and faces are not swept away all at once by some sudden catastrophe, but only dropped out of sight one by one-you are not struck, you are not forced to think of life's decline, and almost unawares you may not be far off from its close.

"Now if we know that changes such as these in the natural world and in our own persons take place imperceptibly, may not this prepare us to admit, that analogous changes, equally unnoted, because equally slow and gradual, may be occurring in our moral character, in the state of our souls before God? And with many I maintain that it is actually so. There is a winter of the soul, a spiritual decrepitude and death, to which many are advancing, at which many have already arrived, yet all unconsciously, because by minute and inappreciable gradations."

The following passage on the anticipatedness of Christ's sufferings as an element of His excessive sorrow, strikes us as extremely fine:

"One of the most obvious of these is, that all His sorrowings and sufferings were long, ere their actual occurrence, clearly and fully foreseen. They were anticipated Borrows. Every calamity and affliction that awaited Him was disclosed to Him in all its certainty and severity from the very commencement of His history, and the terrible anticipation of approaching evil accompanied Him through His whole career on earth. This, obviously, is one feature of the mournful history of Jesus, in which He stands alone-one condition of His earthly experience which must have lent a bitterness to His sorrows from which those of all other mortal sufferers are exempt. For need I remind you, what a great alleviation of the troubles and ills of life it is that, in the great majority of cases, they are unforeseen? In the ordinary arrangements of Providence, a veil of obscurity hides from us the threatening aspect of approaching evil, so that the happiness of the passing hour is not damp. ened, nor the severity of present sorrows increased, by the gloomy prospect of the future. Thus even the man on whom life's calamities and afflictions fall the thickest, is permitted to find in the very weakness and ignorance of our nature a refuge from its troubles; for while memory is gradually relaxing its hold of past evils, hope is left free to people the future with all fancied good. May I not appeal for confirmation of this to your own experience? There are few or none now hearing me who are not in greater or less degree acquainted with grief. they came upon you in the form of personal sickness and pain, or of domestic trials and afflictions, or of sad and bitter bereavements, or of disappointments and reverses of worldly fortune, in whatever shape they came, you have all, I doubt not had your sorrows and troubles in life, and not one of you, but, if you live much longer, will in all probability have many more to encounter yet. But I beseech you to consider how very much it would have added to the severity of any trial through which you have passed, if you could have fully and certainly foreseen it long before it came. Not to speak of the petty vexations and trials that are matters of daily experience, and the anticipation of which would steal away much of the sunshine of life, think what has been the greatest sorrow of your past existence. Perhaps there are not a few before me who can instantly lay the finger memory on that spot, so black in the retrospect, where that dire bereavement, or that terrible and crushing blow of misfortune, fell suddenly upon them. Im

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agine, then, what it would have been to have been able, for long years and months before, to foresee its certain approach. With what heart could you have entered into that enterprise, so enthusiastically and perseveringly prosecuted, could you have anticipated the disastrous issue the frustration of your efforts, and disappointment of your fondest hopes? Or when enjoying sweet intercourse with that much-loved friend, or looking forward, brimful of hope, to years of happiness in his society, what a stern interruption of your happiness and your visions had it been, if the darkness had rolled away from the future of your life, and the hour been revealed close at hand, when that loved one would be torn from your side! And, need I add, to vivify this thought in your minds, that as with the past, so shall it be with the future experience of us all. There are, I doubt not, more than one or two in this assembly, happy, light-hearted, tranquil it may be, who, if they could but look into the secrets of one little year before them, would find their happiness sadly disturbed. Whom do you love most in this world? In whose society and intercourse are you taking most delight? Who is that friend, that brother, or sister, or husband, or wife, or child, on whom your hopes and affections are chiefly centered, and from whom you would feel it would be agony to part? What if the irresistible conviction were forced upon your mind that, ere a few months have come and gone, that friend will be by your side no more, the anguish of separation will be gone through, and you will be left alone? Or what if I could single out one, or another, or more, among this auditory, and convey to them, by some mysterious yet irresistible means, the intelligence that on a certain day and month in the coming year they shall be hurried away from life by some painful and humiliating malady? Alas! with such a terrible prescience of evil resting on our souls, there would be fewer light hearts and happy homes amongst us to-night. Perhaps, these or similar events may actually be in reserve for some of us; but 'we know not what shall be on the morrow.' God has mercifully hid from us the future; and if such calamities await us, they do not disturb our present tranquillity, for they await us unknown."

Following the order adopted by us at the commencement of this notice, we come to the just-published volume of sermons of the late Dr. N. W. Taylor. These sermons, the editors tell us, were written during the period when Dr. Taylor was pastor of the Centre Church, New-Haven, before his entrance on the duties in the discharge of which he so much. distinguished himself as a Theological Professor at Yale College. Many of them" (the sermons here issued) "had reference to a state of deep religious interest in his congregation, with which his ministry was so frequently blessed. They were the productions of his youth, before he had attained the full maturity of his intellectual powers; and in their adaptation to the pulpit, are characterized by a rhetorical style in

striking contrast with the precision of language and exactness of statement which so marked his lectures."

So speak the editors; but from this opinion we beg leave to dissent. Few, among the thousands who heard Dr. Taylor in his maturer years, but will have him brought before them. in full life and power by the sermons here collected. That majestic presence; that singularly handsome face, with an eye which for its depth of lustre, and a forehead which for its dome-like expanse, attracted the attention of even the casual observer; that benignity and simplicity of expression which spoke so truly for the real manhood within; that voice, so remarkable for its rich compass-these features will be recalled to many who turn over pages instinct as are those before us with thoughts which, uttered, as they were, from the pulpit of Yale College, left impressions so vivid and permanent. For here we have exhibited in their full integrity the mental qualities which made Dr. Taylor one of the most marked men of his age, and with which his personal bearing was so aptly associated. He was a man of almost pure intellect. Passion in the action and expression of that intellect there undoubtedly was; but it was a passion that caught up in its eddies neither the flowers of fancy nor the smoke of prejudice. It was a strong and vehement but steady current of the upper air, touching only those who rose to the high region it traversed. In all the pages before us we can discover no appeal to any sensibility, except perhaps that of terror. No metaphor colors the surface of the argument. No episodes impede its course. It is all vehement reasoning, engendering heat, it is true, and sometimes bursting into flame, but only in the same way that the hardest and most closely wrought chain, in the very rapidity of its action, will strike a fire which a softer substance would fail to excite.

One other peculiarity in these remarkable productions we may pause to notice. It is the almost merciless rigor of the appeal to that very element in the hearer which the preacher exhibits in such unmasked and tremendous force. It is the reason of the Divine, naked, and with its unsheathed sword, claiming justice from the reason of the human. Then again

it is the reason of the Divine doing execution on the reason of the human. There is a sublime power in the way in which this is represented, that reminds us of the finest sermons of Whitefield. All subterfuges are torn away. The sinner's impotent arm, lifted to parry the Divine blow, is struck down. No palliatives, such as we hear from more polite and obsequious pulpits, are first administered. The chloroform of moderatismthe announcement," After all, you may perhaps save yourself" -"God is merciful, and the disease is not so bad"-the distrac tives of mere rhetorical embellishments are not applied by this stern but just physician of the soul. On the contrary, he says, "You must bear the knife, and you must bear it with the full and acute consciousness of all your present powers. You must not only have this vile heart lacerated, broken, crushed, but you must feel that this is being done. For until this death to sin is thus experienced, there can not be life to live."

Of Dr. Taylor's theological peculiarities the sermons before us give few traces. One only, that on the "Sinner's Duty to make himself a New Heart," is to any considerable extent obnoxious to this criticism. The title alone of this sermon will bring before some of our readers many reminiscences. Dr. Taylor, during the last half of his life, was a theological professor at the New-Haven Seminary, an institution supposed to hold "New" Light views, and to advocate progressive measures. Dr. Tyler was at the same time a theological professor at the East-Windsor Seminary in Connecticut, a sort of opposition institution, holding " Ola" Light views, and advocating conservative measures. A lively and continuous controversy, rarely smoothed by snatches of calm, sprang up between the two professors. The main points of doctrine as to which they differed, were the extent of imputation, and that of the moral ability of the sinner for self-renovation. As it so happens generally, however, when we come to read Dr. Taylor's sermon on this latter point, we find very little in it of those peculiarities which in his letters caused so much controversy. From this sermon we now make a single extract:

"5. The duty of the sinner to make himself a new heart is to be regarded by him as a practicable duty.

"Many suppose otherwise. At least they suppose that every attempt at its present performance is nugatory and vain, and that they have only to wait till God interposes, and by His grace constrains them to give Him their hearts. My hearers, there is not a more fatal mistake than this; nor one more absolutely groundless. Fatal, because so long as you act under it, nothing will be done to any purpose in the work of conversion. Give God your heart, while you regard every attempt to do it as hopeless as the creation of a world! Never. Under this persuasion, it is as certain that you perish, under the wrath of God, as that there is a God. If the time never comes in which you believe that you may give God your heart, you will never try to give Him your heart; and if you never try to give Him your heart, you will never do it, even through His grace, but will only resist His Spirit till you die. Cherish this persuasion, then, that this duty can not and will not now be be done, even if you attempt it, and surely as there is a hell, you are the victim of its woes.

"But the persuasion is groundless. Look at the commands of God-think of His calls, His entreaties, His expostulations, His promises, His threatenings, His beseeching tenderness, His overflowing compassion and grace! Is not all this designed to make the impression that whatever God calls upon you to do, may be done? Do you say, It never will be done without His grace? True. But it may be done through His

grace. Yes, yes; oh! yes, fellow-sinner, through the grace of God it may be done. It may be done now-now, as well as at any future moment of your life. Now, now, now, fellow-sinner, you may give your heart to God, and become an heir of His glory. What, so soon? Yes, now, even NOW, through grace it may be done. But, you say, I am not even awakened. Be it so. Then it is high time you were; and how long a time would it take you to become awakened, if you knew you had but another moment to live? It is time you were awakened. It takes no time for a sinner falling into hell, as you know you are, to be awakened. If you are not awakened, it is your own fault-if you continue unawakened another moment, it will be your own fault. But you say: 'I have no evidence that the Spirit of God is striving with me.' But you know that you are a sinner against God, and momently exposed to His wrath, and is not this enough to awaken you? Would it not, in fact, awaken you, were you not determined not to be awakened? And as to the Spirit of God, how do you know that He is not now striving with you, in all the tenderness and grief of resisted love and grace-ay, striving with you for the last time? How do you know that it is not so, and that the reason that you are not awakened is, that you are resisting and grieving the Holy Ghost for the last time? Do you not now clearly see and understand your duty? Do you not feel the firm grasp of obligation on your conscience-every consideration of right, and reason, and duty, pressing you to obey the living God? And how do you know that this is not the Spirit of God striving to bring you to instant repentance, and that you are not even now resisting and grieving Him for the last time? -resisting, and resisting for the last time, an influence that would result in your instant conversion, if you were not resisting it? How do you know that you are not thus breaking away from these arms of everlasting love for the last time-struggling to escape from the embrace of omnipotent love and mercy, that you may plunge into hell? Ay, thus-thus grieving the Holy Spirit for the last time!"