1848.] Philosophers of his Age. 383 en itself. Such is the theocracy of the dogma. Who that knows any thing of Puritan greatness can doubt the force of such an appeal? Basing succession upon truth, not truth upon succession, it speaks in God's name, and alike on battle-fields, on the stormy seas, and amid the famines, pestilences, and earthquakes of early times, its cry has been,"If God be for us, who can be against us?" With philosophy to back it, and without philosophy, this doctrine has acted with tremendous power upon men. Edwards surveyed the whole field of history from his dogmatic point of view. He wrote his History of Redemption as Bossuet wrote his Essay upon Universal History. Where one sees the traces of the imperishable hierarchy, the other sees the traces of the imperishable doctrine. It is no small privilege to look upon the broad chart of history through the eyes of these two master-spirits, these eagles of Meaux and Northampton. If the Frenchman has the more polished style, artistic arrangement, and statesmanlike grasp, the New-Englander is not less acute, comprehensive, and forcible. We should be sorry, however, to read history through no other eyes than theirs. Yet neither was the slave of system. The independent spirit that moved the one to be the champion of the liberties of the Gallican Church against Ultramontane usurpations is worthy of being named with the intrepidity with which the other took his stand in defence of Congregational freedom. - We must hasten now towards our conclusion, although it be at the sacrifice of a most interesting branch of the subject, the relation of Edwards to the leading philosophers, especially the Christian philosophers, of his age. The eighteenth century was peculiarly a philosophical age. While the exile from Northampton was pursuing his exalted studies in the wilds of Stockbridge, other minds of similar tendencies, in quarters little familiar to him, were engaged in the same noble work, and striving to confirm Christian faith by the light of reason and philosophy. What an august conclave could have been assembled of sages living at the same time! For a moment suppose them brought together. From the see of Cloyne, in Ireland, let Berkeley come, honored, indeed, with the mitre, yet as humble-minded as when in his Rhode Island seclusion, more experienced in the world, but not the less a spiritualist from the knowledge of its grossness; from the episcopal palace of Durham let Butler, master of the science of analogy, sage in the knowledge of man's moral nature, wisest of English moralists, come; from his home in Bath let Hartley come, pattern of a Christian physician, and precursor of the host of men who have sought to illustrate the mind by the body, and to confirm Christianity by arguments drawn from both; from his retired nook at Königsberg, Prussia, let Kant come, investigator of the laws of pure reason; and with him, at respectful distance, the skeptic Hume, whose system he sought to demolish, and for his dreary doubt to substitute a deep philosophic faith; let Sweden, too, send her sage, her mystic seer, for there is room for Emanuel Swedenborg in that assembly. When all have met together, let the Puritan divine and metaphysician enter. We will not discuss the true order of precedence, nor say what place belongs to him. Little honor will we claim for him as a master of style, if good style consists in the choice of the most classic words and the framing of the most harmonious periods. In style he falls as far below Berkeley as he rises above Butler. But surely this august assembly would present no spirit purer, no intellect stronger, than his. To Edwards belongs a chief place among the metaphysicians of the eighteenth century, a high place among the intellects of our race. As we have been wont to believe, the highest honor among the teachers of our race belongs to those who have taught men to acknowledge spiritual realities, and moved them to live as subjects of a Divine kingdom. The view which Edwards took of the natural depravity of the human heart, and its innate incapacity for spiritual life, shall not prevent our regarding him as one of the great spiritualists of the Church. voutly he believed in the Divine light, and was the means of its shining in many souls. It is the baser, and more frequent, error to doubt or deny its existence, than to mourn as he did over the original sin that had extinguished its flame. De Let us look now upon our New England, and consider the changes that have taken place since his day. He still lives in his works, and his opinions, however much modified in the creed of his avowed followers, are still consulted with reverence, and by not a few regarded as authoritative. Princeton and East Windsor may be alone ready to bind themselves to his authority, yet Andover and New Haven rejoice to honor his name and laud his theological services, whilst Cambridge has no word of disparagement for his character. New Eng 1848.] Congregationalists of New England. 385 land owes him gratitude, if not for the details of his system, surely for the elevation of his aims, and the school of intellectual discipline in which so many strong minds have been trained. Chauncy survived him twenty years, and saw changes which his sterner compeer was not permitted to witness. Chauncy lived to pronounce the funeral sermon of the noble Mayhew, and to see the consummation of the result for which Mayhew had so fondly hoped, our country independent of the sceptre and crosier of England. He lived to see innovations considerably in advance of his own avowed position. In his day, the Trinitarian clauses were stricken from the Liturgy of King's Chapel, which he once feared would combine or exhibit the sway of the crown and the mitre. He lived to see his warnings against fanaticism heeded, and the sober men of the straitest sect adopting his views respecting the marks of true religion and church prosperity. As he grew old, devotion more and more absorbed him, and subdued a heart more prone by nature to strength than to tenderness of feeling. With doctrines hopeful and benevolent, that despaired of no man's final salvation, he rivalled in the fervor of his piety the austere man whose name he had rarely mentioned in controversy, but whose tendencies he had been called upon to oppose, content with exhibiting the excesses of Whitefield, Tennent, and Davenport, without presuming to say how much of their extravagance had its countenance in the revivalist of Northampton. Both these fathers of our churches trusted in the living God, and owned with prostrate devotion his glory in Christ. We They have been the spiritual fathers of a mighty host, and by affinity with one or the other the tendencies of subsequent times may be designated. Their names stand fitly at the head of the Christian Independents, the Congregationalists, of New England, and, in fact, of our whole country. are not amongst those who are ashamed of the history of Congregationalism. The Congregationalists of New England, both Orthodox and Liberal, have given to our country its noblest intellectual, moral, and religious treasures. have taken the lead in all laudable enterprise. The useful arts, literature, theology, missions, education, moral reform, practical religion, have found their chief champions among them. They It is a solemn thing to review the lives of our illustrious fathers. In all their diversities of doctrine and temperament, how they trusted in God, the living God! How steadfastly they looked to the great First Cause through all second causes! How is it now, in this age of the apotheosis of nature, the adoration, almost, of science, the industrial arts, and the gold to which they are made so mightily to minister? We are men of the third century of New England. Let us not forget the lesson of the first and second centuries. Think of the first age. Call up the image of the Pilgrim band. We may almost hear the Atlantic waves beating against the rock-bound coast, and see the weary ship appear with its Heaven-guided company, and catch the sound of their mighty anthem, "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's sake." The worthies of the second age appear, and, with their more advanced civilization, thought, and liberality, speak the same sentiment through men as diverse as the rigid Edwards and the more hopeful Chauncy. Let the men of the third age give the response. Let not the cares of the world, nor the delusions of partial science, nor the worship of second causes, nor the decencies of external morality, nor even the excitements of social reform, lead us to forget to worship the God of our fathers, and crave the grace proffered through his Son. Whilst so many causes give the mind a horizontal turn, and in this line so many of our interests lead, let us not slight the beacon fingers that point upward to God and eternity. Edwards may help to teach us this lesson the more, if we can look upward through a more cheering creed than was his. S. 0. ART. V. THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN.* THE "Revelation" of St. John is, to the majority of readers, still a riddle. We welcome, beforehand, the attempt, coming from one of the freer sections of the Church, to remove the seventy times seven-fold seal with which a book, to us so impressive and practical, as well as poetical, has for ages been sealed, by those whom "much learning" * A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, the Divine. By THOMAS WHITTEMORE. Boston: J. M. Usher. 1848. 12mo. pp. 388. 1848.] Whittemore's Commentary. 387 (or much ignorance) had made "mad." The appearance of a popular commentary on the Apocalypse, in style and size corresponding to the Notes of Barnes and Livermore, is, to us, an interesting, and, we would fain think, a promising, phenomenon in our modern Church history. It is one of our favorite notions, that the Revelation of St. John, the Divine, is destined, one day, to become a popular book; we mean a book which the people can understand, appreciate, and admire. That the work before us will help toward this result we do not doubt, notwithstanding our dissent from several of the writer's positions. For he respects, on the whole, poetry and common sense in his interpretation far more than does any treatise on the subject in English with which we are acquainted. Even this liberal critic, indeed, seems to us somewhat too literal, at times, and prosaic in the tone and tendency of his explanations; but, on the whole, we are grateful for the volume he has given us, and glad to speed it on its mission, which we trust will be successful, so far as to draw a wide and rational and greatly enlightened attention to a long abused part of Scripture. We differ from Mr. Whittemore on two points. He maintains that John wrote his Revelation fifteen or twenty years before the destruction of Jerusalem, in the reign of Nero. Not considering the external evidence as decisive, he relies upon internal. We do not think he makes out his case. We should like, if we had room here, to shake apart his loose logic on the subject; but we must hasten on to bring forward presently our own view on a more important topic, the general character of the Apocalypse and its meaning for us and for all time. We would submit, however, for the present, to Mr. Whittemore and his readers, whether it is really credible that Nero was the great beast, the scarlet-colored beast on which the mystic woman rode, the seven-headed, ten-horned beast, one of whose heads was apparently wounded to death and then healed, that Nero was the terrible beast whose enmity to the Lamb occupies so much of the book, and which not till after the destruction of Rome (or Paganism, or Popery, whichever it be) was cast into the lake of fire. We submit whether it would not have been wiser in this case, as in the case of the "Six hundred and sixty-six," to say, "Let him that hath understanding give the name and number of the beast; we have not that understanding." For ourselves, we apprehend that the |