-and that this opposition was overcome by no course of reasoning, but by an inward and sweet sense,' which came to him once when walking alone in the fields, and looking up into the blue sky, he saw the blending of the Divine majesty with a calm, sweet, and almost infinite meekness.

"The piety which grew up under such a system was, of necessity, energetic, it was the uprousing of the whole energy of the human soul, pierced, and wrenched, and probed from her lowest depths to her topmost heights with every awful life-force possible to existence. He whose faith in God came clear through these terrible tests would be sure never to know greater ones. He might certainly challenge earth or heaven, things present or things to come, to swerve him from this grand allegiance.

"But it is to be conceded, that these systems, so admirable in relation to the energy, earnestness, and acuteness of their authors, when received as absolute truth, and as a basis of actual life, had, on minds of a certain class, the effect of a slow poison, producing life-habits of morbid action very different from any which ever followed the simple reading of the bible. They differ from the New Testament as the living embrace of a friend does from his lifeless body, mapped out under the knife of the anatomical demonstrator;-every nerve and muscle is there, but to a sensitive spirit there is the very chill of death in the analysis.

"All systems that deal with the infinite are, besides, exposed to danger from small, unsuspected admixtures of human error, which become deadly when carried to such vast results. The smallest speck of earth's dust, in the focus of an infinite lens, appears magnified among the heavenly orbs as a frightful monster.

"Thus it happened, that, while strong spirits walked, palm-crowned, with victorious hymns, along these sublime paths, feebler and more sensitive ones lay along the track, bleeding away in life-long despair. Fearful to them were the shadows that lay over the cradle and the grave. The mother clasped her babe to her bosom, and looked with shuddering to the awful coming trial of free agency, with its terrible responsibilities and risks, and, as she thought of the infinite chances against her beloved, almost wished it might die in infancy. But when the stroke of death came, and some young, thoughtless head was laid suddenly low, who can say what silent anguish of loving hearts sounded the dread depths of eternity with the awful question, Where?"

And the practical application of such theories is thus depicted in the narrative. The young sailor's mother, Mrs. Marvyn, has just heard of her son's death at sea :—

"When Mrs. Marvyn had drawn Mary with her into her room, she seemed like a person almost in frenzy. She shut and bolted the door, drew her to the foot of the bed, and throwing her arms round her, rested her hot and throbbing forehead on her shoulder. She pressed her thin hand over her eyes, and then, suddenly drawing back, looked her in the face as one resolved to speak something long suppressed. Her soft brown eyes had a flash of despairing wildness in them, like that of a hunted animal turning in its death-struggle on its pursuer.

"Mary,' she said, 'I can't help it,-don't mind what I say, but I must speak or die! Mary, I cannot, will not, be resigned !—it is all hard, unjust, cruel !—to all eternity I will say so! To me there is no

goodness, no justice, no mercy in anything! Life seems to me the most tremendous doom that can be inflicted on a helpless being! What had we done, that it should be sent upon us? Why were we made to love so, to hope so, our hearts so full of feeling, and all the laws of Nature marching over us,-never stopping for our agony? Why, we can suffer so in this life that we had better never have been born!

"But, Mary, think what a moment life is! think of those awful ages of eternity! and then think of all God's power and knowledge used on the lost to make them suffer! think that all but the merest fragment of mankind have gone into this,—are in it now! The number of the elect is so small we can scarce count them for anything! Think what noble minds, what warm, generous hearts, what splendid natures are wrecked and thrown away by thousands and tens of thousands ! How we love each other! how our hearts weave into each other! how more than glad we should be to die for each other! And all this ends-O God! how must it end ?-Mary! it isn't my sorrow only! What right have I to mourn? Is my son any better than any other mother's son? Thousands of thousands, whose mothers loved them as I loved mine, are gone there!-Oh, my wedding-day! Why did they rejoice? Brides should wear mourning, the bells should toll for every wedding; every new family is built over this awful pit of despair, and only one in a thousand escapes !'

Pale, aghast, horror-stricken, Mary stood dumb, as one who in the dark and storm sees by the sudden glare of lightning a chasm yawning under foot. It was amazement and dimness of anguish ;-the dreadful words struck on the very centre where her soul rested. She felt as if the point of a wedge were being driven between her life and her life's life,-between her and her God. She clasped her hands instinctively on her bosom, as if to hold there some cherished image, and said, in a piercing voice of supplication, My God! my God! oh, where art

Thou?'

"Mrs. Marvyn walked up and down the room with a vivid spot of red in each cheek and a baleful fire in her eyes, talking in rapid soliloquy, scarcely regarding her listener, absorbed in her own enkindled thoughts.

"Dr. Hopkins says that this is all best,-better than it would have been in any other possible way, that God chose it because it was for a greater final good,—that He not only chose it, but took means to make it certain, that He ordains every sin, and does all that is necessary to make it certain,-that He creates the vessels of wrath and fits them for destruction, and that He has an infinite knowledge by which He can do it without violating their free agency.-So much the worse! What a use

of infinite knowledge! What if men should do so? What if a father should take means to make it certain that his poor little child should be an abandoned wretch, without violating his free agency? So much the worse, I say! They say He does this so that He may show to all eternity, by their example, the evil nature of sin, and its consequences! This is all that the greater part of the human race have been used for yet; and it is all right, because an overplus of infinite happiness is yet to be wrought out by it!-It is not right! No possible amount of good to ever so many can make it right to deprave ever so few;-happiness and misery cannot be measured so! I never can think it right,— never!-Yet they say our salvation depends on our loving God,-loving

Him better than ourselves,-loving Him better than our dearest friends. -It is impossible !-it is contrary to the laws of my nature! I can never love God!-I can never praise Him!—I am lost! lost! lost! And what is worse, I cannot redeem my friends! Oh, I could suffer for ever, how willingly !—if I could save him!-But oh, eternity! eternity! Frightful, unspeakable woe! No end !-no bottom !-no shore ! -no hope-O God! O God!'

Now, without plunging into this unfathomable sea, we ask, what is Mrs. Stowe's object, what is her purpose, in bringing all this before the English public? She is describing a New England theology, and that of the last century; yet she brings her book to this country, and publishes it in London! Is not this a strange proceeding? Have we any "Dr. Hopkinses" in England? We cannot say that we ever met with one. But if some divines in New England speculated unwisely on the divine decrees in the year 1780 or 1790, is that any reason why Mrs. Stowe should inveigh against their errors to us in London in the year 1859 ?

This question is not an immaterial one; for unless Mrs. Stowe can be fully justified, she is deeply criminal. There is, perhaps, not a wiser or a truer statement in all that compendium of wisdom and truth, our Thirty-nine Articles, than this:

"For curious and carnal persons, lacking the spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's predestination, is a most dangerous downfal, whereby the devil doth thrust them either. into desperation, or into recklessness of unclean living, no less perilous than desperation."

Yet has Mrs. Stowe, for no good reason that we can perceive, calmly thrust before the eyes of tens of thousands of "curious and carnal persons" this same awful sentence of God's predestination; thereby opening before them a most dangerous pit or downfal. We so strongly feel the undesirableness of this, that we would not undertake Mrs. Stowe's responsibility in the publication of this volume for any conceivable reward or inducement.

Let it be observed, and seriously weighed, that the framers of the Seventeenth Article, while they put forth this solemn caution against "curious and carnal" discussions of such matters, did not waver in their belief in God's "sentence of predestination." They only forewarned men, that those who were destitute of the teaching of the Spirit of Christ were wholly unfit to handle such matters. The controversies of such arguers could only resemble those described long ago by Milton, when the lost spirits, in their drear abode,

"reasoned high

Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute;
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."

Poor Mrs. Marvyn herself, in Mrs. Stowe's pages, "finds no end." She says:

"I have thought, in desperate moments, of giving up the Bible itself. But what do I gain? Do I not see the same difficulty in nature?"

:

Unquestionably she did. The existence of EVIL, from which suffering and sorrow are merely the offshoots, is the grand problem. Proud man demands to have it solved. But this would be tantamount to equality with God. To command the whole landscape of the Universe, we must be seated on the throne of God. Satan promised this to the victim of his first temptation :—“ Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." But Satan "was a liar from the beginning." His victim learnt, indeed, the lower side of evil, its wretchedness and woe; but to know it as God knows it, was not his to give. Satan had failed in his own attempt to mount God's throne; and it was not likely that he should succeed in raising any other creature to that elevation.

But, besides this first grand fault in Mrs. Stowe's story,-the throwing before myriads of the "curious and carnal," questions which to them are but poison,-there is another mischief in the book which is not so apparent at first sight. And this is, a general laxity or uncertainty with reference to religious belief.

This is produced, first, by the revolting pictures drawn of Calvinism, without offering any more attractive system on which the mind might rest. It is also produced, more silently, by the practical examples of the book. Thus Mary, the saint of the whole story, is allowed to fix her affections, most ardently, upon a rambling sailor, who tells her, "I can't make head or tail of a word Dr. H. says ;" and who complains that the religious meetings "bore him confoundedly." And in another place, a "really christian" young minister is helped into a marriage with a girl who has declared that "she didn't believe the doctrines," by the same pattern saint, Mary Scudder. And, throughout the book, there is an evident delight felt, in sketching hard, selfish, hypocritical professors of religion, and in contrasting them with frank, hearty, affectionate, "unregenerate persons."

This loose, indefinite way of viewing and stating religious truth, has startled and grieved one periodical, which is very far removed from either bigotry or Calvinism. The Saturday Review remarks, with much truth and force, that "there really are some things which are too solemn for novelists, strange as such an opinion may appear." "Mrs. Stowe does not commit herself to anything, but talks about it and about it; putting Dr. Hopkins and his views in all sorts of positions, and looking at them under every possible aspect. We know little of Jonathan Edwards, and nothing at all of Dr. Hopkins; but a religious novelist owed them more respect than Mrs. Stowe has shown for them. The themes on which they wrote were far too awful for a novelist."

The same writer remarks, that "in so far as Mrs. Stowe's book

can be said to have any moral at all, it is that we ought to keep our minds in a sort of hazy devotional warmth, and hope for the best; and that any consistent or explicit theological belief upon the great topics which form the basis of theology is selfcondemned." We take this to be a tolerably fair and accurate view of the real drift of the book, if indeed it can be said to have any; and surely such a no-creed is very near akin to either recklessness or confirmed scepticism.

On this ground, mainly, we regret the publication of Mrs. Stowe's book, and desire for it a speedy oblivion. But we have one other objection to offer, of a far lower class and less important kind; but still one which, with reference to other lady-authors, we think it necessary to mention.

It was indicated, obliquely, in a sarcastic advertisement which recently appeared, of a new story, entitled "Elizabeth, a tale which does not end in a marriage." Can any one inform us why christian women, like the authors of "The Minister's Wooing,' "Queechy," and others who might be named, cannot write a religious narrative without making it a love story?

"Cannot," however, must be the wrong word; and we ought rather to say," will not." Miss Stephen has already proved, in her admirable and popular volume,* that there is no real difficulty in forming an interesting narrative without any "courtship," or any marriage. In her "Anna," the reader's attention is kept entirely riveted to the close; and yet we are never told whether the heroine is fair or "ordinary," whether her eyes were blue or sparkling, or whether she ever had an offer of marriage. With this example before us, we can feel no doubt that an interesting tale can be written without any of these questionable ingredients. And if so, why will not our lady-authors indulge us with a few works of this kind, if only for the sake of variety? But we desire this abstinence on other grounds. There is much to be pleased with in "Queechy," the "Hills of the Shatemuc," and the other works of Miss Warner; and yet we have often been deterred from placing them in the hands of young females, from a conviction that love-stories are not wholesome aliment for a girl at school.

It is from

3. The third book on our list is also a popular one. the pen of one of the Masters of a public school, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; a man greatly esteemed and valued; a man destined, we trust, to be of some service to the church in his time. Yet we are scarcely better satisfied with it than we were with the former two. The book shews power, and exhibits one phase of truth; but it has, like the other works we have just noticed, some serious faults and imperfections.

A young boy, Eric Williams, is the hero of the story. His parents, returning to India, leave him, and a younger brother

* "Anna, or Passages from the Life of a Daughter at Home."