of a system of secular education acceptable to all, | Not we, but he, ate of the tree whose fruit was inand accompanied by the social and political equality terdicted, flicted. To which the judge replies that none can suffer "for what they never did." But what you call old Adam's fall, and only his trespass, was. You call amiss to call it his both his and yours it He was designed of all mankind to be a public head, of religious sects such as no other civilized com- Yet on us all, of his sad fall the punishment's in munity has yet achieved this certainly is a problem well worthy of the study of every reflecting mind. To attribute this national characteristic to the voluntary system would be an anachronism, as that is of comparatively modern date in New England; besides that the dependence of the ministers on their flocks, by transferring ecclesiastical power to the multitude, only gives to their bigotry, if they be ignorant, a more dangerous sway. So also of universal suffrage; by investing the million with political power, it renders the average amount of their enlightenment the measure of the liberty enjoyed by those who entertain religious opinions disapproved of by the majority. Of the natural effects of such power, and the homage paid to it by the higher classes, even where the political institutions are only partially democratic, we have abundant exemplication in Europe, where the educated of the laity and clergy, in spite of their comparative independence of the popular will, defer outwardly to many theological notions of the vulgar with which they have often no real sympathy.-Vol. i., pp. 49, 50. Our author illustrates largely the mutual toleration which prevails, not only as to the great purpose of the common education. Thus, we read concerning the cheerful, smokeless town of Portland, the principal city of Maine : There are churches here of every religious denomination: Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, Free-Will Baptists, Universalists, Unitarians, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Quakers, all living harmoniously together. The late governor of the State was a Unitarian; and as if to prove the perfect toleration of churches the most opposed to each other, they have recently had a Roman Catholic governor.-Vol. i.., p. 48. 66 66 Sir Charles is disposed to attribute great influence in this change of the stanch exclusionists, the old Puritan settlers, into perfect religious cosmopolitans, to the reaction against the extreme Calvinism of the church first established in this part of America, a movement which has had a powerful tendency to subdue and mitigate sectarian bitterness." He gives us some curious extracts (vol. i., pp. 53—5) from an old religious poem, the Day of Doom," written by one Michael Wigglesworth, teacher of the town of Malden, New England. In this strange homily in verse the extreme Calvinistic opinions are followed out to their most appalling conclusions with unflinching fearlessness; and this poem was not more than 70 years ago a school-book in New England. We forget which was the preacher, within or without the church, of the last century, who noted in his diary - Enjoyed some hours' comfortable meditation on the infinite mercy of God in damning little babes!" Of this race was our poet who, in his picture of the Last Day, has this groupThen to the bar all they drew near who died in infancy, 66 And never had, or good or bad, effected personally alleging that it was hard for them to suffer for the guilt of Adam :— A common root whence all should shoot; and stood in all their stead. With more to the like effect-when The glorious King thus answering, they cease and plead no longer; Their consciences must needs confess his reasons are the stronger. We are then instructed that the elect mothers admitted to heaven are not permitted to be disturbed by any compassion for their babes consigned to the place where God's vengeance feeds the flame With piles of wood and brimstone flood, that none can quench the same. After which it cannot startle us to hear that The godly wife conceives no grief, nor can she shed a tear, For the sad fate of her dear mate, when she his doom doth hear.* * Our Transatlantic friends need not suspect us of the slightest wish to discompose them by transcribing a few of Sir C. Lyell's extracts from the poet Wigglesworth, who died, and by the way had a funeral sermon highly eulogistic preached over him by the celebrated Cotton Mather, in 1710. We do not need to be reminded that the "Day of Doom" might be paralleled, stanza for stanza, from hymn-books of more recent composition, and even now current in old England. For example, we have on our table the seventeenth edition of the hymns of Daniel Herbert (2 vols. Simkin & Marshall.) The preface is dated 1825, and the poet says, I live in Sudbury, that dirty place, Where are a few poor sinners saved by grace."-ii., p. 3. These hymns are at this day, we believe, chanted throughout the communion of our Whitfield Methodists. Imagine a Christian congregation singing" to the praise and glory of God" in 1849 such strains as "God's own elect, how oft they fall, as often rise again; Not one shall ever fall to hell; for Christ bore all their sin; case,) grace. Although he falls ten times a day, (which often is the all this; "Were such a composition," proceeds our unfathomable mystery. It becomes impatient of author, now submitted to any committee of all circumscription of the spiritual nature as of the school managers or teachers in New England, moral attributes of the Godhead. All other dogthey would not only reject it, but the most ortho- mas now appear as purely of human invention as dox amongst them would shrewdly suspect it to those intolerable dogmas relating to predestination, be a weak invention of the enemy, designed to election, the five points, with their hideous concaricature, or give undue prominence to, precisely sequences. Calvinism has already snapped asunthose tenets of the dominant Calvinism which the der the long chain of traditionary theology, and moderate party object to, as outraging human contemptuously cast aside its links. No restraint reason, and as derogatory to the moral attributes remains; the whole doctrinal system of older of the Supreme Being." No doubt it is the in- Christianity is broken up. In truth, the one leadevitable tendency of these extreme Calvinistic ing thought throughout that school of powerful, opinions to produce a violent revulsion. Calvin- eloquent, and, in justice we cannot but add, deepism is everywhere the legitimate parent of Unita- ly devotional American writers, Channing, Dewey, rianism. It has been so in Calvin's own city, in Norton, is the abnegation of Calvinism; this is Geneva; it has been so in England, it has been so the key to all their doctrinal system, as far as in America. The process is simple, and if slow, they have any system; without this they cannot direct. The human mind directly it subsides be fairly judged, or addressed with any hope of from that high-wrought agony of belief which success. It is a curious and significant fact, that trembles before and submissively adores the Cal- exactly the same process went on among the Engvinistic Deity, can no longer endure the presump-lish descendants of the Puritans, though in far tion which has thus harshly defined and, as it were, materialized the divine counsels; which has hardened into rigid, clear dogma, all which must be "T was mercy made poor Peter mourn and weep, 'T was sovereign mercy saved him from hell-fire." "Too many trust, be saved they must, because of their Christ must be all, or none at all; he won't be half a Again, (p. 92) "If Jesus is holy, his people are holy, for Christ and his people are one; As Jehovah's gift in the counsels of old ere creation's work was begun." In another of these hymns we read, (ib., p. 8)— "That day when he brings all the nations from far, "Read then Paul's epistles, you rotten Arminian! "The pilgrim boy on his way has gone, In the path of life you'll find him," &c.-p. 13. "Sing, sing-if music desire Themes that with ravishing rapture are glowing, "Ah! think it not-the notion No warrant gleans from truth and factThat to this creed devotion P. 18. Brings lawlessness in outward act!"-p. 56. "It is not an act at a moment done, On the spur of some one occasion, more unfavorable times, in times dangerous to all Can attest that a soul has lost or won cation "Ye spirits of our fathers Who (instrumentally) From England's church did exorcise The demon popery !" &c.-p. 108. But Moore is the staple-and we hope, if he has not seen the precious little tome, that this incidental notice of it may both gratify and edify the recluse of Sloperton Cottage: "There is not in this fallen world season more sweet Than is that when the Lord in the closet we meet." P. 162. "Go where duty calls thee," &c.-p. 148. "Yes! praise to the Lord for the good city mission." p. 94. "The voice that once within these walls the Gospel trumpet blew."-p. 179. "When in death I at length recline, This message bear to my kindred dear! Tell them I sought upon grace divine Day and night to live while I sojourned here. If a stone on my grave reposes, I pray you upon its surface write- Our own feelings of respect and veneration for the pre- Of all that false doctrine had done in our age, In letters of light, John, Bishop of Chester, is Archbishop now!" &c. P. 114. The modest author of this work is anonymous. It appears from a parody on John Anderson my Joe, at p. 90, that he is a mercantile gentleman, and is, or once was, connected in worldly fortunes with a devout citizen named Jones. Whether the firm was "Jones, Blifil, & Co." we cannot say. ance and freedom; but the strength and repose of a great establishment are, in some respects, more favorable to private liberty. If less favor is shown to those without, there is usually more liberality to those within. It is in the protected soil of great establishments that the germs of every great reform in the church have quietly taken root. For myself, if I were ever to permit my liberty to be compromised by such considerations, I would rather take my chance in the bosom of a great national religion than amidst the jealous eyes of small and contending sects, and I think it will be found that a more liberal and catholic theology has always pervaded establishments than the bodies of dissent too was chiefly in our great commercial and manufacturing towns, which, as we have observed, are our nearest types of the American cities. In almost all these towns-if not the actual offspring, the growth of our rapid, almost sudden, manufacturing prosperity—the Church of England was at its weakest. A single parish-church, in general a miserably poor vicarage, saw itself almost in a few years the centre of a vast city. Many of the master-manufacturers were of the shrewd, sober, money-making race of the old dissenters. For them, as they grew in intelligence and mingled more with mankind, the old stern Puritan creeders from them. Nay, I much doubt whether inbecame too narrow. Then arose Priestley and his school-we could follow out this whole history with far greater closeness and particularity-but it is well known how great a number of the old Presbyterian congregations utterly threw aside the old Presbyterian creed. Calvinism found refuge chiefly among the Whitfieldian Methodists, where it still broods in all its harrowing darkness; where it still (it is but justice to say) is crushing many hard hearts into religious belief; with amiable inconsistency bringing forth from that iron soil a large harvest of Christian gentleness and love. As to the United States, we confess that we have grave doubts whether the whole secret of this mutual toleration is not in the multiplicity of the sects; in the weakness of each single one against the hostile aggregate. But after all, is this more than outward reconciliation, a compulsory treaty in which all have been compelled to yield up to the common use the neutral ground of education, because no one has such a superiority of force as to occupy it as his exclusive possession? We have been very much struck by a passage from a sermon by a writer of a very high order, of the school of Channing, in some respects, we think, his superior, the Rev. Orville Dewey. Dr. Dewey wants perhaps some of that almost passionate earnestness, that copious flow, that melting tenderness, which carries away the reader of Dr. Channing; but he is a more keen observer of human nature, writes more directly to what we will call the rational conscience, has, with almost equal command of vigorous, at times nobly sustained language, a strong and practical good sense, not often surpassed in our common literature. If suspected as a religious writer-(and we may observe that whoever wishes to be acquainted with the real tenets of the American Unitarians will find in his writings the most distinct statement of them)-as an ethical writer, as an expositor of the modes of moral, social, religious thought and feeling among our New England kindred, he might be studied with great advantage. In a very remarkable sermon On Associations, (Dewey's Works, pp. 259,) we read: With regard to those great associations denominated religious sects, I fear that the case involves no less peril to the mental independence of our people. I allow that the multiplicity of sects in this country is some bond for their mutual forbear tolerance itself in such countries-in England and Fas est et ab hoste doceri. These are wise words, of the wisdom drawn from experience. We need not observe that even under the broad shade of our establishment opinions such as those of Dr. Dewey, would of course find no repose; but we recommend this line of thought to those who have long been murmuring in secret, and are now openly clamoring for the dissolution of church and state, which, if it means anything, must mean the abrogation of our establishment. These zealots can hardly suppose that they are to unite the perfect independence of self-government with the privileges of a national church; that the Anglican Church is to retain the endowments, the glebes, tithes, estates, rights, honors, when it is no longer the Church of England. The Pope, it seems, is now to be put on the voluntary system; let us wait the result before we reduce our own clergy to that state, of something far worse than poverty, subserviency to their congregations. Break up the establishment-which, we repeat, must be the inevitable consequence of the severance from the state-and what a Cadmean army of sects, not yet compelled as in America, and wearied out into mutual toleration! What a wild din of controversy! Poor charity, where wilt thou find refuge but in thy native heaven? Sir Charles Lyell is no less at a loss to reconcile the excellent and universal New England system of education with the outbursts of fanaticism, of which the latest, the most ludicrous, and in some respects most deplorable, was what is called the Millerite movement. The leader of this sect, one Miller, taught that the millennium would come to pass on the 23rd of October, 1844-the year before our author revisited Boston. He has many whimsical stories of the proselytes. Some would not reap their harvest; it was mocking of Providence to store up useless grain; some gave their landlord warning that he was to expect no more rent. There were shops for the sale of white | robes. A tabernacle was built out of plunder cruelly extorted from simple girls and others, for the accommodation of between 2000 and 3000, who were to meet, pray, and “ go up" at Boston. As the building was only to last a short time, but for the interference of the magistrates, who compelled the erection of walls of more Providence-despising solidity, their last day might have come to many of these poor people sooner than they expected. But oh, the fate of human things! In the winter of 1845, Sir Charles and Lady Lyell saw in this same tabernacle, now turned into a theatre, the profane stage-play of Macbeth, by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean, where Hecate's "Now I mount and now I fly," reminded some of the audience of the former use of the building. "I observed," proceeds the traveller, erence to the authority of churchmen is the highest merit of a Christian. They have perhaps heard much about the pride of philosophy, and how all with religion they have been accustomed blindly to human learning is a snare. In matters connected resign themselves to the guidance of others, and hence are prepared to yield themselves up to the influence of any new pretender to superior sanctity who is a greater enthusiast than themselves.—Vol. i., pp. 90-92. Sir Charles Lyell we see, argues that this is a fallacy. To a certain extent it may be so; but we venture to say that no culture, however careful and general, of the reason, no education, the most intellectual and systematic, will ever absolutely school the world out of religious fanaticism. What was the rank-what had been the education of some of the believers in Mr. Edward Irving and the unknown tongues? Man cannot live on intellect alone; there are other parts of to one of my New England friends, that the number of Millerite proselytes, and also the fact that the prohis moral being, his imagination, his feelings, his phet of the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith, could religious nature, which in certain constitutions, reckon at the lowest estimate 60,000 followers in under certain circumstances, will be liable to exthe United States, and, according to some accounts, cess. Where there is life, there will be at times 120,000, did not argue much in favor of the working too much blood; where there is not utter torpor, of their plan of national education. "As for the Mormons," he replied, "you must bear in mind energy in accesses too high strung and unconthat they were largely recruited from the manufac- trollable; without religious apathy there must at turing districts of England and Wales, and from times be religious eccentricity. We go further, European emigrants recently arrived. They were we cannot wish it otherwise; we think that here drawn chiefly from an illiterate class in the Western too we see the divine wisdom and goodness. We States, where society is in its rudest condition. The would wish all mankind to be cultivated to the progress of the Millerites, however, although confined height of their reason; we would desire that all to a fraction of the population, reflects undoubtedly might be capable of comprehending as familiar much discredit on the educational and religious training in New England; but since the year 1000, when things the great truths of philosophy. We have all Christendom believed that the world was to come the supreme contempt for those who would limit to an end, there have never been wanting interpreters philosophy in her inquiries by narrow views of of prophecy, who have confidently assigned some religion; who (for example) would lose sight of exact date, and one near at hand, for the millen- this plain irrefragable fact, that where there is nium. Your Faber on the Prophecies, and the one passage in the Old Testament, according to writings of Croly, and even some articles in the its rigid literal interpretation, which comes into [query? a] Quarterly Review, helped for a time to collision with the principles of geology, there are keep up this spirit here and make it fashionable. But the Millerite movement, like the recent exhi- twenty which must be forced out of the meaning bition of the holy coat at Treves, has done much to which they bore when they were written, before open men's minds; and the exertions made of late they can be made to agree with the Newtonian to check this fanatical movement, have advanced astronomy. We are content, with the Archbishop the cause of truth." Other apologists of Canterbury and our geological deans among observed to me, that so long as a part of the popu- ourselves, with Dr. Wiseman among the Roman lation was very ignorant, even the well-educated Catholics, with Dr. Pye Smith among the Diswould occasionally participate in fanatical movements; "for religious enthusiasm, being very con- senters, to seek the history of man in the Bible tagious, resembles a famine fever, which first attacks intended for man. We would place geologists those who are starving, but afterwards infects some like Sir Charles Lyell on that serene eminence, of the healthiest and best-fed individuals in the where all who are conscious that they seek truth, whole community." This explanation, plausible and truth alone, have a right to take their seat far and ingenious as it may appear, is, I believe, a fal- above the low murmurs of those who, setting the lacy. If they who have gone through school and col- sacred Scriptures and modern science at issue with lege, and have been for years in the habit of listening to preachers, become the victims of popular fanati- each other, show their want of profound and sober cism, it proves that, however accomplished and knowledge of both; we would leave the Dean of learned they may be, their reasoning powers have York to that befitting answer, which we trust he not been cultivated, their understandings have not will receive-silence. But this before us is a been enlarged, they have not been trained in habits question entirely different, and to be judged on of judging and thinking for themselves; in fact, different principles. We believe that the irreguthey are ill-educated. Instead of being told that it is their duty carefully to investigate historical evi-larity of those individuals, or even of those sects of dence for themselves, and to cherish an independent minds, which diverge into folly, into extravagance, frame of mind, they have probably been brought up into fanaticism, is the price which we pay for those to think that a docile, submissive, and child like def- | irregularly great minds which are the glories and the only one in my experience,) I was taken, when at Boston, to hear an eminent Unitarian preacher who was prevented by illness from officiating, and his place was supplied by a self-satisfied young man, who, having talked dogmatically on points contested by many a rationalist, made it clear that he commiserated the weak minds of those who adhered benefactors of mankind, the creators, the inventors, the original impellers, in all great works and movements in our race-the great poets, artists, patriots, philanthropists, even philosophers. Our vision of education, we confess, is rather that of Milton, which Sir Charles Lyell, we are inclined to think, has judged (p. 202) more from the report of John-to articles of faith rejected by his church. If this son than from actual study of that noble treatise addressed to Master Samuel Hartlib. Science indeed finds a place in that all-embracing system, but rather an early and subordinate one; youth are to rise at length, having left "all these things behind," to the height and summit of human wisdom. When all these employments [not merely natural philosophy, which Milton treats as almost elementary, but even politics, jurisprudence, and theology] are well conquered, then will those choice histories, heroic poems, and Attic tragedies of stateliest and most royal argument, with all the famous political orations, offer themselves; which, if they were not only read, but some of them got by memory, and solemnly pronounced with right action and grace, as might be taught, would endue them even with the spirit of Demosthenes or Cicero, Euripides or Sophocles. Of Education, Milton's Prose Works. We have dwelt long enough on these subjects; though there others of the same class in which we should wish to join issue with Sir Charles; in truth, the whole twelfth chapter, on the higher education in New England, and all the great questions which arise out of that primal controversy, would require a number of our journal to itself. But it would be the greatest injustice to a work, the charm of which is its fertile and everchanging variety, to give undue prominence to one class of topics. On one kindred point alone we are bound to touch briefly and emphatically, and this in justice to the writer, as regards his estimation among ourselves. Our readers are not to ascribe to Sir Charles Lyell, from his intercourse with the Unitarians of Boston, in private, or his attendance on their religious services, agreement or sympathy with their opinions. That intercourse was almost inevitable. To this community belong almost all the great names in science and in letters, at least those known in England; their chief preachers are men of great eloquence, and it is their ordinary and avowed system to exclude controversial subjects from their teaching; they dwell on the great truths on which all Christians are agreed; they do not scruple to use, without comment or explanation favorable to their own views, the common phraseology of the Scripture. The unsuspecting reader might indeed peruse almost volumes of Channing's writings without discovering his peculiar opinions. Sir Charles Lyell himself, however, has inserted this significant caution : too common method of treating theological subjects be ill-calculated to convince or conciliate dissentients, it is equally reprehensible from its tendency to engender, in the minds of those who assent, a Pharisaical feeling of self-gratulation that they are not as other sectarians are.-Vol. ii., p. 347. Our difficulty in turning to other topics is to know where to pause for discussion. We cannot, however, refrain from submitting to our readers' consideration the strong good sense with which he exposes one of the great dangers, as well as one of the inevitable abuses, of republican institutions-of institutions which virtually rest the whole power of the state in a complete democracy that which he aptly calls the "ostracism of wealth." It is a wise lesson on the jealous impatience of a democracy as to trusting the least power out of their own hands; on their suspicion of the only true and legitimate guarantees for public order, and for a wise judgment on the public welfare-we mean property and distinction, either political or intellectual-on their overweening confidence in their own wisdom and subservience to those above them, which almost knowledge. It strikingly displays their fear of always betrays them into far more degrading subservience to those below them, needy and noisy demagogues. We are sorry not to quote the whole of a very instructive conversation between Sir Charles and a leading lawyer of Massachusetts. This gentleman said, inter alia Every one of our representatives, whether in the State Legislatures or in Congress, receives a certain sum daily when on duty, besides more than enough travelling money for carrying him to his post and home again. In choosing a delegate, therefore, the people consider themselves as patrons who are giving away a place; and if an opulent man offers "You have himself, they are disposed to say, enough already, let us help some one as good as you who needs it." Sir C. Lyell adds: During my subsequent stay in New England I often conversed with men of the working classes on made up their mind that it was not desirable to the same subject, and invariably found that they had choose representatives from the wealthiest class. "The rich," they say, "have less sympathy with our opinions and feelings; love their amusements, and go shooting, fishing, and travelling; keep hospitable houses, and are inaccessible when we want to talk with them, at all hours, and tell them how we wish them to vote." I once asked a party of New England tradesmen whether, if Mr. B., already But I should mislead my readers if I gave them an eminent public man, came into a large fortune to understand that they could frequent churches of through his wife, as might soon be expected, he this denomination without risk of sometimes having would stand a worse chance than before of being their feelings offended by hearing doctrines they have sent to Congress. The question gave rise to a disbeen taught to reverence treated slightingly, or even cussion among themselves, and at last they assured with contempt. On one occasion, (and it was theme that they did not think his accession to a fortune |