The most trained masters of experimentation are the sole proper triers of the truth and nature of these phenomena.

A Sermon preached by Dr. E. P. HUMPHREY, in 1852, before the Old School Presbyterian Assembly, with general applause, on " Our Theology and its Developments," prompts the following paragraph in the "Notices:"

"A Presbyterian divine of the old school, expatiating on the expanding and aggressive power of his theology, could hardly shut out of mind the numerous and powerful denomination which espouses the doctrines of Wesley-a denomination which has spread with so wondrous rapidity over territories once loyal to the faith that is 'delivered systematically in the judgment of the Synod of Dort.' He might ignore the Lutheran Church, the English Episcopal Church, and other bodies of Christians who do not take Turretin for their text-book in theology. But how could he pass over in silence the Christian denomination which, in the space of a few years, had grown to outnumber his own, in portions of the country, too, where Presbyterianism had long enjoyed undisputed possession? Dr. Humphrey thus accounts for the growth of Methodism: 'It might be clearly shown, as I humbly conceive, that its past success is to be referred, not to those doctrines which are peculiar to itself, but to those which are common to both theologies.' Perhaps the Wesleyan would reply that the success of Dr. Humphrey's system is due likewise, not to its peculiarities, but to the elements which it has in common with other systems. But will Dr. Humphrey deny that one of the chief causes of the spread of Methodism, is the antagonism of its preachers to a notion of predestination, which served in the popular mind to cast doubt on the sincerity of God in the Gospel invitations? Is not their success very much due to the emphasis with which they have insisted on the truth of God's unwillingness that any should perish-on the truth that none who will seek God, are cut off from the hope of salvation, and that all may seek him-nay, that all are commanded and entreated to do so? The vitality of Methodism sprung from its assertion of these truths of the Gospel. So far, its power is the power of the Gospel. It has erred in denying what it could not set in harmony with them. But what shall be said of the creed which says nothing of the love and grace of God, and his desire for the salvation of impenitent men-like the creed on page seventh of the sermon before us? What shall be said of the preaching which leaves the impression that the Gospel affords no opportunity, except to a small portion of those addressed? Of such preaching, this at least may be said, that it is responsible for the astonishing progress of Methodism, and for whatever is one-sided in Methodist theology."

It would indeed be a problem for Dr. Humphrey to show how, if Methodist success arose from "doctrines held in common with other denominations," she has, during her brief life, outrun them all! How should the same amount of cause produce double or treble the amount of effect? But Methodists know full well, that while the doctrine of justification by faith (of which Calvinists have so often denied us the possession) is the common life-spring by which all evangelical denominations run, the sources of all our own extra freshness of feeling and vigor of action are not one, but nearly all the points in which we differ from Calvinism. A Methodist preacher would indeed feel his mouth shut up by the dogma, that every sin and every impenitence was predetermined by God; and that more than half, perhaps all his hearers were damned not only before he began his sermon, but before they were born. What expansion to a preacher's soul, to preach a free salvation offered by a sincere God, purchased by a universal atonement, unlimited by any secret exclusive decree, unobstructed by any volitional necessity of rejection—that is, disenthralled of all the hampers of Calvinism, moderate or immoderate! What a constant warn

ing to the Christian's persevering life, to know that apostasy is a real possibility, verified by many an actual example; not a safe impossibility, as old Calvinism saith; nor a shadowy possibility that never can happen, as young Calvinism subtilly splits it. And then, while both Calvinisms dread the doctrine of Assurance, knowing that, joined to the doctrine of infallible Perseverance, it produces a bold presumption of not only present, but eternal salvation, Methodism teaches us the duty and the joy of knowing a present salvation; and knowing it each hour of life for just that hour! And, inasmuch as Calvinism must affirm of every apostate, however bright his evidence of conversion for long years, that he never had any grace, it thereby destroys to the soul all certainty of evidence until probation is closed, making the Christian life a path of mist. And as the completed perseverance is the only sure test of reality, the Calvinist lives not in a state of cherished and joyous faith, but in a position of perpetually cultivated doubt; a state of permanent, querying self-diagnosis, which can never be verified by present phenomena, but only by final result, by which he becomes like a dyspeptic studying his own stomach; not like a racer taking his health for granted, and running because he is vigorous, and vigorous because he runs. And then, to know that mighty is the fullness of the spirit, whereby we may be here on earth made triumphant over the temptations that assail us, and sanctified from the sins that would beset us, not as a metaphysical possibility never realized, but as a fact of multiplied experience-what a stimulant to earnestness of prayer, and to struggle after real, livable holiness! Thus, wherein we differ from Calvinism, therein it is we are free and fresh, happy and strong. An entire different religious temperament is created. All the difference is realized between Puritanism and Methodism. And a freer, more flexible activity is formed; a variety, that dissipates the monotonous, and breaks up the mechanical. And we must tell our New Haven friends that, while the above paragraph indicates, what we have often thought, that their divinity was framed to forestall Methodism without becoming identical with it, we are deeply certain that they have but little mended the old divinity of Calvinism. Their umbratile distinctions, by which they would attain the advantages of Wesleyan Arminianism, without plagiarizing its principles, are metaphysical chef d'œuvres, but practical failThere remain the contradictions, the exclusions, the unbroken fatalities of Calvinism in the creed. There remain the acridness of Puritanism in the spirit, its angularity in the form, its mechanicalness in the activity. Indeed, we have often felt in worshiping with our devout but monotonous Calvinistic friends, as if their and our whole performance were a solemn panoramic movement, of which we were a fated part; and in no instance has this sensation been felt more vividly than under the ministration of some of the chief doctors of New-Haven theology themselves.

ures.

And we join their Old School brethren in fearing that they are in a doubtful transition state; standing on unmaintainable ground; and liable to wake up, next generation, Pelagian. We Methodists know our firm position. We are marching to our second centennial, without a nail of the old Wesleyan platform changed, sprung, or rusty. But of New School Calvinism we stand in doubt what will be its future status, or, mayhap, its terminus.

II.-Foreign Reviews.

L THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, October, 1857.-1. Spedding's Complete Edition of the Works of Bacon: 2. Napier: 3. The Mediterranean Sea: 4. Henri Martin's History of France: 5. Landed Credit: 6. Lives of the Chief Justices of England: 7. The Highlands-Men, Sheep, and Deer: 8. Michael Angelo: 9. India.

IL THE CHRIstian RemembRANCER, October, 1857.-1. Recent Literature and Art: 2. Sinai and Palestine: 3. Anglo-Continental Association: 4. Robert Browning: 5. Mr. Kingsley's Novels: 6. Pusey on the Councils.

III. THE JOURNAL OF SACRED LITERATURE, July, 1857.-1. Biblical Revision-The Gospel of St. John: 2. The Periods of our Lord's Life and Ministry: 3. History of the Sabbath under the Old Testament Dispensation; Its Divine Origin and Universal Obligation: 4. Some Strictures upon Stanley's Sinai and Palestine: 5. The Legend of Peter's Penitential Food: 6. Correspondence. IV. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Quarterly RevIEW, October, 1857.-1. Researches in Palestine: 2. Progressive Developments of the Divine Purpose: 3. Ferns and Fern Literature: 4. Caste and Christianity: 5. French Novels and French Plays; their Influence on French Society: 6. Special Services for the People: 7. Quarterly Report of Facts and Progress.

V. THE LONDON (Wesleyan) QUARTERLY REVIEW, October, 1857.-1. The University of London: 2. Tooke's History of Prices: 3. Cotemporary French Philosophy: 4. Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition: 5. Silver from the Mine to the Mint: 6. Lives of the Chief Justices: 7. Vigil the Peruvian Canonist: 9. Lord Dufferin's Yacht Voyage to Iceland: 9. Chronicles of Geneva: 10. The Sepoy Rebellion in India.

A SUPERIOR number. The article on British India (written by Rev. William Arthur) contains many eloquent utterances in regard to the late terrible outburst of Eastern heathenism, and statesman-like suggestions for future reforms. VI. THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW, October, 1857.-1. Female Dress in 1857: 2. Political Priests: 3. Quedah; or, Adventures in Malayan Waters: 4. History of Civilization in England: 5. Aurora Leigh: 6. The Four Empires: 7. The Choephora of Eschylus: 8. Representative Government- what is it good for? 9. Mommsen's Roman History: 10. The Progress of English Jurisprudence. THE first article is an able disquisition on the extravagance of female fashion. It is very timely, very truthful, and not unlikely to produce good results. But we should have preferred to see the still greater extravagances of men, not merely in the article of dress, in which their culpability is not inferior, but in regard to indulgences degrading and unhealthful as well as expensive, from which the gentler sex is pure. The wines and liquors, the cigars and the tobaccos, the banquets and the races, will tell a terrible balance on the side of male extravagance, which need not, indeed, silence the due reproof of female fashion, but should always suggest the proper husband to it. Our discipline, before it withdrew its sharp rebuke of extravagance of apparel, was somewhat liable to the same objection of male partiality. The Westminster republishes entire Mr. Butler's graceful satire, "Nothing to Wear." It thus furnishes an answer to the keen interrogation point once put by Sidney Smith in the Edinburgh Review, "Who reads an American book?"

The late work put forth by Mr. Gliddon and the other authors of the skeptical and somewhat bitter "Types of Mankind," entitled "Indigenous Races of the Earth; or, New Chapters of Ethnological Inquiry," meets but a

cold reception from the Westminster Review. The critic at start remarks, that, "it challenges attention by its bulk, and the pretensions of its title-page, if by no other more deserving claim." He charges it with ignoring the latest researches on important points, and neglecting valuable analogies which make against the "polygentic" theory of a variety of human origins.

Professor Draper's "Human Physiology" is highly commended, while his theory of non-existence of " vital force” is repudiated.

"We are not altogether in accordance with him in either of these respects; because we consider that we have just as much evidence of the existence of some peculiar power or agency in the living body, which may be appropriately named vital force,' as we have of heat and of electric force, or even of mechanical force; and in many of the instances in which Professor Draper clearly shows that heat or some other physical agent is the primum mobile, we conceive that it must become metamorphosed into vital force by acting through an organic structure, just as heat is metamorphosed into electricity when it passes through a combination of bismuth and antimony. We fully agree with him, that the socalled 'plastic power' of a cell, or the germ of a seed, may be regarded as the manifestation of an antecedent physical impression;' but until it can be shown why the same physical impression shall occasion the evolution of one cell-germfor example-into a Zoophyte, and of another into a Bird, it seems to us that we must recognize something distinctive in the original constitution of eachcall it by what name we may-which determines these differences."

It is due to Professor Draper to say, that his rejection of the doctrine of a life principle is not an indication of materialism or of skepticism in regard to the truths of the soul. We know of few scientific writers who seem to warm with a more spontaneous or genial glow when his subject brings him near the precincts of the hopes and verities of immortal life.

Upon Michelet's "History of France in the Seventeenth Century" the Westminster passes the extraordinary eulogy, that it will do more to reinstate the cause of French Protestantism in the opinion of Europe, than any book which has appeared since "Calvin's Institutes." The reason is, that while all other French historians, even Protestant ones like Guizot and Sismondi, have assumed the Catholic and Absolutist stand-point, as exemplified in the splendid rottenness of the reign of Louis XIV., Michelet has assumed the stand-point of the great Henry IV., at the time when, by Jesuit intrigue, he was assassinated. This stand-point was anti-Catholic and anti-absolute. When with Henry it expired, the freedom and true greatness of France expired also.

VII. THE NATIONAL REVIEW, October, 1857.-1. The Reform of the Army: 2. The Autobiography of a Mohammedan Gentleman: 3. Charles Waterton: 4. The Ultimate Laws of Physiology: 5. Unspiritual Religion: Professor Rogers: 6. Alexander Smith's Poetry: 7. Popular Legends and Fairy Tales: 8 Béranger: 9. The Military Revolt in India.

THE article on Unspiritual Religion aims to be a severe rebuke on Henry Rogers's Greyson Letters, which is noticed in our Book-Table. By a very unnecessary miss of the mark, the reviewer charges on the religion the unspirituality which he finds in Mr. Rogers's publication in support of the religion. The main charges against Mr. Rogers are, that his tone is undevout, sharp, and sarcastic; that he deals in logic in a matter which is truly an affair of pure and high emotion; and that his logic is very unsatisfactory in its kind. The article is so Maurician that we suspect it to be Mr. Maurice's own.

It has so much of his strained effort to state positions which cannot be stated or understood, his intense earnestness about something, nobody can exactly discover what, though he is always about to tell, that we find ourselves in the perusal in the usual state of entranced confusion into which the pages of that hazy gentleman are sure to magnetize us.

Mr. Rogers's book is certainly not in general devout; for it professedly treats on the logical difficulties which often obstruct the acceptance of the facts or the theory of Evangelical religion. It as certainly is sarcastic; for it does often find capricious crotchets conjured up by semi-skeptics, for which sarcasm is the proper correlative remedy. It is perhaps too rollicking; and yet who more needs to be caught with their own grain than the rapid, rollicking glancers-on-the-wing at truth? Now such things do not at all meet the case of our high spiritual emotionist, who cannot accept Scripture facts or orthodox doctrine; who does not know exactly what, as matter of theory, he does accept; but who simply cherishes his spiritual nature, and makes his religion consist in a high state of the pietistic instincts. To all this it would be a sufficient reply, If the book does not suit your case, then yours is the case for which the book was not written.

And so religious skepticism has at the present time got into a fit of piety. The slight exceptions only prove the rule, that this is an absolutely new phenomenon in its history. Even Herbert of Cherbury did not talk in the hyper-evangelical strain of Francis Newman. The utmost that deists and semi-deists have hitherto done, has been to construct a system of natural religion, in which they have contrived to live in a state of temperate satisfied rationality and emotional quietism. To appropriate coolly the religious nomenclature of high evangelicism; to purloin the process of repentance, conversion, and sanctification; to involve their sanctification up to the nth power of purified profession, and so look down upon the low level of Wesley's Christian Perfection, is the feat of modern pictistic deism. And the ladder of Christian doctrine and Scripture fact by which Puritans and Methodists toilsomely climb up to sanctification, is not only to be held as unnecessary, but it is to be unceremoniously kicked down as an absolute clog upon the ascending feet of the true spiritual emotionist. Alas! the fresh feeling of originality with which all this is done, proves that through ages past, if spirituality is a reality, its reality has been maintained by Scripture evangelicism alone; and that it is a novelty, never before known in all the centuries, upon semi-deistical lips. We have a right to say to this communion of pietists, Where was your Church before Francis Newman? While during past decades our Scripture evangelicism has been tugging and fighting to maintain the cause of spiritual religion, where were you and your fatherhood? Deduce your pedigree, if you can, through any other route than the church of Thomas Paine. Show us a decenter past or a modester present. Nor can we rid ourselves of a sense of its unreality, as well as its newness of invention. It is overdone and sounds like falsetto. It is sudden, and looks like a gotten-up fashion. It is upstart, and lacks reliability. Nor can we rid ourselves of the impression that its founders are a set of overgrown children who have said, "Let us play religion." Like inveterate Methodists, we must put them on probation. When