often represented to be. There is always something about the French preachers a great deal too artificial for us; a sort of jesuitical policy about truth, if we may speak so; a disposition, that is to say, to make the most of every argument, and something more; to push every consideration, whether bearing upon doctrine or duty, whether addressing fear or hope, to extravagance. There is too much of the art of the rhetorician in their sermons, and the vaunted unction of the French pulpit, though oftentimes touching, seems to us to lack something of sound, strong, and sterling sensibility. Of the high intellectual merit of the old English pulpit, and especially of the splendor of that constellation of divines, which rose in the seventeenth century, consisting of Barrow and Jeremy Taylor, Owen and Baxter, Tillotson and Bishop Burnet, Sherlock and South, and like to which nothing has since shone on England, - of these lights that beam upon us from the past, we do not want, as we think, any measure of just admiration. There is a hale, strong, "large, sound, round-about sense," in the English sermons of one and two centuries ago, there is an expansive and generous view of things, a wise and liberal philosophy of life, and of providence, and of revelation, and of religion, natural as well as revealed, that makes us turn to them with delight and refreshment from the metaphysical divines of our own country. And yet the names of Davies and Strong, of Bellamy and Hopkins, and the Wests, * and, above all, of Edwards, must not suffer us to forget, that very powerful and acute minds have been employed in the pulpit of our own country. Indeed, intellect has not been wanting in the pulpit, on either side of the water. Barrow's wonderful amplitude and minuteness of discussion, "the exhaustive process " in the last place where we could expect it, in the pulpit, and Taylor's learning, his profound and varied observation of life, and the play of his most luxuriant fancy, have always been, and always must continue to be, the delight of scholars and men of reading. Still, their discourses do not satisfy us, as sermons. They are too unwieldy; they are too various and profuse in their topics; they want unity and point; they do not strike home. They do not, to make our objection more specific, enter into a sufficiently close grapple with the mind of the hearer; they do not come into a sufficiently near contact and intimacy with the heart, speaking to its wants, eliciting its tenderness, and awakening to life the slumbering images of power and beauty that lie within. Leighton and Bishop Butler seem to us to go deeper. But still our feeling is, after all that the fathers of the English pulpit have taught us, that there are yet unsearched depths of the human heart, which it is the very province of the preacher to explore, that there are chords to be struck, whose vibration, strong as ever eloquence awakened, will be, not passionate emotion, but grave and deep-toned sensibility, that there are feelings of the soul to be approached, - feelings intimate, secret, and unworn by ordinary pulpit exhortation, - to be approached by avenues not yet found out, and to be addressed with appeals of yet unknown power. Human nature is the very being addressed in the pulpit; and human nature is the very subject about which he is mainly addressed, and yet how little is known of this nature! The simple philosophy of a good heart, followed out through all the mazes and mysteries of human experience; the philosophy, too, that is to explain a bad heart; the terrible conflict of good and evil, not only in the virtuous, but in the vicious; the tremendous loss, as well as suffering, incurred by sin; the cruel wrong which it does to human nature; the mournfulness, as well as indignation, with which it should be contemplated; the quick and tender sympathy for all that is human, even like the compassion of Jesus; the consciousness of the glorious capacities of the soul; the sense of its original and intrinsic dignity; how beautiful and blessed is its natural accordance with rectitude, though it is sadly fallen from it; how dear and precious is the first breathing of virtuous emotion even in the most debased mind; how majestic and enrapturing is the prospect which, through God's mercy, opens to it beyond the dark clouds of sin and sorrow, - all this, we believe, that preachers are to understand and feel, as they never yet have done.

And all this, it appears to us, is understood more than by any other preacher of past or present times, by the author whose writings are before us. We regard these writings as a new manifestation of the human intellect on the subject of religion. There is nothing in the English language on this subject like them; and it is our deliberate judgment, that there are no popular English writings, on morals and religion, that are equal to them. We say, popular writings. There is no attempt in these volumes at a comprehensive view of the philosophy of religion; though there is much that throws light upon this great theme, many a chord struck, whose notes will be brought into that sublime harmony of morals and piety, of natural and revealed religion, of physical and moral science, of life and duty, of temptation and virtue, of suffering and triumph, of the present world and the future, which is yet to sound out through the church and through the world. But the writings before us do not aim at any such achievement of high philosophy. They are a collection of independent productions, many of them occasional, and "written," as the author informs us, "to place what he deems great truths, within reach of the multitude of men." Most of them were written, too, in ill health, and with an often avowed consciousness, on the part of the author, however little occasion his readers may see for it, that they bear the marks of that physical infirmity, which, to such a mind, must enter as "iron into the soul." But, fragments though they are spheres of light, should we not rather say?-they will live; they will long revolve in the moral system, and will shed their light upon other times. We are conscious that we say this with no sectarian bias. We believe that a suspicion of this tendency is more likely to keep us and many around us, from a just and due estimation of these writings. We know that they have been much praised. But we believe that there is such a thing as losing a discrimination of excellencies, as well as of defects, in abundant praise; such a thing as losing a just sense of universally acknowledged merit. When the Athenian citizen gave as a reason for voting against Aristides, that he was always called "the Just," we suppose that he was not only perverse and ill-na

VOL. XIV. - N. S. VOL. IX. NO. I.

8

was.

tured, but that he had a very imperfect idea of what justice We believe, then, for every reason, that Dr. Channing is not "over-estimated" here, however confident Blackwood's Tory Magazine may be, that he is, abroad. We are sure that we could not fail to admire these writings, though we were "of another parish," and we know that there are many who are, who yet do themselves, as well as our author, that justice. If we did not agree with his creed, we could not help sympathizing with his spirit, and thanking him for the attractive light which he has shed upon the paths of religion; upon the perfections of God, upon the ways of heaven, and upon the capacities, duties, and prospects of man.

But we must check ourselves. We have spoken already with a freedom quite upon the verge of our American decorum. Indeed, the task we have undertaken is obviously one of great delicacy, not to say difficulty; otherwise it would not have been left so long unattempted. The same delicacy must still restrain our pen, from giving full expansion to the views we entertain, concerning the very peculiar and preeminent interest that belongs to these writings.

Let us rather place before the reader some passages, taken from the mass of them, and illustrative of their general character. We feel bound to make our extracts brief, because the volumes probably are or will be, in the hands of most of our readers. Yet to those who may not have them, we would present a few specimens of what they may find in the perusal of the whole: specimens, we say, for we scarcely know of any writings of a character, more equal and sustained throughout.

The following passages are of such wholesome political tendency, that they are well worthy of being recalled to the attention of our readers.

"It is the distinction of republican institutions, that whilst they compel the passion for power to moderate its pretensions, and to satisfy itself with more limited gratifications, they tend to spread it more widely through the community, and to make it a universal principle. The doors of office being opened to all, crowds burn to rush in. A thousand hands are stretched out to grasp the reins which are denied to none. Perhaps in this boasted and boasting land of liberty, not a few, if called to state the chief good of a republic, would place it in this; that every man is eligible to every office, and that the highest places of power and trust are prizes for universal competition. The superiority attributed by many to our institutions, is, not that they secure the greatest freedom, but give every man a chance of ruling; not that they reduce the power of government within the narrowest limits which the safety of the state admits, but throw it into as many hands as possible. The despot's great crime is thought to be, that he keeps the delight of dominion to himself, that he makes a monopoly of it, whilst our more generous institutions, by breaking it into parcels, and inviting the multitude to scramble for it, spread this joy more widely. The result is, that political ambition infects our country, and generates a feverish restlessness and discontent, which, to the monarchist, may seem more than a balance for our forms of liberty. The spirit of intrigue, which in absolute governments is confined to courts, walks abroad through the land; and as individuals can accomplish no political purpose single-handed, they band themselves into parties, ostensibly framed for public ends, but aiming only at the acquisition of power. The nominal sovereign, that is, the people, like all other sovereigns, is courted and flattered, and told that it can do no wrong. Its pride is pampered, its passions inflamed, its prejudices made inveterate. Such are the processes, by which other republics have been subverted, and he must be blind who cannot trace them among ourselves. We mean not to exaggerate our dangers. We rejoice to know, that the improvements of society oppose many checks to the love of power. But every wise man, who sees its workings, must dread it as our chief foe." - 8vo vol. pp. 152, 153.

"Government, then, does little to advance the chief interest of human nature by its direct agency; and what shall we say of its indirect? Here we wish not to offend; but we must be allowed to use that plainness of speech which becomes Christians and freemen. We do fear, then, that the indirect influence of government is on the whole adverse to virtue; and in saying this, we do not speak of other countries, or of different political institutions from our own. We do not mean to say, what all around us would echo, that monarchy corrupts a state, that the air of a court reeks with infection, and taints the higher classes with a licentiousness which descends to their inferiors. We speak of government at home; and we ask wise men to say, whether it ministers most to vice or virtue. We fear, that here, as elsewhere, political power is of corrupting tendency; and that, generally speaking, public men are not the most effectual teachers of truth, disinterestedness, and incorruptible integrity to the people. An error prevails in relation