being to which mere scientific views are so prone from their very nature, and to which all counterfeit moral systems allied to naturalism do also universally tend. We cannot feel that we are sinners without feeling also that we are indeed most important parts of God's works, notwithstanding that when contemplated in our physical relations to the universe, we disappear among the very lowest of infinitesimals. The moral sense teaches that the rational and moral parts, instead of diminishing in value in consequence of the number and magnitude of other existences, do actually rise in the scale of intrinsic importance, in proportion to the greatness of the universe, of which they are parts. In this it recognises the truth, that, in a certain sense, the whole is for the parts as truly as the parts are for the whole. All things are yours, for ye are Christ's; all height and depth, all life and death, all things present and all things to come. Here then, as has been said, and at this precise point, science and revelation are in the most polar opposition in respect to the views they severally take of man. The genus Homo of the former is a being of very different relations from the child of the fallen and covenant-breaking Adam. Naturalism, we repeat it, knows nothing but the dogma of the parts for the whole. It never, of itself, reaches the sublime truth which the child so soon learns from its catechism, that parts, and wholes, and man, and nature,-yea, all things are for the glory of the Sovereign God. And here is its most gross inconsistency. The recognition of such a destiny it regards as among the most narrow and bigoted of theological absurdities; yet it manifests no repugnance to viewing man as the mere sport and victim of an ever advancing physical movement; as a being who lives and perishes for the glory of an unrelenting nature; his duties all resolved into an observance and study of her laws, his happiness and dignity in a life of obedience to her commandments, and his death into the payment of her never-forgiven debt.

The other diversity of tendency, to which allusion was made, is closely allied to the one of which we have been treating, and, in fact, comes directly from it. Reference is had to those views of the Divine relation to us, and to those personal appellations addressed to, or used of, the Deity, which seem to grow out of the naturalistic as distinguished from the moral contemplation of God and nature. As the naturalist loves to view things alone as wholes, or in their tendencies to a whole, so is there a correspondence in the universality of his language respecting the Deity, and in the appellations he bestows upon Him. He loves to contemplate a God afar off. He is accustomed, when compelled to speak of Him, to style Him the First Cause, the universal animating principle, the Supreme Being, the Infinite, the Prime Mover, the Primitive Development-anything, in short, which keeps

out the ideas of personality and moral attributes. In direct opposition to this feeling it is, that the serious and devout believer loves to dwell on the personality of God, as exhibited in the frequent personal appellations given to Him in the Scriptures. Hence he delights in contemplating Him historically, in the acts and events recorded in His word, rather than as the great animating Power, or developing Cause, or pervading Intelligence. Instead, therefore, of being fond of these appellations (although he does not reject them), he loves to think of Him as the God of the Fathers, the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of His people, the God of the Covenant, the King of Zion, the Holy One of Israel; and above all, as the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He would rather go to the very verge of anthropomorphism; he would rather be charged with low, and narrow, and finite, and local views of the Deity, than employ appellations, however philosophical, that would seem to imply only the physical relations, or which tend to efface, or keep out of view, the ideas of Creator, Preserver, Lawgiver, Judge, and Mediator, together with the inseparable associations of providence, law, forgiveness, and salvation. The physical sublimity itself, or that which may be regarded as attaching to the more universal or philosophical view, is immensely heightened to his conception, when connected, in the Scriptures, with the nearer personal acts and attributes. "He filleth all things; in Him we live and move and have our being; He inhabiteth eternity, and abides in the high and holy place; He also dwelleth with all such as are of lowly spirits, and who tremble at his word, to revive the heart of the humble, and the spirit of the contrite ones-Jehovah is his name, our Redeemer-the holy one of Israel." Even that most sublime epithet, Jehovah Tsebaoth, Kógios tor durduεor, Deus agminum cœlestium, the Lord of Hosts, is associated in his mind with the idea of a spiritual rather than a physical power. It suggests the Lord of the Seraphim, the ruler of Thrones, and Dominions, and Principalities, and Angels, and Archangels, rather than the energies and agencies of nature. The appellation is admirably descriptive of Him "who calleth the stars by name, who bringeth out their hosts by number;" and yet, to one who delights in the personal and moral views of God's providence, it more readily calls to mind the King of the armies of Israel, the Leader of the array of "angels who encamp round about the righteous," and to whose guardian care He gives in charge the temporal and eternal interests of all who revere His

ARTICLE V.

TORREY'S NEANDER.

By REV. SAMUEL M. HOPKINS, A.M., Teacher in Theo. Sem. Auburn, N. Y.

General History of the Christian Religion and Church. From the German of Dr. Augustus Neander. Translated from the second and improved edition. By JOSEPH TORREY, Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in the University of Vermont. Volume First, comprising the first great Division of the History. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. 1847.

THIS celebrated work of Neander's has been so long before the public-even in its present improved form, some five or six years, and the great merits of the historian are so universally acknowledged, that we shall not venture on anything like an extended criticism. Besides, the present writer, with a judicious reflection on the quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent, prefers leaving that to others, who may be better entitled to speak as having authority. He limits himself to some brief notice of the work, and of the translation, with the examination of a particular topic of the history, that may seem likely to interest the readers of this Review. Of the translation, we may say at once, that it seems to us in a high degree satisfactory. Neander is by no means the easiest writer in the world to render with ease and clearness in another language. He often takes very little pains with his periods. It may almost be said of him as of that other celebrated German Professor, Teufelsdröckh, that, "on the whole, he is not a cultivated writer.'

He drives straight forward towards the mark, energetically enough, but with scant attention to grace of movement; and the ideas he intends to convey are sometimes of the most shadowy and intangible character. Mr. Rose, the English translator, every now and then doubts his apprehension of the thought, and helps himself out with notes, and the insertion of the original phrase for the reader to translate as he pleases. Professor Torrey, without resorting to such expedients, has given a clear, faithful, and well-expressed copy of Neander's work. remember but a single instance in which, as if doubtful of the correctness of his rendering, he has inserted the original phrase. It is in the chapter on the Church constitution; a passage in which the author is tracing the process by which the attributes of the Church spiritual became transferred to the Church visible. Thus

We

the corruption of the Church and its necessary unity was thrown outward (verausserlichte sich).

The translator's hesitancy here is justified by the fact that he has failed to seize the exact idea of the original; (6 was thrown outward," is a clumsy phrase, which conveys no distinct idea. The meaning of the writer is, that the feeling which should have attached to the real Church and its actual unity, became attached to its apparent and visible unity. There was a transference of ideas from what was real, to what was apparent. The conception of the Church was "thrown outward," no doubt; but it was in the specific mode of being transferred from the Church of faith, and love, and holiness, to the Church of creeds, and bishops, and ceremonies. It would be strange, however, if in dealing with so large a work and so troublesome an author, the translator should have made no stumble.

It is easy to say, as some contemporaneous Reviewer has said, that the translation is stiff and awkward. It perhaps makes that impression upon a reader who happens to begin at the beginning, for the first pages are not the best specimen of the work. It improves in its progress; but no one acquainted with the style of Neander, negligent, involved, abounding in long, complicated periods, with a tendency to over-refinement of reasoning, and the free use of German philosophical technology, will be disposed to complain in this respect. If any body thinks he can do better, it will do him no harm to try. We can say rather confidently, as the result of some experience,

"sudet multum frustraque laboret

1

Ausus idem, tantum series juncturaque pollet.” Neander's Kirchengeschichte is not properly a history. It is an extended critical discussion of the various prominent topics connected with the origin and progress of Christianity. The history of the Church, as distinguished from the history of religion, occupies but a small part of this large and handsome volume. The bulk of it is taken up with a view of the state of the world at the introduction of the gospel, the dominant philosophies, the Church constitution, and with a minute delineation of the various forms of error that stood opposed to, or combined with, the Christian system. It was on these last that the writer appears to have laid out his strength. His acute and patient mind, imbued with philosophy and fond of system, delighted in the microscopic dissection of the shadowy forms of Gnosticism and the Alexandrian philosophy; and we must say, that we think he has more consulted here his own taste, than the edification of his readers. The grotesque and monstrous systems of anti-Christian philosophy which issued from Alexandria or from Antioch, possess neither interest nor significancy. They teach nothing-suggest nothing. They are no further instructive than as they are melancholy examples of labo

rious wickedness. The collected ravings of Bedlam would be as edifying, and as well calculated to improve the student of Church history. It is absurd to call the system of Basilides or of Valentine a heresy; the epithet is far too respectable for the character of these off-shoots of a dreaming infidelity. We cannot but think that all the acute criticism, the close, patient discrimination between the different schools of this enormous absurdity,

False by degrees, and exquisitely wrong,

might as well have been spared. The ground of objection is that they are mere baseless phantoms; velut ægri somnia vanæ finguntur species. They have long since vanished beyond the possibility of reconstruction. Sabellius and Paul of Samosatra have their representatives still above ground. The Therapeuta yet survive in the drab-coated Coenobites of Lebanon and Neskayuna. The Montanists and Millenarians made their appeal with some show of reason to Scripture. But Gnosticism has not a leg to stand upon. It is a mere wreath of unsubstantial but pestiferous fog and miasma. Think of dealing gravely with Basilides and his three hundred and sixty-five heavens, or with Valentine's thirty male and female emanations, descending by stages to that poor lump of a distracted on, Achamoth, from whose hysterical convulsions proceed the elements of this lower sphere. Looking from one point of view at the Gnostic systems, they are most nauseously insipid and childish; taking a more serious view, they are monstrously wicked. The profaneness of Arianism is really no-thing at all to the impiety of Gnosticism. We may be thought very little capable of appreciating the charm of philosophical history; but we must say that the matter-of-fact treatment of this subject by Mosheim in his Commentaries, is much more satisfactory to us than the fine-drawn criticisms and discriminations of Neander. The rigid abstinence from all philosophizing in his copious discussions of the topics falling within the first three centuries, is a remarkable feature in Mosheim's work. He sifts every subject to the bottom; furnishes copious citations from original authorities; casts all the lights of learning, aided by shrewd conjecture and the most sagacious criticism, on every doubtful point; sums up a subject with admirable comprehensiveness, and there drops it. He gives the facts, and leaves the reader to philosophize on them at his leisure. We do not hesitate to say, that the atmosphere around the early heresies and schisms, as treated by Mosheim, is clearer than as exhibited by Neander. The prominent attribute of Mosheim as an historian, was good sense. The

1 It will be understood that the reference is the Commentarii de Rebus Christianorum ante Const. M., and not to the Institutes. The latter approach so near, or rather depart so little from (since that was their original form), the character of a mere syllabus, that the distinctive features of the historian are scarcely expressed in them.