history which now belongs to Christ would have related, word for word, his own condescending grace; so that, in every word and act of Jesus, we are to recognise, in effect, the voice and movements of paternal love.' pp. 66 ––69.

For the remaining sections, we must refer to the Work itself,except that we wish to introduce under the head Of the Holy 'Spirit,' the valuable and practical remarks on the subject contained in the Preface; especially as we agree with the Author, that if there be one part of Our Lord's teaching more emphatically entitled than another to the character of inexhaustible fulness, and which distinguishes Him above all other inspired instructors, it is what he taught on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

"He shall not speak of himself," said Christ; and, as if to sup ply the deficiency, to reward and provide for that disinterested and emphatic silence of the Divine Spirit concerning himself, our Lord made him the great theme of his own last discourses and promises. And when was he more original and explicit than when dwelling on this subject? What a vast tract of new truth did he add to the domains of faith, all fertilized and enriched with the effluence of the Spirit! On what topic was he more evangelical than on this?-even antedating the style of the epistles, and leaving little, if any thing, for them to add either in unction or in fulness. What subject did he equally rely on to console his disciples, and to fill them with expectation in the prospect of his own departure? He was in search of the strongest solace; and he had an infinite variety of subjects to choose from; but out of all that multitude the topic on which he chose chiefly to insist was the promise of the Holy Spirit. And what lofty things did he predicate concerning him? What names of greatness and goodness did he bestow on him! He made him the great promise of his new dispensation! And yet, what doctrine, what leading doctrine at least, is less insisted on in the church than the doctrine of divine influence? And, consequently, what promise is less fulfilled to the church than the promise of the Spirit? It is true, an occasional sermon is preached on the subject, just to satisfy the sense of duty; and an occasional restlessness is observable in parts of the church; but, alas! it is a starting in sleep, rather than an awaking out of it; like the spasmodic motions of a person who is visited in sleep by the reproachful remembrance of an important duty which he has consciously neglected; it is the involuntary agitations of the slumbering church, convulsively answering to the unwelcome reproaches of the unslumbering conscience. Other prophecies are considered; but the promise of the Spirit, the great unfulfilled prophecy of the gospel, is doomed, by general consent, to stand over for future consideration. Other blessings are desired; but this, which would bring all blessings in its train; which is offered in an abundance corresponding to its infinite plenitude, an abundance of which the capacity of the recipient is to be the only limit; of this we are satisfied with just so much as will save our sleep from deepening into death. Each falling shower-consecrated emblem

of divine influence-the scantiest that moistens the thirsty earth, descends more copiously than the offered influences of the Holy Spirit, and reproaches us with the spiritual drought of the church. And so long have we accustomed ourselves to be content with little things, that we have gone far in disqualifying ourselves for the reception of great things; the revivals of the new world are still regarded by many 56 as idle tales."

The church itself requires conversion. We pray for the conversion of the world; but the church itself, though in another, yet in a sober and substantial sense, needs a similar blessing. The object of conversion is two-fold ; personal, and relative; to bless us, and to make us blessings. Individual conversion accomplishes the first object, by placing us in a personal and evangelical relation to Christ; the second can only be scripturally effected by the collection and organization of those who are so related to Christ into a church, and by that church advancing forwards and placing itself in an evangelical relation to the Holy Spirit. Now the prevailing sin of Christians is, that they are inclined to stop short at the first of these stages. They are, perhaps, sufficiently alive to the importance of preaching Christ as the author of redemption; for they have their own personal experience in evidence of its necessity; but they are not proportionally alive to the necessity of divine influence as the means of usefulness; for of that they have not the same evidence. Their conversion to Christ, as individuals, was scarcely more necessary to answer the first aim of the gospel, in their own salvation, than their conversion to the Spirit, in their collective capacity, is necessary to answer the second, in the salvation of others. I say their conversion to the Spirit;-for the change necessary has all the characteristics of conversion ;--conviction of guilt in neglecting his agency, a perception of his necessity and suitableness, and earnest applications for his heavenly influence.' pp. xxii-xxv.

The Essays on the Spirituality, Benevolence, and Practicalness of Christ as the Great Teacher, display an exuberance of illustration. The Work proceeds with a sustained earnestness. The spirituality of Christ's kingdom, its total non-resemblance to worldly governments, and the spiritual nature of the Christian vocation, are pressed upon us with the cogency of reason, the tenderness of persuasion, and the ardour of a zeal, kindled at the altar of devout benevolence. What a portrait of the Divine Teacher is delineated in the fourth Essay ! The tears wept over Jerusalem seem to have opened the fountain of tenderness in the Author's benevolent heart, and we cordially sympathize with him as he exclaims:

Pitiable, indeed, must be the state of that mind which can find itself at ease to debate a question of metaphysical divinity in the presence of the Redeemer's tears. Yet there are men whose creed has no place even for his sacred grief; who are actually annoyed at these tears wept over perishing sinners, as at heterodox variance with the Divine decrees; who frown at this precious distilment of infinite love as inconsistent with their views of divine inflexibility. There are those who would rather these tears had never been shed, or that the record

of this burst of divine compassion should be expunged from the sacred page, than that it should remain as an obstacle to their logical views of the divine purposes. But we linger over it with delight; we love to remain within the softening influence, the hallowed contagion of the Redeemer's tears; we bless him for them; we regard the melting scene as only inferior in pathos, in tender and solemn grandeur, to Calvary itself. pp. 326-7.

Practicalness is an ugly word. We do not think the Author always happy in his terminology. But, though we dislike the word, we acknowledge that it conveys a more definite meaning than any other which occurs to us. It stands for the moral results which it is the direct aim and tendency of the Saviour's teaching to produce; and expanded into a proposition, it is powerfully sustained by a beautiful and unbroken chain of eloquent argumentation. But again we must allow the Writer to speak for himself; nor can he or the public justly complain of us, that we have made him his own reviewer. We thus take leave of him, merely observing, that the wine he has furnished is of an excellent vintage, and of the best quality. All that it wants is―age.

Of every other system it may be said, that it only actuates a part of our nature, leaving the rest like a palsied member of the body, unnoticed and unused; to Christianity alone belongs the high prerogative of calling every latent principle of our complex nature into action, giving appropriate exercise to every function, and proportion to every part; of animating, and maturing, and circulating like an etherial fluid through the whole, and bringing it to the perfection of " a man in Christ Jesus." Wherever it comes, it creates a capacity for true enjoyment, and puts all the universe in motion to gratify that capacity. It makes us feel that we exist under an obligation to be happy. Perfect itself, it pants to behold perfection in every thing else, and, since it finds it not already existing, it puts forth all its efforts to produce it. Perfect from the beginning, it has remained unchanged, while the arts, and sciences, and systems of a dateless antiquity have yielded to the demand for improvement. It has seen every thing human, contemporaneous with its origin, renovated and changed again; but, like the Jewish legislator when he had survived his generation, its eye is not dim, nor its natural force abated. It maintains its post in the van of improvement, and points the way to enterprise and hope, as the anointed leader of mankind. And however untried the paths, and high the distinctions which await them in their onward course, it will still be seen in exemplary advance, beckoning them on to the goal of perfection. No living springs of good shall gush from their hidden depths in human nature, which have not been smitten into existence by this rod of heaven; no forms of excellence shall arise to bless the world, of which it is not the parent, and the perfect type. Only give the gospel room to plant its moral apparatus, and let it obtain the necessary fulcrum for its powers, and it will employ a lever which shall move the world from the dark vicinity of hell, and lift it into the sunlight and neighbourhood of heaven.

However incredible the statement may appear to those who are unacquainted with the chimeras of error, there is a class of persons who, under the presumptuous pretence of enjoying an intimate acquaintance with the mind of Christ, and of magnifying his grace, profess to glory in the gospel as a dispensation from holiness. That such a dispensation would be highly acceptable to the children of disobedience, we can easily imagine; but that its advent should be ascribed to him whom hell itself acknowledged to be the Holy One of God, must be regarded as a masterpiece of impiety which bids defiance to imitation, as the last triumph of infernal art. Compared with the advocates of this blasphemy, he who only charges on the gospel a defective morality is a mere venial trifler; he only alleges that it is wanting in some of the elements of a perfect excellence; they claim for it as a peculiar glory that it dispenses with all excellence. For, by affirming that it discharges them from the law as a rule of life, they virtually declare that it legalizes vice, that it grants them a patent to sin under its own broad seal, that it naturalizes the alien and eternal outlaw, sin, and makes it a denizen of the kingdom of God. He, by pretending dissatisfaction with its unfinished excellence, is guilty of abating the ardour and expectation of the thirsty enquirer after the water of life; they, by adulterating the vital element, by infusing their own poisonous distillation, turn the very chalice of salvation into the cup of perdition. He wears no mask, he bears the mark of his master visibly stamped on his forehead, and takes on himself, so far at least as the character of the gospel is concerned, the undivided responsibility of his sin; while they, under the treacherous guise of an alliance with Christ, affiliate their monstrous enormities on his holy gospel, and throw its hallowed skirt over the nakedness of their pollution.

This, it must be confessed, is a "doctrine of devils ;" it partakes of the infernal too palpably to be mistaken; like a stream of volcanic lava it may be traced directly to the mouth of the pit which disgorged it, to scorch and desolate the earth in its progress. If demons can rejoice, the successful introduction of this error into the church must have furnished them with an occasion for exultation not less triumphant than that of the first transgression; it taught them that the paradise of the new creation is as accessible as the original Eden, that the upas can be grafted on the tree of life, that they might confidently repose on the success of this experiment, and regard it as final, secure that, after this, there is nothing too monstrous to be believed, or too good to be perverted, when human credulity and depravity are the materials to be employed. If he of our race who lent himself to be the first vehicle of this deadly sentiment, had aspired to the bad pre-eminence of eclipsing the first sinner, of enacting another fall of man, he could not have adopted a more effectual expedient. Beyond all proportion of demerit, he has purchased for himself the first place in the classification of the heretics, and troublers, and monsters of the church. Judas betrayed his master to the cross; but he has betrayed the cross itself, and all its loaded blessings, into the hands of the enemy of God and man; his name, like that of the Iscariot traitor, deserves to be the synonyme of all that is exaggerated and enormous in guilt.' pp. 386-389.

VOL. XIV.-N.S.

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Art. III. Lives of the most eminent Literary, and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Vols. I. and II. (Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, Numbers 63, and 71.) London, 1835.

THIS valuable series now comprises upwards of seventy volumes. To how many more it is to extend, we have no means of divining; but no symptoms of exhaustion are at present to be detected, either in the subjects of the volumes or in the authorship. Some of the later ones rank amongst the most useful and elegant contributions to modern literature; and in this portion of the biographical series, we recognize with satisfaction the contributions of Southey, Montgomery, and other able writers, whose names, though not affixed to the several articles, are announced in the advertisements.. It is this circumstance which has drawn our attention more particularly to these volumes, added to their being of that class which comes under the head of elegant literature, and which is the most interesting to general readers. Before, however, we advert to their contents, we shall take the opportunity of offering a few critical remarks upon the series of which they form part.

And we cannot refrain from premising, that this Cyclopædia has not been hitherto subjected to that competent and discriminating notice and examination, which its pretensions, its merits, and its defects alike call for. We regret that our own arrangements have not enabled us to keep pace with the monthly issue; and it is now next to impossible to bring up the arrear; but we believe that we have devoted more attention to it, in the shape of extended articles, than the series has received from any other journal. The weekly journals, metropolitan and provincial, have given that sort of laudatory notice to sundry and many of the volumes, which sufficiently answers the purpose of a publisher; but we do not recollect to have seen in any publication of higher pretensions, a critique, either upon the plan and general conduct of the Cyclopædia, or upon any particular section. If the work consisted of mere jejune compilations, (which is the character, we admit, of a few of the volumes,) the Quarterly Reviewers might be pardoned for omitting to take notice of them. Many of the volumes, however, belonging to the classes of history, natural history, and natural philosophy, are not less deserving of critical analysis and discriminating commendation than any of the productions issued from the press.

It cannot be expected that the result of such examination, if honestly and competently conducted, would be uniformly favourable to the execution of the work. Speaking generally, the scientific portion promises to be the most valuable of the series. The preliminary discourse on Natural Philosophy, by Sir John Herschel, and the erudite Treatise on Astronomy, by the same distinguished philosopher; Professor Powell's compendious historical view of