Sydney, and Dr. Hetherington, of Melbourne, and many others in the Union Churches in Australia, would spurn with contempt the being gazetted in the Blue-Books of the Free Church, if this implied that they held the principles of the Free Church. Precisely the same ministers might be also gazetted in blue-books by the United Presbyterian Synod, and by the General Assembly of the Established Church.

In looking at the Blue-Book of the Free Church in 1865, we see the name of the editor of The Testimony and his brethren. Their names are, however, omitted in the Colonial list of ministers in the Blue-Book of 1866. A touching appeal was published, as an advertisement, in the Edinburgh Daily Review, by the Rev. Mr. M'Culloch, of Ahalton, one of the Free Church minority in New South Wales, imploring the members of the approaching Assembly of 1866 to support the Free Church protesting minority in New South Wales. The appeal was in vain. The minority in Victoria in 1861 were cut off, amid the most violent excitement, rude attacks on some of the minority personally, and in particular on the Rev. Mr. Fraser, of Paisley, who supported their claims; but in 1866, so far as we have heard, not a single word was uttered in the Free Church General Assembly in response to the able and touching appeal of Mr. M'Culloch. We are fully convinced that, in many instances, this silence did not arise from indifference, but from heartlessness, and the melancholy conviction that, humanly speaking, all efforts to stem the latitudinarian flood were hopeless and vain. We would earnestly implore the Free Church to pause ere it be too late, and instead of drifting farther in a downward latitudinarian course, to take up the position so ably yet briefly sketched in the extract we have quoted from The Sydney Testimony.

Literature.

Representative Responsibility; a Law of the Divine Procedure in Providence and Redemption. By the Rev. Henry Wallace, Londonderry. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 38, George Street. London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co. Dublin: J. Robertson & Co. Belfast: C. Atchison. 1867.

We have read this volume with no ordinary interest and satisfaction. It is such a work, however, as would require to be read and re-read, and its contents carefully pondered, in order to an intelligent homologation of its doctrines and arguments as a whole; and this the time at our disposal does not admit. Our opinion of the merits of the work and of the talents of its author is very high. Mr. Wallace is a philosopher and a theologian of no mean order. We have no knowledge of him except

by the work before us; but if he be a young man in his full vigour, as we think he is, we anticipate further productions from his pen tending powerfully to vindicate the great doctrines of Scripture, and to demonstrate the baselessness of the speculations that are being broached by popular writers, and which are being adopted and hailed by certain theologians and associations of Christians at the present time.

The object of this work will be seen from the following statement in the preface :

"It has been my aim, in the following discourses, to prove that the distinctive dootrines of evangelical religion are founded upon principles of universal acceptance amongst men. . . . The truths of the Divine Word have their place there because they are true on other and antecedent grounds; and they do not derive their truth from their place in Scripture. They have therefore two distinct claims upon our belief. The one founded upon the evidence proper to the nature of any given truth; the other in the fact that it is found in the Word of God, and is thus authoritatively pronounced to be true. Both these forms of evidence are divine, but appeal to different parts of our nature-the one to the intellectual, the other to the moral. Our reasoning powers have their appropriate province in investigating the nature of the truth by the light of its proper evidence, the only way by which it can enter into our minds and be properly apprehended. And the proper province of authority in enforcing religious truth is first to require all due attention to the proper evidence of the truth to be received, requiring therefore the exercise of the understanding. And when the understanding has apprehended the truth, it is the province of authority to require that it be admitted to influence conclusively the springs of action, to form the character, to rule the life. It is in this direction I have sought the rational vindication of some of the distinctive doctrines of the evangelical system, being fully persuaded that it is capable of bearing the most searching analysis, and the utmost severity of philosophical criticism."

The first subject discussed in the volume is the representative character of Adam-the imputation of his first sin to all his posterity, and original sin as the consequence of his apostacy. By an elaborate and lengthened argument, conducted with great ability, our author seeks to prove that this representative character of the first man and its consequences arose out of the constitution given to man at his creation, and is not merely to be contemplated as a sovereign appointment of God, that it has been and is acted on by men in the social and individual relations and in the administration of Divine providence. We give the following passage as a specimen of the power with which the argument is conducted ::

"There is a magisterial authority vested in the race, the power of self-government, insomuch that every man feels himself to be responsible to mankind; and that every man has a claim upon his justice, and that he himself is entitled to justice from every man. Universal experience testifies to the organic relation of the members of the race. Every man feels that his acts, while personal to himself, are relative to others also. Their influence does not exhaust itself within his own individuality. It is transitive, passing over upon others, to an undefined extent, for good or for evil. Even the whole genesis of his act is not to be found in himself. It is not wholly original, a purely native product of his own will. It has antecedents out of himself. No act of any man is isolated, any more than the man himself. It has something in

it which connects it with all the past. It has a long line of ancestry. It has some thing in it which connects it with all the future. It has a long line of posterity. And its collateral relations extend over the breadth of every generation. The one single act comprehends within it the fruits of other minds, of other wills, of other responsibilities. There is no act of mine, in which, could I analyse it to its ultimate elements, I should not be able to connect with it thousands of other wills along with my own. And could I return to every man his own proper contribution, the residuum which belongs to me would appear infinitesimally small, simply the last drop which caused the overflow. Could it be traced back in the direct line of its descent, it would be impossible to stop until we had reached the first human will. And although it has' had a distinct and definite relation in its antecedent elements to thousands of other wills, the responsibilities belonging to it had not been exhausted when it reached my will. Nor then; for it has passed on from me to others, swollen in volume by the added elements which it has received from me. Thus have all these antecedent influences connected my will and activity with an act which, although responsibly and justly mine, began with the beginning of the race, and has flowed on through the channel of the "one blood," until its wave has broken upon me. The consequences, of a man's act do not exhaust themselves upon the man himself. And could he trace its course onward he could find it affect others, often, too, with even greater intensity than it affects himself."

con

1

We apprehend there is a flaw in our author's argument about "permission," which he should reconsider. Our space does not permit of discussion; but, we doubt not, there may be, and is, extensive permission on the part of God without involving the least hairbreadth of " nivance." This seems to be admitted by our author himself, when he says, in a subsequent page-"It was no wrong to his (man's) freedom of will to suffer (permit) him to be tried with inducements suited to his nature." The solution of the difficulty as to the entrance of sin seems to be Infallibility is an attribute which belongs to none but God. God himself-with reverence be it said-could not create a creature infallible, for this would be to make a god. But it will not surely be denied that God could effectually support and preserve creatures in the rectitude in which He created them, by moral influence continually put forth, as He maintains the material world by physical influence. Yet He is not under any essential obligation to do so; and in His adorable sovereignty He has, for holy ends worthy of Himself, permitted some of His creatures to fall from the state of rectitude, while He has seen meet so to deal with others that they have been kept in their first state. This view on this deep subject is at least worthy of consideration. None should be forward to dogmatise on a theme so profound.

The representative character of Christ is also discussed by our author with consummate ability. He ever limits this representation to the elect, and knows nothing of a double reference of the atonement-one which leaves all those to whom it refers to inevitable destruction, and another, securing the eternal salvation of all to whom it had and has respect. He knows nothing of an equivocal representative character belonging to the Mediator partly effectual and partly unavailing.

In his discussion of the priesthood of Christ, he adverts to ritualism in such terms as these

"The world's religion, a religion conformable to the world's taste, must present a visible object of worship, and its worship must be elaborate bodily exercise in the midst of the ornate devices of artistic genius, in gorgeous symbolic robes of symbolic forms, and symbolic colours, in a symbolic structure fragrant with symbolic perfume. All is symbolic, nothing real. Any object of worship, material and visible, since the ascension of Christ, is an idol, and its worship idolatry. It must be regarded as a significant fact that no ritual finds a place under the gospel, that in the New Testament it is only referred to with condemnation, as the antagonist of the system of the grace of God. All religious ceremonial professing to be symbolic can only claim the authority of the doctrines and commandments of men,' but are but will. worship' without authority from God."

The last discourse in the volume has for its subject the work and witness of the Spirit. Some of his views on this may be questioned, but we rejoice to meet such sentences as these :

"The Redemption of Christ provides for the certain fulfilment of its whole design; for the faith and repentance and holiness of heart and life, as well as for the pardon. The application of the Redemption is made as certain as its impetration. The practical effect cannot be safely suspended upon any contingency of human will or action. The will must be gained or nothing is gained. A change in the whole experi ence of mind and will is as impossible to a sinner as is the change of his state before God. The redemption which does not secure both is unsuited to the condition of man, and would be unworthy of God. Repentance is as much a gift of Christ's bestowal as is forgiveness, and is as necessary to the complete deliverance of the sinner."

To show the benefit of enlarged acquaintance with revealed truth, among other good effects, our author states

"The more the points of conscious contact between the mind and the truth, the greater is the number of tests by which the genuineness of our Christian experience can be tried, and the less likelihood that all our evidences, the testimony of the Spirit, shall be obscured together."

Throughout the volume Mr. Wallace holds his argument, in all its bearings, with a powerful grasp, and prosecutes it from time to time, through difficult passes, with the unhesitating tread of one who has no doubt himself about the tenableness of his position, though some of his readers may have some dubiety regarding it. He no doubt occasionally soars high, so that it is somewhat difficult to follow him; but the atmosphere in which he moves is never so rarified that his wings are not finding a resting-place such as to make you feel satisfied that he occupies a position of considerable stability. Though one may not be quite sure of all his positions, he never leaves you in the dark as to what these are. He makes use of no misty phraseology. He eschews the regions of transcendentalism, and is at home in those of strong

common sense.

The Tree of Promise; or the Mosaic Economy a Dispensation of the Covenant of Grace. By the late Rev. Alexander Stewart, Cromarty. With a Biographical Notice. Edinburgh: William P. Kennedy, 79, George Street. London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co. 1864.

THIS book did not come to our hand till lately. The work and its author need no commendation from us; the high character of both are fully established. Mr. Stewart was a man of first class talents, but excessively retiring. As a work on the types, and especially on the various sacrifices, it is very suggestive, and the perusal of it will be of great use to preachers of the Gospel as well as others; for of all illus trations of the doctrine of the Gospel, and of the mediatory work of Christ in particular, the Divinely-provided storehouse of this furnished in the ceremonial ritual is the best. In the use of these for this purpose, Mr. Stewart excelled, of which this volume contains ample proof. Of this we can but give our readers the following brief specimen, from a discussion regarding the sacrifice of the red heifer :—

"One circumstance further remains to be noticed. The officiating priest, the person who burnt the carcase, the clean person who gathered the ashes, and even the clean person who sprinkled the water of separation, all contracted the minor uncleanness. There is seeming contradiction in the same ashes or water cleansing the defiled, and also polluting the clean, which some consider an intimation of the inefficacy of ritual purifications; but this only betrays an ignorance wherein that inefficacy consisted, and rivets the contradiction. The explanation is in the nature of the sin-offering. The heifer was by nature clean, and if killed for food might be eaten without defilement; but being made sin,' the carcase was polluted like that of an unclean animal. This was intimated in the annual sin-offering (Lev. xvi. 24, 26, 28), and more clearly in this instance. It is most significant. 2 Cor. v. 21 is the key to the enigma. Christ's being made sin is the very reason His people are made righteous; His guilt is the ground of their innocence; His death is their life. This is certainly the explanation of the circumstance, yet it admits of an accommodation so pointed that it cannot be omitted. The Jews say that Solomon could not unriddle this mystery. When will they see that the blood of Jesus of Nazareth, which cleanses the Christian from all sin, pollutes them with inconceivable guilt? The Gospel is also a savour of life or death to all concerned with it."

There are some things in the letters prefixed of which we are not quite sure, and in the reference to Hervey in particular. There are some forms of expression in the writings of Hervey, and some of the best divines of that era, which we do not now use, but which rightly understood were designed to embody the truth regarding the warrant and the nature of the exercise of appropriating faith. But the following extracts from a letter as to the views of Dr. Wardlaw have a freshness in them, though written off-hand to his brother, and a certainty of sound which show the firm grasp with which Mr. Stewart held the doctrines of the Calvinistic system, and his skill in detecting and exposing error :

"I was thinking to-day," he says, "lying on the sofa, of the love of God. He is good to all. He bestows benefits apon them; life, health, the comforts of life, and on many the means of grace and the proffer of salvation. But after all that, the objects