his assistance you could not lift a finger in your daily occupation, and without his blessing your plans would be fruitless, your efforts unavailing. I put it then to your conscience, whether it be right and fitting that you should live this day prayerless, thankless, thoughtless. Is it right and fitting that you continue without God in the world, when it is God that upholds and supplies you from hour to hour? If you look upon Atheism as unnatural and unreasonable, how can you regard otherwise this indifference to acknowledged truths, this negligence of your avowed principles?

"Such, my friends, are the questions by which we can test the practical influence of our belief in God. They show us that there may be a renunciation of Deity, an indifference to his charac

ter, a negligence of his will,-which is in reality but little in advance of an absolute denial of his existence. Between this state of mind and the speculation called Atheism, there is a closer connexion and deeper sympathy, than we at first imagine. If it be true, as I have attempted to show, that the denial of God has its origin in the degradation of the character, then the first step in attaining to it is the habitual neglect of religious principle in the heart and the life. We are accustomed to speak of Atheism with the greatest abhorrence. Let us regard with equal abhorrence that state of thinking and feeling which is so evidently the preparatory and introductory step. We say the only remedy for Atheism is an elevation of the character, a new unfolding, a regeneration of the spiritual man. I lay it down therefore as a truth all-important to us to remember, that the surest safeguard against it in ourselves, and the strongest argument against it in others, are to be found in the steady cultivation of the religious nature, the habitual leading of a religious life. To the believer in God, the spectacle of an Atheist is a monument and a warning. The blindness of mind, and the hardness of heart, which can look upon this universe and see in it no author, are the natural consequences of habitually living without God in the world. It is the good man who has the strongest assurance of God's existence and perfections; for he has the witness in himself that cannot be controverted. The Spirit beareth witness with his spirit, that he himself is a child of God."

The last sermon Mr. Goodwin preached was from the text, "I know not the day of my death." It was occasioned by the death of his parishioner, the late Charles C. Emerson, Esq., whose extraordinary talents and beautiful religious character gave promise of high and extensive usefulness, which was disappointed by his early and sudden decease, before the community could have an opportunity of appreciating the loss it has sustained in him, but not before he had won himself a place in the hearts of many friends, by whom the memory of his gener

ous, elevated, and holy character will never cease to be affectionately cherished. We subjoin the conclusion of the discourse. The admonitions and consolations it contains may with perfect appropriateness be laid to heart by all who are interested in the death of him who uttered them.

"We have been often taught, the affecting lesson has been recently repeated to us, it is not the old merely that should be ex horted to be ready; it is not to those who have ceased to be useful or vigorous or happy, that Providence speaks. Oh no! the voice is to the young, to the active, to those who are tenderly beloved, to those who have high hopes and bright prospects before them in life. The voice is to all. For we have seen one pass from us as a shadow, called suddenly away, in all the vigor of opening manhood, in all the brightness of earthly promise, and in the sunlight of friendship and affection. Bright hopes have indeed been withered, fond expectations have been blasted. To some this event may appear dark and mysterious. It is mysterious; for all change is mysterious, and we are surrounded with mysteries from the cradle to the grave. We are travelling amongst shadows, and we see but a little of the purposes of Providence. But then there is a Providence; there is a purpose; and that Providence is guided by infinite wisdom and boundless love. This is our faith; let us hold to it, and not let it go. And it is delightful to think, when the child of bright promise is taken from earth, that God has some use, some higher, some purer, some more glorious use for that spirit, in other portions of his dominions. Let us not think of him then as one whose usefulness is ended; for even upon earth the usefulness of the good does not end at their dying. Let us not speak of the separation as eternal. Above all, let us be careful that we are not selfish in our sorrow. In fine, let us always remember, that he is now as a treasure that is laid up in heaven, which nothing earthly can destroy, which nothing earthly can corrupt."

C. P.

ART. II.

Fanaticism.

of Enthusiasm."

By the Author of " Natural History New York and Boston. 1834.

THE author of this work is a philosopher. His mind goes round in a large circle. He looks on men with a generous and sympathetic spirit. Though a theologian, a member of the Church of England, and sufficiently attached to his church, he

is not a bigot. His mind is not the slave of his creed. If he is ready to condemn other sects, as for example the Unitarians and Catholics, and that too in unsparing language, his works are not wanting in severe strictures on his own church. But his denunciations are never those of a mere partisan; and when he is unjust in his condemnations, it is the injustice, not of bigotry, but of misapprehension and error. There is very much in his writings to which we should not assent; and yet there is not one of his volumes, we think, which does not disclose a sound heart, and a mind vital with freedom and the love of truth. Compared with the great crowd of English theological writers, he stands as a philosopher among bigots. He writes as a Christian, and not as a sectarist.

But while we ascribe to him this very high rank, we think that all general terms of admiration and praise bestowed on his works require large deductions. He is an able man, but not one of the ablest, one of the first thirty, perhaps, but not one of the first three. He is one of the first theological writers of the day, but not of all times. His works are of a kind to be eminent in one age, but not through all ages. He is one of those who preface the way and herald the coming of a mightier one. With great excellences, he has also great faults both as a writer and a thinker. With great quickness of perception, and great range of knowledge, and great powers of generalization, he is still a loose thinker. He almost works out great general principles, but fails by this almost. You close one of his works, and vast thoughts float through your mind; but they are like the shapes seen in dreams, vague and indistinct. When you lay the book down, you say, What a glorious writer! A week passes, and you wonder why it has left so fleeting an impression on your mind. He stands on a high summit and overlooks a large field of thought, but sees with an uncertain eye. He is one who has ascended a high mountain on a cloudy day. The field of view is immense. The horizon is the circumference of a world. But below him the clouds float, and the mists hang, and all the distinct features of the prospect are lost. But now and then, with the shifting of the wind, the clouds part and the mists roll away, and a green valley, through which winds a shaded river, is revealed, or some rocky mountain summit shoots up through the haze and glows in the rising sun.

His style is obnoxious to much the same criticisms. It is that kind which is either best or worst. He has great power

of expression, an overflowing treasury of words, — an imagination that at once encloses and melts down scattered facts into general principles, and is most fertile with poetical illustration, while all that he writes is alive with an earnest spirit. Many passages might be selected from his works, imbued with the very soul of eloquence. Yet having said this, it must also be added, that his style is often vague, often diffuse and wordy, - often disclosing the place where the thought is, instead of disclosing the thought itself; like painted windows, through which you can see light and shade and indistinct forms moving, but cannot see what the moving forms are, nor what are the objects from which the light radiates, or which cast the shadows. The style is not a transparent medium for the thought, but a visible thing between you and the thought. It is a style which young readers would admire as a style, without reference to the thoughts. You never forget as you do sometimes with the best writers, that he is using words. Nor is this all. He sometimes seems to be writing, not to express a thought already clear to his own mind, but to get at it and make it clear. He writes as some extempore orators, who have rapid imaginations and fluent tongues, speak, who are thinking out the subject while they speak. When the thought is clear to their minds, they express it with beauty and power; but having uttered it, they are obliged to work their way for fifteen minutes through a mist of metaphors and words to the next idea.

It is not our purpose to write an analysis of the work at the head of this article. The work itself is worth being read. Instead, therefore, of commenting on the book itself, we shall make some remarks on a truth suggested by it, namely, that there is a reformation in the views and feelings of Christians in progress leading on to a greater union and harmony between them. There is at this time a reform, (of which this and other works of the same author are both the signs and the results,) going on in the Christian church, not less important, though less conspicuous, than that which signalized the age of Luther. This reform consists in a growing disposition to dwell upon and value more highly the fundamental principles of Christianity, those principles which furnish laws and motives for holy living, and to value less highly mere forms and technical terms of theology and those questions of controversy, that float like bubbles (as conspicuous and as empty) on the great sea of truth. The reformation of Luther, to use a phrase that may convey our meaning

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better than more accurate language would do, was a reformation of the intellect of Christendom; - there is now going on a reformation of the heart of Christendom.

Any one who has mingled much with men must have observed, that, amongst the intelligent, the interest in questions of mere sectarian theology is ebbing away. Such questions are confined mainly to Synods, Conventions, and Assemblies. The great mass of intelligent laymen regard them as vain triflings; and the rest, supposing that these questions involve the substance of Christianity, look on Christianity itself as an idle dream, having nothing to do with the waking world. Yet in all these men the religious principle is alive, but it demands something more than barren disputes about the Trinity, or Original Sin, to satisfy it. He who would have power over the beating heart of the present age in this country, must dwell on those great principles of Christianity which address the conscience, and stir the fountains of sorrow and joy, and reveal to men's consciousness the spiritual world. The controversial creeds of past times may sway the verbal faith; but they are losing their power over the hearts and lives of men. Theologians are beginning to be aware of this truth. The character of the disputes between High Church and Low Church, between orthodox and heterodox, are but indications of the necessity widely felt of dwelling on those parts of Christianity which address the common sense and common heart of man. Christianity is ceasing to be dogmatic and becoming practical. We should rather say, that men are beginning to view the doctrines of Christianity as valuable only so far as they have a bearing on the state of the heart, or the manifestations of the heart in the life.

And with this change there is springing up an increasing harmony between sects. A careless observer might say that the Christian world was never so divided as at this time; a more careful eye would see that it was never so united. One of the superficial signs of this growing union, is the harmony between Presbyterians, and Methodists, and Baptists, and Episcopalians, and other sects deemed orthodox, but which not long since contended with each other, front to front, their ranks bristling with the array of war. We believe that the time is not far distant when even Unitarians and Catholics, who seem to be regarded as the antipodes in heresy, will be admitted into these United Sects, and the name of Christian be extended over all. And there is a still deeper principle of harmony and union in that