The Scriptures teach plainly enough that God is the Creator, the common Parent, and the moral Governor of the race, that he cares for all, protects all, feeds all, and will judge all in the last day. If this is what Mr. Beecher means, he employs a great many words, and much earnestness, in affirming what nobody denies. But he evidently knows what he is about, and he is not fighting with shadows. The Scriptures also teach, with equal explicitness, that God is the Father, in a peculiar sense, of those who truly love him, who have been renewed by the Holy Spirit, and are pardoned through Christ's blood, and justified by Christ's righteousness; that they are the elect, and will be saved; and that their salvation will be owing, not to their "disposition," to their being "love-men," nor yet to God's univeral love as it flows forth toward all men, but to his special love, "according to his eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Is Mr. Beecher aware how often he is moved to affirm that he believes in "doctrines," believes in "Divine justice," believes in Christian "institutions and ordinances"? What is the reason of this, except that he finds himself saying that which sounds so exceedingly like a denial of these things? And he is right, his talk has a very heretical sound. Neither saints nor sinners would ever suppose, for a single moment, that he believed such things but for these same little counter interpolations of the main drift. They are all that saves him to the ranks of the orthodox! Does he not take us all to be marvellously good-natured? He makes great holes in the gospel-net, and then calls everybody to look while he mends here and there a mesh. Let us mark his phrase:

"Have you been reared to suppose that you are to be saved by virtue of Christ's mercy, and then that even that will not save you if you wander from the peculiar institutions and ordinances of your fathers? Far be it from me to disown those ordinances or institutions. But I stand in the name of God and affirm that the institutions and ordinances of creeds are not men's masters but their servants. And that man who, without regard to ritual or creed, if he works righteousness, I stand by the Apostle and declare that man belongs to God's mercy. . . It is not these outside things in any Church that save you at all. They neither help nor hinder. The

thing that is mighty above all is, that your soul should get hold of God's soul; that your light should be kindled by God's light; your very spirit be in sympathy with and, as it were, a part of the spirit of God. That is the thing that brings relationship, and relationship brings salvation."

This is a sample of what every habitual hearer or reader of Mr. Beecher's sermons will remember, as one of the things so frequently repeated that language fails him for variety. "Church fellowship" is nothing, "creed" is nothing," baptism" is nothing, "institution" is nothing, ordinance" is nothing; "these outside things" "neither help nor hinder "; all this and much more, with an occasional "far be it from me to disown." Will he put these things together and tell us, in a few logical sentences, what he means; or would that be inconvenient, as having a definite sense would savor of "system," and so place him directly in the range of his own batteries?

The discourse of Sabbath evening, Nov. 18, 1860, was long and labored; and it had a very particular aim, and that aim pervaded the whole, but was fully apparent only when the preacher approached his peroration. Then he opened his reserve battery with a fury of flash and thunder compared to which even his ordinary warfare is tame :

"It has been the teaching of some, that while Christ died for the world, after all, the atonement of Christ was limited. If you mean by that, that in its practical operation and by reason of man's fallen nature it is limited, that is, if you mean that men reject the provision offered, and that the boon of atonement is not universal in its blessing, that is a matter of fact. But that is not the idea of many theologians, but that the limit itself is a necessary limit; that in its own nature it affects only a part of the human race. The teaching is that God, from all eternity, selected a certain number of men to be saved; that that number can neither be increased nor diminished; that they are created for that very purpose and destined to that very purpose; and the atonement of Christ was limited exactly to that amount, like a garment well fitted to the body, neither too large nor too small. And they hold that there was another portion of the human race that from all eternity God created and destined to damnation; that he created them on purpose for that; that he created them with just as exquisite skill for suffering as he created others for joy; that they were created for no other purpose than that they might just show forth his glory in

suffering. The idea of God in their system is, that he shows forth his glory in heaven by making men happy there; and shows his glory forth in hell by making others miserable there; that they were foreordained to punishment. It still stands upon the records of the Church; there are sentiments like these which have been recorded for years and years, and the paper upon which they are written has not yet rotted; that God made human hearts and strung them with affections, and feelings, and sentiments, and said, I am making these on purpose for happiness, and all heaven rejoiced in the sweet melodies; and he made another heart with affections and feelings and sentiments, across which, when he swept his hands, all hell reverebrated with woe. It is said that God did that before men were born, in eternal ages, and on purpose to show forth in their sufferings and sorrows the fitness of his glory. Now if that be God, I defy casuist or logician, or sage or speculating philosopher, to create a devil, beside; I do not know room for one. The capacity of malignity is filled up by such a notion as that; there are no other elements out of which to create a devil that would not be merciful in comparison to that."

Can it be necessary to say to our readers, that this is caricature? We deliberately pronounce it an atrocious libel upon a large portion of the Christian Church. If there is anything in the writings of Theodore Parker which surpasses it in cool, mendacious effrontery, it has escaped our notice.

What did the listening multitude suppose the preacher to mean? As he is fond of shooting at things very far away, did they suppose he was discharging his peculiar thunder at something quite unknown, almost never heard of hereabouts? something existing away down south, or, perchance, in England, or on the continent of Europe? They thought no such thing. They knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that their minister was dealing with the doctrine of election, which is taught in our Catechisms, and set forth in the Confessions of Faith of our Churches, and preached by our Alexanders, and Shedds, and Adamses, and Albros, and Lords.

This sermon brings forcibly to mind a passage in the religious experience of Jonathan Edwards, who had the same early struggle which Mr. Beecher has elsewhere described, but came out of it in a widely different way.

"From my childhood up," he says, "my mind had been full of ob

jections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty, in choosing whom he would to eternal life, and rejecting whom he pleased; leaving them eternally to perish, and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be convinced and fully satisfied, as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men, according to his sovereign pleasure. But never could give an account, how, or by what means, I was thus convinced, not in the least imagining at the time, nor a long time after, that there was any extraordinary influence of God's Spirit in it; but only that now I saw further, and my reason apprehended the justice and reasonableness of it. However, my mind rested in it; and it put an end to all those cavils and objections. And there has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, with respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty, from that day to this; so that I scarce ever have found so much as the rising of an objection against it, in the most absolute sense, in God's showing mercy to whom he will show mercy, and hardening whom he will. God's absolute sovereignty and justice, with respect to salvation and damnation, is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as much as of anything that I see with my eyes; at least it is so at times. But I have often, since that first conviction, had quite another kind of sense of God's sovereignty than I had then. I have often since had not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine has often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not so." (Edwards' Works, vol. 1, p. 33.)

Verily it is a fearful thing for the God of Jonathan Edwards to fall into the hands of Henry Ward Beecher !

[TO BE CONCLUDED.]

ARTICLE IV.

MRS. BROWNING AND CHRISTIAN POETRY.

THERE is no field so rich in poetic thought and inspiration as Christianity. It is true that hitherto the great majority of the world's poets have gathered their fragrant flowers in the shady nooks and picturesque walks of Nature, and have sung their thrilling lays around the salient angles of epic narrative, or

along the hot, beaten road of natural and unsanctified passion. With a few noble exceptions, to whom the Church is deeply indebted, and whose rich, harmonious notes will grow sweeter and more precious as time glides on, poets have drank their inspiration at the shallower streams of sentimental morality and naturalism, if not even at the muddy pools of the sensuous and the sensual. Surely it is not always to be so.

So certainly and rapidly as the promised dawn of millennial day approaches, the time will come when the grand themes and events in Christianity will stir the Muse to her highest and proudest achievements. The end of poetry, it has been said, is to produce intellectual pleasure by exciting emotions either of the elevated or pathetic order. Where, aside from religion, can be found themes so elevated and pathetic? Aristotle defines poetry to be "imitation," in the sense that it finds its models in Nature; or, as another philosopher has said, "poetry doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shows of things to the desire of the mind."

Religion fathoms the lowest depths and the sublimest heights of Nature; it is the reality of "things," "the shows" of which the rectified soul longs to have exhibited to it. The themes of religion connect us with the infinite God and his eternal plans; with sin and woe, and their glorious remedy. What other contemplations are calculated so to stir the mind with pathetic and elevated emotions?

These themes are yet to take an absorbing and controlling hold of the public heart and mind; to move men as they move the angelic hosts. There will be a day when the exciting intelligence that shall come along the wires, and over the seas, shall not be of stocks and markets, but of the triumphs of the Redeemer's kingdom. There will be seen to be, in Redemption and its kindred truths, such a fitness to man's need, that, when it comes to be grasped, will cause it to stir the souls of the millions as no other themes ever did or ever could. Then will there be a new age of poetry, and poetry of such melting pathos, and of such ennobling, glorifying power, as shall cause men to loath the maudlin verse, and tinsel mimicry of all the Nature-worshipping, or the sensuous and sensual poets.

Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a great, Christian poetess.