The Family Circle Glee-Book: containing about two hundred Songs, Glees, Choruses, etc., etc. Compiled by Elias Howe. Published by Russell & Richardson, Boston; Mason Brothers, New York; J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia. 1857. (Not a Glee in it; but a very large and pleasant collection of popular melodies, harmonized.)

Putnam's Railway Classics. Irving's Tales of a Traveller.

1 vol. 16mo. pp. 288. Salmagundi, pp. 243. Sketch-Book, pp. 256. New York: G. P. Putnam & Co. 1857.

Rollo in Geneva. By Jacob Abbott. Boston: Brown, Taggard, & Chase. 1857. 16mo. pp. 220.

Harper's Story Books, No. 31. Judge Justice. June, 1857. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1857.

Louisa von Plettenhaus, the Journal of a Poor Young Lady. Translated from the German. New York: C. S. Francis & Co. 1857. 12mo. pp. 233. Key to the Geology of the Globe: an Essay, designed to show that the present Geographical, Hydrographical, and Geological Structures, observed on the Earth's Crust, were the Result of Forces acting according to fixed demonstrable Laws, analogous to those governing the Development of Organic Bodies. By Richard Owen, M. D., Professor of Geology and Chemistry in the University of Nashville. Illustrated by Maps and Diagrams. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1857. 8vo. pp. 256. (See p. 152.)

PAMPHLETS.

The Relation of Public Amusements to Public Morality, especially of the Theatre to the Highest Interests of Humanity. An Address, delivered at the Academy of Music, New York, before the "American Dramatic Fund Society," for the benefit of the Fund. By Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D., Pastor of All-Souls' Church, New York. New York: C. S. Francis & Co. 1857. pp. 52. (See page 49.)

Two Sermons, preached to the First Church in New Haven, on a Day of Fasting, viz. Good Friday, the 10th of April, 1857. By Leonard Bacon, Pastor. Published by Request. New Haven: Thomas H. Pease.

The Homœopathic Principle applied to Insanity. A Proposal to treat Lunacy by Spiritualism. By James John Garth Wilkinson, M. D., Author of The Human Body and its Connection with Man," etc. Reprinted from the London Edition. Boston: Otis Clapp. 1857.

66

Pp. 18.

Homœopathy and Homœopathic Practitioners in Europe. By E. Sanford, M. D., Providence, R. I. Boston: Otis Clapp. pp. 28.

Report of the Ministry at Large in Charlestown. April, 1857. By Rev. O. C. Everett. Charlestown: W. W. Whidden. pp. 23.

Proof of My Ministry: a Farewell Sermon preached in Union Street Church, Bangor, by Joseph H. Allen. Bangor: S. S. Smith. pp. 15.

Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends, held at Longwood, Chester County, Fifth Month, 1857. Philadelphia: J. M. McKim. pp. 64.

The Unitarian Pulpit, Nos. 1 and 2. May and June, 1857. London: E. T. Whitfield. pp. 64.

The Christian Reformer, or Unitarian Magazine and Review. London: E. T. Whitfield. June, 1857.

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, June and July.

The Historical Magazine, Vol. I. No. 6. June.

Public Amusement for Poor and Rich. By Edward E. Hale. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. pp. 24. (See p. 51.)

THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

SEPTEMBER, 1857.

ART. I. RECENT PSYCHOLOGISTS.

1. Theologische Ethik. (Theological Ethics.) Von RICHARD ROTHE. Wittenberg. 1845-1848. 3 vols. 8vo. pp. xiv, 430, 485, 1125. 2. System der Biblischen Psychologie. (System of Biblical Psychology.) Von FRANZ DELITZSCH. Leipzig. 1855. 8vo. pp. viii, 440.

3. Psychologische Briefe. (Psychological Letters.) Von DR. JOHN EDUARD ERDMANN. Leipzig. 1856. 8vo. pp. xix, 384. 4. The Constitution of the Human Soul. Six Lectures delivered at the Brooklyn Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y. By RICHARD S. STOrrs, JR., D. D. New York: Carter and Brothers. 1857. 8vo. pp. xiv, 338.

THE human soul is as old as creation, yet its nature is the newest problem of time. For nearly two thousand years, indeed, an earnest and powerful class of men have devoted themselves to the study and care of souls, and after three centuries of struggel they won for their order the chief place among the empires of the earth. They not only mastered the old thrones, but also the old philosophies, and this Christian clergy laid upon the altars of the rising churches the best thoughts from the Greek academies, as well as the richest treasures from the Roman palaces. In due time the wisdom and eloquence of the great heathen sages reappeared in a new form, and the grace and truth that came by Jesus VOL. LXIII. 5TH S. VOL. I. NO. II. 14

Christ were set forth in terms and ideas borrowed from the schools of Plato, Aristotle, and their successors.

The world of course gained vastly by the transformation, for we cannot believe that the hand on the dial of ages can ever be turned backward; yet in one respect we are compelled to confess a great disappointment in tracing the development of Christian thought under such new incentives and with such ancient helpers. We confess that we have been disappointed at the meagreness of the systematic psychology within the Christian Church, in comparison with the affluence of the materials and the magnificence of the illustrations at command. In fact it may be safely said, that the formal treatises on Christian psychology, from the days of its pioneers, Tertullian, Gregory of Nyssa, &c., have thrown less light upon the soul by their strained analysis of its nature than is to be found in the more genial utterances of devout feeling or pastoral sympathy, that show what the soul is by showing the fruits of its healthy life. Accordingly, it has often seemed to us that the best account of the psychology of Christendom would be given, not by a compilation of the treatises that have been written on the subject by metaphysicians or theologians, but by a broad and scholarly portraiture of the character and acts of the soul under the Christian faith. Such a survey might not be of itself a philosophy, but it would be the basis of a philosophy of the soul; and we cannot expect to have a good natural philosophy, either of the outer or the inner man, until we have a good natural history; or, in other words, we must have the facts before we can have the science. We certainly have had more satisfaction from this very cause in the pastoral literature and art of Christendom, than in its purely speculative philosophy; for this pastoral literature and art reveal the functions and instincts of living souls under the ministry of earnest, practical men, whilst purely speculative philosophy may reflect the idiosyncrasies of individual intellects, with little inspiration from heaven and little sympathy with mankind. In fact, the deepest philosophy justifies our preference for living functions over metaphysical abstractions, for this philosophy looks upon life itself as the best revelation of

being, and teaches us that we can know the soul satisfactorily only by studying its consciousness and acts, or what it thinks, feels, desires, and wills.

The volumes which we have named at the beginning of. this article all point in the direction indicated; and the four authors, although differing widely in opinion and in ability, aim to treat the soul as the great practical interest of life, and to show the best methods of developing its powers.

The stately volume of Dr. Storrs is the first publication of the Graham Fund for Lectures on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as manifested in his Works, and consists of six Lectures on the Human Soul, as a Personality, as endowed with Faculties for Knowledge, Virtue, Beneficent Operation, Happiness, and Immortal Progress. This book is very fresh, vigorous, judicious, and often brilliant, and, as a short series of popular lectures, it fulfils its aim. Its style we could wish to be modified and made more easy and colloquial, and less exacting and fatiguing. The more abstruse or elevated the subject, the greater the need of simplicity and directness, in order to win and convince the general reader. There are portions of these Lectures that offend our taste by their grandiloquence, and seem to us in diction unworthy the manly and accomplished author. Yet the style is by no means obscure, and often it is lighted to excess, through windows multitudinous in number and profuse in decoration. To the orthodox churches we regard Dr. Storrs as a great benefactor, by his breadth of thought and liberality of tone, whilst to readers accustomed to the best thoughts of such writers as Channing, Martineau, Schleiermacher, and the whole Platonic school of divines, he will be a less satisfactory guide, and will hardly appear to do justice to those recipient capacities of the soul which are as precious as its active faculties to the student of human consciousness, as well as to the disciple of the written word. The defect comes in part from his evident desire to keep within the limits of natural theology, and his unwillingness to treat the mere evangelical functions of the soul as having a basis in its constitution, -a trait which sadly cripples the philosophy of his closing Lecture, on the Immortal Life.

The Letters of Erdmann seem to us to be the most charming work lately written upon psychology, and, in point of ease, piquancy, clearness of statement, and brilliancy of illustration, to make a new era in popularizing abstruse subjects. We urge less his merit for originality than for lucidity and fascination; and whilst many a sentence has Pascal's diamond points, the general movement of his style has Voltaire's conversational ease, with not a little of his wit and sauciness. Erdmann, although not a professed moralist or theologian, writes seriously, and recognizes sacredly the divine laws of human life. Of his twenty Letters, the first nine treat especially of Anthropology, or of man in his position on the earth, his races, ages of life, sexes, temperaments, instincts, habits, organism, whilst the last eleven are given to Psychology proper, or to discussions of the nature and development of intelligence and volition through all the stages of their progress, from the first dim impressions and impulses up to that rational obedience which is the harmony of the intellect and the will. The book does not claim to be the work of a devoted Christian or of a theological champion, yet its tone is not wanting in tenderness and reverence, and its luminous and comprehensive thoughts may be of vast service to minds of more electric temper and apostolic walk. The author belongs apparently to Hegel's school of intellectual realists, yet he is not of the radical class of Hegelians, who take the materialist side of the universe to be the only side, and so ignore the true substance of things. He has certainly got as far as Socrates in the path of life, although it is not clear to us quite that he has reached the Christ. The learned and brilliant Professor of Philosophy at Halle deserves a full introduction to American readers, and we are glad to know that his master-work, the History of Philosophy, is now in course of translation by one of our most promising young scholars.

The Biblical Psychology of Delitzsch, Professor of Theology at Erlangen, seems to us to be the boldest and most significant metaphysical work of the modern orthodoxy of the thorough-going school. There is no mincing of the matter in his pages, no talk of substance of doctrine, or the language