful and original expression sometimes occur, which strike the mind as no mean proofs that we are reading the work of a thinker. Our authoress seems to have felt in her own heart the matchless excellence of the gospel and the supreme power of the love of Christ. We have been particularly pleased with those letters in which she endeavours to impress her young friends with a true sense of the value of the Holy Scriptures. Had we space we should be glad to quote from these letters. And indeed we cannot refuse to make a short extract from the sixth letter in which we find a just thought uttered with all the unction of true feeling.

"God, my dear friends, is as sufficient to satisfy the heart, as he is worthy to occupy the mind. It is good to be laid upon a sick bed (if he bless it) to see the vanity of even the world's best and fairest. What is poetry to the languid ear? What are pictures to the aching eye? or praise, or music, or gaiety, to the sick and sinking heart? Where is the mind itself with all its boasted resources? Yet when the thoughts are confused and the fancy fevered, the judgment weakened and the memory faithless,-even then the words which God speaks in his Gospel are spirit and life. Just where the world leaves us, he takes us up."-pp. 79, 80.

We could not help being reminded by this passage of one of our own dear friends now afflicted with disease, for whose sickness we have wept much, and for whose recovery we have often prayed. We could not help thinking of a striking remark he made to us as to the source of his consolation in the pains of his body and the weakness of his mind. At times, (he said), a rich text from the glorious Gospel will float through my mind all day, and come and go like the joyful strains of some rich melody which has long been familiar to the heart. What a reward even on earth for making the Bible one's study and delight!

In these Letters, familiar as they are, we sometimes meet with a thought of great importance. Take the following for an example.

"Minds of a reflective and somewhat timid cast are most liable to the influence of morbid sensibility; they soon begin to look through

rather than upon society, and consequently become disgusted with the construction of it.They serve their pleasures as children do their toys-pull them to pieces in order to ascertain their internal mechanism; and their emotions as the same children serve their rosebuds-open them to accelerate their time of bloom. Without intentional want of benevolence, they feel little towards their fellow-creatures beyond general good-will, or perfect indifference, whilst their affections are few, ardent, arbitrary, and exclusive."

With the technical theology embodied in these Letters we cannot agree, and we sometimes find what we esteem errors expressed in their grossest form. We did hope and trust that ideas like that expressed in the following couplet, quoted by our authoress, were passing out of approbation and use.

"For God before, man like himself did frame,

But God himself now like mortal man became."

Would that the writer could have considered what she meant before she transcribed these lines. The thought contained in them to which we allude is too shocking for criticism.

CORRESPONDENCE AND INTELLIGENCE.

SIXTH LETTER TO REV. ADIN BALLOU.

Harvard, November 17, 1834.

DEAR SIR,

I now proceed to make some remarks on the following passage contained in your letter:

:

"Finally, dear brother, pardon me for alluding to a practice in your denomination, which is as offensive to me, as the one I have been vindicating is to you. I mean the almost perpetual attention which your ministers and writers pay to their distinguishing doctrine of the divine Unity. I am a Unitarian. I was never any thing else. I drew my Unitarianism out of the Bible before I ever heard of Trinitarianism. It has always remained with me. I value the doctrine for what I deem its selfconsistency and agreement with divine revelation. But to imagine it a doctrine necessary to be laboured over and over, year after year, in almost every sermon, periodical, and tract, I am no more able, than to imagine how Trinitarians contrive to make a belief in the Trinity the mainspring of vital religion."

If it is a fact that our ministers and writers pay "almost perpetual attention to the doctrine of the divine Unity," and if this "doctrine is laboured over and over, year after year, in almost every sermon, periodical, and tract;" I must confess it is a fact I was not acquainted with; and were I to form a judgment in regard to this thing from what I have read, observed, and heard, it would differ considerably from yours. For these twenty years past I have been generally connected with Unitarian

societies, and more than eight years of this time I have been a hearer. I have heard many Unitarians preach, and a great many Unitarian sermons; i. e. sermons which inculcated Unitarian views of the gospel. And I cannot now recollect a single sermon among them all, in which our distinguishing doctrine was the theme or burden of the discourse! To be more particular, I do not recollect that I have ever heard a sermon, the apparent object of which was to disprove the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the equality of the Son to the Father, or of the two natures of Christ, or of his preexistence, or of the personality of the Holy Spirit. Others may have heard these subjects frequently discussed in the pulpit, but I have not. I can easily call to mind a great many sermons which I have heard delivered by Unitarian clergymen, and if they have, in my presence, dwelt on these controverted doctrines just alluded to, I do not now remember it. I would not say that I never heard a sermon on these topics; but if I have, it now escapes my recollection. You know that the Orthodox generally bring very different charges against us. They charge us with keeping back our peculiar doctrines. They complain of our sermons, that they do not go far enough: they frequently call our discourses" moral essays": they object that we dwell too much on duties, virtues, and human ability. You know what language they use, and I need not repeat it here.

I do not mean to insinuate that we have been silent at all times and in all places about the Trinity. We regard it not as a trifling error, and we are prompt to embrace proper opportunities to correct it. But this is only one among many errors which we are earnestly labouring to correct.

If you examine our periodicals of these last twenty years, you will find that our writers have paid no small share of attention to many other subjects besides the doctrine of the Trinity and the Divine Unity. I refer you to the "Christian Disciple," "Christian Examiner," "Unitarian Miscellany,' Sparks' Tracts," "The Liberal Preacher," "Unitarian Advocate," "Scriptural Interpreter," and "Christian Register"-and also to "The Unitarian," the death of whose editor was so eloquently and feelingly announced in your last paper. Our common and deeply lamented friend was the open, the earnest, the active friend to Unitarian Christianity. But the pages of "The Unitarian," as well as his other writings, will show that he was labouring not baesly to check and destroy the influence of a single error, nor to establish a single truth. Trinitarianism was not the only object which he boldly and often opposed. He did not employ all his time and energies in attempts to establish the doctrine of the Divine Unity. He contended with Calvinism, with Universalism, with Infidelity, with Atheism. It was his desire and endeavour to render this work highly useful to the cause of practical religion. But I need not remind you of these things.

If you will read the publications mentioned above, I think you will own that our writers have not confined their attention to that article of faith from which they have taken their distinctive name. They have Bought to give mankind juster views of religion and of divine revelation generally. They believed that wrong notions were entertained by many of their Christian brethren, not only in regard to the Trinity, but also in regard to native depravity, election, reprobation, the divine decrees, the divine sovereignty, the atonement, regeneration, faith, good works, the condition of those who die in infancy, the true evidences of a Christian character and hope, &c. &c. They have been busy also in pleading the cause of charity, peace, temperance, benevolence. In their studies they have thought of Sunday-schools, of the inmates of prisons and hospitals, of the sailor, of the slave, of the poor and afflicted. They have laboured much to check the progress of infidelity.

And if you consult the other publications of Unitarians, I think you will observe the same wide range of thought and the same large and coin