thoughts of to-day, and the genial atmosphere which must spring from the holy recollections of the past cannot fail to cheer his spirit if he happen to be cast down by reason of present delinquencies.

All this, we say, may lure men to prayer, and may give them the semblance of being "devout men," but not, we fear, of being "full of the Holy Ghost." For have we not here an obvious attempt to substitute holy thoughts and recollections for the Holy Spirit? It is not the Spirit who is to elevate your soul to God, and to direct your prayers and to help your infirmities. Here is a help of another kind,-one that comes from yourself— yourself in a certain posture and in a certain place. This is to help your devotions.

Nay, but Christianity frowns upon all such imaginary aids. I will not be the slave of my own past thoughts, the Christian says, I will not live myself over again. I claim the Christian's privilege of forgetting the things that are behind, good and bad, holy and unholy. I say to them all, Get you behind me, I will not. be haunted by the ghost of my former being. I am dead with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I live, I live by faith on the Son of God.-But there is no faith in living on the good thoughts of yesterday, or breathing the holy recollections of the past twelvemonth.-A set place, a consecrated spot, every line, and angle, and mark indented on my memory, and endeared to my heart.-No! I will not interweave my thoughts and associations with anything on earth, because it is unstable, and ready to vanish away. I belong to a fixed and abiding order of things. I will go and pray where I will never be disturbed. I will go where I shall go for ever, even into the holiest of all. I will pray in the spirit, beside the amid the holy recollections which it inspires.

cross,

We must cite one other example of the way in which the Tractarians interfere with the prerogatives of the Spirit :

"It is impossible, if you are really devout when you pray, that you should become undevout presently after. The fragrance, as it were, of the holy offering will continue surely some little while with you, and dispose you to live in some measure according to your prayers.

"This very evening, when you say the Lord's prayer, on coming to the words, 'Lead me not into temptation,' you may stop and quietly consider in your mind what the sins and frailties are to which you are most violently inclined or accustomed; and you may earnestly wish and beg for grace, when next those sins and frailties beset you, to put them by and have nothing to do with them. And having so wished and prayed, you may, if you will, when the time comes, call your wish and prayer to mind, and leave off the sin before it be meddled with. Till you have learned to make this use of your prayers, they will not be worthy of your Father

which seeth in secret; you must not expect any blessing on them. But when they begin to make a difference in your lives, then God will indeed be glorified then. His grace will help you to pray better; and still, as the improvement in your devotion goes on, your behaviour will improve also, till his mercy have thoroughly prepared you for the reward promised in His Son's name to every persevering humble worshipper."

Such is the place which prayer holds in the Tractarian system. It is made the mainspring of spiritual life. Pray devoutly, and you will live devoutly; live devoutly, and you will go to heavenfor Christ's sake, of course. The better you pray, the better you must behave; and the better you behave, the better you must pray.

Then prayer is the Tractarian substitute for the Spirit in sanctification, and good behaviour is the substitute for Christ in salvation. Not that either of these is utterly excluded; but they are very sparingly admitted, as in the quotations above, which are fair specimens of the whole, and they are introduced in such a way as the natural heart will certainly evade. For give what they recommend, -a consecrated form of words and a hallowed place, &c.-and assign even the smallest imaginable virtue to these things, that small degree of virtue will content the vast majority of worshippers. Add anything, however small, to Christ's work, or the Spirit's work, the addition will immediately be turned into a substitute. The earthly will supersede and put out of sight the heavenly, even as a little leaf beside you will eclipse a brilliant star.

But we must not enlarge further. We have said enough, we believe, to prove our charge against Tractarianism,-that it robs Christianity of its spiritual character. For inasmuch as its spiritual character is derived from the presence and work of the Holy Ghost, they who magnify external symbols and multiply external helps, do assuredly throw the Spirit's work into the shade, and in so far as they do that, they unspiritualise Christianity. It is vain to suppose, we quote an obvious sentiment of Mr Taylor's," that the mass of men would continue to think of justification and sanctification, and of fitness for heaven, as moral and spiritual realities, when they were assured in the most solemn manner, that justification, sanctification, and preparation for heaven, all passed upon them, unconsciously, at the moment when they emerged from the baptismal pool!"

ART. V.-The Earlier Prophecies of Isaiah. By JOSEPH ADDISON ALEXANDER, Professor of the Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. New York and London: Wiley and Putman.

The most important theological seminary in the Presbyterian Church of the United States, is that which is situated at Princeton, in New Jersey. This town is also the seat of Nassau College, which was established more than a century ago, was once presided over by Jonathan Edwards and Dr Witherspoon, and has done much to promote the diffusion of literature and science. The Nassau College of New Jersey, though not sectarian in its constitution, has always been substantially under the control of the Presbyterians; its arrangements embody efficient provision for superintending the religion and the morality of the students. It has always had a full and well-appointed Faculty of Arts, to which there has been more recently added a faculty of law. The theological seminary does not form an integral part of Nassau College, though an intimate practical connexion subsists between them. The seminary is under the immediate superintendence of the General Assembly, and its ordinary affairs are administered by a board of trustees appointed by that body. Indeed, the form in which the ecclesiastical questions agitated between the old school and the new school Presbyterians, and terminating at last in a division of the Presbyterian Church, were brought into the courts of law, was that of determining whether the annual election of trustees for the theological seminary made by the Old School assembly, or that made by the New School assembly, was the valid and legitimate one, under the charter of incorporation by which the seminary was established. The civil courts decided in favour of the Old School, and thus this valuable institution, which has an important bearing upon the interests of sound doctrine and true religion in the United States, remained, as we believe, under somewhat safer and better management than if the decision had been in favour of the other party. The theological seminary was established in 1812, and its professors have all distinguished themselves in theological literature, while their united labours have done much to promote the prosperity and efficiency of the American Presbyterian Church. The Biblical Repertory, chiefly conducted by the professors of the college and the theological seminary, is a periodical marked by great ability and learning, and ought to be better known in this country than it is. A selection of the theological articles in this periodical has recently been published in one volume under the title of "Princeton The

ological Essays," and we are happy to learn that it has been extensively read in this country. The theological seminary still enjoys the services of its first two professors, Dr Archibald Alexander and Dr Samuel Miller, who have spent thirty-five years in the discharge of most important duties, who have been honoured with great usefulness, and who, though now considerably beyond the ordinary limits of human life, are still prosecuting their labours in the full enjoyment of the respect and affection of all who know them. Dr Alexander is well known in this country by his works on the Evidences, and the Canons, and Dr Miller by his work on Church Government. Dr Charles Hodge has been for some time associated with these venerable men in the work of theological instruction, and he is possessed of talents and acquirements which fully qualify him to maintain the reputation of the seminary, and to exert a most beneficial influence upon the Presbyterian Church. His commentary on Paul's Epistle to the Romans, though known in this country chiefly from an abridged edition, in which the most important critical matter has been omitted, is highly esteemed amongst all sound theologians and competent critics. The author of the very valuable work which we are about to notice, is the junior member of the faculty of the theological seminary at Princeton, and we are delighted to find from the perusal of this book, that he too is possessed of an ability and an erudition that eminently qualify him for discharging the duties of the office which he fills, and for rendering important services to theological literature.

The specific end for which this work was written, has been that of making the results of critical and philological research available for purposes of practical utility. The class of persons whose profit has been consulted is chiefly that of pastors, who are furnished with a succedaneum for many costly books in this most excellent synopsis of the latest philological studies on Isaiah. Professor Álexander has done great service by his clear, and brief, and, we may add, very interesting exhibition of the views of an immense number of commentators. He has shown great tact in selecting and arranging the opinions of the multiplicity of authors, whose researches he was called on to exhibit in their results, so far at least as these results were fitted to instruct, even where they were not, in themselves, very valuable. He is characterized by calmness, and yet warmth of feeling; and his theology may always be depended upon. There is not much in the way of suggesting views

* A second volume, containing a selection of articles on miscellaneous subjects o literature, science, and general interest, has likewise been published, but we have not had an opportunity of reading it.

+ The original edition appeared at "Philadelphia, published by Grig and Elliott,

1835."

passages that might be called quite new; though his selection. of translations, and his mode of putting the opinion of another often amount to the same thing as an original suggestion. We seldom see reason to differ from him in his interpretation of special clauses or sentences-his reasons are generally so obviously good-even when his after application of the drift of the whole appears to us unsatisfactory. The defects, we may venture to say, that will be felt existing in this work, are to be found in the author's conclusions as to what the prophecies in general aim at, not in his special criticisms. As a defender of Isaiah's genuineness, and a successful inquirer into the grammatical signification of his language, and a contributor of rich materials for the exposition of these prophecies, Professor Alexander is "facile princeps."

His first volume contains "The Earlier Prophecies;" his second contains "the Later," and is more thoroughly critical than the first. The introduction to the first volume is full of excellent remark, discussing the use of "Prophet, Prophecy, and Prophesy," before coming to the particular subject of the book before him. In the course of that discussion, he refers to the Fathers as contrasting the maniacal excitement of heathen inspiration with that of the Hebrew prophets, whose peculiarities are calmness, self-possession, and active intelligence. We like his remarks, though incidental, on this topic. It is, perhaps, not sufficiently noticed, that Inspiration could not be otherwise than calm and solemn. It proceeded directly from the Holy Ghost, and is not He calm, meek, and lowly? He is "That Other comforter," evidently bearing in his name a reference to the fact of his exhibiting the same attractive perfections as were manifested by Jesus. It could not, indeed, be otherwise; the persons of the Godhead are of one mind, and nature, and perfection; and he that has seen Christ has seen the Godhead. No doubt, too, it was in a mode and manner resembling what Jesus used, of whom it is written, "He shall not strive, nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets." No doubt, we say, it was in such a manner that the Holy Ghost breathed inspiration on Paul in his prison at Rome, or on John in his Patmos exile. No excitement, no loud boisterous sound, no convulsive movement visible in a single feature of the inspired penmen; all, on the contrary, breathed deep, unutterably deep awe and solemnity, and peace-like Paradise in the cool of the day, when the voice of the Lord God was heard among its trees. The inspired penmen wrote as calmly as if they had in that hour been sitting on the shore of the Sea of Glass. It was thus, we suppose, with David when he tuned his harp under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; so profound in these moments was the calm, that the

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