Dr. Watts' version three verses of the 102d Psalm. With thrilling force the grand old words of that inspiring song rolled upward from that vast assembly of strong, earnest, resolute Christian men, standing there in a solid body: "Let Zion and her sons rejoice; Behold the promised hour, Her God hath heard her mourning voice The Lord will raise Jerusalem This shall be known when we are dead And left our long record, That nations yet unborn may read And trust and praise the Lord." The Rev. Dr. Skinner, senior professor in the Union Theological Seminary in New York, led the Assembly in a fervent prayer, and forthwith a committee was dispatched consisting of Dr. Adams and Hon. Wm. Strong, LL. D., to announce the decision in the other Assembly. The question now goes down by overtures from the two Assemblies to their presbyteries respectively; and on the approval of the Basis by two-thirds of each of those bodies the union will be sanctioned. We do not anticipate any considerable opposition. Appearances indicate that there will be almost an entire unanimity, and great is the rejoicing throughout the length and breadth of the long sundered, but now to become, we trust, hearty and effectively one, PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. In conclusion we would, as New School men, express our hearty thanks to our brethren, the friends of Reunion in the other branch of the church, for their uniting zeal and vigilant effort in the prosecution of this desirable result. Our zeal would have flagged more than once in the discouragements encountered, had it not been reinforced by their determined perseverance. Nor have we a word to say in the way of censure of those who have acted in opposition to the measure. They have no doubt acted conscientiously, and, so far as they have acted, frankly and directly. We rather thank them for the opportunity which their arguments and objections have given us to set the real, and we think eminent, merits of the cause in a clearer light. Whatever may have been their objections-whether a sympathy with the truth, a desire to maintain what they would call a "witnessing church," a strong, natural attachment to their own separate body, expressed in the words, "our dear Old School Church," or "our dear New School Church," or a preference for a small compact body over a large, noisy, many-sided, forth-pushing one, or a fear lest the union of organization would not be a union of heart, or that such union would not prove as effectual as competitionthey had a right to their opinions, and most of them, we have little doubt, will yield gracefully to the will of the majority. In all this course of events, and the happy results we anticipate, we recognize with profound gratitude the gracious guidance and interposition of the Providence and Spirit of God. Beyond our fears, beyond even our hopes, he has removed the obstacles, softened our prejudices, brought us to see eye to eye, and brought about a degree of conscious unity and affection which, when we consider the past, as strange as it is, is gratifying to the Christian heart. It is not likely that we have yet surmounted all the difficulties of our position. Questions of great delicacy which no "Concurrent Declarations" could provide for before-hand, will yet come up for decision. And we shall need on both sides the greatest charity, forbearance and mutual conciliation. In particular those who think themselves the special guardians of orthodoxy will have to be very considerate in their application of their principles, and those who are zealous for liberty of thought and language will have to be very wise and moderate in their use of it. We stand upon the Confession of Faith by the most solemnly renewed pledges to each other, and wherein our views differ from those of our brethren, we are bound to express our differences that they will not through any fault of ours be mistaken by them for departures from our common standards. Boldness of thought and expression may be a virtue. But it must not be allowed unnecessarily to hinder charity. If the special guardians of the doctrines are to remember the prophetic censure upon them, "That make a man an offender for a word," equally must those of the liberties of the church remember the admonition of St. Paul: "Take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to them that are weak." The great object for which we are coming together is not the pride of greatness, either in numbers, talents or resources; it is not the pleasure, great as that may be, of enjoying the goodly fellowship of so large a body of brethren and friends; it is service to Christ, efficiency of action in his cause, the combination of our abilities, resources and counsels in enter prises for the glory of God and the good of man, for the advancement of the real interests of humanity, of our country and of the church. If we would be happy in our union, we must be efficient in our work. We trust the two General Assemblies who are to meet for the consummation of this union in the month of November next, will not leave the city of Pittsburg till they have concerted and are prepared to advise some definite measures for at least a practical beginning of this beneficient cooperation. We thank God that we are now able to look forward with so much confidence to a new era of honor and usefulness for a beloved church. The rending and the breaking down, we trust are ended. "The time to cast away stones," even the precious stones of the sanctuary, is gone, we hope, never to return. "The time to gather stones together," "the time to build up" in this our land and in the world the holy temple of the Lord, "the time to sew," to close up the unseemly rents in the beautiful robes of Christ's mystic bride, are at length come. May God give us grace not to be wanting, since, in his favoring providence, we have "come to the kingdom for such a time as this." ART. IX.-NOTES ON RECENT BOOKS. CHURCH HISTORY AND HOMILETICS. History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. By WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY, M. A. In two volumes. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 498, 423. To characterize this work rightly, would require a variety of terms expressive of approval and disapproval. Some things we greatly dislike. They are either impertinent, inconsistent, or unwarranted. But there are large portions of the work which are well conceived and forcibly and eloquently expressed. The theme is an important one. The history of the moral life of a nation or of the race, must ever be a most attractive and profitable subject of investigation to thoughtful minds, and few periods of the past have more claims upon our attention than the early centuries of Christian history and the period of the Reformation. Mr. Lecky has selected the first of these, and while on some points-mainly of minor importance-his generalizations are drawn from imperfect data, or lack the proper and full evidence to support them, yet more usually he indulges, we might almost say revels, in a multiplicity of historical illustrations, which seem at least to abundantly sustain his positions. His opening chapter, which is quite extended, is more metaphysical than historical. It presents the character, claims. bearings and relative merits of the two schools of morais, the Intuitive and the Utilitarian. To the former of these Mr. Lecky decidedly and emphatically inclines. Indeed, his professed devotion to truth for its own sake, irrespective of its bearing upon human interests or sacred institutions, commits him beforehand to the cause which he defends. His reasoning, for the most part, is forcible and unexceptionable, while the school of Bentham and his sympathizers, including Mill, Buckle, Comte, and others, receives some severe thrusts, administered, however, with something of brotherly tenderness. After an elaborate and ingenious effort to reconcile the Intuition theory of morals with moral progress, and showing that the two do in fact harmonize, he proceeds to the proper task which he has undertaken. His picture of Roman morals under Augustus and his immediate successors is ably, and for the most part faithfully drawn. The career of the Stoic and Epicurean systems, with their bearings upon social and civil life are somewhat minutely traced, and while the latter as sympathizing with utilitarianism is seen in all its degrading tendencies, the insufficiency of the former for regenerating a corrupt and dying empire is vividly presented. The introduction and spread of Christianity throughout the bounds of the Roman Empire, are next considered. This is one of the most interesting portions of the work. Mr. Lecky freely admits the paramount importance of the influence exerted by the new religion upon social morals. He makes admissions equal to what the most devoted friends of Christianity will be apt to claim. Its superiority to every thing that had preceded it, is eloquently set forth. "No other religion, under such circumstances, had ever combined so many distinct elements of power and attraction. Unlike the Jewish religion, it was bound by no local ties, and was equally adapted for every nation and every class. Unlike Stoicism, it appealed in the strongest manner to the affections, and offered all the charm of a sympathetic worship. Unlike the Egyptian religions, it united with its distinctive teachings a pure and noble system of ethics, and proved itself capable of realizing it in action. It proclaimed, amid a vast movement of social and national amalgamation, the universal brotherhood of mankind. Amid the softening influences of philosophy and civilization, it taught the supreme sanctity of love. To the slave, who had never before exercised so large an influence over Roman religious life, it was the religion of the suffering and the oppressed. To the philosopher, it was at once the echo of the highest ethics of the later Stoics, and the expansion of the best teachings of the school of Plato. To a world thirsting for prodigy, it offered a history replete with wonders more strange than those of Apollonius; while the Jew and the Chaldean could scarcely rival its exorcists, and the legends of continual miracles circulated among its followers. . To a world that had grown very weary gazing on the cold, passionless grandeur which Cato realized, and which Lucan sung, it presented an ideal of compassion and love-an ideal destined for centuries to draw around it all that was greatest as well as all that was noblest upon earth-a Teacher who could weep by the sepulchre of his friend, who was touched with the feeling of our infirmities. . . . The chief cause of its success was the congruity of its teaching with the spiritual nature of mankind." So, also, Christianity is spoken of as "an agency which all men must admit to have been, for good or for evil, the most powerful moral lever that has ever been applied to the affairs of men." As to the early church, it is remarked, "there has probably never existed a community whose members were bound to one another by a deeper or purer affection than the Christian in the days of persecution... and more successful in reclaiming and transforming the most vicious of mankind." It may seem strange that such an anomlay as Christianity is conceded to have been in the old Roman world. should have no tribute paid to its claims to a divine origin, or that its character as altogether superhuman should not have been more than incidentally illustrated. Yet Mr. Lecky exhausts his learning and skill to make the very idea of miracle appear improbable, if not impossible-although he is on bis guard against asserting the impossibility-and thus appears utterly to ignore everything supernatural in human history. Essaying in substance the solution of the same problem on which Gibbon and others have exhausted their ingenuity, he seems to us to fail in much the same way. He assumes facts as explanations, when these same facts themselves stand in equal need of explanation. He makes much of the organization of the early church, but who does not see that that organization was no originally complex contrivance, but the simple adaptation of the church as a social body to the circumstances and necessities of its position? The organization, so effective, is only a single exponent of the inward life that shaped it. Whence that wonderful life? is the real question. And when that is asked, others come thronging upon us Whence in a time of almost universal moral decay. a system of morals and religion, so beneficient, so sublime, so superior to all the philos⚫ophies and religions of the world, as Christianity? Whence this " most power ful lever that has ever been applied to the affairs of men?" The existence of the lever needs to be explained, far more than its effects. But this Mr. Lecky has failed to do. He says indeed, as if excusing himself from fairly facing the difficulty, "The first rise of Christianity in Judea is a subject wholly apart from this book. We are examining only the subsequent movement in the Roman Empire. Of this movement it may be boldly asserted that the assumption of a moral or intellectual miracle is utterly gratuitous." Be it so then. But why is it? Only because the miracle was already wrought -because the wonderful agency that was to effect the wonderful regeneration already existed and already had been brought into play. Surely after a distinct confession that the vital point of the explanation of the difficulty has been intentionally passed over, it seems to us scarcely the right thing to laboriously endeavor to eliminate "miracle" from all subsequent history, and leave the impression, as Mr. Lecky unquestionably does, upon the reader's mind, that "miracle" is nowhere to be sought, discovered, or implied, in the conditions of the problem. He explains certain results which are the consequence of the great fact which constitute the problem, and not the fact itself. He depreciates the extent and importance of the ten persecutions. He represents the miraculous incidents of Christian history as so suited to the credulity of the time as to be a help rather than a hindrance to the acceptance of the new religion. On these he expatiates at considerable length. Yet he fairly distinguishes the moral elements of Christianity, in kind as well as degree, from those of the pagan systems. He brings out in very clear light the changes wrought by Roman conquest and the introduction of foreign worship and foreign religions. The nature of Roman toleration is also displayed. Repeatedly also do we meet with passages that are at once suggestive and important. For instance, he says, after depicting the changes wrought by Christianity: "It is well for us to look steadily on such facts as these. They display more vividly than any mere philosophical disquisition the abyss of depravity into which it is possible for hu man nature to sink. They furnish us with striking proofs of the reality of the moral progress we have attained, and they enable us in some degree to estimate the regenerat ing influence that Christianity has exercised in the world; for the destruction of the gladlatorial games is all its work. Philosophers indeed might deplore them; gentle natures might shrink from their contagion, but to the multitude they possessed a fascination which nothing but the new religion could overcome." Yet there is frequently an under current of thought coming to the surface which is indicative of strong prejudices, and which assumes what the author certainly does not prove, if it is not actually inconsistent with what he elsewhere asserts. Several instances of incongruity in his statements have come under our notice, in which he comes near to contradicting himself. We think, moreover, there is some reason to complain that he repeatedly fails properly to distinguish between Christianity and its perversions, leaving the former to bear the odium of the latter. In the fact that Christianity makes salvation dependent upon an orthodox belief, Mr. Lecky seems assured that he has found the necessary antecedent to persecutions that have been wrought by nominally Christian bodies. Intolerance, he thinks, is necessarily involved in the tenet, even while he admits elsewhere that the dangerous state of fallen man appeals strongly to Christian sensibility, and evokes the power of Christian love. He can not endure anything of a Calvinistic type. It is the founder of Pelagianism who wins from him the epithet of noble. The idea of "original sin" is to him utterly repulsive, and he does not fail to set forth what he considers its absurdity. Even while paying his tribute to the leaders of the Protestant reform, he stigmatizes Calvin, commingling admiration with censure. "The true teachers of those ages were the reformers, who arose in obscure towns of Germany and Switzerland, or that diseased recluse, who, from his solitude near Geneva, fasci nated Europe with the gleams of a dazzling and almost peerless eloquence, and by a moral teaching which, though often feverish, paradoxical and unpractical, abounded in passages of transcendent majesty, and of the most entrancing purity and beauty." Against what he denominates the theological spirit, in opposition to the scien tific, he inveighs with a bitter severity. It is represented as the barrier to all |
