1848.] Extracts. 121 esting discourse in the volume. The elaborate, but rather attenuated and unsatisfactory, discussion of Mr. Carlyle's doctrine of self-consciousness adds little to the force of what is said in relation to the dangers of our modern civilization, the main object of the sermon, which is presented with conciseness and power in these words : — "We must go and teach this people. In proportion as their occupations educate them less, and their circumstances tempt them more, a direct and purposed culture must be provided; a culture which keeps in view the great primary end of responsible existence; which looks not at their trade, but at their souls, and brings them, not as apt servants to the mill, but as holy children to their God. Education, in the Christian sense, is truly everlasting childhood preparing for maturity, maturity for age, and the whole of life for death and heaven." pp. 102, 103. "The Seven Sleepers" is the quaint title of a very striking sermon; a little fanciful, however, both in design and execution. The two sermons on "The Sphere of Silence" are both remarkable productions. The former, on Man's Silence, abounds in useful and important suggestions in regard to "things too low to be spoken of," and "things too high to be spoken of"; the latter, "The Sphere of God's Silence," enters upon a theme too vast for human language. But though we may not receive them as a part of our religious faith, nor perhaps be able to define them exactly, we should be sorry to lose passages like these: tran "The mighty spirits of our race are as the lyric thoughts of God that drop and breathe from his Almighty solitude; sient cords flying forth from the strings, as his solemn hand wanders over the possibilities of beauty. One only finished expression of his mind, one entire symmetric strain, has fallen upon our world. In Christ, we have the overflowing Word, the deep and beautiful soliloquy, of the Most High...... Not more clearly does the worship of the saintly soul, breathing through its window opened to the midnight, betray the secrets of its affections, than the mind of Jesus of Nazareth reveals the perfect thought and inmost love of the All-ruling God."- pp. 348, 349. "The Christian Time-View" is a discourse such as only Mr. Martineau could write. We know not where to look for a passage of more rhetorical beauty than the following. It seems to us hardly inferior to Mr. Macaulay's noblest paragraphs. VOL. XLIV. —4TH S. VOL. IX. NO. I. 11 "The difference between the ancient and modern world is this that in the one the great reality of being was now; in the other it is yet to come. If you would witness a scene characteristic of the popular life of old, you must go to the amphitheatre of Rome, mingle with its eighty thousand spectators, and watch the eager faces of senators and people: observe how the masters of the world spend the wealth of conquest, and indulge the pride of power: see every wild creature that God has made to dwell from the jungles of India to the mountains of Wales, from the forests of Germany to the deserts of Nubia, brought hither to be hunted down in artificial groves by thousands in an hour: behold the captives of war, noble perhaps and wise in their own land, turned loose, amid yells of insult more terrible for their foreign tongue, to contend with brutal gladiators trained to make death the favorite amusement, and present the most solemn of individual realities as a wholesale public sport: mark the light look with which the multitude, by uplifted finger, demands that the wounded combatant be slain before their eyes: notice the troop of Christian martyrs awaiting, hand in hand, the leap from the tiger's den and when the day's spectacle is over, and the blood of two thousand victims stains the ring, follow the giddy crowd as it streams from the vomitories into the street, trace its lazy course into the forum, and hear it there scrambling for the bread of private indolence doled out by the purse of public corruption; and see how it suns itself to sleep in the open ways, or crawls into foul dens till morning brings the hope of games and merry blood again; - and you have an idea of the Imperial people, and their passionate living for the moment, which the Gospel found in occupation of the world. And if you would fix in your thought an image of the popular mind of Christendom, I know not that you could do better than go at sunrise with the throng of toiling men to the hill-side where Whitefield or Wesley is about to preach. Hear what a great heart of reality in that hymn that swells upon the morning air, a prophet's strain upon a people's lips! See the rugged hands of labor, clasped and trembling, wrestling with the Unseen in prayer! Observe the uplifted faces, deep-lined with hardship and with guilt, streaming now with honest tears, and flushed with earnest shame, as the man of God awakes the life within, and tells of him that bare for us the stripe and cross, and offers the holiest spirit to the humblest lot, and tears away the veil of sense from the glad and awful gates of heaven and hell. Go to these people's homes, and observe the decent tastes, the sense of domestic obligations, the care for childhood, the desire of instruction, the neighbourly kindness, the conscientious self-respect; and say, whether the sacred image of duty does not live within those minds: whether - 1848.] Extracts. 123 : holiness has not taken the place of pleasure in their idea of life whether for them, too, the toils of nature are not lightened by some eternal hope, and their burden carried by some angel of love, and the strife of necessity turned into the service of God. The present tyrannizes over their character no more, subdued by a future infinitely great: and hardly though they lie upon the rock of this world, they can live the life of faith; and while the hand plies the tools of earth, keep a spirit open to the skies." pp. 261–263. After the specimens which we have already given, we need say nothing of the extraordinary brilliancy of these sermons. They abound in passages of rare descriptive power, in keen satire, and terse expressions of wisdom. "In the shipwreck, where Death seizes the storm as his trumpet, and, with the lightning as his banner, comes streaming down the sky."-p. 135. "The very child, of too transient stay, may paint on the darkness of our sorrow so fair a vision of loving wonder, of reverent trust, of deep and thoughtful patience, that a divine presence abides with us for ever, as the mild and constant light of faith and hope."- pp. 155, 156. "To walk beneath the porch is still infinitely less than to kneel before the cross. We do nothing well, till we learn our worth; nothing best, till we forget it. And this will not be, till, besides being built into the real veracious laws of this world, we are also conscious of the inspection of another: till we live, not only fair. ly among equals, but submissively under the Most High; and while casting the shadow of a good life on the scene below, lie in the light of vaster spheres above.". Aptitude for business is not power of Reason; and a grandee on the exchange may be a pauper in God's universe." - p. 66. "They live and die on principles purely mercantile; and the book of life must be a common ledger, if their names are written on its page." 66 p. 6. p. 205. "We seem to have reached an age of soft affections and emasculated conscience, full of pity for pain and disease, of horror at blood and death; but doubting whether any thing is wicked that is not cruel, and reconciling itself even to that on sufficient considerations of advantage."-p. 182. Men "who, having made up their minds that Christianity is useful in many ways, and of excellent service in managing the weaker portion of mankind, resolve to patronize it. Well; - it is an ancient arrogance, lasting as the vanities of the human heart. The Pharisee, it would appear, belongs to a sect never extinct he lives immortal upon the earth; and in our day; like Simon of old, graciously condescends to ask the Lord Jesus to dine!"— p. 166. With such men life would be "a monster of incongruity; its first volume, a jest-book; its second, a table of interest; and its last, a mixture of the satire and the liturgy."—p. 187. 66 Religion is not a didactic thing that words can give, and silence can withhold. It is a spirit; a life; an aspiration; a contagious glory from soul to soul; a spontaneous union with God. Our inward unfaithfulness is sure to extinguish it; our outward policy cannot produce it. To love and to do the Holy Will is the ultimate way, not only to know the truth, but to lead others to know it too." p. 236. He who can write in this manner must be a master of our English style, and have at the same time a brilliant, elevated, far-reaching, and vigorous mind. The style, however, though more natural than that of the volume which precedes it, is not well sustained, and is often hard and forced, nor is the thought always consistent with itself. But such flashes of light, such gleams and intervals of clear and holy faith, such moments even as are here revealed of religious elevation and repose, are enough to stamp the volume as an uncommon one, and to mark it out for high uses among men. It has altogether exceeded our expectations, and we rejoice to learn that it has just been republished here. E. F. Gannett ART. VIII.—THE MEXICAN WAR.* J. H. M. THE war between the United States and Mexico is the great political and moral fact of our times. There is no other among the movements, or the results, of the present period, be it ever so hopeful, instructive, or alarming, which equals this either in the immediate interest of its character, or in the importance of its possible, if not probable, consequences. The condition of Ireland is suited to attract the regards of the civilized world, having its causes, as it doubtless has, in political mismanagement and social degradation reacting on each other. The financial distress of England presents a subject for profound meditation, suggesting, as it does, so Peace with Mexico. By ALBERT GALLATIN. New York. 8vo. pp. 34. 1848.] War an Evil. 125 many thoughts respecting the principles of trade and the laws of production that underlie the intercourse of modern nations. The position of the Roman Catholic Church, evidently aiming at a recovery of its ancient power, on the one side, by accommodating its domestic policy to the liberal tendencies of the age, and, on the other side, as manifestly bent on establishing its ecclesiastical pretensions to the overthrow of Protestantism in Great Britain and America, offers a spectacle of the deepest interest to the religious or philosophical observer. And the relaxation in the East of those customs which have for ages excluded Christianity from China, and the Mohammedan countries of the Asiatic and African continents, cannot but fill the Christian heart with eager expectation. Still there is no point in the passage of events over the present age which will so signalize it in future times as the war which is now waged between our country and the republic of Mexico, none to which the historian of a century hence will so confidently refer as the great moral and political fact of the age. Our present interest in the subject arises out of its moral significance. On account of its relations to the right and the good, and its connection with the character of the people, we believe it may be examined from a point of view above all merely political or party questions. It has been most unhappily admitted or assumed on all sides, that the war cannot be discussed without committing one's self to the support of some one or other of the parties which divide the country. This is a mistake, a palpable and gross mistake. We doubt that we shall say any thing in this article to which men of all parties will not give their assent. At least, we mean to take those positions which shall place us far above the strifes of the partisan orator or the political leader. There is a ground on which all can stand, and from which, looking down upon facts and principles, all must come to the same result. We e begin, then, by saying, what no one will deny, that war is an evil. No one will deny this, for it never has been denied. All persons acknowledge that war is an evil; a necessary evil, some say, inevitable in the present state of the world; a useful evil, others maintain, yielding beneficial results that outweigh its pernicious consequences; but still an evil, as truly an evil as a pestilence or a conflagration. No one would think of including war among the blessings for |