the aliens. The business of the church is to save and sanctify. But how concerning the imperativeness of the case? If it be not heartily and continually prosecuted, will men actually and forever perish in their sins? Yes, says the Word of God; no, half queries something within, whether intellect or heart, or what, it is not easy to detect. But how, again, concerning the method of this salvation? Must men's consciences be plied with the personal controversy of God against them as utterly guilty as well as hopelessly lost in themselves; and must the cross of an only sufficient expiation for them be kept standing straight before the eyes of the congregation, as distinctly as it confronted the crowd around Calvary, having this superscription emblazoned on it and speaking from it: "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world!" Yes, says the Gospel of the Holy Spirit; no, half doubts the spiritual guide of others, who is feeling every week the paralyzing, undermining influence of surrounding preachers and professors, magazine-writers and fashionable wits, in whose sight all this evangelism is nothing better than a pitiable foolishness. Ministers and churches know well enough the pressure in this unbelieving direction, whose faith in Christ and the Divine Spirit has to be maintained under the shade of a rich and supercilious establishment of easy-going disciples of the man Jesus; who have all the literature, all the politeness, all the æsthetics, all the patronage, and of course, all the introductions worth noticing, in the community. In such locations, the offence of the cross has not ceased; it is as rank as ever it was in Rome or Athens. In such locations, many a heart has made as full acquaintance as can be made in this world, with the power of the temptation to be "ashamed of the Gospel of Christ." This is emphatically a New England danger, threatening both the purity of doctrine and discipline in our denomination. And intensely is this so, beyond any other part of New England, in this eastern section of our own Commonwealth. The influence of our venerable, but backslidden university, has gone in this direction, with its great prestige, for half a century. What would feign call itself Boston culture, par eminence, in letters and manners, rolls a deep tide down the same channel. We sometimes wonder that it has been withstood as well as it has, knowing how weak is the side which pride presents to flattery and raillery, even in good people. Then, our aspiring scholars must also be philosophers, original thinkers, explorers; and as there are no new quarries to be opened in theological science, what can be done but to pull down some of the old cathedrals in order to build better? So the great stones of the catechisms and confessions must be taken apart and tumbled about like blocks of granite awaiting a builder's orders; and the "living oracles" must be drilled and blasted with exegetical gunpowder to add more debris to the confusion. But when the street-screens are removed to show the reconstruction, alas! for the pattern which was given in the Mount; these new-fashioned temples are not after its divine model. "Ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice." If there is to be no cause of apprehension respecting the integrity of the faith until a convention comes together to expunge the Epistle to the Romans, and to repeal the Protestant confessions, then there will assuredly never be any need to sound an alarm in Zion. History has recorded almost every folly but that. Yet apostasies have come in; but, at first, only like a noiseless rise of waters; then, as an overwhelming and devouring flood. Obsta principiis; but if the mischief has got a start, then dam it, dyke it off, as soon as possible. This mischief has always a start and a headway in the world, for the natural mind runs into it, and so does the regenerate under natural enticements, with a persistent proclivity. Then the hands that are not weary, and the hearts that are not faint, must still work and watch to counteract the ruinous infatuation. We never expect to see the end of what we hesitate not to call the wilful misrepresentation of our position in this matter. As long as men choose to do it, they will write in the "Westminster" vein, against the most positive knowledge to the contrary, as thus: "You may as well now deny the entire Bible as hint a doubt whether every word in the Chronicles is inspired, or whether the book of Esther or Solomon's Song contains a deal of Christian divinity. Modern defenders of the faith do not their work slovenly or by bits; they enter into no compromise; you must take the faith as a whole as they offer, or abide the consequences." This is false, with just enough of verisimilitude in it to make it look like a real, though rather exaggerated, portrait. The boundaries of the true and the untrue in a charge so indiscriminate, any honest person of but small intelligence can run for himself. But people who do not sympathize with this ultra antichristianism are tempted to yield to its spirit, in a sufficient degree to censure all earnest endeavors to hold in check the religious mind of the age from drifting off upon the sea of doubt and denial, where so many have sunk like lead in the deep waters. Thus, so far forth, they make common cause with the foe; and by their fainter censures of the alarmists (as they call us) they encourage the bolder clamors of an outright Sadduceism for the privilege of letting every one think just as he pleases, which is the next-door-neighbor to every one's doing whatever seems best in his own eyes. We must come to some understanding at this point, or expect to see our forces cut in sunder with the sharp wedges of the opposing army. Those who believe in the truth and necessity of the evangelical faith, must not be afraid of defending, and having others defend it, in a manly and unflinching way. They tell us, from the other side, that "None but slaves Find fault with free men's freedom." We must tell them back, with an earnestness which shall carry conviction, and an unanimity which shall turn their battery upon themselves, that "He is a freeman whom the Truth makes free, And all are slaves beside." We shall not be deterred, by fear of the worn-out fling of bigotry, from saying, that in this grand struggle of the last days, the truth is with the churches that are built on the Puritan foundations, so far as the issues of salvation from sin are involved. Can we learn a lesson from our national conflict? We say, that thus far the cause of constitutional government in our hands has had the worst of the struggle, because, while the South has been doing just one thing, and intends to do nothing else, that is, to cripple and destroy us as far as possible, we have been trying to do two entirely irrreconcilable things: to conquer their rebellion without wounding very badly their feel ings. The Christianity which attempts to occupy that position might as well haul down its flag to-day; for this, with it, can literally be only "a question of time." It will burn its powder and explode its shells to no purpose, save its own very useless expense. ARTICLE II. THE HOMES OF LITERARY MEN. SEVERAL years ago there appeared a book called "Homes of American Authors." In contrast to the notion we always have of English writers since the days of Johnson, and GrubStreet life, the public were overjoyed to find that our authors are not literary vagabonds, but really have homes, and sometimes domestic peace; for the old notion that literary people must quarrel is nearly gone by. And yet it was but a few years since that poor Percival lived in a garret on sixty-five dollars a year, and feasted on every literature under heaven; and the erratic genius of Poe, and of the wild William Northboth suicides led them into painful haps and hazards. And there has ever been a sort of fatality about the literary geniuses which no philosophy will fully account for, a reverence, on our part, for the wonder-working mystery of genius; a curiosity to hear the story of its wrongs, perhaps a jealousy of shining parts joined with contempt for mortal weakness; and on the part of authors an ever-abiding sense that the world is out of joint and they are born to set it right, and a familiarity with mental suffering which duller spirits wot nothing of. Ah! the cost of being a genius; yet you, reader, love them passionately after all; and do you not grieve over the fate of that artistpoet neither whose poems nor whose paintings ever got the warm meed of praise, and whose last walk ended on the Bridge of Sighs? "Alas for the rarity It always thrills me when I see on the booksellers' shelves those thin, paper-bound volumes yet uncut, in which some young poet has sighed out his first passion, and gone back into obscurity, his volume selling for a sixpence, and unread at that. I always buy such books and put them side by side in my library, and rarely I find that the early Tennysonian volume of 1833 develops into the "Idyls" of 1860. I love to trace those gentle aspiring steppings-out into the great world, and hope for the best, remembering that my dear Southey, and dearer Irving, were always kind to young authors. It is rather painful for me, looking back, to call up that club of college friends who were so eager to write themselves into notoriety. Where are those dreams now? Ah! my old friend, you have whittled away your quills at an editor's desk, and what has your life come to? Where are all those fine tastes you pleased us with, during those Attic nights? You remember the volumes you said you should write; yes, your volumes! but who would read them if collected out of stray newspapers now? Here is a fine reputation spoiled. And our class-poet settled down into a very steady farmer when he had published a National Ode; while the one solitary, unpromising, hard-thinking plodder we had has lately becôme very eminent as a political and judicial author. What memories a university life affords! How green they always keep! And here is the very place where young genius is nursed, — nursed as hardily as Schiller at the Karls-schule where he "enrolled himself in 1773; and turned, with a heavy heart, from freedom and cherished hopes, to Greek, and seclusion, and law." Now I beg you, reader, to allow me to quote from the wise little volume of Rev. Dr. Osgood, wherein he discourses. so sweetly of his Harvard reminiscences, and then we will return to our subject: "We sometimes had voluntary meetings in presence of our professors, and of these I remember with especial pleasure our evenings with Chaucer and Spenser at Professor Edward T. Channing's study. How his genial face shone in the light of the winter's fire, and threw new meaning upon the rare gems of thought and humor and imagination of those kings of ancient song. Who of us does not bless him every day that we write an English sentence, for his pure taste and admirable |