in a different relation from that here indicated; it is not as things contrasted, but rather contradistinguished as "the good ground," from "the good seed," both needful for the harvest. On one single point, too, we hold him not to do justice to what he so eloquently eulogizes-the spiritual philosophy of Plato. "In some passages," says he," he seems to recognise the necessity of a divine influence. These, however, may be regarded as hyperboles.” — p. 34. We think not, and in proof would but refer to one passage among many, evidently incapable of being thus degraded into figure; we allude to that in his second Alcibiades, wherein Socrates discourses almost prophetically of the coming teacher: "One deputed from heaven" (Loyov Osov Tivos) to teach men their duty to God and each other." Whereupon Alcibiades, in what we may well term "the believing spirit," is made to cry out: "Oh! when will this time come, Ŏ Socrates? and who shall be this instructor? Methinks it will be most delightful to see this teacher, and what kind of person he shall be."- Alcibiades, ii., p. 150. Such was the lofty language of this "Athenian Moses," as Justin Martyr well termed him; one whom Cicero, that most believing spirit" of the Romans, feared not to name "DEUS ille noster Plato." But as reviewers we must turn to our author. We greet, then, with the right hand of fellowship, Professor Lewis, as a brother laborer in the great and common cause of all educated Americans the awakening of our countrymen to a deeper and truer philosophy than what has heretofore satisfied them a philosophy whose roots are within the heart and conscience of man, and its fruits in his life a philosophy which sets its mark on all wherein the man shows forth himself, whether it be in the mart or the forum, whether by word or deed, whether in reasoning or acts, whether as a member of the state, or as a member of the church.

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On this latter point of the church, Professor Lewis speaks (we know not his religious profession) as becomes the catholic Christian. After quoting from the "Republic" of Plato an eloquent burst of sorrow over the human, and of longing for the coming of the heavenly πολιτεία,” our author adds :

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"We will not say that this was a prophecy of the Christian Church. It may have been only uttered to cheer his desponding hopes; yet this will we boldly assert, that only in the true idea of a church can it find its accomplishment. When the Church, with its true doctrines, (not as a civil organization for the security of property and order, but as a divine, yet visible institution,) shall be acknowledged as a higher order than the state; when politicians learn the great lesson of viewing all things from a theological position; when they can purify their hearts, and invigorate their mental powers, by breathing the higher atmosphere of religious philosophy; when no man is deemed worthy of office who does not reluctantly descend from this purer region to engage in the duties of political life, then, and not till then, will the glorious vision be realized."- p. 38.

We are pleased, too, to see- or rather under his principles it could not be otherwise - Professor Lewis stand forth the advocate

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of the Church as an authoritative responsible teacher. "Oh! when shall that truly believing age fully come, when we shall have again a teaching, and not merely a reasoning church; a church not vainly wasting its efforts in loud assertions of its traditionary right to teach, and never advancing a step beyond this inane position, but actually teaching without distrust, and with the conscious authority of an institution of heaven." Such surely was the apostles' course.

"They argued not, but preached, and conscience did the rest."

In the result of such teaching, as compared with more popular forms, on the youthful mind, we are also fully at accord with him; the reasoning lecturer but inspires doubt "into that faith which never wavered under the catechetical instruction of the Church."―p. 26. As from a common root all his views of education are of this same spiritual stamp; the moral is to be the ground-work of the intellectual; the heart to be first set right, that it may guide the head. With Plato the education of the will is to precede that of the intellect.

"The tastes and affections, he taught, were to be first cultivated. It was the duty of legislators (and of a church, too, he would have said, had a church existed) first of all to give a right direction to these; so that, to use his own expression, when reason comes' it might find a house furnished for its reception, and be recognised not so much by speculative argument, as by its congeniality to the inward state of the soul."- p. 32.

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But we must not enlarge our limits forbid. We part from our author as one with whom, though we know him not, yet as recognising in him a congenial spirit, we acknowledge the ties of brotherhood, and feel convinced that, with his powers of usefulness, (as reviewers, at least,) it will not be long ere we welcome him again, as we shall do with pleasure, to our critical columns.

2. The Method of Nature. An Oration, delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11th, 1841, By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Boston: 1841. Simpkins. pp. 30.

WE would that we could convey to the heart of the highly-gifted writer of this oration, the mingled feelings of admiration and regret with which its perusal has filled us. We know few things of the kind more beautiful in American literature; we know as few more false and dangerous. It is painful thus to speak of any thing so exceedingly beautiful, and still more painful to believe it. It is like gazing at some lovely flower with the conviction that its scent is death, or beholding the colors of the rainbow in the "miasma"

that is bringing pestilence. Our admiration is checked by aversion; we are repelled doubly by its very attractiveness. But neither does this comparison come up to our feelings. The tear dropped over prostituted beauty approaches nearer to the sensation, when all that is beautiful and lovely in taste and talent is made, as it here is made, the pander to the infidel heart of man, the destroyer of man's fairest hopes of happiness here and hereafter. This may sound to the reader, as well as the author, harsh censure; we think it not undeserved; we know it to be most unwillingly bestowed, and in admiration and love would yet hope that a mind thus nobly gifted will not remain permanently divorced from that saving faith which alone can preserve it untainted, and which has evidently been, even to him who rejects it, the true fountain of his noblest inspiration. But to turn to the oration.

In it Mr. Emerson appears alike the deep spiritual philosopher and the ardent lover of nature; true in both, and beautiful in the exhibition of a mind formed in the mould both of the philosopher and the poet, so that, casting out some half dozen sentences from it, there is nothing in the whole oration to which we do not most cheerfully accord both sympathy and admiration, and which we would not ourselves feel most proud to have written. But these half dozen sentences, as giving the aim of the whole, poison the whole; they taint its beauty, they degrade its logic, they falsify its truth, by exhibiting all as but the vesture and habiliments of spiritual falsehood. What that "first lie" (nowτor yɛvdos) is, we will endeavour to make clear to our readers.

The new Christianity (for they seem as yet unwilling to abandon the term) of which Messrs. Brownson, Parker and Emerson, of Boston, may be held to be the new world apostles - (and of them Mr. Emerson by far, as it seems to us, the most eloquent and persuasive) — this Christianity consists in such a transcendental view of revelation as to lose sight of all its facts, all its doctrines, all its institutions, and all its prescribed duties; abandoning itself, as it were, to ecstatic love and admiration of God and his works, and, above all, of the spiritual mind of man, which last becomes, in the long run, the object, and the sole object, of religious worship, the DEITY at whose footstool the admiring worshipper is called to fall down and adore. Now this appears to us, after some familiarity with their writings, to be the sum and substance of their pretended faith-not atheism, but sentimental pantheism and spiritual selfworship. That it is the scope of the oration before us, will, we think, be evident to any attentive reader. Nor does Mr. Emerson leave it to be deduced; in so many words he thus states it, that to man the mind of man is the GOD!!! After eulogizing the piety of a past generation, he thus proceeds:

"And what is to replace to us the piety of that race? We cannot have theirs; it glides away from us day by day, but we also can bask in the great morning

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which rises for ever out of the eastern sea, and be ourselves the children of the light. I stand here to say, let us worship the mighty and transcendant soul.". p. 27.

Again :

Accept the intellect, and it (!!) will accept us. Be the lowly ministers of that pure omniscience, and deny it not before men." — p. 28.

Now such language, however wild or mystical, might perhaps be capable of a sound interpretation were it but a casual expression; such, however, is not the case. It is the very exponent of their whole system. The soul of man, as being in fact and truth identical with God, is the key to all their blasphemous rhapsodies.

"Not thanks, nor prayer," says Emerson, "seem quite the highest or truest name for our communication with the Infinite, but glad and conspiring reception -reception that becomes giving in its turn as the receiver is only the all-giver in part and in infancy. Not of adulation," he adds, "we are too nearly related in the deep of mind to that we honor." - p. 6.

How little of " adulation" these worshippers give to God and his blessed Son, it is almost painful to note.

"I am God," is "a truth of thought," says Emerson, and "a lie only to the ear." "All things are mine," is the language he ascribes to God," and all mine are thine." - p. 6.

So, too, of our blessed Lord, his words elsewhere are:

"The true Christianity, a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of man, is lost. None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed that is, in Jesus Christ."

Such, then, is the blasphemous rant of one whose heart and intellect, we well believe, God hath tuned for better things before he call him to his account, and such the teaching contained in a discourse actually delivered before the divinity school of Cambridge. Who but must wonder to see such teacher there sitting "in Moses's seat," the seat of rigid Calvinistic orthodoxy? Who but must shudder to hear of such teaching passing as Christian with a Christian audience? and who but must learn from it the all-needful lesson, how quickly man's wisdom becometh folly when it deserts the oracles of God?-how surely the Christian ministry sinks into nothingness when it falls away from the apostolic platform-how silently, yet how fearfully, religion itself melts into the rhapsodies of sentimental pantheism, even in the purest and noblest of minds, when entrusted but to human reason to teach it, and to a church of man's creation to guard, explain and enforce it?

But we will, before closing, do justice to our pra, as well as censure, of Mr. Emerson's oration. Of nature he us speaks as truly as beautifully:

"How silent, how spacious! what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom. In graceful succession, in equal fulness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unravelled, nor shown. Away, profane philosopher! seekest thou in nature its cause? This refers to that, and that to the next, and the next to the third, and every thing refers. Thou must ask in another mood; thou must feel it and love it; thou must behold it in a spirit as grand as that by which it exists ere thou canst know the law. Known it will not be, but gladly beloved and enjoyed.” — p. 10.

Or, to take his closing words, the outburst of what we should term a holy confidence, could we but find in his system any solid ground for such lofty feeling:

"I draw from this faith courage and hope. All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be greater than it. Let those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm, and it is wider than space, older than time; wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn; they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power."

How beautiful and how true! were it not baseless as the wind, and stained, moreover, with the pride of the infidel mind.

3. An Epitome of the History of Philosophy, being the Work adopted by the University of France for Instruction in the Colleges and High Schools. Translated from the French, with Additions, and a Continuation of the History from the time of Reid to the present day, by C. S. HENRY, D.D., Professor of Philosophy and History in the University of the City of New York. In two Volumes. New York: 1841. Harper and Brothers.

THESE Volumes form the one hundred and forty-third and one hundred and forty-fourth numbers of that valuable series, published by the Messrs. Harpers, under the title of the Family Library. It may have contained more popular treatises, but none, we think, more useful in the highest sense to which that much abused word is applied. A work of this kind in English was certainly needed; a work that should be elementary, comprehensive, didactic, and at the same time, adapted to popular reading, as far as, consistently with the nature of the subject, this latter object could be accomplished. Enfield's history is not designed for general circulation, and is comparatively useless in consequence of not being brought down to the period of those new developments, which the subject has undergone with the present century. We allude by this, not so much to new discoveries, as to the peculiar aspect which philosophic inquiries have assumed. Philosophy seems to have paused to