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THE ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.*-The author of this work is a Belgian, who has been for twenty years Professor of Political Economy at the University of Liege. He has published several works on topics of Political Economy which have attracted attention, and gained for him reputation. We hardly think this work will add to his fame. He goes over the principal subjects which belong to Political Economy in a 12mo. volume of less than 300 pages, and there is no thorough discussion of anything. He appears not to have read the recent works on the subject, but advances arguments which have been shown to be fallacious. Sometimes he relieves the abstract discussion by a concrete example in order to bring out his idea more strongly, as when to show the folly of protection, he says, "That Frenchmen and Italians after spending nearly two millions sterling in boring a tunnel through the Alps, can place their custom-house officers at each end to destroy in a great measure by the dues they exact, the usefulness of this marvel of engineering, is an inexplicable contradiction."

The book is well printed and easily read, and the table of contents is full and exact.

MEYER'S COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS.† -Of all the masterly commentaries of Meyer, that on the Epistles to the Corinthians is deemed by some the very best. The critical acumen and the practical Christian feeling of the author are both admirably illustrated on its pages. The Epistles themselves, from the variety as well as the character of the topics which the Apostle has occasion to take up, are an exceedingly inviting field for critical annotation. The notes of the American editor are not numerous. They are tinged with the doctrinal peculiarities which characterize his system of theology, but are not deficient in learning or clearness. The volume is a great advance on the commentaries which English and American ministers have generally been familiar with.

* The Elements of Political Economy. By EMILE DE LAVLEYE, translated by ALFRED W. POLLARD, B.A., St. John's College, Oxford, with an introduction and supplementary chapter by F. W. TAUSSIG, instructor in Political Economy, Harvard College. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1884.

Critical and Exegetical Hand-Book to the Epistles to the Corinthians. By H. A. W. MEYER, Ph.D., &c. Clark's Edinburgh Edition. Edited by T. W. Chambers, D.D. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, publishers. 1884.

WALKER'S HISTORY OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN HARTFORD.*. This volume deserves a more extended review than we are able at present to prepare. At a later day we expect to insert such a review from another pen. Prompted by the occurrence of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the First Church in Hartford, Dr. Walker, its present pastor, has explored the history of this ancient Church, and has written an extremely instructive and interesting account of it from the beginning. Its successive pastors, from Thomas Hooker down to the present, are described in their characteristic traits and in their peculiar work. The narrative is enlivened by anecdotes which tradition has saved from oblivion. The progress of religion in Hartford, and, incidentally, in the community at large, in different portions of this long period, is faithfully exhibited. The work is marked by candor and truthfulness. Faults of men, where there were faults, are not hidden, but the tone is gentle and charitable, and there is a just appreciation of merit even where it was shaded by imperfection. As the work approaches our own epoch, we are introduced to persons and events of which we have had some personal knowledge. We have been struck with the tact and, at the same time, with the frankness, with which facts are related. The portraits and other illustrations add much to the attractiveness of the volume. It is of much value to the historical student who would study our history in its sources. To New Englanders, both clerical and lay, it may be commended as full of matter which cannot fail to interest them. It is a worthy and substantial contribution to the ecclesiastical annals of the new world. "Ency

HAGENBACH'S THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA.†-The clopædia" is one of the branches of theology which we owe to the Germans. It is a preliminary survey of the field of theological study, with a guide to the literature. Among the works of this class, Hagenbach's is, on the whole, the best. The American work on the basis of it has been prepared by competent hands. It is enlarged by matter pertaining to English and American theology, a topic on which German books are apt to be meager. The lists of books are carefully and judiciously prepared. The index, if not so full as we would like to have it, is sufficient for most practical uses.

*History of the First Church in Hartford, 1633-1883. By GEORGE LEON WALKER. Illustrated. Hartford: Brown & Gross. 1884.

Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology. On the basis of Hagenbach. By GEORGE R. CROOKS, D.D., and JOHN F. HURST, D.D. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Cincinnati: Walker & Stone. 1884.

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ARTICLE I.-JONATHAN EDWARDS AND THE
HALF-WAY COVENANT.

THE month of June, 1750, saw the people of Northampton in a state of intense excitement, with which the people of the surrounding country to a considerable extent sympathized. The chief outward expression of this excitement was the dismission from his pastorate, of twenty-three years, of Jonathan Edwards.

This dismission had been demanded by a vote of "above two hundred against twenty" of the church members, and was ecclesiastically effected by the result of a pretty evenly divided council of nine churches, on the 22d of June, 1750.

This result had been prefaced by a controversy between pastor and people of such sharpness and conspicuity, had so enlisted the sympathies, on one side or the other, of observers near and far, and was in itself so melancholy an affair, that it was instinctively felt to be an event of historic importance in New England generally; a conviction which a clearer knowledge of the principles involved only serves to confirm.

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Two causes conspired to bring about the controversy between Mr. Edwards and his Northampton congregation resulting in their overwhelming rejection of his pastoral ministrations.

One was the endeavor on his part-whether wise or unwise in method it is not here important to enquire-to lead his church to an investigation of the behavior of a number of the young people of his congregation who were accused of reading and circulating licentious, books, and of other bad conduct.

The other was a more fundamental question relating to the conditions of entitlement to Sacramental privileges, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, respecting which the church and the pastor had come to stand in positions of resolved antagonism.

It is to the second only of these two conspiring occasions of controversy that attention will here be directed; but this one was at the time the one of most importance, and is now the only one of other than antiquarian interest.

To set the Northampton affair of June, 1750, in its proper surroundings, and to estimate accurately Jonathan Edwards's relations to the Half-way Covenant system, both as it was generally practiced in New England and as it was somewhat peculiarly administered in the Northampton church in his day, it will be needful to trace out a short pathway of preliminary historical survey.

One of the strongest convictions of the founders of the New England colonies was the necessity of a really Christian membership in the churches they established. They had seen in the old countries, both in England and on the continent, what they regarded as the disastrous results of a membership of the church and an admission to sacramental privileges, of persons confessedly or at least plainly not experimentally Christian. To guard against this danger, which they thought inherent in the State system of churches which they had known in England and Europe generally, they accepted and set on working the way of Congregational churches of New England. These churches they affirmed (see Hooker's Survey, Cotton's Keyes, Holinesse of Church Members, etc.,) ought to be composed of "Visible Saints"; or as John Cotton puts it (Way of the Churches, chap. 3, sect. 3, p. 56):

"Wee receive none as Members into the Church but such as (according to the Judgment of Charitable Christians) may be Conceived to be received of God into Fellowship with Christ, the head of the Church."

At the same time, however, the founders of these churches held with strenuous tenacity to the doctrine of the Abrahamic Covenant as extended to the Christian Church; and to the belief that all baptized persons were therefore in a real sense church-members, subject to its discipline as well as partial partakers of its privileges. This membership was not indeed in all respects complete without something further. It could not "orderly" be "continued and confirmed" without some act of personal repentance and faith in after years.

This view of the reality of a qualified church membership by infant baptism was a very positive one with the founders. It was a view which carried many things along with it. An individual's church membership by his childhood's baptism was the valid ground of great privileges and great accountabilities. For example, the Boston church in March, 1653, being then under the charge of Rev. John Wilson its first pastor, called before it a boy of sixteen years who had in infancy been "baptized into the fellowship of the covenant," and publicly "admonished" him for "choosing evil company and frequenting a house of ill report"-probably a tavern or tippling establishment.

Four years later, in June, 1657, the same church, having now joined Rev. John Norton with Mr. Wilson in its ministry, summoned another young man of twenty-one years before it who was "born and baptized in its fellowship," and for a graver offense publicly excommunicated him.

But not many years went by before the churches found themselves embarrassed in working their system in accordance with both their fundamental principles.

The children grew up, married, and had children whom they in turn wanted to have baptized; but the parents had never met with any personal religious experience, had never come to the Lord's Supper, had only that connection with the church which their infantile baptism had given them. What was to be done?

Could a child be baptized on the strength of his grandfather's church-membership? Thomas Hooker and John Dav

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