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abhorrence of crime, and an abstract admiration of virtue, that forbid all doubt of the warm sincerity of the protest! What a mystery is here! We may talk as we please of the physical wonders of the universe; here is a moral wonder that surpasses them all. We might be well content to remain in ignorance of the stars above our heads, and of the secrets of the earth beneath our feet, in comparison with the higher knowledge of this mystery within us, and which is no where so brought out to view as in the light of God's word. This mystery of the two antagonist principles, the blinding individual depravity, and the clear-sighted abstract sense and even love of right, ever judging correctly when undisturbed, even though it proceed to an unconscious condemnation of our own most cherished sins; the one of heavenly origin, a bright relic of a former better state, a Divine companion that dwelt with man in Eden, that has never wholly abandoned us since the fall, and that still lives with us in the midst of ruin, and corruption, and moral death; the other infused from hell, and nourished into vigorous life by all that is earthly and animal in our ruined natures.

In

The essays in this book are very different in many respects from sermons. They have not their regular and studied introductions. They are destitute of the precise internal divisions that are deemed necessary in discourses from the pulpit: they have not the formal application and admonitory peroration. fact, these most serious and impressive sketches may be said to be all application. The intellect is ever instructed, yet the conscience is never abandoned. They go together throughout. The appeal is made at every step, because at every step the abstract dogma appears clothed in a living sentiment or action. Everything in fact, is in action. Sin is ever shown acting out its evil; righteousness and faith are ever in living exercise, and in living relation to their source and object; God is ever visiting crime with retribution, or listening to the prayer of faith and penitence, or accepting the expiation by which alone sin can be healed.

And this, we would say with all deference, should be the style of preaching. There may be stated, however, three prevailing methods, which may be said to be, in almost equal degrees, opposed to it. There is what is sometimes called, doctrinal preaching; of which there may be specified two kinds. One of these may be named, for the sake of distinction, the scriptural, and the other the rationalistic method. The first, it is true, honors the Bible, by going directly to it for the proof of every important principle it may assert. It is, however, to the Bible, as a depository of abstract propositions, in the form of texts, which this method, after it has severed them from their contexts, builds into an abstract argument, or syntagma of truths. These may, it is

true, be followed by something like a practical application, but having little life or power, because unaccompanied by the vivid exemplar that might stamp upon them the strong impression of reality. The second method, also called doctrinal, and to which we have added the epithet rationalistic, makes but little account of the Scriptures. When employed by those claiming to be orthodox, it is of course assumed that its fundamental positions are most certainly contained in the Bible; but then the preacher ever proceeds to construct his argumentative homilies out of his own resources. He will prove, for example, not from texts, but from metaphysical analysis of cause and consequence, that sin is an evil, and such an evil as is not to be tolerated in God's universethat it is unuseful or hurtful-that the happiness of the majority of beings requires its punishment-that it is irrational, and, of course, that the sinner is unwise in respect to an enlightened view of his own highest self-interest-that man is accountablethat he is governed by motives-that the atonement was demanded on grounds of political and social necessity-and that reason shows, by a discussion of the finite and infinite, that the punishment of sin must be eternal-not so much on the ground that Christ has solemnly declared this to be the awful measure of its desert, but because it is agreeable to the fitness of things, and essential to the preservation of law and order in the universe.

Such is often what is styled doctrinal preaching. Professedly opposed to this in both its forms, as textual or rationalistic, and claiming, also, a great superiority, is what is often vauntingly styled, practical or moral preaching. It would indeed be well, were it only truly practical and truly moral, or, in other words, did it find the life of practice and morals in motives deriving their power from eternity, or connected with the holiness of the Divine character, and the consuming purity of the Divine law. But this, it is well known, is very far from being true of that kind of preach, ing, which so often claims exclusively to itself this fair and popular name. Dry discussions of worldly relations having little ono affinity with any deeper or more startling truths of religionr and which belong just as much to Mohamedanism, or to natural deism, as to Christianity-a morality destitute of all the elements of fear, or hope, or love, and which loses all that is rich, and tender, and melting in emotion, because it rejects all the sterner aspects of truth-an intellectual summation of duties grounded either on some dry worldly system of utilitarian ethics, or, if the preacher is ambitious to rise above this, some transcendental species of sentimentalism, dead and cold in proportion to its false glow-these form the leading characteristics of what is often boastingly styled, practical preaching. With all its talk of love, it is, after all, but a dry and deceitful wor or theory of charity; and which, although it most evidently "puffeth up," as

the apostle foretold, many mistake, nevertheless, for charity itself. It charges the old theology (and with some truth, too,) with a neglect of practical instruction, and then seeks to remedy the defect by courses of sermons on the morals of trade, or of social intercourse, or of public and private amusements-this, too, severed from all deep religious motives, (which the system can never furnish,) and with the least possible connection with the fanatical ideas of eternity and a judgment to come. Its highest spiritualism consists in a philosophical declamation against vice and sensuality as at war with the superior or rational nature, or as inconsistent with our self respect, and self reverence, and self cultivation. It is a style of preaching to which the grossest sensualist or worldling will sometimes listen with intense delight, because he is pleased with its philosophical air, and likes to think of himself as one whose marred divinity or still angelic nature is thus addressed. He is elevated at the thought, and cannot well think of himself as a sinner deserving hell, when he feels that his soul is capable of such exalted notions, respecting the divine in humanity. Notwithstanding, however, all this swelling and puffing up, it never truly lifts the poor sensualist a worldling from the dust, in which he is groveling. It says to them-Be ye virtuous, be ye elevated, be ye warmed with sentimental emotion, be ye clothed with a refined morality, but it is accompanied with no quickening power to make them renounce either their licentiousness or their worldliness.

Now in the book before us, as far as we may regard these most instructive essays as models for sermonizing, there seems presented a method avoiding the evils, whilst it embraces all the merits of the three courses referred to. It is what its title professes, and what it rigorously maintains-Religion teaching by Example. Doctrine and life, the abstract and the concrete, precept and power, desert and retribution, righteousness and salvation, go together. Instead of mere didactic exhortation, to which even the Atheist might assent, could he divest it of that which gives to morality all its fearful sanction-instead of this, God, as represented in the Bible and the work before us, is in all, and acts in all, and all things are at once referred to Him as the exponent of the eternal right, and the ever energizing Executive of the eternal justice. Such a method of preaching would be mainly exemplar. It would select its facts from the most powerful and life-like histories and biographies of the Scriptures. It would preach much from the Old Testament; because, whatever may be the higher claims of the New in other respects, the former more frequently presents the divine attributes in connection with living examples. Instead of furnishing merely speculative or argumentative homilies, with a text prefixed by way of motto, the pulpit would become dramatic, yet most real, historical, life-like, and in this way most instructive, com

municating to the hearers an amount of biblical knowledge, and a facility of applying it, immensely beyond what is accomplished by any of the methods of preaching now in vogue. It would be at the same highly doctrinal. Does the preacher wish to set forth in all its majesty, the doctrine of the Divine sovreignityGod's method of ruling over his enemies, and in the hearts of his people-let him select the history of Pharaoh, and the account of the temptation of Hezekiah by the messengers providentially sent from the king of Babylon; the one case illustrating God's glorious prerogative in making use of the sins, and in nerving the cowardly hearts, of wicked men; the other, exhibiting the manner in which He so arranges the events of His providence, that good men may fall into outward transgression, as the only effectual method of discovering unto them the deep mysteries of their own hearts. Does any one wish to present in the strongest light the immense difference between the carnal and the spiritual mind, in all the power of actual and contending contrast, let him take the story of Herod and John the Baptist. Would he preach on the atonement; what will so exhibit the awful doctrine of the need of expiation, as the history of the crucifixion, and of the mysterious agonies of Gethsemane? Would he exhibit in the most convincing light the cardinal truth of justification by faith only, without the works of the law; where will he find anything more satisfactory, more conclusive, more silencing to all cavils and all self-righteousness, than the subduing story of the dying thief upon the cross, who went down to his grave justified, because in his last moments he was enabled to exercise that wondrous faith with which God is ever well pleased, and in the possession of which the soul can never be separate from Him from whom alone this grace procedes. Is retribution the high theme which the preacher wishes to bring to bear upon the conscience; let him not merely talk about obligation, and the fitness of things, and the good of the universe; but turn to the awful description of the flood, or of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, or of the last great day of judgment. Would he present God's everlasting love, his overflowing mercy and loving kindness; there is for him the birth, and life, and death of Jesus, and the history of the penitent souls from whom he never turned away.

But we are wandering from our author, although the train of thought in which we have indulged, is directly and naturally suggested by the perusal of his book. We would conclude by recommending it, as a work admirably adapted for private devotional reading, and especially for the family circle, in short, as one of the most valuable aids to the cultivation of a solid religious spirit, that has lately been sent forth from the press.

This is the true sense of the Hebrew; pin, a positive and physical rather than a

moral influence.

ARTICLE X.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

1. The History of the Poloponessian War by Thucydides; according to the text of Dindorf; with notes: For the use of Colleges. By JOHN J. OWEN, D.D., Principal of the Cornelius Institute, New York. Leavitt & Trow, 1848.

Mr. Owen is well known to the literary and classical public, for the very valuable series of books in which he has now for several years been most laboriously, and faithfully, and usefully engaged. His editions of the Anabasis and Cyropedia of Xenophon, and of the Odyssey of Homer, have become standard works in our best academies and colleges. They have ever been noticed in terms of approbation in the pages of this review, and we are glad to find that approbation so universally sanctioned by the opinions of the best classical scholars and teachers in the country. To the present work he has given unusual care and attention, and the result has been one of the most finished editions of this very difficuit author that has been presented to the public. It does not abound in the philosophical and political disquisitions of Arnold; for this was not the author's main design. It is not marked by the showy and useless pedantry which so often accompanies works of a similar kind. But its merit, and a very high merit it is, consists in this, that he does make plain to the student, and enables him to read with comparative ease, the most difficult author, in some respects, in the Greek language. This he effects by keeping ever before his mind, as he seems to have done in all his former works, the wants of the student as discovered by a careful examination of the peculiar obscurities of his author, and by his own tact and experience as a faithful and successful teacher. In previous readings of Thucydides many years ago, we had made written memoranda of his most perplexing passages and peculiar idioms. On comparing them with this edition, we have almost invariably found, that the help required was given in the very places where it was most needed, and that too with the least critical parade. Other authorities are briefly referred to, their respective expositions examined, the editor's own opinion modestly yet firmly expressed, the sense clearly brought out, and all this with the least waste of unnecessary comment. In reading some editions of this and other difficult Greek authors, it is a common thing to find a most provoking silence on the very passages which most require elucidation; whilst others, which readily explain themselves, and which might be safely and usefully left to the student's own skill, are overloaded with pedantic and unneces sary comment. This is very much the case with the edition of Bloomfield. Now Mr. Owen seems to have had a conscience in this matter. He has resolutely taken in hand every difficulty, and whenever he fails in elucidation, (which is but seldom,) it is in company with the ablest critics who have labored in vain to clear up all the intricacies, and anomalies, and strange constructions, to say nothing of the corruptions, of this writer. Thucydides seems to have taxed the powers of the Greek tongue to its utmost, and to have ventured on licenses to the widest extent to which they could possibly be carried. On this account, with all his difficulties, and because of these very difficulties, there is no Greek author, the study of whom is more valuable in acquiring a knowledge of the power and range of the language. In other respects also no writer more deserves to be read in our schools and colleges. The time is coming when the chief value of classical learning will be found in its moral and political aspects; and here Thucydides is invaluable. The states of Greece presented a miniature of the world. Their wars, their diplomacy, their intrigues, their treaties so often and so solemnly made for scores of years and then broken in as many days, their progressive democracies, their demagogueism, their popular parties, the immense power of the evil traits of human nature, the feeble influence of the good--all these, as presented in the graphic pages of Thucydides, furnish lessons not for their own age only, but for ours, and for many, we have sad reason to believe, that shall yet succeed us.

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