the future do we see! How grand the shadows which coming events, even now, are projecting into the field of mortal vision! Think of this great Union of States, just now beginning to unfold its capacity of wealth and power and growth-just beginning to escape from the danger of impending barbarism, and to achieve its own predestined place in history-its churches, of so many evangelical names and forms, just beginning to appreciate, yet hardly daring to accept the fact that not the forms of dogma and of discipline which divide them, but the faith which they hold in common, is the power of God unto salvation-its Christian zeal just beginning to be kindled with the consciousness of powers and opportunities to be employed in filling the world with light and liberty. Think of Europe, where great changes are now going forward, which all men recognize as harbingers of greater changes soon to follow. Think of the human masses everywhere, slowly lifted up from immemorial degradation, as by the cosmic forces that lifted up the plains and mountains from the chaotic deep, when God had said, "Let there be light!" and the beauty of the new creation was to be revealed. Think how recently the dissevered parts of this terraqueous world have been brought into intimate connection with each other-all regions opening to peaceful commerce-the nations becoming conscious of their mutual dependence-steamships everywhere scorning the currents, puffing at the winds, and bringing the remotest shores into proximity-the ever-lengthening lines of railway, already more than long enough to girdle the earth-the nerves of telegraphic communication stretching from city to city, penetrating every continent, underlying the seas, crossing the oceans, and beginning to make the whole world one great organism through which intelligence flashes with the instantaneousness of thought. Think of those mysterious religious influences— mysterious to all who do not recognize God in them—which have so lately moved whole nations as by a simultaneous impulse. What hath God wrought! And what a future is it which is heralded by the marvelous changes so marvelously crowded into these last few years! That is no distant future. We who are living to-day are related to it. We are not only to expect it, we are to labor for it.

ARTICLE X.-THE PRINCETON REVIEW ON DR. TAYLOR, AND THE EDWARDEAN THEOLOGY.

The Princeton Review for July, 1859, Article III; and October, 1858, Article I.

THE Princeton Review for July, 1859, contains an elaborate Article upon "Dr. Taylor's Lectures on the Moral Government of God." Our first reading of this paper was cursory and imperfect, for we confess to have been moved to so great impatience by the injustice of a few passages, that we were glad to lay it aside, and leave the greater part unread. We should have preferred never to see or think of it again, but have been constrained by our sense of what is due to the memory of the departed to give it a careful perusal and criticism.

Before we begin this criticism, we have a word to say in respect to the conductors of the Princeton Review, and the mode in which they are wont to write of many New England theo. logians. We regard these gentlemen as scholars and fellow Christians. We do not, indeed, accept all their views of Christian doctrine; for in some points they have sadly deviated from the simplicity of the gospel through the influence of a scholastic philosophy, and do not seem to be aware that what they set forth as the pure evangelical doctrine is a metaphysical corruption of the same through the tradition of the elders. But though we deplore their error in these particulars, and are often amazed at the simplicity of their complete unconsciousness of it, we do not for this reason exclude them from our fellowship, nor call in question their essential orthodoxy. We acknowledge their Christian piety and zeal, and gladly extend to them the right hand of fellowship as to brethren in the family and church of Christ. But while we cheerfully share with them an equal claim to the orthodox and Christian name, we concede to them no monopoly of either, and no precedence above other men of different schools. Any exclusive pretensions in either direction which they may make, whether

directly or indirectly asserted, move us we scarcely know whether more to smiles or tears. Whatever arguments they may present for our conviction, we will patiently consider. Whatever imposing airs they may assume, or vituperative epithets they may employ, whatever real or affected pity they may express, we shall consider as intended to influence another portion of their readers. Certainly they excite in us no other feelings than sorrow that they should possibly think us so weak as to be moved by such appliances.

We find, indeed, an argument to our charity, in the peculiar position which they hold with their patrons and constituents. They are in some sense the organ for a considerable portion of the once undivided Presbyterian Church. Their constituency is well organized and carefully trained to believe in its own superiority, and to provide for its own efficiency. It is essential to its prosperity that an intense church feeling should be fostered among all its ministers and members. Nothing tends to this result so directly as the constant assertion of their own superior orthodoxy. The more confidently this is done, the more boldly these assertions are repeated, the more intense is the self-satisfaction of their adherents, and at times the more sublimely unconscious is their self-complacence. To complete the impression designed, it is required that all dissentients should be stigmatized as lax, latitudinarian, Pelagian, heretical; with the appropriate expressions of pity and grief. Their opinions and measures should never be noticed or alluded to except in connection with such invidious epithets, in order that repetition may accomplish the work of argument and the constant reiteration of names may gain over the confiding and credulous to a confirmed faith. This course of controversial tactics must also be prosecuted for years, during which their adversaries should never be named with a generous word, nor their opinions be fairly conceived or charitably interpreted.

Such a policy is favorable to vigorous writing, so favorable, that it only requires moderate intellectual ability with the requisite practice, to train a corps of forcible and spirited writers, capable, to use a phrase from Dr. Alexander's Letters,

of 'mauling the New Haven divines most unmercifully,' and of performing the same operation on all other so-called Pelagians. Candor and circumspection, accuracy in stating an opponent's opinions, and charity in giving them the most favorable construction, do not tend to form the vigorous style which deals furious blows with indiscriminate zeal, and blindly runs a-muck at everything called heresy, without being careful to distinguish the friends from the foes of truth. The cry of "orthodoxy," and "the Church," is sure to waken responsive echoes from a well compacted body of devoted adherents, or adhering devotees. A journal which is sure of its audience, and knows so well what will carry conviction to their minds, is likely to be vigorous, consistent, and self-satisfied. For a rough lustiness of thinking, a straight-forward directness of writing, for a free resort to saintly vituperation, and a similar application of the ultima ratio in the cry of the church is in danger, we recognize two American Theological Journals as preeminent, viz, The Biblical Repertory and Brownson's Review.

It was to be expected that our brethren of the Princeton Review should closely criticise the writings of Dr. Taylor. They had committed themselves in opposition to the man and his doctrines by a course of controversy that has lasted for a generation-a controversy that runs back through previous generations, in which the New England theologians and the New England theology have been objects of suspicion and dislike. It has not been a controversy of words alone, but a controversy of deeds-resulting in the excision of an influential portion of the once united Presbyterian church, because of the heresy involved in the then much talked of New Theology. As a defender of this New Theology Dr. Taylor was conspicuous, and the good name of the man, as well as the soundness of his opinions, were pursued with intense hostility, and stigmatized with unstinted denunciation. In the forward zeal which impelled to the division of the Presbyterian body, the Princeton Review did not wholly sympathize. The better judgment and the more refined Christianity of its conductors would gladly have restrained the impetuous spirits which urged on the

church to violent deeds; but when the acts were done which it could not avert, the Princeton Review justified and approved, and has continued to employ the same language as from the first, towards the men whom it originally denounced. We are not in the least surprised that it should subject the published works of Dr. Taylor to a severe and unfavorable criticism, and seek to find, as the result of that criticism, an argument to justify its previous attitude of determined hostility.

The writer of the Article before us recognizes the necessity under which he is placed, in the several reasons which he gives for reviewing the lectures on Moral Government. In his first paragraph he refers to the prominent position which Dr. Taylor held among the theologians of his time, and the intimate connection of the man and his opinions with recent controversies in and out of New England. He then congratulates himself and his readers that the published works of the author furnish us with an authorized exposition of his opinions, so that it can no longer be questioned what his teachings were. The thought then occurs to him that the principal importance of these works is to be found in their power to throw light on past controversies, more than in any efficacy "to revive controversies already fought through, or to re-vitalize a system whose first meteoric success was only eclipsed by the rapidity of its decline." The evidences of this decline are then referred to, in the confident and self-complacent spirit which is so characteristic of the Princeton Review. Into the matter of fact here mooted we do not care now to enter. We only suggest that if these principles are fast dying out, it were surely safe and wise to leave them to die in peace; or if the "new forms of latitudinarian theology, which overshadow the issues of Taylorism," have so entirely overgrown the original poisonous stock, it were better to attack directly these new forms of evil which had taken the place of the once formidable New Haven theology.

After this preliminary flourish of trumpets, jubilantly announcing the easy triumph of the critic, he proceeds more formally to his work. But before he begins, he has some preliminary matters to dispose of. He must first account for Dr.