earth ring with their prosperity; and well too might they whine, and sob, and fill the world with their lamentations when every man in Hayti became his own master. Truly, in the estimation of those who thus ignominiously wept, freedom in Hayti is one of the grandest failures the world ever saw. But all this relates to the white man, who, as we have clearly shown, brought his ruin upon himself. Supposing the whole of France to be ruined, will it really and necessarily follow that Hayti, who is independent of her, is involved in the same misfortune? The question is not whether certain white French colonists, who once ruled in St. Domingo, are now ruined, but whether the mass of the black citizens of independent Hayti are in all respects better, and whether they possess a better trade and commerce with the world, now that they are free, than when they were slaves? One great part of the wealth of St. Domingo as a slave colony was the black man himself; and it has yet to be proved that, having become free, he has consequently become inferior. To answer this question affirmatively would go far to show that freedom anywhere is simply a misfortune, and that the true progress of humanity can only be judged of in proportion as men are wise enough to become slaves. This, however, has not been the reigning idea of Hayti, and most assuredly is not that of Italy at the present time. The ruin, then, of the few white lords who once ruled Hayti, and whose power and glory derived their luster simply from the degradation, darkness, and wretchedness then around them, does not involve that of the tens of thousands who are now free in the same land. The Haytien people, now as free citizens, are living under governors of their own color and choosing, and honoring, by an honest loyalty and sound sense, laws of their own making, while at the same time the whole frame-work of well-planned and well-organized institutions is daily gaining strength by the diffusion of education and Christian principle. To reason that slavery, which unmans both the master and his victim, is in any conceivable sense desirable, would not only be an outrage on every Haytien conviction, but would be utterly at variance with the facts in the case. In fact there is something noble in the thought that Hayti, with her free homes, her present onward movement, and her future prospects, is now possessed, worked, and ruled by men whose souls and character are such as to prefer infi

nitely to perish than to be slaves! Truly, freedom in Hayti has been no failure to the black man, nor has it been otherwise than a decided gain to the general interests of the world.

But if Hayti with her present scanty population, and the innumerable difficulties which still operate within herself, as the baneful effects of former unhappy times and circumstances of which she was the victim, has already benefited herself and others by her commerce and general improvement, what might not have been expected from her had the numerical strength of her population reached the seven or eight millions which that splendid island could easily support? These she may one day possess, when by her further advance in civilization and prosperity, morally as well as intellectually and commercially, she shall become the center of attraction to the still suffering descendants of Africa in the United States and other parts of the world. Hope looks forward to the event with joy, for it must be supposed that ultimately thousands of the colored race of America, who, though free, are in many ways oppressed, will feel their souls swell beyond their present limits, and, like their Haytien brethren, find it impossible to live but in a free element, where man of whatsoever hue is fully man.

Freedom in Hayti, therefore, cannot be shown to be a failure. On the contrary, the proofs that liberty is the only true element of human beings of every color are very apparent in this "Queen of the Antilles," not only from what has been there realized in the past, but from the promises of the future under its present well-meaning government. This will be still more evident when pure and genuine Christianity, with its life and power, shall be brought to bear upon the nation at large, and shall have diffused its elevating principles through all the ramifications of society. Much, indeed, remains yet to be done in Hayti, as might naturally be expected in a people of such an origin, and for whom the Christian Church anywhere has cared so little. The poison of Voltaire and his school has spread its ruinous influence through the better classes of society, and has thus in many cases thrown the reins upon the neck of vice, while the degrading vices of African superstitions have long been at work among the uneducated masses of the people. Image worship, too, in

the name of Christianity, has had its lowering effect upon the nation, and the more elevating principles of uncorrupted truth have been buried under the rubbish and smoke of incense, beads, and relics; but the way to better things and better days, it may be hoped, is now thrown open. Religious freedom reigns, at least for the present; and it cannot for a moment be doubted that the whole soul of the noble-minded Geffrard, now at the head of the nation as president, is full bent on doing his utmost to prove more fully than ever to the world that freedom in Hayti is not a failure!

ART. III. THE CHRIST OF HISTORY.

The Christ of History. An Argument grounded in the Facts of his Life on Earth. By JOHN YOUNG, M.A. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1857.

AMONG the multitudes of books that, plenteous as autumn leaves, have fallen from the teeming press during the last decade, we have met with but few which we have perused with more of unmixed pleasure and profit than the one named above; and yet it seems practically to have fallen stillborn from the American press. And it is with the hope of attracting to it some portion at least of the attention which it so richly merits, that we have at this late day taken up our pen. Its title, though aptly chosen, fails to develop to the casual reader the depth and richness of the vein of thought contained within its pages. In it we have, in fact, a new phase of the Battle of the Evidences—an argument accommodated afresh to the evershifting quicksands of infidelity. Human progress is never continuous nor in right lines, and can only be fitly symbolized by the movements of a ship when compelled to shape her course in the face of adverse winds, tacking alternately to the right hand and to the left, thus approximating slowly but surely to the desired haven. This law of progress has been strikingly manifest in the changing aspects of the contest which Christianity has been waging with unbelief and sin for nearly nineteen hundred years. In the outset of Christ's personal ministry

on earth he addressed audiences who were fully prepared to accept, nay more, in fact, did accept, not only the grand central truths of the divine existence and providence, but who were accustomed also to credit the reality of divine revelations and supernatural interpositions in human affairs-who required, therefore, neither a demonstration of the existence of God, nor proof of his power or willingness to intervene in the affairs of men. On the contrary, they asked only at the hand of him who claimed to be the ambassador of Jehovah that he should present authentic credentials, fully attesting the divinity of his mission. Accordingly we find in the New Testament that the Jews persistently demanded of Christ that he should give them a sign from heaven. The battle of the evidences, therefore, in that age was limited to the single issue: Was the mission of Christ attested by such supernatural signs as demonstrated, in fact, that he possessed superhuman power? The unbelieving scribes and Pharisees did not discredit the possibility of such a divine messenger as Christ claimed to be; they only doubted, or professed to doubt, whether in fact he had sufficiently vindicated his title to such honors. The same, or at least a similar state of facts existed with reference to the ministry of the apostles. Their hearers in general did not question the existence of God, (or of gods,) nor yet the power of God to intervene in the affairs of men; these they were fully prepared to concede; they only demanded, in fact, supernatural evidence that Christ and his apostles were what they claimed to be. And this proof accordingly was furnished to them to the fullest extent. Thus, when John the Baptist sent messengers to Christ saying, "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?" the answer was, "Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them." Hence also it was that the apostles were commanded to tarry at Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high; that is, with not only the gift of the Holy Ghost as a source of personal illumination, but also of preternatural power. Under such a dispensation Christianity spread rapidly throughout the various provinces of the Roman empire, and soon, with the necessity for them, miracles themselves passed away, and thenceforth it

was left to human instrumentalities, backed and energized by the silent yet resistless influences of the Holy Spirit, to sustain and propagate the Gospel. From the era of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, through the long night of the dark ages, until the days of Luther, when mind awoke to a sense of conscious freedom and individual responsibility, men paid but little attention to either the real or the formal evidences of Christianity. But the same spirit of inquiry which led Luther to first scrutinize and then reject the claims of the Romish Church, led other more daring spirits to question the divine authority, not only of Rome, but of Christianity itself. In other words, the spirit of the age culminated in a revolt against the principle of a blind, unreasoning submission to authority, albeit that authority claimed to be of divine origin. This reaction, though excessive, was inevitable, and in its final results healthful, since it led to an intelligent re-examination of the foundations of Christian faith, and thus subserved the cause it was blindly seeking to destroy. The individual conscience, stimulated by contact with the philosophies of Descartes and Bacon to an assertion of its native dignity and authority, propounded to the dominant Christianity of that day the same question which the chief priests and elders of the people had propounded to Christ, namely: "By what authority doest thou these things, and who gave thee this authority?" But to humanity this inquiry has a deeper and a higher significance than that given to it by the captious Jews; it sprung from the conscious awakening of mind to some just sense of its own transcendent dignity and importance. On the one hand, Descartes had propounded the fundamental postulate of all modern philosophy, namely, that all speculative thought must begin with an examination of the facts of human consciousness; or, in other words, he had affirmed that psychology is at once the alphabet and touchstone of all valid thought; while Bacon, on the other, had proclaimed with equal clearness and directness that all valid knowledge must rest upon a basis of observed facts-that facts are, in truth, the integers of thought, without which its processes are invalid and fruitless. The one pointed man practically to the inward and the spiritual, as to the true source of illumination; the other directed him to the outward, the material, the physical. Hence originated two diverse movements essentially complementary to each