world one is "comforted" and the other is "tormented." Now if it is said the souls of the wicked after death are "reserved to the day of judgment," when the "final perdition of ungodly men" will take place, is it grace or justice that holds them in this reserve? If grace, we ask then for what end? Surely not to allow them another probation, for in the case above cited an impassible gulf was between the "bosom of Abraham" and the "tormenting flames." Now if the perpetuation of existence depends, according to our author, upon faith in the Lord Jesus Christ alone, how are we to understand this existence of the souls of the wicked after death? The New Testament presents the true doctrine on this subject. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, [shall not enjoy this everlasting life,] but the wrath of God abideth on him." He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." They that have done good shall come forth to the resurrection of life; they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation." The redemption of Christ conferred immortality upon the wicked as well as upon the righteous, the immortality of the one being that of bliss and glory, while the immortality of the other is that of wretchedness and woe.

66

The Harpers have in press the following: Alford's Greek Testament. The Greek Testament: with a Critically Revised Text; a Digest of Various Readings; Marginal References to Verbal and Idiomatic Usage; Prolegomena; and a Critical and Exegetical Commentary.

The Land of the Book; or, Biblical Illustrations drawn from the Manners and Customs, the Scenes and Scenery of the Holy Land. By Rev. W. M. THOMSON, Missionary of the A. B. C. F. M. to Palestine.

work will be immensely valuable, and was greatly needed. It has been thirty years since a complete Cyclopædia was published in this country, during which time the most astonishing progress has been made in all departments of science and literature, and in the fine and mechanic arts. A generation has passed away and another has come upon the stage. From what we know of the publishers and editors of this great American work, we assured that no labor or expense will be spared to make it the most valuable, as well as the most reliable work of the kind in the world. The third volume ends with the word Browning, from which we infer that it will comprise more volumes than was at first anticipated. This, instead of being an objection, will only so far enhance the value of the work. We would say to the editors and publishers, let it be thorough and exhaustive, especially in relation to all the facts and principles of important subjects, should it embrace twice as many volumes as contemplated, and consume a lifetime in its publication.

Another interesting work, in process of publication, and which has reached its eighth volume, is Benton's Abridgement of the Debates of Congress. This volume covers four years, beginning with the second session of the sixteenth Congress, Nov. 13, 1820, and ends with the first session of the eighteenth Congress, May 27, 1824. The first incident of the volume is the election of Speaker of the House, on the resignation of Mr. Clay, when there were twenty-one ballotings without a choice. The votes were mostly divided between W. Lowndes, J W. Taylor, and S. Smith. The principal subjects of agitation in Congress were the admission of Missouri, revolutions in Greece and South America, piracy in the Gulf of Mexico, Indian trade and civilization, national road, occupation of Columbia River, Lafayette's visit, and the tariff of 1824.

Among others we notice Two Millions,

to Wear." This poetical satire is timely, and calculated to do good in certain quarWhat it may lack in poetic fire, it certainly gains in the force and directness with which it lashes the inordinate passion for speculation which has been hitherto, unIt is a happily, too prevalent among us. complete burlesque on the codfish aristocracy. The poem was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College, and was written at their request.

A Text-Book of Vegetable and Animal Phys

Childhood and the Church. By T. F. RANDOLPH MERCEIN: Carlton & Porter, N. Y. This small volume is the last production of the youthful and talented Mercein. Though some of the positions taken by the author, in regard to the regenerated nature of childhood, may be considered by those who believe in the doctrine of inherent total infant depravity, as unorthodox, yet we believe, in the main, they will find a response in every Christian heart. For purity of thought and felicity of expression, we regard this book as a gem of the purest ray; and it was fitting that its author, who possessed a native goodness and child-like simplicity of character, should leave such a memorial after his departure to that world of which child-like innocence and purity is the type. We present our readers with the following beautiful extract:

It may be objected that the Saviour gives the universal law: "Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." But it is clear that Jesus never meant to say that all who enter his kingdom must be regenerated in manhood. If then the precise age is thus left undefined, the expression declares only that every human soul in order to an entrance into the kingdom, must be qualified by that spiritual change of the nature derived from Adam, which is equivalent to a new creation of the moral nature. He must be born of the Spirit as well as of the flesh. The two births are distinguished in character, rather than in the order of time. The tide of sinful life must be touched by the purifying scepter of redemption, or it can never flow through the city of our God but whether that purifying touch comes to the full manly current, or to the youthful streamlet, or to the infant rill, or works its wonders at life's fountain-head, still it is true that a new, or more than Adamic life is infused. Except a soul is born of the Spirit it cannot enter the kingdom of God. This scripture, therefore, does not conflict with the doctrine of infant regeneration; but on the contrary, when connected with the divine proclamation in regard to childhood, is decisive in its testimony to the spiritual character of infancy. The two declarations of the Head of the Church form the propositions of a syllogism from which there is no escape.

All who are in the kingdom of God are born of the Spirit

But-such as infants are in the kingdom of GodTherefore-infants are "born of the Spirit"-are regenerate.

A BIBLE OVER NINE HUNDRED YEARS OLD.The Rev. Dr. Duffield, of Detroit, has in his possession a Bible in the Latin language. The book is made entirely of vellum, and the printing is all done by hand with a pen and ink. Every letter is perfect in its shape, and cannot be distinguished, by any imperfections in form, from the printed letters of the present day. The shape of the letters is, of course, different from those now in use, but in no other respect can they be distinguished from printed matter. The immense amount of labor may be conceived from the fact there are two columns on each page, each of which will average sixty lines to the column. The columns numbering twelve hundred, we have about seventy-two thousand lines in the whole book. Nothing short of a lifetime could accomplish such a work.

The date of this book is A. D. 930. It was consequently made five hundred and sixty years before printing was invented, and is nine hundred and twenty-eight years old. There is probably nothing on this continent, in the shape of a perfect book, equal to it in age. The vellum upon which it is printed, is of the finest kind, and is made of the skin of young lambs and kids, dressed and rubbed with pumice stone until it is very thin. It is somewhat thicker than common paper, being a medium between that and the drawing paper now in use. The fine veins in the skin are distinctly visible in many places. A pencil mark was drawn by the operator to guide the construction of each line. Many pages have these lines visible on the whole surface, no effort having been made to rub them out. Two lines running up and down divide the columns with mathematical accuracy. At the beginning of each chapter highly-colored ornamental letters are placed. These are the only marks of the division of chapters. There are no subdivisions into verses, the chapters running through in one paragraph to the end, and no descriptive headings.

This invaluable relic was presented to Dr. Duffield, by Lewis Cass, Jr., our minister resident at Rome. He procured it of a Greek monk, who brought it from the Greek convent of St. Catharine, at the foot of Mount Sinai. Mr. Cass befriended this monk, who was in trouble; and he, in return, presented him with the volume which we have described. According to his story, it is the work of one of the ancient monk scribes in the convent above named. When it became known that Mr. Cass was parting with it, and that it was going out of the country, the

round sum of three thousand dollars was offered him for it by the monks of the city of Rome.

There is, in the library of Harvard College, a Greek manuscript of a portion of the Scriptures that is older, by one or two centuries, than Dr. Duffield's Bible. And in a private library in Cambridge there are several monkish manuscripts of the entire Bible, similar in every respect to that described. There is also in the same library an evangelistarium, or selections from the Gospel for the use of the Church-a folio volume of over three

hundred pages, written on parchment in the eighth century, that is, eleven hundred years ago, and seven hundred years before the invention of printing. This book is, of course, older by about two hundred years than the Detroit Bible, and we have no account of any other book in this country of equal antiquity.

THE FIRST PRINTED BIBLE.-A copy of the first Latin Bible, supposed to have been printed in Mayence by John Guttenberg, between the years 1450 and 1455, was recently sold in London. This is a marvelous production, struck off from the type cut by the hand in imitation of the manuscript it was intended to represent, each page being composed and worked off separately. This was formerly one of the gems in the library of H. R. H., the late Duke of Sussex, and when at his sale it produced nine hundred and seventy-five dollars, was considered to have brought its full value. On the present occasion it realized two thousand nine hundred and seventy-five dollars, or more than thrice the sum it then cost.

Among the English Bibles the following caused most competition: The first edition of the entire Scriptures in English, by Bishop Myles Coverdale, printed in 1535, abroad, a volume of the greatest rarity, of which we believe no perfect copy is known, with the title-page and several leaves in fac-simile, six hundred and eighty-two dollars and fifty cents. The Byble, by Thomas Matthew, in 1537, one hundred and thirty-five dollars. Cranmer's version, dated May, 1541, one hundred and five dollars. Cranmer's version, dated November, 1541, two hundred and ten dollars. Mathewe's Byble, printed by Raynalde and Hyll in 1549, one hundred and thirty-two dollars and fifty cents. Jugge's edition of 1568, one hundred and fifteen dollars. The first English version printed in Scotland, sixty dollars; all these being more

or less imperfect, although completed with fac-similes. The Pentateuch, translated by W. Tyndale, printed at Malborow, in the land of Hesse, by Hans Luft, (at Marlburg, by Luther's printer,) having twelve leaves in fac-simile, seven hundred and seventy-five dollars. The New Testament in Latin and English, by M. Coverdale, printed at Paris in 1538, three hundred and forty-five dollars. Another edition of Coverdale's New Testament, printed in 1538, seventy-five dollars.

COPYRIGHTS.-The North American contains

the following interesting remarks on the subject of copyrights:

The capital embarked in copyrights by the leading English publishers is out of all proportion to that which is similarly employed in this country. Instead of paying a per centage on the sale of a work, they most commonly buy the author's entire interest. Thus, Moore was paid by the Longmans fifteen thousand dollars for his Lallah Rookh. The same firm pay Macaulay thirty thousand dollars for the right of publishing the first two volumes of his History of England ten years. The sums paid in the purchase of copyrights by Murray, Bentley, and Colborn, the aristocratic publishers, as they munificent character. They sell no books exare styled in England, have been of the most cept of their own publication, but these are so numerous and important that they constitute a business of immense magnitude. As the circle of readers is constantly enlarging in Europe, as well as in this country, it is obvious that the demand for books will increase in the same proportion.

On the subject of copyright we take the following from the Washington Union :

The United States is, probably, the most ex tensive book market in the world. We speak from general impressions rather than from particular knowledge; but we have no doubt that while other countries-Germany and England for instance-may exceed us in the number, variety, and importance of their publications, we surpass them in the number of books sold. Physical comfort is so easily acquired in this country, and a taste for knowledge so early and generally implanted by our widely-spread system of primary education, that the class of than elsewhere. It comprehends, in some sort, book-buyers and book-traders is much larger our entire population. So numerous is this class, and scattered over so immense a territory, that a new feature of the book-trade has been the consequence. An intermediate agency, between the publisher who creates a demand for a book, and the local dealers, at distant points, who wish to buy it, is found to be neces sary. Hence, we have the book-jobber, who buys of the publisher and sells to the retail dealers with whom he has established a connection. This branch of the business is in

creasing in importance, and gives profit and employment to a large number of persons.

NOTES AND GLEANINGS. BEECHER'S STYLE.-To be able to judge of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's style of writing and preaching would require a new system of rhetoric entirely of the occidental cast. Some of the papers, in alluding to his effusions of the pulpit and the pen, have described them as "word paintings," a species of the fine arts or belles lettres literature with which we have not been able to form an acquaintance. A certain officious parasite of Jenny Lind once having racked his brains for a compliment, after one of her successful efforts, glided up to her and in the blandest manner possible remarked that every strain of her song was a pearl. Taking his hat, which he held in his hand, Jenny placed it to her mouth, and gave two or three tremendous trills, then returning it she said, "There, take a hat full." The Independent, of which Beecher is one of the editors, in speaking of his "Life Thoughts,"

says:

Among them are golden aphorisms, and sweetly-murmuring oracles of plaintive sentiment, and odes in prose, so luxuriant in imagery that herds of common rhymesters might be turned out to pasture among them, without any fear of exhausting the succulent supply. As Mr. Beecher thinks that "doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed," so he has preferred to give us truth in jelly forms, very soft, and aromatic, and delicious to the taste. For the strong meat that nourishes muscles and bones, and fertilizes the veins with healthful blood, we of course must go to other books. But here are manly principles and heroic suggestions, and illuminating flashes of electric heat that shed summer upon the soul, and prophesy a fruitful autumn, when the world comes to live the life which these thoughts so musically herald. The book is literally a collection of gems, and, for its own merit, no less than for the great notoriety of its author, will have a prodigious sale.

A correspondent strongly intimates that one of our choice selections of extracts entitled "A Library Army," which appeared in January last, being a description by Dr. Porce, is appropriated by Mr. Beecher almost entirely in an article over his star in the Independent. The resemblance is wonderful both in though and expression; but then great men often think and speak alike. The witty editor of the Northwestern Advocate, on the subject of plagiarism, says:

Henry Ward Beecher's friends must not take it for granted that every beautiful thing he says is original. He borrows but little, and yet ever and anon we trace the influence of some other mind upon his thought and language. We expect this; a mind so keenly

Again: "A man in the right, with God on his side, is in the majority, though he be alone," etc., is a fine sentiment, and none the less so for having been used before by Fred Douglass and long before either of them, Elisha said: "Fear not; they that be with us are more than they they that be with them," alluding to Divine succor, and the eyes of the young man saw innumerable horses and chariots of fire around the prophet. Aye, "God and one more is a majority."

Again: "There are some who stand on a narrow strip of land between two Dead Seas, and drink their waters alternately." What

Methodist does not at once recur to

Lo! on a narrow neck of land,

"Twixt two unbounded scas, I stand?

A few weeks ago there was widely copied an illustration drawn from the nettle: "If gently touched it stings and irritates, if grasped boldly it is harmless." More than twenty years ago we read something like these lines:

Softly touch the angry nettle,

And it stings you for your pains:
Grasp it like a man of mettle,

Soft as silk the stem remains.

The reader may ask, "Do you design making a charge of plagiarism against Mr. Beecher ?" By no means upon so slight a foundation as is afforded by these resemblances, palpable as they are.

- We

AUTHORS KNOWN BY THEIR WORKS. take the following from the Boston Post:

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton says, in one of his recent novels, that "authors are the only people with whom the public are acquainted," or words to that effect. Certainly it is not an easy thing for one who writes much, provided his writings are widely read, to conceal himself from public knowledge. Disguise himself as he may, every book he publishes is in some degree an autobiography. Nay, his very efforts at concealment reveal traits of character which frankness itself would not have disclosed. His intellectual parts are manifest by the very nature of his vocation, and his moral status, whatever he may think to the contrary, cannot well be hid, even if he endeavor to hide it, which few authors take the pains to do throughout their entire writings. Not less than other men, authors may be known by their "works." Whoever talks largely, whether in print or verbal speech, talks himself out at last, and the world sees him as he is. Undoubtedly a clever writer may now and then, if he will, contradict his own taste, habits, or even principles. Charles Sprague, who praised the "Spanish weed" so prettily (in his poem of "Curiosity,")

is innocent of its use, and was merely exercising his imagination, as poets have done before. There have been drinking songs by bards bibulous only of Souchong or Hyson; love songs by poets who were never in love; sea songs by land-lubbers who get their inspiration from brandy, and found their subject in a horsepond; hunting songs by men who never saw a fox outside of a menagerie; war-songs by sentimental young ladies who faint at the sight of blood, and "cannot bear a gun;" sacred songs by profane scamps, who neither sing nor say the Church service; mad songs by the most serene of quietists; work songs by lazy fellows who are as innocent of labor as a fine lady; baby songs by old maids and barren wives; home songs by old bachelors whose homes are in the cock-loft of the tavern; and songs of the country by Cockneys who don't know clover from dandelions. Such things may be done for once, but rarely well, and never with that fine fidelity to nature which gives permanent life to a work of art, whether in painting or poetry. It still comes to pass in the long run, that the author appears as he is, truthful or mendacious; a lover or a hater of men; a re

specter or a contemner of women; a man of chaste or of unchaste imagination; sincere or affected; honest or unscrupulous: tenderhearted or cruel; amiable or churlish; highminded or pusillanimous. Nor can the nature of his theme prevent this self-revelation. A religious polemic may show all the passions of the cock-pit; a philosopher may display worse vices than those which he reprehends; a philanthropist may disclose the malignity of an assassin; and a satirist, as it almost always happens, may reveal a nature at once gentle, loving, compassionate, and magnanimous."

CREMATION.-This ancient custom of disposing of the dead is seriously thought of being revived from sanitary motives. The custom once prevailed among the Jews. At first the burning of the body was considered a mark of disgrace, but after King Asa was burned, with many aromatic substances, as a mark of honor, not to be burned was more a mark of disgrace than honor. A book has recently been published in London advocating the propriety of a return to this custom, especially in large cities. To render the idea less revolting he proposes the following plan:

On a gentle eminence, surrounded by pleasant grounds, stands a convenient, well-ventilated chapel, with a high spire or steeple. At the entrance, where some of the mourners might prefer to take leave of the body, are chambers for their accommodation. Within the edifice are seats for those who follow the remains to the last; there is also an organ and a gallery for choristers. In the center of the chapel, embellished with appropriate emblems and devices, is erected a shrine of marble, somewhat like those which cover the ashes of the great and mighty in our old cathedrals, the openings being filled with prepared glass. Within this, a sufficient space intervening, is an inner shrine,

covered with bright, non-radiating metal, and within this again is a coyered sarcophagus of tempered fire-clay, with one or more longitudinal slits near the top, extending its whole length. As soon as the body is deposited therein, sheets of flame at an immensely high temperature, rush through the long apertures from end to end; and acting as a combination of a modified oxhydrogen blow-pipe, with the reverberatory furnace, utterly and completely consume and decompose the body in an incredibly short space of time; even the large quantity of water it contains is decomposed by the extreme heat, and its elements, instead of retarding, aid combustion, as is the case in fierce conflagrations. The gaseous productions of combustion are conveyed away by flues, and means being adopted to consume anything like smoke, all that is observed from the outside is occasionally a quivering transparent ether floating away from the high steeple to mingle with the atmosphere.

COLE'S PICTURE OF LIFE.-Cole's "Voyage of Life" comprises four pictures—Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age. The best judges have declared its great merits. The artist, Thomas Cole, now deceased, had his home amid the beauty and grandeur of the Hudson River and the Catskills. His studio was on the mountain; and we hear of its being kept, by love that mourns his departure, just as he left it. He was a man of genius, a most interesting and noble character. His soul was deep, and full of poetic sentiment, moral enthusiasm, and religious feeling.

Mr. Cole painted the "Voyage of Life" in 1840. Not long afterward he went to Rome, and while there he painted a duplicate, or a copy.

When the last picture was nearly complete, an American then at Rome invited Thorwaldsen to go and see the pictures; and he has given us a description of the sculptor's visit:

The moment that he entered the room, I could see by the lighting up of his clear blue eye that he felt himself at home; and before Cole could do anything more than name the subject of the series, he took up the interpretation himself, and read the story off from the canvas, with a readiness that made Cole's eyes moisten with delight. When he came to the last he paused and gazed; then returned to the first, passed slowly before them all, and coming back to the last again, stood before it for a long while without uttering a word. It seemed to me as if he felt that he too had reached that silent sea, and was comparing the recollections of his own eventful career with the story of that old man and his shattered bark. And to this day I can never look upon that picture without fancying that I still see Thorwaldsen standing before it, with his gray locks falling over his shoulders, like those of the old man in the boat, and his serene features composed to deep and solemn meditation. It was the old man in