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blem. If God is purposing to set upon our head the crown of a higher wisdom and a maturer manhood, through sorrows and tribulations, without which no nation has ever been truly great or wise, we will enter, without fear, into the dark cloud, which shines toward the coming age, like a golden flood.

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Ir was made for man in Paradise; for special praise and worship and holy meditation, and bodily repose. It was enjoined by recorded statute at Sinai "Remember the Sabbath-day;" - which statute is just as binding now as any other one of the ten commandments. Modified in some respects, commemorating the resurrection of the Lord, it stands, to-day, in all the binding force of the Divine ordinance ; "made for man," by God in his unchanging love and wisdom; that the groaning and travailing creation may rest; that man, leaving, for a time, his farm and his merchandise, may be reminded how soon he must leave all forever; - that families may be taught out of the Holy Scriptures;-that the Gospel may be preached for the conversion of sinners and the spiritual enlargement of the church, and the children of God may rejoice and sing praise in pleasant anticipation of that better "keeping of Sabbath" of which this is an emblem and a pledge.

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"All unrighteousness is sin." — 1 John 5: 17.

THE word used here to express sin is aμapría, which in classic Greek means a missing of the mark, as when one shoots an arrow, or throws a spear or javelin. It is an error, blunder, or failure in trying to accomplish a given end. So a primary idea of sin is a mistake, and so all unrighteousness is a blunder. It is a violation of selfinterest. He who seeks to gain any desirable end or supposed good by violating the law of right, misses his aim. His policy is bad and his process foolish, and so the Scriptures call him a "fool.”

The heathen Greek attained to a knowledge of the fact that sin is a mistake in the pursuit of self-interest, though, he did not, without the Scriptures, rise to know the cause: God constituted us for holiness and happiness. Any violation of our constitution, physical, mental, or moral, must therefore, as an unrighteous act, defeat our highest good, and so prove a blunder. All infringement of the law of right for a supposed good, results in injury to our real good.

So the sinner always misses the mark, if we view his act only in the light of a cultivated self-interest for this world.

As a business sin is ruinous; as an incidental it is an expense; as an auxiliary it is an enemy; as a luxury it is poison. "All unrighteousness is sin," is a mistake, a blunder.

ARTICLE X.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Christian Nurture. By HORACE BUSHNELL. New York: Charles Scribner. 1861. pp. 407.

TRUTH is the common property of honest thinkers. It is golden ore no matter in what strata it is imbedded. Every one has a right to admire and use the precious metal, even to the "quoting of Horace Bushnell's Nature and the Supernatural as an antidote to Margaret Fuller." It is a very small criticism (it strikes us) to attempt the monopoly of a distinguished name on any pretence of party ownership, or to hint an inconsistency in the approving use of it by those who are free to dissent from some of the positions for which it has become responsible. Because one may now and then adventure in the pulpit some almost inspired line of Shakspearean wisdom, that is not an indorsement of everything which the great dramatist may have written. We have no hesitation, therefore, in saying that this volume contains very much which meets our approval as genuine Christian doctrine uttered in a manly way, because its author is claimed by the "New Theology" as one of its banner-bearers. Be this as it may, we can afford to write that here he has enriched a vitally important theme not only with the colorings of a brilliant imagination and the tenderness of a very sensitive emotive nature, but also with a wealth

of sterling instruction which we wish might be reduced to practice by our churches and the community, the land over.

A part of this volume has a theological history which probably would not have been just so, had the work appeared at first in its present completed form. The subsequent and newer chapters are explanatory and confirmatory of the somewhat naked and ambiguous doctrinal statements of the original much briefer treatise. Even now, its doctrinal substructure is none too strong, though the author evidently has designed to lay his foundations in a scriptural view of sin and salvation. But his theology runs itself into philosophical rather than biblical moulds. He never recites the Catechism. We miss the clear ring of the better Calvinistic divines. The strength of this book is practical rather than dogmatic. It is sometimes fanciful; occasionally original; frequently excoriating, in its severe strictures of domestic follies and blunders. Its views of organic laws in the economy of God with reference to family sanctification are impressively just. We are glad also to find that the author believes in domestic authority of a stringent type. "There are cases, now and then, in the outrageous and shocking misconduct of some boy, where an explosion is wanted; where the father represents God best, by some terrible outburst of indignant violated feeling, and becomes an instant avenger, without any counsel or preparation whatever. Nothing else expresses fitly what is due to such kind of conduct. And there is many a grown-up man, who will remember such an hour of discipline as the time when the ploughshare of God's truth went into his soul like redemption itself. That was the shock that woke him up to the stanch realities of principle; and he will recollect that father, as God's minister, typified to all dearest, holiest, reverence, by the pungent indignations of that time."―p. 333. We like that sentence and sentiment. It carries with it a tremendous and a glorious application in spheres and relations beyond these present. Family-administration will never be what it should be until it is laid closer alongside the plan and purpose of God's providential and gracious sovereignty over us all. This treatise goes directly to promote the end thus indicated.

Debt and Grace, as related to the Doctrine of a Future Life. By C. F. HUDSON. Fourth Thousand. New York. 1861. VIII. and 496.

MR. HUDSON'S studies in eschatology have given him the first place among the annihilationists, where perhaps he deems it prefer

able to reign, than to serve in the less conspicuous rank and file of the common and Catholic faith. He has unearthed an old error, and is pushing it forward in a series of volumes projected upon the same idea, with great zeal and a very formidable array of authorities. His doctrine is, that immortal life means eternal salvation; that this is the gift of grace to the saved; that those who are not so endowed through Christ's redemption have no immortality; but dying impenitent they are literally struck out of existence, that is, are annihilated. To sustain this theory, the author boldly grapples with the involved questions of biblical criticism, philosophy, theology, history, displaying a very respectable scholarship and mental vigor, although some of his learning savors rather strongly of a pedantic parade. He is anxious concerning the adjustment of this startling dogma with the harmony of the general evangelical doctrine of which we understand him to be an otherwise adherent. He has done what he could, and all that any one will be likely to do, in support of his thesis. But has he done anything to persuade the human soul (save here and there a morbid specimen) that it or its fellows will sleep ere long a sleep which shall literally have no waking? We put the old and ineradicable instinct against all his logic and exegesis, and soberly assure him that annihilationism can never become the creed of human beings so long as they continue to be human. His book belongs to the painful and forcible failures of which the "Conflict of Ages" is an illustrious instance that is a desperate attempt to convince men of that which it is morally impossible for them to believe on any wide scale. We cannot here say more, except to express a regret that so much intellectual power and furniture should not have expended themselves upon a more useful and hopeful argument. In a future number, the topic may receive a more lengthened attention.

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Religious Lectures on Peculiar Phenomena in The Four Seasons. By EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D. D., LL. D., Late President of Amherst College, and now Professor of Natural Theology and Geology. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, Lee, & Co., 117 Washington Street. 1861.

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SUCH a book as this ought never to be out of print. This new and beautiful edition is issued the author modestly informs us — because "inquiries for it have been so frequent and long continued, as to produce the belief that there is a call for a third edition." It exhibits all the well-known characteristic of the Professor-broad intel

ligence, pure and highly cultivated taste, enthusiasm in science, fine imagination, a style classic and sparkling, and argument philosophie and cogent; all these laid under contribution to sound theology and the spirit of faith and devotion.

The first lecture on "The Resurrections of Spring," takes Paul's illustration of "bare grain" and the "body that shall be," and constructs an original argument for the identity of the resurrection-body, in reply to the philosophic objection that it is impossible. The second is on "The Triumphal Arch of Summer," and contains a fine description of a grand thunder-storm which passed over Amherst College on the 23d of June, 1848, and the rainbow, of an unusual brilliancy which succeeded, developing with much force and impressiveness, the various lessons of truth and goodness which God has connected with this beautiful phenomenon - his "bow in the cloud." "The Euthanasia of Autumn" gathers up sweet scriptural instructions from the fading leaf and the brilliant hues of the forest,- beauty in decay, hope and peace and joy in dissolution. The fourth lecture in the book, on "The Coronation of Winter," was the first delivered, and paints, with graphic power, the spectacle which occasioned it, — all the trees encased in icy crystals to the extremities of their outermost branches, and lighted up, by a brilliant sun, into a scene of gorgeous beauty, far surpassing the glittering crown jewels of kings, and all the powers of art. The spectacle thus described, is made to supply a variety of valuable lessons, all bearing on man's higher concernments.

The book is full of striking thoughts, and sweet Christian instruction. The value of this new edition is enhanced by the addition of an exegesis of 1 Cor. 15: 35-44,- first published in the Bibliotheca Sacra-answering certain objections to the views of bodily identity contained in the first lecture. The paper, typography, and drawings of scenes described make up a fitting dress for these eloquent discourses.

Discourses on Sacramental Occasions. By ICHABOD S. SPENCER, D. D., Author of "A Pastor's Sketches," &c. With an Introduction by GARDINER SPRING, D. D. New York: W. M. Dodd. 12mo. pp. 468.

To any who have read the "Sketches" by Dr. Spencer, the title of this volume will be sufficient recommendation. It should be added that the issue of such a volume was long a cherished purpose of the author.

These twenty-six Discourses are a most valuable contribution to

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