the enlightened places of the earth for more than a thousand years. They are to this day the models of taste to which we discipline the minds of our youth. No better can be found. Homer and Virgil, Plato and Tully, still hold the preeminence in all the high places of learning. What a gift, then, to men were the giant minds of Greece and Rome! What an impulse was given to the work of mental improvement, in the creation of that brightest constellation in the intellectual firmament!

A good book is a glorious legacy to the world. In some sense it rescues its author from death. It translates him, not to heaven, but to a higher sphere of usefulness upon earth. It continues him among men, and enables him to speak when his body is in the dust. The great men of the world, therefore, are still with us. We have in our houses, and by our firesides, Baxter and Howe, Milton and Cowper, Newton and Edwards. We have still with us loved and revered names, Alexander and Stuart,-men, who continue to instruct us by their wisdom, and to cheer us on by their example,-men, who tell us of a better country and of a higher life,-of greater light and brighter visions of truth and of God. But more than this is true. A book not only continues its author thus upon the earth, but it is in the same sense the creation of just as many such men, as there are copies of his work circulating among men. The land, therefore, is full of the great and good men of all ages. They are the inmates of every abode of intelligence, and are gathered in greatest numbers into those places, where the young mind learns to reason, to feel, to act.

Johnson, most infelicitously for himself, fancies the poor, blind bard of Britain, after completing his immortal work, as musing upon the future of his Paradise Lost, upon its reception among men, and its influence in all coming time. Well might he muse, and with intense emotion too, upon that future, so bright with promise, so fraught with good to man. Well might he exult at the thought of thus continuing among men, and of thus pouring into their minds, from one generation to another, this stream of pure and elevated thought, and of thus "asserting eternal Providence, and justifying the ways of God to man, even to the end of the world. We may not indeed be selfish, or glory in our own strength, but in being made the means of good to others, there is reason for rejoicing. Could the poor tinker in Bedford jail have fully realized what God was preparing for men through him; could he have seen the future of what he was then meditating; could he have seen that it would soon become the companion of an innumerable company of pilgrims; that it would be translated into foreign tongues, and go wherever the

Bible goes, and be esteemed only less than the visions of his namesake in Patmos; could he have seen this, and seen it as the result of the ways in which God was leading him, and as the fruit that came into being from the experience, the mental agony, and the depths of despair, through which he passed, in passing into the sunshine of hope and of joyous life,-Bunyan's soul would have leaped for joy. He would then have looked upon his dungeon as a palace, upon his imprisonment as the season of his greatest usefulness, and upon all his agony of soul as the spirit of his inspiration. Could Watts have seen the future of his labors, when he was composing his "songs for children," and when there flowed from the full, deep fountain of celestial melody in his soul, those higher and richer strains, which are now sung in every Christian land, and which, we doubt not, will continue to be the medium of devout praise to God to the end of time; could Watts have seen this issue of his efforts-seen, that, in touching the harp of David, he was drawing from it "sweeter tones than it has ever given to the church of God since the hand of the old Hebrew swept across its strings, and enkindled the devotions of the faithful," then, next to his exultation around the throne of the Lamb, would have been his rejoicing on earth.

In the literature, then, of great men, there is accumulated a vast amount of good for our world. True, there may be found in it sentiments, which we are not willing to endorse, teaching, which all may not think comports with that of the Bible. We may not be willing to go with Luther in his stubborn literality respecting the real presence, nor with Calvin in his views concerning the Sabbath. We may refuse to follow Edwards to the ne plus ultra of his necessarian scheme, or to side with Chalmers in his advocacy of ecclesiastical establishments. We may have no sympathy with Alexander in his limitation of the atonement, or with Stuart in his exegesis of the seventh of Romans. But what if we dissent here. Does our dissent make the literature of these great men useless to us? What are these things, when viewed in connection with their whole teaching? What are they, when seen in the light which these men pour upon the truth of God, and the path of our duty ?-spots merely in the disk of a glorious orb of light and heat to our world. We no more think of them, nor suffer them to lessen our estimate of the boon we have in their labors, than we do the dark places in the sun, when surrounded with its illumination, and cheered by its genial warmth.

The testimony of great men to the truth of the Bible, and to the worth of religion, is connected with the highest good of our

race.

Their connections here are of great value. They thoroughly weighed the evidences of Revelation; they saw far into the wants of the human soul. The testimony, therefore, of such men as Boyle, and Newton, and Hale, upon these points, is of immense benefit to our world. It sets aside the sneer of ignorance, and makes the shallow minds of infidels afraid to touch the ark of God. It matters not, in this aspect, what the life of great men may have been. They may have gone contrary to their better reason-may have lived in the face of all their convictions of duty. All this may be true, and however we may regret it and weep over it, yet it does not at all lessen the value of their testimony to the truth of the Bible, and to the worth of religion, given in that honest hour, when men are themselves, when passion ceases, and reason is on the throne,— the hour, when truth and eternity come into communion, and when the soul of man thinks and feels aright, and speaks out its convictions, and confesses its wants.

In no act, therefore, of his long and useful life, did the great civilian of the West do more for his country, and for the weal of the whole human family, than he did in laying himself down at the feet of Jesus as a lost sinner, in trusting in his blood for eternal life, and in thus saying to the world, Here is my trust-here my only hope. In no exhibition of his giant intellect did the idol of New England ever give expression to words of higher import, or of more lasting importance to mankind, than he did, when he said, and said to listening thousands, "Religion is a necessary and indispensable element in any great human character. It is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne. If that tie be sundered, or broken, he floats away a worthless atom in the universe, its proper attraction all gone, its destiny and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation, and despair." Mighty words these! In them Webster will live, and do good till the heavens, it may be, are no more.

We might say much in relation to the influence for good which great men have exerted in infusing new life into the church, in giving increased efficiency to her action, and a higher spirituality to her devotion. Did our limits permit, we might speak of what Whitfield and Edwards accomplished in this work; of what Buchanan and Mills effected for the cause of missions; and of what Chalmers wrought out in his day for the church of Scotland, in bringing the minds of the people back to those doctrines, which give life, and in thus awakening in that land a spirit, unseen there since the days of the Covenanter, a piety unfelt there since her first witnesses were slain for

the testimony of Jesus,-a piety that is now making itself felt all over the earth. We might speak of others, but we must stop. The theme is inexhaustable. The whole we shall not see until the books are opened, and the extent of this goodness is spread out for the benefit of the universe, and for the glory of Him, who wrought it all through the instrumentality of great

men.

ART. VII.-CHURCH REVIEW THEOLOGY.

The Church Review and Ecclesiastical Register. April, 1853. New Haven, Conn. (Art. V. NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY.)

WHEN We admitted into our last Number some strictures on the Church Review, by way of reply to its aspersions on New England theology, we were not aware of the extent to which the same article had been noticed in other Journals. The same reviewer has now favored his readers with "New England Theology," No. 2, referring at the head of his article not only to the New Englander, but to three other Journals published at New York and Boston. We shall not undertake at present the labor of sifting out from that article the details of difference between the Church Review and the New Englander on points of history. Whether it was John Doe or Richard Roe that proposed in the Episcopalian Convention of 1785 to eliminate certain clauses from the litany-whether the petition to the Parliament in 1772, was subscribed by "about two hundred and fifty," or by two hundred and forty-three-whether all those subscribers were opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity, or whether some of them may not have been simply Pelagiansare questions on which the reviewer may quibble to his heart's content. We leave the revolution in King's Chapel and the origin and growth of Unitarianism in Boston to be discussed by the Examiner and the Congregationalist, with whom the reviewer chooses to argue on those points. At present, we propose to notice his theology and his logic, rather than his historical accuracy.

The principle laid down by the Church Review, and cheerfully admitted on our part, is, "that it is not the existence, or the rise, or the variety of heresy, that can disprove the Di

vine life in any body claiming to be an integral part of the holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. But the true test is the ability to throw off such heresies without being pervaded by their influence." Let the test thus proposed be clearly understood, and in its application it amounts to nothing more than the intelligible and common sense principle, that where the Gospel is-where the truth as it is in Jesus, is preached, believed, and obeyed-there the Church is. Whenever a congregation, or a confederacy of congregations, which has been "an integral part of the holy, catholic, and apostolic Church" is pervaded by any heresy, in such a sense, and to such an extent, as to leave no longer within itself a counteracting and recuperative energy-in other words, whenever the heresy, the body of doctrine contrary to evangelical truth, has expelled or suppressed the body of doctrine which is able to make men wise unto salvation through faith in Christ, and thus it has come to pass that the supposed congregation or confederacy of congregations has ceased to hold the Gospel, and has adopted in its stead another gospel which is not another-then that congregation or confederacy of congregations is no longer an integral part of Christ's visible Kingdom in this world.

Apply the test, for example, to the congregation of "the King's Chapel" in Boston. At the commencement of the revolutionary war, that congregation was and always had been "an integral part of the holy, catholic, and apostolic Church;" so at least the reviewer is bound to believe. Ten years afterwards it appears that "heresy"-a doctrine contrary to the saving doctrine of Christ-exists in that body. Shall the congregation therefore be immediately exscinded and declared to be wholly "alien from the commonwealth of Israel?" No, not immediately-though it be proved that some of its members are Arians, some Pelagians, some Eutychians, some Nestorians, some Socinians, and some Universalists; for as there may be tares in a field of wheat, so "it is not the existence, or the rise, or the variety of heresy, that can disprove the divine life in any body claiming to be an integral part of the holy, catholic, and apostolic Church." We must not be hasty in our decisions; though even the chosen teacher of the congregation, introduced and adhered to in violation of acknowleged order, is known to hold heretical doctrine. We must have time to see whether there remains in that congregation enough of sound evangelical knowledge and experience, enough of love to the truth, enough of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in believing and praying souls, to constitute a recuperative force that shall prevail against these misleading and destructive opinions. The true test is "the abili