the hardest questions. The "Rights of Man," the "Sovereignty of the People," the greatness of Robespierre consisted in the incessant reiteration, in season and out of season, of such phrases as these. Now these phrases, and the ideas contained in them, are essentially negative, disorganizing, destructive; resistless as instruments of social or political criticism, they can accomplish nothing, create nothing, rectify nothing. Let a disciple of Robespierre stand on the steps of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, and let the square before him be filled with a mob of ten or twenty thousand men clamorous for work; in what stead will his phrases, "the Rights of Man" and "the Sovereignty of the People" stand him then? But call in another physician. Let some statist be sent for, some engineer, some military man perhaps, some man, at all events, that has never used the phrase "Sovereignty of the People" in his life, but that has dealt with men and things in stubborn circumstances, and on the large scale; let the pseudoRobespierre meanwhile harangue the multitude, and keep them in good humour; and the chances are that a scheme will be soon forthcoming that will draw off the multitude, clear the square, find work for the malcontents, and make society all the better for the uproar. Thus it is that we would indicate the difference between some of our social reformers and Mr. Chadwick. Not that we or that he, we believe, would undervalue abstractions. Nothing great, we believe, was ever done but there was an abstraction in the atmosphere at the doing of it. Magnanimity itself must be based on intellectual generality. Nor, as may have been seen from the preceding sketch, was there ever any series of efficient practical services that had not its parallel series of general principles, expressed or secretly proceeded on? What we mean, then, is simply this, that at all times, and especially in such times as the present, society ought to look away occasionally from those whose method it is to catch the eye by frantic gesticulations, and the ear by vehement asseverations of new fundamental theories, and attend a little more to those who, acquiescing so far in the existing order of things, or at least not revolting against it, devote themselves steadily to the work of elaborating, propounding, and carrying specific social ameliorations. Of this class of men, as we have already said, Mr. Chadwick is a remarkable type. To say that he has committed errors is but to say that he has attempted much; that he should be the object of jealousy and opposition is a matter of course, considering the nature of his exertions; but it would be difficult, we believe, to name any man not directly connected with the Government of the country, to whom, according to impartial testimony, the public owes, or from whom it may yet expect, more valuable administrative improvements.

ART. III.-1. The Life and Times of John Calvin, the great Reformer, translated from the German of Paul Henry, D.D., Minister and Seminary Inspector in Berlin. By HENRY STEBBING, D.D., F.R.S. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1849. 2. The Life of John Calvin, compiled from authentic sources, and particularly from his Correspondence. By THOMAS H. DYER. 8vo. London, 1850.

3. The Calvin Translation Society's Publications, 8vo. 1843-1849. Commentary on the Romans, 1 vol. Tracts on the Reformation, &c., 2 vols. Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, 2 vols. Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3 vols. The Harmony of the Evangelists, 3 vols. Commentary on the Book of Psalms, 5 vols. Commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets, 5 vols. Commentary on the Gospel by St. John, 2 vols. Commentary on the Book of Genesis, vol. 1. Commentary on the Epistle to the Corinthians, 2 vols. Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel, vol. 1. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (New Translation), 1 vol.

4. Histoire de la Vie, des Ecrits, et des Doctrines de Calvin. Par M. AUDIN. Seconde Edition. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1844.

OURS is pre-eminently an age of resuscitation and revival. Its characteristic is not so much the discovery of the new as the restoration of the old, both as regards principles and facts. There is perhaps less of the inventive faculty, but there is more of the industrial, the elucidative, or the perfective; and this peculiarity appears in every department of man's pursuits. Layard, for example, has disinterred a city. By his wondrous discoveries he has connected the present with three thousand years ago, and that so closely, that that vast epoch is almost blotted out. It is no effort of fancy, but a prosaic fact, that we can now walk among the halls of the palaces of Nineveh just as the last of its monarchs did before they forsook them, and gaze on their thrones, their deities, and mural decorations, very much as these monarchs would do ere the proud city had crumbled before the conqueror. Egypt and its temples, Etruria and its subterranean cities, have been illuminated in a similar style; and we are now as familiar with men who lived, and epochs which passed away a thousand years before Athens or Rome was founded, as we are with the events of the modern historical eras. What was conjecture once, is history now, and the last resurrection of all "has become by some degrees less incredible.

The same thing has happened in regard to certain of our great

historical characters. They also have long been buried beneath ignorance, or prejudice, or superstition; but, in recent times, friendly hands have been held out to disencumber their memories of all that ignorance or aversion had piled above them, and present them to us as God-sent men, fulfilling high destinies, and forming, by their lives and actions, important eras in the world's history-the grand evolutions of the purposes of Him who rules unchallengeable over all. Oliver Cromwell, who had been historically pilloried by Hume and others incompetent to understand his inner life, has, in our time, found one capable to some extent of comprehending the strength of the Protector's convictions, and the magnificence of his sweeping and catholic aims. We rejoice that we can add, that a similar work has been performed on behalf of the Reformer CALVIN; and that at length tardy but substantial justice has been done to his great memory and name. Of nearly all the biographies of Calvin but that to which we are about to allude, we may remark, as was done regarding a certain life of Voltaire,-" Ou l'on confute Condorcet et autres biographes en plus de deux cents faits."

Many reasons might be assigned why the great French Reformer should have been so long neglected, or regarded only with contumely and hatred. The leading features of his profound theological system, so humbling to man, and so diverse from man's superficial philosophy; the asperity with which the Calvinistic controversy has so often been carried on from Calvin's age till ours; the extravagance which characterized some of his pretended followers in the seventeenth century; his alleged political principles; his vehement invectives against his opponents; and, to crown the whole, his implication in the death of Michael Servetus, all tended to obscure his memory, and furnish excuses to the world for assailing him with ribaldry or rancour. Various attempts have been made to roll back these assaults, and present him to the Churches in his real lineaments and character; but till recent times, all these efforts have failed. Calvin was one of those men who could not but be either intensely loved, or as intensely hated; and his biographies, in as far as they deserved the name, were consequently either somewhat tumid eulogiums, or the embodiments of malignity and theological antagonism. At length, however, historical justice begins to be done to Calvin, For a quarter of a century, or more, the opinions of thinking and impartial men have been slowly undergoing a change regarding him and his system. Tholuck and others on the Continent, have combined with Bishop Horsley, Dr. M'Crie, and others in our island, to promote this revolution. The circulation of some of Calvin's Opuscula translated, has drawn attention still more closely to him; and now, none but the bitterly hostile, or the

Dr. Henry's 'Life'-its Character.

87

profoundly ignorant, can be found to vituperate as of old, to reecho, in short, the language of the courtly dames of his day, whose licentiousness he curbed, and who were wont hysterically to exclaim" Do not speak to us of Calvin-he is a monster." Even a portion of the Lutheran Church, which long execrated him as the supposed antagonist of their idolized Reformer, is mollified now, and a general concord regarding the Swiss divine is restored among the judicious in both sections of the Protes

tant Church.

Withal, however, nothing very effective had been done to vindicate his memory, and delineate his history, till the Life of Calvin by Dr. PAUL HENRY of Berlin appeared; and it, to a large extent, supplies the desideratum. Dr. Henry is highly qualified, both by country and acquirements, for the work which he has accomplished. Penetrated by a sense of Calvin's true greatness, and capable of estimating his character from the only right view-point that which a living faith supplies-this biographer has devoted about twenty years to the work before us. He has appealed to every library and every source whence information could be derived; and now lays the results of these inquiries, and of a careful scrutiny of Calvin's works, published and in MS., before the Churches. Amid intense admiration for the Reformer, Dr. Henry is not blind to the blemishes that attach to him; while he delineates his character, and records his efforts, or explains his deep principles, it is done with an honesty of purpose which at once secures our assent by its truthfulness, and commands our admiration by its lofty generous spirit. No doubt the work is much of the German type. There is a redundancy of matter; there are not infrequent repetitions. The plan pursued by the biographer, of recording Calvin's history according to his controversies, rather than according to chronology, necessitated that blemish, and the result is what he himself has called "a ponderous superfluity;" while the long interval which intervened between the commencement and the conclusion of the work, has farther marred its symmetry, both as to structure and to style. To the careful student, however, its general plan-moulded on the threefold idea of recording, first, the formation of Calvin's creed; secondly, the founding of his Ecclesiastical system; and, thirdly, his resolute efforts to extend it, and preserve it from violation by hostile men-gives a large measure of unity to the whole; and though it does seem strange, after hearing, for example, of Melancthon's death in one section of the book, to find him many pages thereafter still contending for the faith, the general principle once mastered, guides us without confusion through most of these difficulties. The great French Reformer is so ubiquitous in the work; he stands so prominently forward amid all that is

done, whether well or ill; he is so perfectly the presiding spirit, that we can pardon the plethoric nature of the Life, because it guides us farther and still farther into the principles-the very heart and soul of Calvin. His individuality is entirely sustained. Our sympathies are strongly attracted to him, whether in suffering or in joy; and the power, the occasional eloquence, the thorough sympathy with Calvin's deepest convictions indicated by this biographer, all unite in investing his work with attractions which will render it a standard one, in spite of its Germanisms and Dr. Henry's intimate acquaintance with the present state of religion in Italy, Germany, France, England, and Scotland, imparts other qualifications needed in the biographer of Calvin, and we are constrained to confess, that though the Genevese Reformer has had tardy justice, he has had it now in large measure, in the work of Dr. Henry.

its mass.

We do not mean to say, that all that it contains is to be admired or approved. The author hopes that the time may come, "when the victory of Christian feeling in the Protestant Church may restore the cross to its place as a symbol; and that not only in sacred edifices, but by the roadside, and on the rocky summit of the mountain, where the wanderer, or the traveller returning to his home, may greet it from afar, and breathe his prayer." We devoutly trust he will be for ever disappointed. He complains, that the "Protestant Church, in order to uproot abuses, has, alas! banished the memory of the saints from our belief, and this, though we profess in our Confession to acknowledge the Communion of Saints." We as devoutly trust that the saints will be left precisely where they are-in glory; yet after perusing these and similar sentiments, one is disposed to wonder how he who recorded them could sympathize in the thorough reforms, or admire the penetrating character of Calvin. But allowance made for these and similar departures from simple principle, the work before us is one that will form an era in men's opinions regarding Calvin, and enable Christendom, if it will, henceforth to know at once his virtues and his foibles, his indomitable will, his undaunted firmness of purpose, and yet his humane, and gentle, and generous nature. Dr. Stebbing has done well to lay a translation of Henry's Life of Calvin before the British Churches, but no merely English scholar will forgive him for withholding the ample appendices. Why should he not forthwith publish them in a separate volume?

The salient points of John Calvin's Life may be easily traced. Born at Noyon in Picardy, on the 10th of July 1509; he adopted the Reformed doctrines about the year 1530; and published the first edition of his Institutes in 1535-6. He was first