CONTENTS OF NO. I. VOL. III. THIRD SERIES. II. HUMAN JUSTICE; OR GOVERNMENT A MORAL POWER 65 BY PROF. TAYLER LEWIS, LL.D. N. Y. University. BIBLICAL REPOSITORY AND CLASSICAL REVIEW. THIRD SERIES, NO. IX.—WHOLE NUMBER, LXV. ARTICLE I. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF JOHN FOSTER. By REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D. D., New York. The Life and Correspondence of John Foster: Edited by J. E. Ryland. With notices of Mr. Foster as a Preacher and a Companion, by JOHN SHEPPARD, Author of "Thoughts on Devotion," etc., etc. In two volumes. New York, Wiley & Putnam, 161 Broadway, 1846. GEOLOGISTS tell us somewhat quaintly, that great and inexhaustible springs are found in connection with what they call faults, that is, breaks in the continuity of the rocks. There must be these breaks in the strata, and if it were not for this benevolent arrangement of Providence, there had been neither running fountains nor rivers, but sluggish stagnant pools. A powerful spring is not to be found but in connection with the existence of a great fault. The despotic crust of the earth must be broken up, before its living fountains of waters can gush in freedom to the surface. There is an instructive analogy in all this. But An Ecclesiastical Despotism would keep the intellectual and moral world without faults, that is, without freedom: it would circle the globe with the dead, hard, rocky crust and tetter of an enforced religious uniformity: it would have no spontaneous, powerful springs breaking out and running freely to the ocean. God's benevolent power interposes, and breaks up the despotic continuity, and gives us springs. The strata of establishments. being pierced and rent, there are no longer stagnant pools, but deep, living fountains. The analogy might be extended into something like an argument for the necessity and usefulness of various denominations in the Church of Christ. These things are not necessarily the result of sectarianism, but of freedom; and God makes use of these faults, even if we admitted them to be, not merely in the geological, but moral sense of the term, faults,-for the production of vastly greater good than ever there could have been without them. They are not faults, but blessings; and though men may abuse them, they are the assurance and the safeguard of spiritual freedom. Of the English minds that have departed from our world within a few years, none have excited a deeper interest, or wielded for a season a loftier power, than John Foster and Robert Hall. They were both triumphant instances of the superiority of intellect, and the homage that will be paid to it, over all circumstance and mere external distinction. One of the most obvious reflections that rises in the mind of a thoughtful observer of the greatness and power of such intellect, after the first analysis and admiration of its elements, may be that it was a possession and result of what is called the voluntary system. These men were two of the "Intellectual Incas" of their race. In the two together, there were combined nearly all the grand qualities that ever go to make up minds of the highest order severity and affluence, keenness and magnificence, simplicity and sublimity of thought; ruggedness, power, and elaborate beauty and exquisiteness of style; precision and splendor of language; condensed energy, fire, and diffusive richness of imagination; originality, independence, and perfect classical elegance; comprehensiveness and accuracy; nobleness of feeling, intense hatred of oppression, Christian humility, childlike simplicity. And yet there were greater differences between them than there were similarities. In some respects their minds were of quite an opposite mould. Hall's mind was more mathematical than Foster's, and he was distinguished for his power of abstract speculation, and his love and habit of reasoning. The tenor of Foster's mind was less argumentative, but more absolute, more intuitive, more rapidly and thoroughly observant. The impression of power is greater from the mind of Foster than of Hall. On this account, and for its eminently suggestive properties, Foster's general style, both of thinking and writing, is much to be preferred; though Hall's has the most sustained and elaborate beauty. Yet the word elaborate is not strictly applicable to Hall's style, which is the natural action of his mind, the movement, not artificial, nor supported by effort, in which his thoughts arranged themselves with the precision and regularity of a Roman cohort. Hall's was a careful beauty of expression, his carefulness and almost fastidiousness of taste being a second nature to him; Foster's was a careless mixture of ruggedness and beauty, the ruggedness greatly predominating. Hall's style is too constantly, too |