strong hold upon the mind. The dominion of appetite begins with physical existence; let the dominion of devotion begin with mental developement. The world is beginning to realize, that early habits of activity should be associated with the idea of fulfilling that part on the theatre of action which God has given us to do, and with continual reference to His approbation. Children are now taught, that in exercising the powers, which He has given them, they are assisting to put in operation the great machine of society which God has organized, and thus early to mix obedience to His will and philanthropic sentiment with active existence. We hail the day in which the truth has dawned upon our country, that the season of pleasure should be made the season of devotion; that every enjoyment should be made a subject of thankfulness. It is in infancy that the heart is most susceptible, it is then, that early dawn, the breath of summer, the melody of an affectionate voice, the caress of tenderness may be made instruments to open the fountains of love in the human soul, a love which flows only at the voice of purity and excellence, and which spreads far and wide as the soul becomes acquainted with the treasures of mercy that are in the Christian's God. When devotion springs up with mental existence, a child will soon learn the connexion between himself as an effect and God as a cause; and it is then he may be taught, that he was created for some great object, the object of being good, and that goodness constitutes the only happiness he was made to enjoy. Better views also open upon us in relation to the education of youth. People begin to realize, that imagination has a powerful ascendency over undisciplined minds, and are beginning to remove from their libraries works which display human passions and feelings in unregulated exercise. Few young or old people can rise uncontaminated from a strict analysis of human passions and vices, and we are happy to see works of fiction assuming a less sickly, sentimental cast, a less disgusting display of overpowering love, amiable weaknesses, resultless sensibility. For setting a bright example in this department of the labor of reformation, Sir Walter Scott's memory will always be held in high veneration. By him, vice is set in its true colors. No Lovelace disgraces his pages. No Tom Jones is allowed to win the heart of virtuous woman. No attempt is made to throw a charm around an unfaithful wife; no veil of grace and beauty conceals impurity of heart and life. The degraded intellect, the brutal appetites, every crime stands out in bold relief and is seen to be abhorred. In his pages "Beauty has no lustre, Save when it gleameth through the crystal web, We think it an error, when it is asserted, that wealth and civilization necessarily introduce crime into a country. It affords facilities for its concealment, and leisure and means to indulge in its practice, but the criminal sins against increasing light, and is doubly guilty. Here, where the Bible is in every hand, the pure gospel preached in every city, town, and village; where our teachers are learned, and our rulers are or ought to be wise and good, is crime the necessary concomitant of wealth and knowledge? think not. Man must, among us, perforce ascertain his own powers, his capabilities of resisting temptation; and the solemn fact is forced upon him, whether he will or not, that if seduction is tolerated in America, it is because the affluent and the powerful, the Fathers of the country, the sons of the Pilgrims, will have it so. U We A. ART. IV.-1. Some of the Principles according to which this world is managed, contrasted with the Government of God, and the Principles exhibited for Man's Guidance in the Bible. Delivered as an Address at the Religious Celebration, on the Fourth of July, in Salem. By GEORGE B. CHEEVER, Pastor of the Howard Street Church. Boston. Perkins & Marvin. 1833. 8vo. pp. 60. 2. Review of Professor Norton's "Statement of Reasons for not believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians, concerning the Nature of God and the Person of Christ." First published in The Christian Spectator." Boston. Crocker & Brewster. 1833. 8vo. pp. 28. IT is understood that Mr. Cheever is the writer of the last of these pamphlets, as well as the first. We feel authorized to take this for granted, and to give it all the pub licity that we can. Indeed, if we are rightly informed, as we cannot doubt, Mr. Cheever first prepared the Review as a sermon or lecture, preached it substantially if not wholly to his own people, then sent it to New Haven to grace the pages of "The Christian Spectator," and then published it or allowed it to be published in Boston as a separate pamphlet, to be scattered here and everywhere. We infer, therefore, that no little importance is attached to this production, by its author, by the conductors of the Christian Spectator, and by his and their friends generally. And well may they view it as important, if weakness and wickedness can give it importance. It will perhaps in one way mark its own time. Its author has revived or begun an unusual warfare, a coarse, envenomed, savage warfare. We say this deliberately, with a full consideration of the strength of every word. We say it of the Review. We say it, with equal deliberation and soberness, of the Address, so far as it relates to Unitarians and their religion and character, a subject to which the orator devotes more space than is usual at the celebration of our Independence. It was, we know, designed to be a religious celebration in this instance, but that only aggravates the sin; especially when we remember, that it had been usual in Salem, as in other places, and probably was not forgotten then, to invite all denominations to be present on this occasion. Mr. Cheever appears eagerly to have seized upon it and exulted in it, as a rare opportunity of exhibiting to others beside his own. people, his powers of daring and reckless denunciation. In these circumstances, looking at his language in this Address, and in the Review which soon followed, we shall not be honest nor be understood, if we connect with his conduct any milder epithets than are here used. Why then follow his example? we are asked. We do not, and we shall not. The burst of honest and irrepressible indignation awakened against the committer of an outrage is not itself an outrage. To convict a man of gross and wicked slandering is not to slander the slanderer. Besides, we have nothing to say against Mr. Cheever or about him, except in relation to this one overt act. We accuse him of nothing, but of being the accuser of his brethren, a character in which he now stands before the world most prominently, and in which he glories. We make no assault 99 66 upon his faith, his system, his church, or brethren. We call him not "a deist,' a rejecter of God's word," an "infidel," or a "wrap-rascal." wrap-rascal." Nor will we represent his whole denomination as using the same language, or capable of the same conduct, as his. We war not, as he does, with the lowest weapons, against hundreds whom we know to be upright, and thousands whom we do not know at all, except as bearing his religious name. We look at him only as he has voluntarily and forcibly placed himself before us. We do, as he says all should do, declare plainly, "Thou art the man." - But where and what are the passages which justify these strictures? The following as specimens will suffice, when accompanied with the assurance that we omit no extenuating or softening remarks, for such there are not in either pamphlet, no, not one. Mr. Cheever, to do him justice, sins not by halves. It enters not into his plan to say any thing or leave any thing unsaid, from which the least charitable inference can be drawn. He tells us, Charity to such error would indeed be wilful participation in sin." That sin he scrupulously and entirely shuns. He does not so much as breathe a prayer, as we recollect, that our eyes may be opened, or the blackness of our guilt washed out. He probably does not think it possible. We have no evidence here that he thinks it desirable. If he does, it would probably occur to him as a part of his duty, to make some attempt to point out our error and convince us of the truth. But he takes a different course. We quote first from his Address delivered " on the Fourth of July." Having spoken of knowledge, taste, poetry, and refinement, as powerful means of religious influence, he is pleased to say of Christianity as inculcated by Unitari ans: "Its gross and wilful errors in regard to man's moral being are palsying in their influence over his intellectual being; 'for in the moral being,' (it is one of Coleridge's profound reflections,) lies the source of the intellectual. The first step to knowledge, or rather the previous condition of all insight into truth, is to dare to commune with our very and permanent self.' This the Unitarians dare not do; if they did, they would at once be convicted of guilt, and meet an unavoidable refutation of their own system. It is Warburton's remark,' Coleridge continues, 'that of all literary exercitations, whether designed for the use or entertainment of the world, there are none of so much importance, or so immediately our concern, as those which let us into the knowledge of our own nature. Others may exercise the understanding or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart and form the human mind to wisdom.' "Now this system, with all its literary exercitations, far from letting us into the knowledge of our own nature, aims both to keep us in ignorance of that nature, and to give us wrong views of it. Here then, in regard to the very groundwork and previous condition of all insight into truth, it is inevitably and thoroughly superficial. We might add to this that a habit of mind, such as the painful and laborious effort of Unitarianism to evade and explain away the Holy Scriptures and discredit their authority tends to foster, is in itself eminently inconsistent with free and vigorous thought. Indeed, a vigorous mind could scarcely pursue a train of thought in any direction, without coming full upon some grand principle, from whose radiant light this system of negations, with its whole statement of reasons for not believing, flees away, discomfited and affrighted. It is a system that, not satisfied with deceiving the heart, and excluding from the soul all knowledge of our very and permanent self,' makes a coward and an habitual sophist even of the intellect, which then only can remain at ease in the midst of such gross error, when covered round and comfortable in the wrap-rascal of self-hypocrisy' and sophistry. "In the light of these truths it is easy to see why, in all the Socinian literature, though its pretensions are great, and supported in this country by the fostering care of the oldest and richest University in the United States, there is nothing but superficiality. There is not, either in this country or in England. Here we shall be pointed to such names as those of Priestly [Priestley ], Belsham, and Channing; nor would any one deny that the first of these was a man of much mental activity and ingenuity, and the last a man distinguished by fine words, elegance of style, and lofty sentimentalism, especially when he speaks of glorious, godlike human nature. At the same time it is neither novelty nor arrogance to say, that they are each superficial in his own sphere, and both superficial in theology. What are they by the side of John Howe, Ralph Cudworth, John Foster, or Dr. Chalmers, or others whom we might name in our own land, of evidently far greater depth and originality of mind either than the Birmingham |