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John the Baptist, to "straighten our crooked, smooth our rugged ways, and smooth our hearts of stone;" and to the Virgin to gain for us "the light to love." Brydges' superb rendering of the "Dies Ira" is followed by a tawdry description of "the sister of charity," who is declared to have been, "once a lady of honor and wealth."

2. Lyra Germanica, containing a selection of the most sacramentarian of the Hymns already published under that title. 3 and 4. Lyra Apostolica and Lyra Innocentium, which are mainly selections from English Tractarian publications.

5. Miscellaneous, which contains, in connection with such sterling hymns, as, "Just as I am, without one plea," and "My Times are in thy hand," Mrs. Stowe's "Calm of the Soul," Mr. Longfellow's ordination ode, and part of his poem on the Springfield Arsenal, with a series of selections from "Alger's Oriental Poetry," in which Brahminical and other pagan writers are called in to add their share to what the "heart of humanity" here declares.

What we have here, therefore, is not an altar to the worship of the one God, but a Pantheon, in which in the first view, all faiths are placed in picturesque parity. Mariolatry, Sacramentarianism, Transcendentalism, Vishnuism, and Brahminism, sidle into the chancel and take their seats on the sedilia which the aesthetic taste and medieval propensities of the editors have erected in the edifice which is to accommodate "all vary. ing phases of belief." Such is the first view. The second, however, is less favorable. The TRUTH is not allowed to enter in its native integrity and beauty into this hierarchy of faiths. Whosoever comes in is to put on the æsthetic attire. In one or two cases, it is true, this process has been escaped. But take the following, to show in what way evangelical truth is to be emasculated, before it is permitted to be received into pantheistic sacramentarian toleration.

Version now before us.

Jesu, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee;
I am poor, despised, forsaken,

Thou henceforth my all shalt be.

True Version.

Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee;
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,

Thou from hence my all shalt be.

Perish every fond ambition

All I've sought, or hoped, or known; Yet, how rich is my condition,

God and heaven MAY BE mine own!

Let the world despise and leave me,

It has left my Saviour too; Human hearts and looks deceive me,

Thou art not like them untrue.
Whilst Thy graces shall adorn me,

God of wisdom, love and might,
Foes may hate and friends may scorn me;
Show Thy face, and all is bright.

Soul, then know thy full salvation,
Rise o'er sin, and fear, and care;
Joy to find in every station,

Something still to do or bear.
Think what spirit dwells within thee,

Think what sacraments are thine; Think that Jesus died to win thee, Child of heaven, canst thou repine?

Perish every fond ambition,

All I've sought, or hoped, or known, Yet how rich is my condition,

God and heaven ARE STILL my own.

Let the world despise and leave me;
They have left my Saviour too;
Human hearts and looks deceive me,

Thou art not, like them, untrue;
And while thou shalt smile upon me,

God of wisdom, love and might,
Foes may hate and friends disown me;
Show Thy face and all is bright.

Soul, then know thy full salvation;
Rise o'er sin and fear and care;
Joy to find in every station,

Something still to do or bear.
Think what spirit dwells within thee;

Think what Father's smiles are thine;
Think that Jesus died to win thee,

Child of heaven, canst thou repine?

It adds to the impropriety of this, that the mutilated copy before us is attributed to "Grant." Now Grant stands in the public eye for Mr. Charles Grant, well known as a faithful hymn-writer of the school of Newton and Cecil. Whether he wrote this hymn, even in its original shape, may be doubted. It first appeared in the early Methodist hymn-books, and was afterwards attributed to Mr. Lyte. But however this may be, Mr. Grant would have recoiled in horror from the utterance of the sentiments here attributed to him. To use his venerated name to indorse a theology against which his whole life was a protest, is as unfair as it would be to publish an infidel ode over Mr. Huntingdon's signature, or to make Archbishop Hughes sing a Bacchanalian song. We are confident, that whatever Mr. Huntingdon may think of the propriety of grouping together so many originally discordant faiths as those here collected, his sense of right will protest against the propriety of subjecting ONE, and that not the least loved and potent of all, to such fantastic and dishonoring a disguise as that here imposed.

RECENT SERMONS.

Sermons. By the REV. JOHN CAIRD, M.A., Minister of the Park Church, Glasgow, author of "Religion in Common Life," a Sermon preached before the Queen. New-York: Robert Carter & Brothers.

1858.

Sermons for the New Life. By HORACE BUSHNELL. New-York: Charles Scribner. 1858.

Practical Sermons. By NATHANIEL W. TAYLOR, D.D., late Dwight Professor of Didactic Theology in Yale College. New-York: Clark, Austin & Smith. 1858. Life in a Risen Saviour. By ROBERT S. CANDLISH, D.D. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. 1858.

Discourses on Common Topics of Christian Faith and Practice. By JAMES W. ALEXANDER, D.D. New-York: Charles Scribner. 1858.

The City: Its Sins and Sorrows. Being a Series of Sermons from Luke 19:41: "He beheld the city and wept over it." By THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D., author of the "Gospel in Ezekiel," etc. New-York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1857. Christ, and the Inheritance of the Saints, illustrated in a Series of Discourses from the Colossians. By THOMAS GUTHRIE, D.D. New-York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1859.

"DILIGENT inquiry of the trade," says Dr. James W. Alexander, in the preface to the volume bearing his name, whose title we have just given, "has informed me that while the recent depression of business has lessened literary demand in general, the proportion of religious books sold has strikingly increased. The testimony of booksellers is, that some of the most widely-spread publications of the day are collections of sermons."

With this remarkable fact in view, we propose in this and in one or two successive numbers, to give a brief critical sketch of some of the more prominent of these sermon-collections. At present we shall take up those popularly classed under the title evangelical; and we shall select as specimens the late volumes of Caird, of Bushnell, of Candlish, of Guthrie, of Alexander, and of Taylor.

The term "evangelical," as will at once be seen, must be taken in its most general sense in order to include all the writers whose names we have just given. Thus Dr. Bushnell denies the specific personality of Satan, maintains the continued presence in the Church of objective supernatural powers, and in former publications was supposed to hold very indistinct views on the atonement; peculiarities, we are happy to say, of which we observe no trace in the volume now before us bearing his name. Mr. Caird, we are told, is Erastian in his notions of ecclesiastical polity, holds low views of inspiration, and sympathizes in some degree with the latitudinarianism of the Scotch moderates of the close of the last century. Dr. Taylor's idiosyncrasies in respect to the self-moving power (the "autonomy") of the will, have been the subject of ecclesiastical inquiry, and betray themselves in one, at least, of the sermons before us. To Dr. Candlish, Dr. Guthrie, and Dr. Alexander, however, we may look as representing the evangelical school in its more technical and exact sense.

But while this is the case, there is not one of the writers whose works we have here collected, who does not present. some, at least, of the leading doctrines of our religion in a manner sometimes original, sometimes forcible, and almost always eloquent. There is not one of them who may not be studied with great advantage by the parish minister. It is in this view mainly that we propose now to subject them to a brief analysis.

Of the writers before us, Dr. Bushnell, Mr. Caird, and Dr. Taylor, may be considered as more particularly addressing the intellect; Dr. Candlish, Dr. Guthrie, and Dr. Alexander, the heart. It is true that this line of distinction is a very faint one. Dr. Alexander exhibits sometimes the highest philosophical power; Dr. Bushnell develops occasionally great tenderness; Dr. Guthrie draws in the aid of the imagination in almost unexampled opulence; Dr. Taylor not unfrequently sweeps over the emotional chords with an effect almost unrivalled. These qualifications, however, may be taken rather as outside than as corrective of the line of division we have just drawn.

Retaining this general division, we may discriminate further by noticing the more particularly in Dr. Bushnell the thoughtful application of doctrine; in Mr. Caird its psychological defense; in Dr. Taylor its vehement vindication, as addressed to the understanding. Under the second class, we may notice in Dr. Candlish the practically and pungently expository; in Dr. Alexander the pathetic; in Dr. Guthrie the sense of the sublime and beautiful, as well as of the tender and affecting. Each of these writers we now proceed more particularly to consider.

Dr. BUSHNELL has for nearly thirty years been known in New-England as a bold and impressive thinker, and a pure and earnest Christian man. For a long time his impatience of systems, his rejection of theological nomenclature, if not of essential formulas, brought him into conflict with the "platforms" or ecclesiastical councils to which, with a singular inconsistency, the Congregationalists are accustomed to refer discipline. The main charge, we believe, was looseness in the statement of the orthodox doctrine of the atonement, and from this, we are told, he escaped, not by being tried himself, but by undertaking to try his prosecutors. Almost simultaneously with the volume now before us, he issued a very remarkable and singularly able treatise on "Nature and the Supernatural," in which, while vindicating the doctrines of original sin, of the fall, of the necessity of a Mediator, and of miracles, with almost unrivalled felicity and impressiveness, he has given utterance to the idiosyncrasies, if not heresies, on the subject of Satan and of the continuance of the supernatural, which we have already noticed.

In the volume before us, however, no trace is to be found of these peculiarities. It is true that the sermons it contains are

built

on a very different model from that which John Newton and Simeon in England, and Dr. Bedell and Dr. Milnor in this country, have made familiar to Episcopal evangelical congregations. We should observe, however, that (1) the great length of our own service, which, as a general thing, excludes much beyond the expository and hortatory, and (2) the more miscellaneous character of our congregations, place

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