The North American for April comes with its 316 pages of as rich and rare and interesting matter as usual. We have not yet had time to read it so thoroughly as to speak critically of its articles.

The National Quarterly Review for March has a wide range of topics and scholarship. Hence the want of literary finish in some of the articles, as, e. g. the one on "Americanisms," is the more striking.

The Bibliotheca for April is above its high average for able articles. We are glad to see more doctrinal articles than usual in this Number. "The Cross in Nature and Nature in the Cross," makes a strong draft on the fancy, though to read, the essay is intensely interesting. Its novelty, if not its logic, carries one along.

The American Theological Review visits us as an elder brother who had left the homestead. We welcome it cordially, as a co-worker in a common vineyard. Would that all the children of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were as worthy.

The Monthly Religious Magazine for April is as genial and general We feel the tacit praise when it comes to us for the cream of Calvinism. Where can we find the cream of Unitarianism?

as ever.

And yet

The Church Monthly greets us with a very broad face. when we come thoroughly to know its merits, we find a lively, practical, godly magazine. Abating something of the Church in its contents, we enjoy it.

The Christian Examiner for March shows its strength in seven articles. Those of a religious drift, as Dr. Thompson's "Plea for Eternal Punishment," and "The Cause of Reason, the Cause of Faith," come with a very frank spirit and free pen. Dr. Thompson's work does not seem to us to have had fair dealing by this reviewer.

The New Englander for April arrives only in time to be entered. We have not read it, but it has a portly look. It is evidently growing, and we think its proportions more in symmetry, with the reduction of book notices, as shown in the present Number.

The Princeton Review. April, 1861.

This stanch and stalwart Review has six admirable articles in the last issue, either of which is worth the annual subscription.

We are happy to see a reprint from the "Bib. Sacra" of July 1860, of Rev. D. B. Ford's " Scriptural Evidence of the Deity of Christ." It is a well-executed digest of this evidence, and a wide circulation of it in pamphlet form must do good.

ARTICLE VIII.

SHORT SERMONS.

"I in them and thou in me." - John 17: 23.

NOT a fusion of natures, but a fellowship of persons, between Christ and his followers. Not the method of the oneness, but the certificate of the fact. Take his own illustration of the vine and the branches. They are one, by the closest of material connections— a vital union according to the laws of vegetable life. But the Christian vine grows out of, and then back again into, its divine stock, as souls grow into one another. The life-principle which combines them is of the highest, most enduring type;-no involuntary adhesion simply, as the graft takes hold of the tree and absorbs its forces, and is henceforth mechanically a portion of that tree. It is a spontaneous, a preferred abiding in Christ; a settled choice that He and his truth abide in us. "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." How elevated and sacred this tie between our hearts and our Redeemer, as between his human soul and the unincarnate Godhead. He places us, as renewed spirits, in the same fellowship with himself, which, as a sinless man, he ever enjoyed with the eternally Holy One: "according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue; whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through

lust." This reveals the principle which binds together all the elect souls of Christ's kingdom to him its Chief. It is a nobility of virtue and glory, standing in the promise of his sovereign grace, through the saving knowledge of himself as the deliverer from guilt and death eternal. And is there less of security, of permanency, in a relation of sympathetic natures so harmonized, and wedded in their inmost loves, than if they were bound together by some stout ligatures of external pressure? Let Paul answer now for thousands of believers, as when he gave the noble confession of the first disciples: "For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Why not this persuasion, when the intercession is still breathing from the mercyseat:-"As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us!"

"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and for thy truth's sake."- Ps. 115: 1.

THE main force of the text is found to be in the meaning of the word "Truth." Revealed Truth is evidently not referred to, for this would be anticlimacteric and pointless; since the giving of the Bible is a part of God's "Mercy," and included under that term. Nor is the general truthfulness, the veracity of God intended; for the succeeding verse points to continued deliverance and undeserved favor which should be quite unexpected by, and unaccountable to, the "heathen; referring perhaps to the siege of Sennacherib. "Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God?"

We find that the root meaning of the Hebrew word, n, here translated truth, is firmness, stability, perpetuity, sureness. Faithfulness, fidelity, truth, i. e., self-consistency, is a derived and secondary meaning. We are to understand the Psalmist as giving glory to the name of God for his mercy and for his FIRMNESS in mercy. It implies a strong purpose of mercy to His people, which will not be changed, nor jostled off its course even by many transgressions and entire unworthiness on their part. The electing purpose of grace being formed before the world began, not on account of any foreseen goodness in the elect, but according to His mere good pleasure, that they should

be holy, why should he forsake them? The reason of His choice is in Himself; and He cannot change.

Here is the only firm basis of the Christian's triumphant confidence. Our sinfulness and weakness call for abandonment. We look to ourselves and are filled with anxiety and fear. Then we turn to God and remember his firmness in mercy, remember the everlasting and unchangeable basis of our calling, and we rejoice like those who find great spoil. We rejoice with humble gratitude, "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name, give glory." 'Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." To Him be all the glory throughout eternal ages. Amen.

66

ARTICLE IX.

THE ROUND TABLE.

OUR COUNTRY! But yesterday twenty millions of people were quietly, cheerfully, prosperously, pursuing the avocations of life. At the plow, the bench, the loom, the office, the anvil, the wharf, they were plying their busy toils. Our Chief Magistrate sends a fact and a call from the nation's Capitol, along the trembling wires, and these twenty millions start to their feet! From the Aroostook to the outer counties of famishing Kansas, hill and valley, city and hamlet, shop, office, and farm, have become a camp, and seventy-five thousand men are falling into the line of march for the battle-field. No Cæsar or Napoleon ever called so many to arms in so brief a week. No cause ever called so loudly for freemen. For it is proposed, in open rebellion by a section of the country, to pause in a career of unparalleled prosperity, and throw up on the historic shore of the centuries the greatest national wreck that the waters of time ever washed. The issue is forced on these twenty millions by eight millions of their brethren, to go to that great ballot-box of nations, the battle-field, and vote on the questions-government or anarchy; republicanism or monarchy; the rule of majorities or minorities; the Declaration of Independence, or the edicts of plantation life. Our fathers once voted on these questions and settled them. The polls were opened at Lexing

ton, and closed at Yorktown. The vote, after eighty years' standing, is doubted. Twenty millions are moving to reaffirm it over the negative of eight millions. There is a terrible logic in "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and our dearest rights must receive the usual crimson baptism. Well, it is of God's method that all the steppingstones of civil progress shall be tinged and made slippery with human blood. Knowing the blessing, we accept the price. Sicut patribus, sit Deus nobis.

ONE of the very pleasant things connected with our enterprise thus far is a discovery, to wit: that the number of the firm friends of the "Old Theology" is much larger than has been supposed. These all rejoice in the appearance of The Boston Review, and in the mutual knowledge of each other's existence. The letters received from various and widely distant sections of the country, do exceedingly cheer and strengthen our hearts. The brethren who have written them lay and clerical - will accept our warmest thanks, as also for their kind offices in extending our list of subscribers, which kind offices we trust they will still continue, as they know we have not a single agent in the field.

As a small return for their generous coöperation, we will make a few personal introductions — all under our impenetrable phantomcloud. An able and successful young pastor from Western Massachusetts says: "In the enterprise you have undertaken I am greatly interested. With the Boston Review so far, I am delighted, and will cordially give you my feeble help and limited influence. There is abundant need of all you propose to do. Our churches have largely drifted from the Gospel of the New Testament. The sacraments are very imperfectly understood, and slightingly appreciated by believers. The doctrine of the vital and mystical union of the believer in Christ is hardly ever mentioned in many orthodox pulpits. Under the accursed influence of the sentimental religion of most of our religious papers and periodicals, a lax and demoralizing method of interpretation is creeping stealthily in, and undermining every one of the fundamental doctrines of grace. None has been so much and so steadily covered as that of Future Punishment. The paralysis of benevolence has largely resulted from secret and unconscious Universalism in the heart of our churches."

A distinguished preacher in Vermont, and occupying a prominent and influential position, writes: "The articles are all of unusual

and refreshing excellence."

We must next introduce the very intelligent pastor of a Baptist