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natural bent, which nothing can change. As Mr. Emerson says: "If you are the devil's child, be sure the devil will have you."

Now the creed of the Evangelical preacher is quite the contrary. He believes in the natural depravity, not of some, but of all men, and that all men, even the most depraved, may be renewed by God's spirit, through the belief of the truth. He holds, therefore, that there is hope for all, and yet, that all are in danger. He has but little faith in natural goodness, and relies more on that which is guided by principle, than by mere impulse. And so it comes to pass that his teachings are displeasing to the mass of novel-readers and novel-writers, and the dislike they conceive of his teachings is easily transferred to his person and character.

Hence the jaundiced eyes through which they are wont to look upon him and his work, and the consequent distorted descriptions of both.

This, we believe, is a true account, both of the general fact, and of this particular example of it. As to which of the two views is the more agreeable to the word of God, we will not stop to inquire.

The seeming fairness of this writer towards all parties but the Evangelical, proceeds not from a sympathy with any of them, but from indifference. He likes a clergyman of the old school, avowedly, because he was a good fellow, fond of society, dogs, and horses, did not preach doctrines, nor meddle with spiritual things at all, and made all his sermons very short. The influence of the pretty Methodist, too, of which apparently such a favorable account is given, is all resolvable into the effect produced naturally by her soul-full eyes, exquisitely modulated voice, and a certain indescribable plastic touch, by which she magnetized all who come near her.

Even spiritual-rappings are indorsed, though rather before their time. The tenants, great and small, are favorites, as people wholly engrossed with this present world could not fail to be, with this author and others like-minded. are, they are admirably drawn to the very life. ourselves enjoyed sketches of the kind more.

Such as they

We never

Adam Bede, the hero, is, to be sure, a little too stately, and superior to other folks, especially the plain people by whom he is surrounded. He greatly surpasses not only these, but Mr. Irwine and the fine English gentleman, Capt. Donnithorne, as well. His marriage with the fair Methodist does not please our fancy. Similia similibus is our motto. His brother Seth is a more common, because a more real character. Lesbith, their mother, the writer of this has in his own parish, and has heard her talk like the book, many a time. Mrs. Poyser is what a fast London youth would call a "stunner." She could be matched, perhaps, in New-England, but hardly any where else. Neither her tongue, wit, nor shrewdness ever fails her. Hetty is a character well conceived, and as well sustained throughout, and, we fear, many such there be. The same is true of her erring admirer, Copt. Donnithorne, whose unfortunate, and eventually criminal relations with Hetty, are described with unusual discrimination, displaying great insight into character, and psychological knowledge of the human heart. He is not a villain after the usual pattern of popular novels, but an average man of the English upper classes in the country. The story of his imprudencies and errors is told with as much delicacy as the case admits, and can not fail to leave a deep moral impression on the minds of youthful readers of either sex.

It is doubtful, indeed, if such narratives do not, by what they reveal, remove the tender bloom from the soul of the maiden, which should be untouched by any profane hand. We can only add, therefore, that if a knowledge of such things be thought desirable by any, it can not easily be imparted in a less objectionable manner than in this tale of those "who loved not wisely but too well."

On the whole, then, we think favorably of Adam Bede as a novel, and allow it to be "the novel of the season."

Its fling at the Evangelical clergy is a matter of course in works of this class, though none the less to be regretted as pretty sure to influence, more or less, the minds of youthful

readers.

In spite of this eruption of hereditary humor, as it were, we

close, as we began, by avowing our belief that the humanitarian element of our recent most popular writers, and Adam Bede among the number, is really derived from the teachings of the New Testament, and is one of the many signs of the times, that these teachings are destined to be universally received and acted on.

ART. IV. THE COSMOS A PROOF OF ONE
PERSONAL GOD.

Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. BY ALEX. VON HUMBOLDT. Vol. 5. Harper & Brothers: New-York. 1859.

Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of America. BY LOUIS AGASSIZ. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Vols I. and II.

Histoire des Sciences Naturelles depuis leur Origine, par Cuvier, (G.)

Cosmos, whose primary signification was ornament, and secondary, order and harmony, is the word now generally used for the Universe, with special reference to its order and unity. Pythagoras appears to have been the first to use it in this ele vated and extended sense, after whom it was widely employed for the same purpose. Thus in Aristotle, by far the most exact and scientific of Greek writers, the word signifies the universe and the order pervading it. (De Cœlo, i. 9.)

The Latin mundus was employed by the Romans as a synonym of Cosmos, though a much feebler word, and less legitimately applied to the totality of created things. Its original meaning was similar, but it had not acquired the necessary secondary signification and association.

Descartes projected a work under the title of Traité du Monde, using the word evidently in the sense of Cosmos, an opus magnum he failed to complete.

Earth and world are often used interchangeably in English, and are not, therefore, sufficiently precise for scientific purposes. Even Nature and Universe have not the necessary prima facie sense of order, harmony, unity. Nature, indeed, is often and accurately used to denote the inward hidden principle, as universe is to include the sum total of sensible phenomena.

But Cosmos is the one word of undoubted origin, and universal usage since Pythagoras, to express not merely the totality, but more especially, the unity of the universe. (Plutarch, De Plac. Phil. II.) Also Galen, (Hist. Phil. p. 429.) And in the treatise De Mundo, (Cap. II.,) "кóσμoç εorì σvoτημa ¿s οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς καὶ τῶν ἐν τούτοις περι εκομένων φύσεων.”

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The Cosmos, then, is the sum of the sensible universe, the assemblage of all things in heaven and on earth, conceived as animated by a soul of harmony, controlled by a principle of order, and radiant with an expression of beauty.

This was the ancient formula which we, as Christians, are able to interpret and elevate into the more truthful, because exact expressions of Divine power, wisdom, and goodness, the handiwork of the one and only God, the Creator of its substance, the Originator and Director of its forces, the Architect of its forms, the Author of its order, the Fashioner of its beauty, and the Arbiter of all its issues.

The language they employed assures us that the Greeks, and, in an inferior degree, the Romans had a clear perception of a certain order in the universe, but the conclusions they reached. respecting the Author of this order, were considerably confused.

We refer not to Atheistic or Eleatic philosophers, who flourished as numerously then as since, but to the Theistic, or rather Polytheistic, who agreed in acknowledging the universe as in some sense the work of Divine Beings, but who were unable to conceive, either of an absolutely original creation, or of God as the Absolute One. It is often said, indeed, that philosophy had subverted the foundations of polytheism long before the advent of Christ. But Cudworth, whose immortal review of the whole subject, is an authority than which none is higher, and who will certainly not be suspected of a dispo

sition to suppress a particle of evidence in favor of the philosophers, is obliged to confess, that while most of them held to a supreme Deity-they all, from Plato down, recognized a host of inferior divinities. Hence he denominates them Monarchists, but denies them the appellation of Monotheists.

Occasionally, however, one unexpectedly meets with a passage, which (if we may suppose his words were signs to the writer of the same ideas as they are to us) would be thought admirable if found in any author of modern times. Of this character is the prayer cited by Cudworth, which Euripides puts in the mouth of one of his heroes:

"O Thou who guid'st the rolling of the earth,
And o'er it hast thy throne, whoe'er thou art,
Most difficult to know-the far-famed Jove,
Or Nature's law, or reason, such as man's-
I thee adore, that, in a noiseless path,

Thy steady hand with justice all things rules."

But, with the exception of a very few passages, kindred in sentiment to these lines of the Greek poet, the literature of every nation unblest by the light of revelation, affords lamentable proof of the incapacity of man's unaided reason to arrive at a clear conception of one God, beside whom there is none else.

It was necessary that the Bible should first make known the doctrine, before we could verify it from the light of nature. It may even be doubted whether the very discoveries which now so abundantly confirm the truth of the Divine unity, would themselves ever have been made, if the sublime representations of the Scriptures had not cleared up and raised the notions of mankind respecting the majesty of God, and referred them to the creation as the work of His hand, abounding in proofs of His unity, power, wisdom, and love. (Romans 1:20-25.)

And even now, (since none are so blind as those who will not see,) we are scandalized, and human nature itself is dishonored, by the spectacle of proud philosophers, disdaining to acknowledge the Divine origin either of the Bible or of the Universe.

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