*Our transatlantic friends need not suspect us of the slightest wish to discompose them by transcribing a few of Sir C. Lyell's extracts from the poet Wigglesworth, who died, and by the way had a funeral sermon highly eulogistic preached over him by the celebrated Cotton Mather, in 1710. We do not need to be reminded that the "Day of Doom" might be paralleled, stanza for stanza, from hymnbooks of more recent composition, and even now current in old England. For example, we have ou our table the seventeenth edition of the Hymns of Daniel Herbert, (2 vols. Simkin & Marshall.) The preface is dated 1825, and the poet says, "I live in Sudbury, that dirty place, p. 3. Where are a few poor sinners saved by grace."-ii. These hymns are at this day, we believe, chanted throughout the communion of our Whitfield Methodists. Imagine a Christian congregation singing "to the praise and glory of God" in 1849 such strains "Were such a composition," proceeds our author, now submitted to any committee of school managers or teachers in New England, they would not only reject it, but the most orthodox amongst them would shrewdly suspect it to be a weak invention of the enemy, designed to caricature, or give undue prominence to, precisely those tenets of the dominant Calvinism which the moderate party object to, as outraging human reason, and as derogatory to the moral attributes of the Supreme Being." No doubt it is the inevitable tendency of these extreme Calvinistic opinions to produce a violent revulsion. Calvinism is everywhere the legitimate parent of Unitarianism. It has been so in Calvin's own city, in Geneva; it has been so in England, In another of these hymns we read (ib. p. 8)— "That day when he brings all the nations from afar, Once more, (vol. ii. p. 125)— "Read then Paul's Epistles, you rotten Arminian! You will not find a passage support your opinion." But why go so far as to the Whitfield Methodists or 1825 Here is a neat little volume just published in London, (Nisbet & Co., 1849,) entitled" Evangelical Melodies," the author of which professes himself to be a member of the Church of England, animated by a fervent desire to redeem the pianoforte and the poetry of Moore and Burns from the service of the Evil One; and in this volume, which probably has already attained great circulation and success within the bills of mortality, we find old favorites of younger days metamorphosed in certainly a most astounding fashion. For example— "The Pilgrim Boy on his way has gone, In the path of Life you'll find him," &c.—p. 13. "Sing, sing-if music desire Themes that with ravishing rapture are glowing, Surely believers can proffer her lyre Themes with such rapture replete to o'erflowing," &c.—p. 18. "Ah! think it not-the notion No warrant gleans from truth and fact That to this creed devotion Brings lawlessness in outward act !"—p. 56. "It is not an act at a moment done, Can attest that a soul has lost or won Campbell too has his share in the pious transmogrification. "Ye spirits of our Fathers Who (instrumentally) From England's church did exorcise The demon Popery!" &c.--p. 108. But Moore is the staple, and we hope, if he has not seen the precious little tome, that this incidental notice of it may both gratify and edify the recluse of Sloperton Cottage: It is a curious it has been so in America. The process is with any hope of success. simple, and, if slow, direct. The human and significant fact, that exactly the same mind directly it subsides from that high- process went on among the English descendwrought agony of belief which trembles be- ants of the Puritans, though in far more unfore and submissively adores the Calvinistic favorable times, in times dangerous to all Deity, can no longer endure the presumption religion, and under auspices less likely to which has thus harshly defined, and, as it maintain any hold on the religious mind. were, materialized the divine counsels; which This change too was chiefly in our great comhas hardened into rigid, clear dogma, all mercial and manufacturing towns, which, as which must be unfathomable mystery. It we have observed, are our nearest types of becomes impatient of all circumscription of the American cities. In almost all these the spiritual nature as of the moral attributes towns-if not the actual offspring, the growth of the Godhead. All other dogmas now ap- of our rapid, almost sudden, manufacturing pear as purely of human invention as those prosperity-the Church of England was at intolerable dogmas relating to predestination, its weakest. A single parish-church, in genelection, the five points, with their hideous eral a miserably poor vicarage, saw itself alconsequences. Calvinism has already snap- most in a few years the centre of a vast city. ped asunder the long chain of traditionary Many of the master-manufacturers were of theology, and contemptuously cast aside its the shrewd, sober, money-making race of the links. No restraint remains; the whole doc-old Dissenters. For them, as they grew in rinal system of older Christianity is broken up. In truth, the one leading thought throughout that school of powerful, eloquent, and, in justice we cannot but add, deeply devotional American writers, Channing, Dewey, Norton, is the abnegation of Calvinism; this is the key to all their doctrinal system, as far as they have any system; without this they cannot be fairly judged, or addressed There is not in this fallen world season more sweet Than is that when the Lord in the closet we meet."-p. 162. "Go where duty calls thee," &c.-p. 148. "Yes! Praise to the Lord for the good City Mission."--p. 94. intelligence and mingled more with mankind, the old stern Puritan creed became too narrow. Then arose Priestley and his schoolwe could follow out this whole history with far greater closeness and particularity-but it is well known how great a number of the old Presbyterian congregations utterly threw aside the old Presbyterian creed. Calvinism found refuge chiefly among the Whitfieldian Methodists, where it still broods in all its harrowing darkness; where it still (it is but justice to say) is crushing many hard hearts into religious belief; with amiable inconsistency bringing forth from that iron soil a large The voice that once within these walls the Gospel trumpet harvest of Christian gentleness and love. blew."-p. 179. **When in death I at length recline, This message bear to my kindred dear! Tell them I sought upon grace divine Day and night to live while I sojourned here. If a stone on my grave reposes, I pray you upon its surface write That he the mouth of whose grave it closes Held free-grace principles, main and might."—p. 190. Our own feelings of respect and veneration for the prelate lately, mostly fitly and happily advanced to the first place in our national hierarchy, must not prevent us from adding a single stave after Moore's well-known tribute to his illustrious countryman, the hero of Waterloo : As to the United States, we confess that we have grave doubts whether the whole secret of this mutual toleration is not in the multiplicity of the sects; in the weakness of each single one against the hostile aggregate. But after all, is this more than outward reconciliation, a compulsory treaty in which all have been compelled to yield up to the common use the neutral ground of education, because no one has such a superiority of force as to occupy it as his exclusive possession ? We have been very much struck by a passage from a sermon by a writer of a very high order, of the school of Channing-in some respects, we think, his superior-the Rev. Orville Dewey. Dr. Dewey wants perhaps some of that almost passionate earnestness, that copious flow, that melting tenderness, which carries away the reader of Dr. Channing; but he is a more keen observer of human nature, writes more directly to what we will call the rational conscience, has, with almost equal command of vigorous, at times nobly sustained language, a strong and prac tical good sense, not often surpassed in our common literature. If suspected as a religious writer (and we may observe that whoever wishes to be acquainted with the real tenets of the American Unitarians will find in his writings the most distinct statement of them)-as an ethical writer, as an expositor of the modes of moral, social, religious thought and feeling among our New England kindred, he might be studied with great advantage. In a very remarkable sermon On Associations, (Dewey's Works, p. 259,) we read: tain the endowments, the glebes, tithes, estates, rights, honors, when it is no longer the Church of England. The Pope, it seems, is now to be put on the voluntary system; let us wait the result before we reduce our own clergy to that state, of something far worse than poverty, subserviency to their congregations. Break up the Establishmentwhich, we repeat, must be the inevitable consequence of the severance from the State -and what a Cadmean army of sects, not yet compelled as in America, and wearied out into mutual toleration! What a wild din of controversy! Poor Charity, where wilt thou find refuge, but in thy native heaven? Sir Charles Lyell is no less at a loss to reconcile the excellent and universal New England system of education with the outbursts of fanaticism, of which the latest, the most ludicrous, and in some respects most deplorable, was what is called the Millerite movement. The leader of this sect, one Miller, taught that the millennium would come to pass on the 23d of October, 1844 "With regard to those great associations denominated religious sects, I fear that the case in volves no less peril to the mental independence of our people. I allow that the multiplicity of sects in this country is some bond for their mutual forbearance and freedom; but the strength and repose of a great establishment are, in some respects, more favorable to private liberty. If less favor is shown to those without, there is usually more liberality to those within. It is in the protected soil of great establishments that the germs of every great reform in the Church have quietly taken root. For myself, if I were ever to permit my liberty to be compromised by such considera--the year before our author revisited Bostions, I would rather take my chance in the bosom of a great national religion than amidst the jealous eyes of small and contending sects, and I think it will be found that a more liberal and catholic theology has always pervaded establishments than the bodies of dissenters from them. Nay, I much doubt whether intolerance itself in such countries, in England and Germany for instance, has ever gone to the length of Jewish and Samaritan exclusion that has sometimes been practised among ton. He has many whimsical stories of the at But oh the fate of human things! In the winter of 1845 Sir Charles and Lady Lyell saw in this same tabernacle, now turned into a theatre, the profane stage-play of Macbeth, by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean, where Hecate's "Now I mount and now I fly," reminded some of the audience of the former use of the building. Fas est et ab hoste doceri. These are wise words, of the wisdom drawn from experience. We need not observe, that even under the broad shade of our establishment opinions such as those of Mr. Dewey would of course find no repose; but we recommend this line of thought to those who have long been murmuring in secret, and are now openly clamoring for the dissolution of Church and "I observed," proceeds the traveller, "to one State, which, if it means anything, must of my New England friends, that the number of mean the abrogation of our Establishment. Millerite proselytes, and also the fact that the These zealots can hardly suppose that they could reckon at the lowest estimate sixty thou prophet of the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith, are to unite the perfect independence of self-sand followers in the United States, and, according government with the privileges of a national to some accounts, one hundred and twenty thouchurch; that the Anglican Church is to re- sand, did not argue much in favor of the working of their plan of national education. As for the Mormons,' he replied, you must bear in mind that they were largely recruited from the manufacturing districts of England and Wales, and from European emigrants recently arrived. They from European emigrants recently arrived. They were drawn chiefly from an illiterate class of the Western States, where society is in its rudest condition. The progress of the Millerites, however, although confined to a fraction of the population, reflects undoubtedly much discredit on the educational and religious training in New England; but, since the year 1000, when all Chrisan end, there have never been wanting interpreters of prophecy, who have confidently assigned some exact date, and one near at hand, for the millennium. Your Faber on the Prophecies, and the writings of Croly, and even some articles in the [query? a] Quarterly Review, helped for a time to keep up this spirit here, and make it fashionable. But the Millerite movement, like the recent exhibition of the Holy Coat at Treves, has done much to open men's minds; and the exertions made of late to check this fanatical movement, have advanced the cause of truth.' Other apologists observed to me, that so long as a part of the population was very ignorant, even the well-educated would occasion ally participate in fanatical movements; for religious enthusiasm, being very contagious, resembles a famine-fever, which first attacks those who are starving, but afterwards infects some of the healthiest and best-fed individuals in the whole community.' This explanation, plausible and ingenious as it may appear, is, I believe, a fallacy. If they who have gone through school and college, and have been for years in the habit of listening to preachers, become the victims of popular fanaticism, it proves that, however accomplished and learned they may be, their reasoning powers have not been cultivated, their understandings have not been enlarged; they have not been trained in habits tendom believed that the world was to come to of judging and thinking for themselves; in fact, they are ill-educated. Instead of being told that it is their duty carefully to investigate historical evidence for themselves, and to cherish an independent frame of mind, they have probably been brought up to think that a docile, submissive, and child-like deference to the authority of churchmen, is the highest merit of a Christian. They have perhaps heard much about the pride of philosophy, and how all human learning is a snare. In matters connected with religion they have been accustomed blindly to resign themselves to the guidance of others, and hence are prepared to yield themselves up to the influence of any new pretender to superior sanctity, who is a greater enthusiast than themselves."-vol. i. pp. 90-92. Sir Charles Lyell, we see, argues that this is a fallacy. To a certain extent it may be so; but we venture to say that no culture, however careful and general, of the reason, no education, the most intellectual and systematic, will ever absolutely school the What world out of religious fanaticism. was the rank-what had been the education of some of the believers in Mr. Edward Irving and the unknown tongues? Man cannot live on intellect alone; there are other parts of his moral being, his imagination, his feelings, his religious nature, which in certain constitutions, under certain circumstances, will be liable to excess. Where there is life, there will be at times too much blood; where there is not utter torpor, energy in accesses too highstrung and uncontrollable; without religious apathy, there must at times be religious eccentricity. We go further, we cannot wish it otherwise; we think that here, too, we see the divine wisdom and goodness. We would wish all mankind to be cultivated to the height of their reason; we would desire that all might be capable of comprehending as familiar things the great truths of philosophy. We have the supreme contempt for those who would limit philosophy in her inquiries by narrow views of religion; who (for example) would lose sight of this plain, irrefragable fact, that where there is one passage in the Old Testament, according to its rigid literal interpretation, which comes into collision with the principles of geology, there are twenty which must be forced out of the meaning which they bore when they were written, before they can be made to agree with the Newtonian astronomy. content, with the archbishop of Canterbury and our geological deans among ourselves, with Dr. Wiseman among Roman Catholics, and with Dr. Pye Smith among the Dissenters, to seek the history of man in the Bible intended for man. We would place geologists, like Sir Charles Lyell, on that serene eminence, where all who are conscious that they seek truth, and truth alone, have a right to take their seat far above the low murmurs of those who, setting the sacred Scriptures and modern science at issue with each other, show their want of profound and sober knowledge of both; we would leave the dean of York to that befitting answer, which we trust he will receive-silence. But this before us is a question entirely different, and to be judged on different principles. We believe that the irregu larity of those individuals, or even of those sects of minds, which diverge into folly, into extravagance, into fanaticism, is the price which we pay for those irregularly great minds which are the glories and the benefactors of mankind, the creators, the inventors, the original impellers, in all great We are works and movements in our race-the great | poets, artists, patriots, philanthropists, even philosophers. Our vision of education, we confess, is rather that of Milton, which Sir Charles Lyell, we are inclined to think, has judged (p. 202) more from the report of Johnson, than from actual study of that noble treatise addressed to Master Samuel Hartlib. Science, indeed, finds a place in that all-embracing system, but rather an early and subordinate one; youth are to rise at length, having left" all these things behind," to the height and summit of human wisdom. "When all these employments (not merely natural philosophy, which Milton treats as almost elementary, but even politics, jurisprudence, and theology,) are well conquered, then will those choice histories, heroic poems, and Attic tragedies of stateliest and most royal argument, with all the famous political orations, offer themselves; which, if they were not only read, but some of them got by memory, and solemnly pronounced with right action and grace, as might be taught, would endue them even with the spirit of Demosthenes or Cicero, Euripides or Sophocles."-Of Education, Milton's Prose Works. unsuspecting reader might indeed peruse almost volumes of Channing's writings without discovering his peculiar opinions. Sir Charles Lyell himself, however, has inserted this significant caution: "But I should mislead my readers if I gave them to understand that they could frequent churches of this denomination without risk of sometimes having their feelings offended by hearing doctrines they have been taught to reverence treated slightingly, or even with contempt. On one occasion, (and it was the only one in my experience,) I was taken, when at Boston, to hear an eminent Unitarian preacher who was prevented by illness from officiating, and his place was supplied by a self-satisfied young man, who, having talked dogmatically on points contested by many a rationalist, made it clear that he commiserated the weak minds of those who adhered to articles of faith rejected by his church. If this too common method of treating theological subjects be ill-calculated to convince or conciliate dissentients, it is equally reprehensible from its tendency to engender, in the minds of those who assent, a Pharisaical feeling of self-gratulation that they are not as other sectarians are."-vol. ii. p. 347. Our difficulty in turning to other topics is We have dwelt long enough on these to know where to pause for discussion. We subjects; though there are others of the cannot, however, refrain from submitting to our readers' consideration the strong good same class in which we should wish to join sense with which he exposes one of the great issue with Sir Charles; in truth, the whole dangers, as well as one of the inevitable twelfth chapter, on the higher education in New England, and all the great questions tions which virtually rest the whole power of abuses of republican institutions-of instituwhich arise out of that primal controversy, the State in a complete democracy-that would require a number of our journal to itself. But it would be the greatest injustice wealth." It is a wise lesson on the jealous which he aptly calls the "ostracism of to a work, the charm of which is its fertile and ever-changing variety, to give undue impatience of a democracy as to trusting the least power out of their own hands; on their prominence to one class of topics. On one kindred point alone we are bound to touch suspicion of the only true and legitimate briefly and emphatically, and this in justice guaranties for public order, and for a wise to the writer, as regards his estimation judgment on the public welfare-we mean among ourselves. Our readers are not to property and distinction, either political or intellectual-on their overweening confidence ascribe to Sir Charles Lyell, from his interin their own wisdom and knowledge. It course with the Unitarians of Boston, in private, or his attendance on their religious strikingly displays their fear of subservience services, agreement or sympathy with their to those above them, which almost always opinions. That intercourse was almost in-betrays them into far more degrading subevitable. To this community belong almost all the great names in science and in letters, at least, those known in England; their chief preachers are men of great eloquence, and it is their ordinary and avowed system to exclude controversial subjects from their teaching; they dwell on the great truths on which all Christians are agreed; they do not scruple to use, without comment or explanation favorable to their own views, the common phraseology of the Scripture. The servience to those below them, needy and noisy demagogues. We are sorry not to quote the whole of a very instructive conversation between Sir Charles and a leading lawyer of Massachusetts. This gentleman said, inter alia the State Legislatures, or in Congress, receives a "Every one of our representatives, whether in certain sum daily when on duty, besides more than enough travelling money for carrying him to his post and home again. In choosing a delegate, |