man; while the friends of the speaker and even hired clappers obstreperously applauded his telling points. A nervous client would recall his attorney from a too long rhetorical digression by the abrupt and direct demand-" speak to my goats." The height of these advocates' ambition was to become masters of a fluent and effective extemporaneous address―non compositum domi, but usque ad extemporalitatem.

The same Quarterly (it always has a kind word for new beginners in literary adventure) finds in the anonymous drama "Salome" the evidences of a fresh and vigorous power, of no common excellence, in this difficult branch of poetic composition. Herodias, the Lady Macbeth of the Gospels, Salome, pictured as a pure, gentle, artless, guileless maiden, the Baptist in his masculine, prophet-like independence and spirituality, Christ coming near enough to the movement of the tragedy to throw over it the unearthly majesty and mystery of his great nature-these certainly furnish materials for a masterly delineation of character, which, in the judgment of this critic, with some abatements, has been wrought out successfully.

With all the wisdom and erudition which our graver periodical literature is perennially pouring forth, it is surprising how little genuine wit or humor comes bubbling to the surface of the stream. We want another Sidney Smith among the reviewers and critics. His advent would be hailed with a clapping of hands around the whole table. Not much has been done to meet this want by the Rev. A. H. K. B. His juiciness is like a rather dry orange. We thought we were going to smile once or twice over his "Estimate of Human Beings" in the last Fraser; but not even the very unique correspondence therein reported, postscript included, nor Mr. Green's studying without shoes and stockings, could quite stir the risibles. Is it dignity or dulness or both which takes the sparkle out of our Catawbas and Champaigns? Is it a sin to laugh? or have the newspapers and lighter magazines bought up the licenses to bring the house down in a good, hearty round of applause? Is the second "time" in the fourth verse of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes no longer canonical among good, serious-minded people? But we strenuously demur against the pulpit-application of the subject, having no faith in laughter as an act of worship and a means of grace.

WIT OUTWITTED AN INCIDENT OF THE LECTURE ROOM.-Dr. —, in treating the subject of Depravity in the light of New Schoolism, grew warm. His broad-brimmed hat was upon the table beside him. In the earnestness and carelessness of his gesticulation, he knocked the hat upon the floor. Smilingly he said, "That is the

way we knock down Old School doctrine." An Old School doctor, who was honoring the lecturer with a hearing, sitting by his side, picked up the hat, and replacing it upon the table said, “And this is the way we set it up again." It need not be said that the reply was greeted with something more than a smile.

THE MAGI'S THREE GIFTS.-Have they any special spiritual significance? Some of the old preachers evidently so thought, and their thoughts, if nothing but fanciful, are certainly very pleasant. Thus, John Tauler, the devout pietist of the Rhine, makes the "myrrh" representative of the bitterness of the soul's turning away from earthly delights to God: the "frankincense" emblematic of the incense of holy love offered up by the consecrated heart to God: and the "gold" the symbol of the devotion of our active service and outward resources to the Divine glory. So, in much the same way, Jeremy Taylor (reversing also the enumeration of these offerings) puts the "myrrh" for the purgative methods and adjuncts of the spiritual life, faith, mortification, chastity, compunction": the "frankincense" for the illuminative graces, "hope, prayer, obedience, good intentions": the "gold" for the eminences and spiritual riches of the unitive life-contempt of riches, poverty of spirit, consecration to God, and benevolence to men. Is this a fair and allowable passing upward from the literal and sensible to a higher religious sense?

WHAT'S IN A NAME?- Much; for instance :-The Tuileries have a very aristocratic and romantic sound: but how with the plain English of it, brickyards? Again; one might date a letter from Aguas Calientes, among the Mexicans, with a rather pleased feeling of importance about one's stopping-place: but reducing it simply to warm water would be very likely to evaporate the self-consequence in a wreath of steam. Names are powers.

THE hypocritical "hail Master" with its Judas-kiss (says the Patience of Hope) is only a short step from the open buffetting and scourging of our suffering Lord. They are of the same kin, and easily work at each other's evil trade.

On page 239, line 27, of our May number, for "thing read string. On page 277, line 16, a @ has changed places with and the kit should be a separate word. An additional proof, to what we have been able previously to receive, will (we anticipate) save us the need of further corrections of this kind.

BOSTON REVIEW.

VOL. III.-SEPTEMBER, 1863.-No. 17.

ARTICLE I.

THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

"A PERSON," says Locke, "is a thinking, intelligent being." In this is implied understanding, reason, will, emotions, feelings, and consciousness. So a person is more than an attribute, influence, or action of a being. They are but modes and manifestations of being, and have in themselves no wholeness of being, or separateness or independence of existence. They pertain to personality, and have necessary dependence on a person, while the person has wholeness, completeness of being in itself. A person understands, reasons, wills, loves, hates, commands, obeys, influences. This it is to be a person, and to have personality.

In view of such a definition, is the Holy Spirit a person? This is our inquiry in the present paper; and in the outset we mark off the limits of the question. It is not whether the Holy Spirit is a person of a certain grade, or above all grades, even supreme and divine. Nor is it the question whether the Holy Spirit is a being emanating from the Father, or from the Father and the Son, or whether, like them, he is possessed of an unproduced and eternal personality. Nor yet is it whether the Holy Spirit sustains peculiar relations to the Father and the Son in a mysterious union with them in essence and substance, constituting and called God. In other words, our inquiry is not concerning the divinity of the Holy Spirit, nor concerning

the doctrine of the trinity. Is the Holy Ghost a person? This is the question.

Furthermore and preliminary, this question must be answered by revelation alone. As neither nature nor reason could raise such a question, so neither can solve it. Reason may and must judge whether the professed revelation propounding this question is real or spurious; pure as first from God, or corrupted by the human channels in which it has run along through the centuries. Reason must also determine the import of the answer that revelation may give. But it lies not within the province of reason to determine what answer may or must be given. For the human understanding is merely the recipient, not the dictator of a divine communication. We protest against the rationalistic attitude of turning the ear toward heaven with the assumption that God may or may not say this or that. That awful and impious arrogance of self-sufficiency and umpire does not become him who is of yesterday's dust and crushed before the moth. God the Infinite and Eternal knows more than man, and he can communicate so much of this knowledge to man as man's capacity can receive or his need require. God is not so dull a teacher as man a pupil. He who has made the ear can fill it.

Nor may reason refuse the answer of revelation to our question, because it cannot locate it, use it, or work it in with its notions on other doctrines, or with its previous system of theology. If the obvious answer of the Scriptures is that the Holy Ghost is a person, that answer must be admitted. One may not reject it because it will give him difficulties on the divinity of the Holy Spirit, or on the doctrine of the trinity. An evident and obvious truth of revelation must be retained, let the cost of retaining be what it may. This article of divine furniture may compel the total emptying of the theological room of our mind to give it and other articles in keeping a place. Be it so; God has a right to furnish that room.

Nor may the revealed answer to our question be rejected because its relations to other truths, or its uses may not be fully understood. It is not supposable that human reason can understand all that God may see fit to reveal; yet faith may receive as fact what reason cannot analyze and understand. A clear,

intelligible statement of God may be above and beyond the grasp of our reason in all its relations, and yet faith apprehend and admit it, as a single truth. Faith supplements the reason, as the telescope does the naked eye, and resolves and makes evident what before was nebulous. Only what is palpably contrary to the reason may the reason reject. As a statement above the reason, but from a credible source, it must be passed up to faith for a reception. To reject a statement of revelation as contrary to reason, one must first compass, surround and take it in, as one must know all the shore to declare the land an island. To reject the doctrine of logarithms or the asymptote one must understand the higher mathematics, but a child may believe the father's statement of them. So God may give us definitions, propositions and declarations of truth, as serviceable as they are incomprehensible, and faith be strong where reason staggers, in their reception. In our pride of intellect we incline to call that contrary to reason or absurd which we cannot understand in its nature. Humility and faith should come to our relief in such cases, specially if the communication is from God or concerning him. It should not trouble us to admit that the nature of God, the mode of his existence and manifestation, and the process his providence in human affairs, are beyond our comprehension; while a simple declaration of fact concerning these things may be intelligible to reason and acceptable to faith. If we discriminate properly between facts and modes, what is and how it is, and concede that God may reveal the one and not the other, we shall find ample and harmonious scope for both reason and faith. A belief that God knows more than man, and can declare facts without explaining them, and then a belief in the facts divinely given, without a rationalistic analysis of their modes, has the double blessedness of a human contentment and the divine approbation.

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We have extended these preliminary remarks for the relief of some who have difficulty in receiving separate truths from God, or truths that they cannot fully understand, or that do not at first seem to harmonize with other truths as clearly revealed. A better understanding of the nature and claims of a revelation. from God would prepare the way for a better reception of it, specially its isolated truths and mysterious declarations.