tion, at the early age of eighteen, at Bristol. By the young especially, though not exclusively, whether in sickness or health, the Memoir and Letters will be perused with deep interest. All will see that personal godliness is no mark of mental weakness, and at once elevates and brightens the talent with which it is connected.

Heinrich Stilling. Carefully abridged from the Original Translation. By Samuel Jackson. 18mo., pp. 432. Houlston and Stoneman.-The larger Life of Stilling (who died, in a good old age, in 1817) has gone through several editions; and though published in a cheap form, (in royal 8vo.,) it has been thought that a smaller work would be acceptable. This is furnished in the present condensation of the former Memoir. The piety of Stilling, though sometimes possessing much of that romantic mysticism so often found in Germany, appears to have been genuine and persevering; and his history, in relation to the Providence on which he firmly relied, is instructive and encouraging.

The Doctrinal Puritans. Solitude improved by Divine Meditation; or, a Treatise proving the Duty, and demonstrating the Necessity, Excellency, Usefulness, Natures, Kinds, and Requisites, of Divine Meditations. By Nathaniel Ranew, sometime Minister of Falsted, in Essex, A.D. 1679. 18mo., pp. 341. Religious Tract Society.-This is one of the most practically valuable of the series to which it belongs. We scarcely know a duty from which Christians might derive more beneficial results than from this of divine meditation; scarcely one which is more generally pretermitted, not from the entire absence of a sense of its importance, but from the feeling of incompetence to engage in it. The titlepage will show how completely this treatise enters into the subject; and we know no work, as a help to its performance, calculated to be more efficient in the service which it will render. For this reason, as we can, so we do, most conscientiously recommend our readers to procure it. If they, by God's blessing on their attention to its advices, become proficients in "divine meditation," most cordially will they thank us for thus putting them in the way of being so.

A Catalogue of Sermons, Discourses, and Lectures, Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign; Charges; Works relating to Pastoral and Hortatory Theo

gy, Oratory, Composition, &c.: forming a small Portion of the Stock of William Brown, 130 and 131, Olt-street, St.

Luke's, London.

To which is prefixed

a Textuary; or, Guide to Preachers in the selecting of Texts, upon an entirely new Plan. By Thaddeus Mason Harris, D.D. 12mo., pp. 304. William Brown. -As a Catalogue, the volume now upon our table is confessedly unique, inasmuch as it possesses that which will at all times be serviceable to the Minister of truth and righteousness. We allude to the Textuary of Dr. Harris. The author remarks that, after finishing a sermon on a particular passage of Scripture, the Preacher will find that his mind is still impressed with the subject, and that he has yet many good thoughts, on which he might easily dilate. Let him either apply these to a continuation of the same subject, or to the placing it in another light, or to the following it into other details and results. By doing so, taking a new text, he will greatly lighten the labour of composition, and, by delivering the discourses thus connected, improve and gratify his audience much more than by preaching, as is usually practised, on one topic in the forenoon, and upon another entirely dissimilar in the evening. The method here proposed will tend to keep up the attention of his hearers, make a deep impression on the mind, and enable them to carry into their meditations one distinct recollection of what they have heard through the day; whereas the contrary practice divides, confuses, and distracts their attention. There is an objection against preaching two sermons on the same text, because the subject is broken off in the middle; because the second sermon must commence with a recapitulation, which is always uninteresting; and because there are some who attend the sanctuary in the evening who were not present in the former part of the day, and who feel disappointed at, or are at best but partially benefited with, "instruction by the halves," as they term it. "I take," says Dr. Harris, "the liberty of recommending that each sermon should be entire and complete in itself, but that the second should continue the train of thought, or exhibit the topic in a distinct view, or in contrast." The arrangement of the "Textuary" is on the whole good: nevertheless it by no means supersedes Gastrell's "Christian Institutes," Clark's "Collection of Scripture Promises," Locke and Dodd's "Commonplace Book," or Enfield's "Preacher's Directory." It forms a valuable coadjutor to those publications. The Catalogue contains a large selection of works relating to "Pastoral and Hortatory

Bible Thoughts. By the Rev. Joseph Caryl, M.A. Edited by the Rev. Ingram Cobbin, M.A. 18mo., pp. iv, 242. Tegg. -Joseph Caryl was one of the sufferers under the Act of Uniformity, and was ejected from the living of St. Magnus on St. Bartholomew's day. He was a voluminous writer. From his Commentary on the Book of Job, this selection of "Bible Thoughts" has been taken. A sentence has occasionally been transposed, in order to improve its construction; and an obsolete word has sometimes been changed for one of more modern date. The book is well worthy a serious perusal.

Spiritual Heroes; or, Sketches of the Puritans, their Character and Times. By John Stoughton. 8vo., pp. xii, 436. Jackson and Walford.-The Islington Congregation; the Three Martyrs; Pilgrim Fathers; the Church in Southwark; the Brave Lord Brooke; the Westminster Assembly; Oxford under Owen; East Anglican Churches; Black Bartholomew; the Plague Year; Tolerance and Persecution; the Three Deathbeds; the Three Graves; Appendix. Such are the subjects to which the thirteen chapters of the volume are devoted, and in which the implied promise of the title-page is amply fulfilled. That the Puritans had their mistakes, no one who reads their history will be disposed to deny; but it is a melancholy proof of the power of the bigotry of exclusiveness, that there is a large class of writers who represent them as a vast mass of unmitigated and mischievous error. There were "spiritual heroes among them; and chiefly by their means was the light of that which truly is Gospel in the Gospel preserved to our land. If in all cases their resistance was not as wise as it might have been, at least the authors of the oppression which makes the wise man mad have no right to complain. They advocated the freedom of order and law, not of licentiousness; and therefore were their revolutions not like those wrought out by infidels, men of corrupt minds, whose great object is to be without a master themselves, and to subject all others to their rapacious tyranny. Mr. Stoughton's volume is not less instructive, and far more interesting,

than if it had been occupied by a stream of consecutive history. He gives what is rather a collection of historical pictures, all different, but relating to the same general class of occurrences. Many passages are written with great power; and the whole is so attractive, that he who begins will not be satisfied unless he goes through the work.

By George

Man and his Motives. Moore, M.D., Member of the Royal College of Physicians, London, &c. 8vo., pp. xi, 406. Longmans.-We have much pleasure in noticing the present work, and in recommending it to our readers, especially those who know the value of a good treatise on some important branches of the mental philosophy. For one thing we feel sincerely grateful to Dr. Moore. We have long thought, not only that the Bible is not at variance with true philosophy, that the ascertained teaching of revelation is never contradicted by the results of philosophical inquiry, rightly conducted, but that by the aid of revelation the philosopher may carry out his researches more widely, and dig still deeper into the profound of thought, than if he attempt to erect a rational or moral scheme independently of the word of God. Dr. Moore has fearlessly acted on this principle; and both in breadth and depth his volume manifests the advantage he has gained. Nor is this all. While the philosophical student will study the treatise with profit, so will the more ordinary reader, who seeks his own practical improvement. The writings of the late Dr. Abercrombie illustrate the same facts; and Dr. Moore's work is not an unfitting companion even for them; and they both evince that a man who thinks and writes in the light of the Bible, sees more, sees better, and sees farther, than if he resolves to be only guided by "reason's glimmering ray" in itself, certainly, invaluable; it is not its extinction that we seek, but its progress into broad day-light, by the rising of the divine Logos, "the Sun of Righteousness."

The Church responsible for her Youth: being a Defence of the Principle of a Catechumen Institution. A Sermon, delivered before the Conference, in the forenoon of the 1st of August, 1847. By Samuel Jackson, President. Published by request of the Conference. 12mo., pp. 15. Sold by John Mason.— Needless as are any remarks of our own, after such a testimony as that is to which the title-page refers, we yet cannot refrain from expressing our earnest wish that this weighty and powerful argument,

itself. In vain has Pius IX. by turns employed prayers and threats to protect them; in vain has he put his immense popularity at the service of the Reverend Fathers: all has been useless. The Jesuits, accompanied by their General, Roothan, have been obliged to pack up immediately, and to abandon the capital of the Holy See, lest they should be stoned by the people.

It is of importance to have a clear apprehension of the real meaning of this general expulsion of the Jesuits. It is, in reality, a declaration of war against the Romanism of the old school, of which the Jesuits are the most faithful, the most dogged representatives. No doubt there are still nations which consent to be called Catholic,-they even pride themselves upon being so called; but their pretended Catholicism is quite a different thing from that which has hitherto been taught and practised by Doctors of the Roman Church. It is not the religion of the Inquisition, of Monks, of purgatory, of pilgrimages, and of relics; it is not the doctrine which traces a profound line of demarcation between the sacerdotal body and the rest of men. It is, if I may be allowed to use such newly-coined words, a modernized, philosophized, republicanized Catholicism. The Pope is nothing else than a tool in the hands of the Liberals. They will take him as a banner, they will follow him as a demi-god, so long as the Pontiff consents to second their projects of political emancipation; but should he attempt to make the least resistance to the progress of modern institutions, they will repel him with disdain.

At the moment of my writing these lines, news of a most serious character has arrived from Rome. Pius IX., the "providential Pope, the Ambassador of God upon earth," as he has been called by his enthusiastic admirers,-refused to take part in the struggle of the Italians against Austria, by saying that he is the common father of Catholics. Well, what came of this resolution? Immediately, the population of Rome began to shout with rage; the National Guard assembled, in arms, in the public squares; the gates of the city were narrowly watched, lest Pius IX. should take to flight, and the Pontiff was allowed twenty-four hours to revoke his decision, with a threat of depriving him of his temporal authority, should he persist in opposing the national will. What became of the principle of Papal infallibility, in the presence of such facts as these? Where are the

maxims of obedience and respect for the words of the Priest? And what are we to think of a Catholicism which subordinates religious dogmas to political interests, and prefers the freedom of Italy to the existence of the Papacy itself? Somebody has said that Pius IX. will be the last of the Popes. It seems that this prediction is not far from being realized.

It is announced that Pius IX. has yielded to the requirements of his subjects, and that, moreover, all the Cardinals have been excluded from the Government. If this news be confirmed, the poor Pope will be henceforth nothing more than the phantom of a Sovereign. He will still have a show of supreme power, but, like Louis XVI., to whom, in the course of my correspondence, I have already compared him, he will have his own palace for a prison. He will be a crowned slave. What a part to be played by the successor of Gregory VII. and Innocent III.! To what end does he continue to wear the triple crown, when that crown is a plaything in the hands of an ardent and imperious democracy?

The most important point to be noted in these events is the progressive abasement, the rapid decline, of the sacerdotal authority from one end of Europe to the other. The time is come when Rome must consent to undergo a complete change, or perish. She has ceased to possess any hold upon the intellect of the age, or the general conscience of the nations. Luther's Reformation, considered in relation to the right of private judgment, pursues its victorious career; it knocks at the gates of the Vatican, and even compels the Sovereign Pontiff to incline his head before its universal empire. It is true, that this is not the whole of the Reformation; the religious element, which is the most essential, is wanting in this religious Revolution; but this is a commencement, and the nations, after having abandoned the ruined edifice of Popery, will perceive, sooner or later, that they must seek an immovable refuge in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

These facts are perfectly evident. However, the Priests, blinded by their hereditary prejudices, pay but little attention to them. They still hope to recover their lost dominion, and neglect neither fraud nor intrigue to bend the course of human affairs to their own will. We have recently had a striking proof of this in our political elections. On

Easter-Day, the 23d of April, the Romish Curés sung mass and celebrated their offices earlier than usual, in order to be at leisure to engage in their electoral manœuvres. In the villages and the little towns of the remote provinces, they were mounted on horseback, like so many Captains of Dragoons, and led behind them numerous bands of peasants, who were about to vote for the clerical candidates. It was indeed a disgraceful farce. These poor countrymen, called for the first time to exercise the right of political suffrage, had not the slightest notion of what they were really about, and were led to the poll like a stupid herd. The Priest had taken care to communicate to them beforehand, from the pulpit, the names of the candidates; he had even circulated among them written or printed papers. The women, as you may well suppose, were not forgotten in these electioneering schemes: they were exhorted by the Curés, upon pain of eternal damnation, to obtain good votes from their husbands. The confessional was brought into play in this work of intrigue, and bribes were not forgotten.

What has been the result of these efforts? The Clergy may reckon from twenty to twenty-five Priests in the National Assembly. This is something; but the scandal which they have occasioned has been so great, that one of the first acts of the representatives of the people has been to order a judicial inquiry into the electoral manœuvres of the Clergy in one of our departments. It appears that the Curés positively refused absolution to those who declined voting according to their good pleasure. I know not what the Romish priesthood can gain by these nominations; but I see clearly what they have lost by such vile intrigues.

It is curious to observe, that, in the eity of Paris, not a single Priest has figured in the list of thirty-four representatives, while a Protestant Pastor, M. Coquerel, has been elected. We must conclude from this, notwithstanding their glowing representations, that the Romish priesthood have very little influence with the great majority of the Parisian population. They have been able to succeed in remote districts, among the ignorant peasants of Vendée, Languedoc, and Lozère; but in the capital of France they have miserably failed. Ought they not to profit by this lesson, to adopt henceforth a more modest tone?

The principal orator of the Romanists, the Abbé Lacordaire, has been elected

for one of the southern provinces. Now, Father Lacordaire is a Dominican. A singular question has been raised upon this subject. It has been asked by several journals whether a Dominican Monk can be a member of the National Assembly. According to the laws of France, those who accept office under foreign rule cease to possess the rights of Frenchmen. "Must not the Monk Lacordaire," say these journals, "be placed in this category? Has he not, in his quality of a Dominican Monk, alienated his personal independence? Is he not in the service of a foreign Prince ? Has he not lost, ipso facto, his rights as a French citizen ? How, then, can he hold a seat in the supreme assembly of the nation?" I know not whether this matter will be brought before the Legislature. Perhaps, amidst so much business of greater importance, a question of this kind may be forgotten by our representatives. But sooner or later the same difficulty will re-appear. Monks, after having taken an oath of passive obedience to their superiors, are no longer citizens. Their free will is enchained, and their proper place is the gloomy recesses of a convent. So much the worse for them who have accepted such a false position !

The National Assembly will soon be occupied with a discussion which will prove interesting, in relation both to religion and politics: I speak of the separation of Church and State. There are very determined champions, both for and against that separation. On the one side, M. de Lamartine, M. de Lamennais, M. de Tocqueville, and other distinguished men, will maintain that the State ought not to give any salary to Ministers of different religions. In the opposite camp, the Bishops, the Priests, the majority of the Protestant Pastors, and the laity who entertain a dread of exciting fresh troubles in the country, will support the maintenance of the union. It is impossible to say which party will obtain the preponderance in the Assembly.

Historically considered, the question presents itself under different aspects. The legislators of our first Revolution began by giving a salary to the Ministers of the Catholic Church. Three or four years afterwards, being irritated by the opposition of the Priests, they declared that each religious community ought to defray the expenses of its own worship. Then came Napoleon, who, desiring to re-establish all that he could of the old régime, made a concordat