ducted mission at Cape Palmas; our Episcopal brethren have also an important Mission at that place; while the Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian bodies have Missions at other places. These Missionary settlements should become channels of great blessing to the African people, and should be kept well filled with the waters of life.

We cannot undertake to give our readers an account of the information contained in these volumes on the commercial capabilities of Africa. A multitude of facts, from a hundred different sources, are here brought together, which deserve well the attention of intelligent mercantile men, but which do not admit of being abridged. The historical notices of the English Colonial settlements possess much interest, but to these also we can give only this passing reference. In a work of this kind various subordinate matters, subsidiary to the general object of the author, and yet distinet, almost episodical, in their character, receive proper notice. Of subjects under this category is the question concerning the mental capacity of the Negro race, and we are prepared to subscribe to the general correctness of the views presented by our author. In a state of slavery, parents are poorly qualified to instruct their children, the plastic season of youth passes almost without improvement; maturer years are years of ignorance; the position of the unfortunate slave through life is unfavourable to mental or moral elevation, and the wonder is that so many coloured people form characters in many points. so respectable rather than that the coloured man, being a slave, should be a degraded person. Any race of men, under the long continued action of similar causes and influences, would become degraded. A rather successful analogical argument is brought forward to refute the often alleged inferiority of the Negro, as evinced in his present debasement, by showing that when Englishmen and Africans have changed places, the coloured man being the master and the white man the slave, a similar degradation of people having our own aristocratic complexion has been the consequence. The illustration is taken from the case of the crew of a merchant vessel who were taken captive and reduced to slavery; the account is given by the captain of the vessel on recovering, some years after, his liberty. The opinion of the negroes themselves may be set off against the opinion of white people, both classes judging of each other in similar circumstances; though we may observe en passant, that the accounts given by the captain, then the overseer of the white slaves, appear to

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confirm the estimate formed of them by their owners. cording to the narrator, in one place "the Arabians were well received; but we were more ridiculed than ever we had been, receiving an abundance of the vile epithets so common to their people, who had ever viewed us as a degraded set of beings, scarcely fit to live in the world." "Swinish looking dogs and white skinned-devils, were the appellations which were familiarly applied to them by the Africans." The narrator of these things himself, gives proof of the evil influence of slavery on his morals; he had no scruple about stealing his master's corn, tobacco, fruit, &c., nor about deceiving him by all manner of falsehood. Are these things less evil in a white slave than in a coloured one? Or is slavery itself a system adapted to repress the good, and to develope strongly the evil and debasing tendencies of our nature?

The

Reverting again to Mr Buxton's Remedy, we cannot conclude our notice of his book, without mention ng with great pleasure the reception it has met with in Great Britain. highest persons in church and state have publicly expressed their confidence in this scheme of benevolence, and Lord John Russell has, in a letter to Parliament, published in the Appendix, not only expressed his conviction of the expediency of some prominent points of the undertaking, as the best. if not the only way of putting down the Slave Trade, but has officially presented estimates for the requisite expenses of three iron steam-vessels, with complete equipments, and for liberal presents to native chiefs and kings. Great Britain is one of the most powerful nations in the world; and while there is much in her policy that we stand in doubt of, and while some of her leading measures are such as we entirely disapprove, still we rejoice in her greatness. She has the ability to accomplish much for the good of our race, and we observe with unaffected pleasure the abundant evidence of her willingness to give the blessings of civilization and Christianity to the long benighted children of Ham.

The prospects of Africa appear full of hope. Powerful causes cannot fail to produce great changes in her condition. Delay may attend their operation, but there can be no uncertainty as to their final result. Africa shall rise from her degradation. The people long oppressed shall yet lift their head among the nations. Let the friends of that long oppressed country but prove faithful, and under the blessing of the

great King of nations, the very land of slaves shall become the home of a people rejoicing in that blessed liberty wherewith Christ makes free.

ART. IV.-An Inquiry in the modern prevailing notions respecting the Freedom of the Will, which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Rewards and Punishments, Praise and Blame. By Jonathan Edwards. Gould, Newman and Saxton, New York, 1840.

THE appearance of a new edition of the standard work of President Edwards on the Freedom of the Will, furnishes an occasion, which we are glad to embrace, of calling the attention of our readers to one particular part of the subject which has of late been a matter of frequent debate.

No attentive and competent observer of the controversies, which of late years have harassed the Church, will dispute that in a great measure they turn upon the nature and functions of the human will. It is as evident that the chief of these questions, on which all others hinge, is that which relates tothe Power of Contrary Choice. It will be agreed that whatever goes to determine concerning the reality, nature and operations of this power, does in that degree determine the controversy itself. In the hope of contributing to this happy result, the ensuing inquiry will be conducted. No valuable progress can be made in it, unless it is pursued with a clear conception of the real point at issue. Our first endeavour, therefore, shall be to ascertain precisely what that point is.

1. The question is not whether the will might have made a choice the contrary of that actually made, had its motives, either internal or external, or both united, been different; i. e. had the state of the agent's mind within, or the outward inducements presented to it, been different. No one disputes that on this supposition there might have been a choice different from, or contrary to, that actually made. No one disputes that should such a change subsequently occur, it might produce a corresponding change of choice.

2. The question is not whether there is a mere natural power of contrary choice, as the phrase "natural power" has

been understood by the best theologians. By this is meant that such a contrary choice would not be extrinsic or contradictory to its nature as will. Such a choice, supposing the requisite influence for its production, would be a proper act of will, germane to its nature, and involving no inherent absurdity or self-contradiction. It would involve no increase of its faculties or powers, no change in its organic structure, or appropriate nature as will. Had it chosen the contrary, this would not have proved or implied it to be a larger, stronger, or constitutionally different faculty. When men turn to the love of God, they do it with the same faculties which were employed in hating him, both as to extent and nature. The state and action of these faculties towards moral objects alone are changed. The question is not whether, in this sense, the human will is endowed with the power of contrary choice.

3. The question is not whether the will, in one and the same act of choice, may or may not choose two contrary objects. This is too palpably absurd to be maintained, and none avowedly or intentionally contend for it. Whether some theories do not involve this position in such a degree that they stand or fall with it, is a fair question for discussion.

4. The question is not whether men may choose whichever of two objects they please. Those who do not examine carefully, are often made to believe that this is the grand question at issue. No one doubts the affirmative of this question.

5. Neither is the question whether the will has liberty of choice, i. e. in every act of choice, acts freely, according to the pleasure of the agent, and not by constraint or compulsion. This is agreed on all hands.

6. But the question is whether the will is so constituted, that, at the moment of any given choice, under precisely the same motives of inward inclination and external inducement, it may turn itself either way; either in the way it actually does choose, or the opposite; either in accordance with its highest pleasure or inclination, or in direct and utter hostility to them. And whether such a property in the human will be essential to liberty, moral agency, praise and blame, rewards and punishments; a question which lies at the very root, as will be perceived, of some of the chief questions in divinity and ethics.

That we may not be obnoxious to the charge of raising a false issue, and fighting a fiction of our own fancy, we shall

quote from the abettors of the notion in question, a few sentences showing clearly what are the views of this subject widely entertained and propagated at the present day.

Their cardinal doctrine on this subject is thus expressed by a leading advocate of it: "Choice in its very nature implies the possibility of a different or contrary election to that which is made." This "possibility," as this writer explains himself, refers not to its having different objects but at its election, so that it may choose whichsoever it pleases; but it refers to the possibility of making the mind's choices themselves different or contrary to what actually occur, at the same instant, under precisely the same internal and external motives, and the same objects offered to their election. For he says, "the question of free will is not whether men choose. This is notorious, none deny it."t Again-" Freeagency is known and defined by the Confession itself and admitted to be the capacity of choice, with power of contrary choice." And in various forms he abundantly asserts, that "choice" and "voluntariness" are not a sufficient ground of accountability unless the mind not only chooses, but exerts a "control" over its own choices.

Another writer speaks of "a will which has not its nature correlated to any objects but a will indifferent, for if its nature were correlated to objects, its particular selection and determination would be influenced by this, and consequently its action would be necessary."§

Again. "The only escape from necessity, therefore, is the conception of will as above defined-a conscious self-moving power, which may obey reason in opposition to passion, or passion in opposition to reason, or obey both in their harmonious union; and lastly which may act in the indiffereney of all, that is act without reference either to reason or passion." Again. "The reason and the sensitivity do not determine the acts of the will. The will has efficiency, or creative and modifying power in itself-self-moved, self-directed."T

A few sentences from a publication recently discontinued, in further explication of the properties of this power of contrary choice, claimed to be essential to true liberty, will suffice under this head. "We know that a moral system necessarily implies the existence of free agents with the power

Beecher's Views in Theology, pp. 31, 32. § Tappan, Review of Edwards, p. 221.

† Id. p. 32.

i Id. P. 227.

+ Id. p. 91 ¶ Id. p. 244.