The manifestation of Christ as the spirit of revealed religion is the manifestation of all the facts and principles that, received by faith, act upon the affections and the will, and produce a cheerful, loving, and energetic obedience. The sense of right, personal obligation, gratitude, love, hope of recompence, confidence of success, these are the sentiments that create and foster true holiness, that generate and nourish true power, and these are the sentiments that are impressed upon our souls by the life, and work, and image, and influence, of Christ. So that, being emphatically the personal spirit of the gospel, where he is, there is liberty."-Pp. 15-18.

Among the concluding "reflections and admonitions" of which the subject of this discourse is found to be fruitful, we did not, as we read, expect to find the divinity of Jesus Christ introduced. It is indeed obviously a mistake for divine mission or inspiration, as the passage will shew. The divine mission is all that the argument requires; and divinity, perhaps we might conjecture, practically means the same thing to men of Mr. Morris's order.

"We lay stress on the representation of our text as one of a large class which intimate and require the divinity [divine mission] of Jesus Christ. Mind the exact point and nature of the argument. It is, that the place assigned to Christ in the scheme and providence of God is such, that only on the supposition of his divine nature [mission] can it be understood and explained. Christ underlies every truth, fills every institute, gives force to every law-is the ground, reason, virtue, end, and rule, of all things. He is the spirit of Christianity. He is not a doctrine, but the doctrine of the gospel. Destroy him, take away him, and you do not merely violate the language, but annihilate the very life, of God's covenant. He is so revealed, having such vital connection with every part and principle of the divine counsel and procedure, as to be the object of prime attraction in the words and ways of God. All eyes are directed to him-all hearts fixed upon him. To all intelligent and holy beings he is the glory. Living saints count him all and in all;' holy angels desire to understand his sufferings,' and their blessed results; returning men speak of 'his decease; and glorified spirits pay all honour and homage to his work and love. Apart from his divinity [divine mission], on the supposition of his mere, however pure and perfect, humanity [human wisdom], I cannot conceive that he could fill so central a place, exert so vital an attraction. Nor, if he could, how he should do so. It secures such 'honour to the Son,' it demands such trust and regard for him, it mixes him up so thoroughly with the most essential views, and worship, and service, of the everlasting God, that it seems impossible to comprehend how, if he were only human [in his claims], he should escape the treatment, and regard, due only to the divine -how there should be no trespassing on the prerogatives of Deity-how the very fact of being Christians should not as by inevitable necessity lead to the being idolaters. Surely, if Christianity be what we are accustomed to regard it, he who is its spirit, in the way and for the reasons which itself explains, can be no other than [the messenger of] the true God and eternal life.'"-Pp. 19, 20.

There is another passing trace of the old orthodoxy worth noticing. The preacher almost apologetically claims attention to the personal memoirs of Christ: "Let us not depreciate the Gospels, because of the clearer theological light of the Epistles." (P. 22.) Is this said seriously, or ironically, by an Evangelical Christian? The clearer theological light of the Epistles! Then Christ did not preach Christianity clearly enough! Paul was a clearer theologian! Well, those who think so should call themselves, not Evangelical, but Epistolary Christians—that's all. Unitarians are the real Evangelicals. One extract more is truer to the gospel spirit, and indeed precedes and gives occasion for the above apology:

"Christ is the spirit of the gospel. In the apostles' minds and writings there was an indestructible connection of every principle of the gospel with the personal Christ. It was not such a connection as can be safely denied or neglected; not an arbitrary and artificial connection; not the connection merely of a chronological order, or a physical organ-but a living and life-giving one. Their preaching and teaching was not of certain things which Christ only said, but of certain things which he did, and felt, and was. Every thing was 'in him '-every doctrine, every dispensation, every duty. Christ was Christianity. It is to do

grievous violence to the New Testament, to say that Christ means only Christian doctrine. It is an arbitrary canon-a shallow philosophy. So essentially did the being, history, and work of Christ enter into the faith, and hope, and virtue of the apostles, that language, which would be extravagant and absurd if used of any other, flowed freely, and as if by natural necessity, from their tongues and pens when describing him. He is 'the truth,' the way,' the life,' the 'peace,' 'hope,' and 'resurrection' of men; he is their 'wisdom,' 'righteousness,' 'sanctification,' and 'redemption.' You do not realize the full meaning of these expressions in saying that he revealed these things. He was these things. And how, but as he embodied them as truths, and secured them as blessings?"-Pp. 21, 22.

Fur Prædestinatus. The Predestinated Thief; or a Dialogue between a Calvinistic Preacher and a Thief sentenced to be Hanged, &c. Written origiginally in Latin, by William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury.

THIS spirited translation of a very celebrated controversial tract has been somewhat too long in receiving the favourable notice to which it is entitled at our hands. For the information of those of our readers who may not be acquainted with it, we may state that this is an exposure of the Calvinistic doctrine of Predestination, given in the shape of a conversation, chiefly sustained between a Calvinistic divine and a thief who is to die on the following day. The convict recounts the crimes of his life, yet is full of satisfaction, deriving that feeling from the doctrines and prayers of his visitor, arguing that his crimes were the result, not so much of his evil passions, as of God's predestination,that, in the orthodox creed, the best actions of man are so evil in the sight of God, that they are scarcely morally better than the crimes of the most abandoned, and that sinners, obeying the divine impulse in predestination, as much fulfil God's will as the so-called virtuous. In the Dialogue, which is managed with considerable cleverness, the thief avails himself, not merely of the arguments, but of the very words, of celebrated Calvinistic writers.

It would doubtless be said by any English Calvinist of the present day, that the statements of doctrine in this tract are a caricature, and not a true representation, of his belief. However true this might be, we believe it would not be possible for him to frame a statement of the doctrine of election which would not be liable to dangerous practical consequences when received and used by a vicious man. The use of this tract is, that it exposes, in very strong colours, the mischievous practical conclusions of Calvinism.

The translator attributes the work to Archbishop Sancroft; and the biographer of the Archbishop, Dr. D'Oyley, sanctions this. But it will be seen, by consulting Brandt's History of the Reformation (Vol. IV. p. 539), and Jackson's Life of John Goodwin (p. 250), that this is a disputed point. The "Fur Prædestinatus" was originally published anonymously. It was answered, in 1757, also in Latin, by George Kendal, in a work entitled, "Fur pro Tribunali." Kendal intimates that the Fur was reported to be written by an English bishop; but expresses his disbelief of the report, and conjectures that it was imported into London from Holland or Italy. The conjecture as respects Holland seems to have been near the fact; for it is asserted that the work was first printed and circulated in Holland in the early part of the seventeenth century. Now Sancroft was not born till 1617. It has been attributed to Henry Alatius, a man of some note among the Remonstrants.

The picture given of the state of two of the Dutch Universities in the 17th century is curious. The quotation, which we take from the beginning of the thief's history, may serve as a specimen of the whole :

66

'My parents, from my earliest years, took due care to have me well instructed, intending that at a proper age I should be sent to the University. What was to be done, then? The University of Leyden was filled with heresies: at Franequer the students were votaries of Bacchus; they quarrelled, fought, and, like the most ferocious warriors, were continually engaged in giving and receiving challenges to single combat. The Bishop of our church advised that I

should be sent to this seat of learning, deeming it better that I should become a priest of Bacchus and a son of Mars than a heretic, since the former can only destroy the body, while the latter can slay and destroy the soul. Accordingly, having received my parents' blessing, I proceeded to Franequer, where I found the ale so excellent, the price so low, the society so delightful, that all my finances were soon exhausted in conviviality."-Pp. 9, 10.

Whatever value the Fur Prædestinatus may have as a theological treatise, there can be no question that it is remarkable as a literary curiosity.

By

The Slave Girl; a Tale of the Nineteenth Century. In Five Cantos. F. N. Dyer. London-Houlston and Stoneman. 1848. THE following extract from the Preface to "The Slave Girl" will shew that it has a more definite object than most of the poems and collections of poems which at present issue so plentifully from the press:

"In undertaking this work, the author felt a strong conviction that a dissertation on Negro Slavery might be made more effective in the shape of a tale, addressed to the heart and imagination and based upon the feelings of domestic life, than by offering any direct political and moral reasonings against that crime. And poetry seemed to him the best vehicle for conveying his impressions of the sin and danger of its continuance, as many of the gentler sex, in England and America, might be induced to read a poem, who would look on an argumentative treatise as too serious and uninviting.'

It is not every great social question, the treatment of which we could without apprehension leave to the poet. For in cases where principles are uncertain, it would be too much to expect him to be logician also, and to unite the eye of fancy for the beautiful with the steady gaze of reason towards the true. Conviction and sympathy may be on opposite sides, and the poetic faculty will turn its back on the latter but unwillingly. But in the case of Slavery this is not so. The question of right or wrong, at least in this country, has been long decided. Reason, conscience, sympathy, are all on one side. The principles on which the decision rests are so simple as to need no discussion; so grand as to be poetic, whether strung into verse or not. It may be, and we believe is, for the best interests of poetry that it should rather contemplate the present and future of our civilization than look longingly back to the past; but the complications of English pauperism and the illustration of the Elizabethan Poor-law would afford it but an ungrateful subject. The poet's office is not so much to form as to express and strengthen the convictions of his readers.

Mr. Dyer selects as his subject one of those melancholy cases in which the slightest possible taint of Negro blood enslaves a beautiful and accomplished woman. Lucinda is the illegitimate daughter of a Virginian planter, by a lady whom, though all but white, he had scorned to marry. She is brought up in the house of her uncle in ignorance of the circumstances of her birth, and there engages the love of her cousin Arthur. By the advice of Arthur's mother, their affection is kept secret lest it should excite the anger of her husband, whose consent, and the necessary formal act of emancipation for Lucy, she hopes in time to gain. The lovers are, however, discovered by Conrad, a false friend of Arthur, who has cast an eye of unhallowed affection on Lucy. Warned in time by the mother, they fly, and await at a distance, and in the first happiness of domestic love, tidings from home. These tidings are brought by Arthur's mother herself, broken-hearted and desolate. Her husband had been kinder than she looked for, had promised every thing, and had rejected the insidious counsel of Conrad with scorn. But, under the influence of those false ideas of honour so powerful in Virginia, he accepts a challenge from the latter, and the result is another proof of the reasonableness of duelling. The innocent man is slain; and his wife, tormented by the remembrance of the fatal consequences of her temporary distrust, is soon brought to the grave by sorrow and remorse. We must tell the rest of the story somewhat more briefly. Arthur,

at Lucy's persuasion, resolves to brave poverty and public opinion at once, and frees his slaves. We are left to suppose by the sequel, that he neglects to emancipate his wife and child. He enters upon commerce; but, pursued by the machinations of those who hated him for his liberality, becomes bankrupt. His creditors claim his wife and child as part of his property. They will listen to no compromise. Assisted by a grateful Negro, who rejoins his old master in the time of difficulty and danger, Arthur resolves on flight. After much hardship he reaches the coast, and is preparing to embark for a free state, when they are overtaken, his wife and child captured as slaves-himself and Cæsar as having aided their escape. They are, however, delivered, when deliverance seemed all but impossible. The vessel in which they are being transported to a place of captivity is run down in the night by an English frigate; and though the faithful Negro perishes with the child in his attempt to save it, Arthur and Lucy are restored to one another and to freedom.

This story, notwithstanding some minor improbabilities, is well adapted for Mr. Dyer's purpose. We especially approve of his discretion in not exhibiting Lucy as actually enduring those horrors which the system so often brings on a young and beautiful slave. For there is a point at which intensity of suffering excludes, instead of stimulates, interest. And throughout, Mr. Dyer has put the question on its proper basis. There is little declamation here on whips and chains and torture. Cruelty alone may be an argument for reform, but is none for emancipation. It is the great argument, that of universal application, as cogent in regard to the most petted domestic servant of ancient Greece, or the hardest worked field-slave of Cuba, on which Mr. Dyer chiefly insists the inherent right of every human being to personal freedom, and the intense moral degradation which accompanies the deprivation of it. This argument alone it is impossible to answer. Every one who has conversed with an American advocate of slavery must know, that only when using this are we safe from the retort, "Physician, heal thyself!"

We have left ourselves little room to speak of the poetic merits of "The Slave Girl." Nor will the connection of the story allow us to illustrate our remarks by very copious extracts. The poem is written in the Spenserian stanza-a measure which affords much scope for the author's facility of versification. It must, however, be confessed, in spite of the illustrious poet from whom it takes its English name, that it is hardly fitted for rapid and exciting narrative. Mr. Dyer has, perhaps, done as much with it in this respect as it was possible to do. He always pleases us by the flow of his language; often detains our attention by force of his poetic eloquence; and interest in his narrative progressively increases to the end. As a specimen, we select part of Lucy's exhortation to her husband to free his slaves:

"Cast, cast such compromise of right away!
No kindness to the slave can compensate
For the deep wrong of an unrighteous sway.
Has not his heart, as thine, the love innate
Of liberty, and the as natural hate

Of dictatorial power, however bland?

Oh, ponder, ponder on the dreadful fate

Which hope forbids their bosoms to expand,

And Mammon on thy brow shall set no shameful brand!

The shallow reasonings of a sordid pride

So oft reiterated, that the bread

Which for the slave a master's cares provide,
Renders him happier than the free, who dread
The pinch of famine, whilst their babes unfed
With sobs the memory of their wants refresh,
Have many a soul from noon-clear truth misled;
But thou, oh Arthur! burst the sophist's mesh,-
Deem not the immortal soul less noble than the flesh!

The hungry hind may clasp his children dear,
And nourish hopes of happier days to come;
For want alone is all his heart need fear,
And he is free where'er he lists to roam,
To find for them in distant climes a home,
Where peace and plenty may his toils repay ;-
Not so the slave, who knows each hour may doom
His helpless offspring the oppressor's prey,

And that he may be sold from their dear arms away.

Power irresponsible, itself is crime

For man, so weak and fallible, to own ;-
Shall he usurp the attribute sublime

Of Deity-command the smile and groan

On his own brother's lip, nor be undone?
Great Source of life, my supplication hear!

Rather than from my breast should spring a son
O'er his own kind so base a rule to rear,

May the sweet name of Mother never bless my ear!"

Though differing from Mr. Dyer in some minor points here touched upon, we heartily thank him for his powerful enforcement of the great principle of universal freedom, and wish that his book may answer the benevolent end which he proposed to himself in writing it.

C.

What are we to Learn from 1848? A Political Discourse, delivered at Eignbrook, Hereford, on December 31. By Edward White. London-Jackson and Walford.

MR. WHITE is not a stranger to the readers of the Christian Reformer (II. 681-684). The discourse of which we give the title above, is a finespirited and almost eloquent production. We do not agree with every opinion stated, nor do we commend the taste of every expression; but as a whole, this political address is entitled to high praise. There is some very plain speaking on inebriety, bribery and other national sins; the vices engendered by our universities, and the abuses which spring out of a national establishment, are fearlessly exposed; yet the reader will rise from the perusal of the sermon with the impression that its author is a man of a kind, genial and hopeful temperament. We quote a passage or two illustrative of this. After touching upon the faults of our aristocracy (which he certainly does not extenuate), he goes on to say—

"The homes of the gentry are generally the abodes of pure manners, and of kindly feelings, so long as their will is unopposed; and a noble spirit of chivalry still adorns the descendants of the old Cavaliers. In their way, too, they are very religious; and although we do not agree with them in their views of Christianity, they hear the lessons of gentleness and moderation read from Sunday to Sunday out of the same Bible that instructs the poor man in his duties."-P. 23.

There is much spirit in the following burst of patriotic sentiment:

"May GOD SAVE THE QUEEN AND SAVE OUR COUNTRY! It is a glorious land. It is the Palestine of the modern world-the native soil of freedom, truth and courage. It stands amidst the surrounding ocean as some ancient island temple, sacred to religion, and resounding night and day with the praises of God. Here Alfred reigned. Here Wickliffe taught. Here Ridley died. Here Bacon reasoned. Here Baxter preached. Here Milton sang. Here Bunyan dreamed. Here Sydney bled. Here sleep in Jesus an innumerable company of departed saints. Here breathes the genius of ten thousand illustrious men who have served the state and ministered in the churches. Hence have gone forth missionaries and Bibles without number, lights to lighten the Gentiles, to pour the beams of everlasting life upon Asia, Africa and America. Upon our shores the exile finds a haven, and the slave his liberty. In the homes of England, incense burns to God from myriads of domestic altars. By