tion of Christ. this review entered on the public ministration of the Gospel, there were found a few lifting up their voices in protest and advocacy, that it was not only possible but probable, that all who died in infancy, having been guilty of no actual sin-no rejection of Him who was appointed the world's Redeemer, weresaved. I must nowspeak in the first person. As having been from the beginning (ab ovo, as they say) of antislavery tendencies, I "cast in my lot" with the pleaders for probability, to share the odium of being suspected— suspected! denounced, as being unsound, and licentiously squandering the salvaBut Common Sense was with us, and we prospered. Nay, that is not the accurate account. It protested against our paltering limitation. Mere probability of all being saved implied, it said, the possibility of some or many of infant spirits, who had neither done, nor spoken, nor thought an evil thing, being consigned to the fires of Hell. Civilization, not to speak of piety, will not endure it. You must progress, Reverend Sirs. So we of the anti-slavery school ascended the platform to proclaim the certainty of the salvation of all dying in infancy -when the pro-slavery Conservatism of Dogma was now in its turn reduced to a feeble protestation that we were wise above what is written-as if it were not written that God is just, which He would not be were He to consign to Hell fire any infant spirit. All Common Sense says, Amen. You need not try by sophistications to reduce the judgment. Common Sense will not now tolerate you in preaching. as was preached by not a few, even so late as fifty years ago, that there are possibly, if not probably a multitude of infants, "not a span long," dreeing the penalty of Adam's sin in the abyss of Hell. SIMPLY, IT IS MOST DREADFUL TO THINK WITH WHAT THOUGHTS OF GOD THE MIND OF SCOTLAND WAS IMPREGNATED, AND THAT NOT LONG SINCE." Not long since! There remain, at this moment, not a few of the old Conservative party, who hold by the antique doctrine of the possible damnation at least of an incalculable multitude of infant spirits. The Leisure Hour. 1861. These two fine volumes (and especially the first of the two), may confidently challenge comparison with all the periodical literature of England, issued for the instruction and delight of the common people. The engravings are first-rate, and the old superstition that everybody is six feet high, seems to have been at length laid aside by the artists of these volumes. The pictures are, consequently, far more life-like. We have read some of the stories in 'The Leisure Hour,' and can understand quite well that such writing as they exhibit for a penny a week, could be commanded only by the resources and the circulation of a great society. The two volumes are solid monuments of the literary and pictorial arts of 1861. Congregational Church Worship. A Paper read at Halifax, by G. W. CONDER, of Leeds. W. Kent and Co. 1861. Probably it is not within the reach of our influence to persuade any man to purchase a threepenny tract, much less to purchase a hundred of them at the price of one guinea. If we could form so exaggerated an idea of our ability, we should say to any person possessed of one spare pound, and good principles, send for a hundred copies of Mr. Conder's essay on worship as it is, and as it ought to be, amongst the Independents and Baptists, and circulate them among your friends at church next Sunday. By so doing, you will confer a spiritual gift upon the congregation, and if you are cursed with a pulpit formalist, you will mightily quicken for some time to come, his energies in prayer and praise. The vulgar dissenting prejudices against forms' and 'chanting,' are here treated not very ceremoniously. It is seldom indeed, as Mr. Conder says, that the worship' in a dissenting chapel wholly without forms, is of a nature to lift up the soul to heaven by its nobleness and fervour. In this, as in so many other things, our grand old cause has been half ruined by the dominant influence of a petty traditional sectarianism, proceeding on the theory that whatever the Church of England does is wrong. Thank Heaven, there is a turn in the tide, and an altogether different class of men are likely to guide the future destinies of Nonconformity. St. Mark's School by the Seaside in the Summer of 1861. A suggestion by Rev. STEPHEN HAWKEY, M.A. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co. This pamphlet details the successful execution of an ingenious project for giving some of the boys of two national schools, one inland at Windsor, the other maritime at Portsmouth, a summer holiday by the interchange of homes. The particulars of the enterprise are too intricate to describe, but it may be said that the pleasure given to the boys, and the civilizing influence thence accruing, were so great, that the history of the undertaking is well deserving the attention of those who may feel prompted to 'go and do likewise.' Charges and Sermons on Special Occasions, during a Ministry of Fifty Years. By ANDREW REED, D.D. Ward and Co. 1861. 'Rise up before the face of the old man. In this volume, the venerable author concludes his long ministerial course. The book is magnificently brought out in respect of type, paper, and binding, as if the publishers were resolved that it should last for many years to come. The many friends of the preacher will gladly avail themselves of this opportunity of obtaining a valuable memorial of a ministry through half a century. It is a volume full of excellent counsel, especially to those who are engaged in the loftiest occupations. Dr. Reed's charges are 'weighty and powerful;' but he is a man, and this is his chief glory, mightier in works than in words. 6 At an annual dinner of one of the charitable institutions which he founded, the Duke of Wellington, in his old age, spoke of him as a great man, whose requisition to preside he felt himself unable to refuse.' We imagine that that feature in Dr. Reed's character which especially impressed the Duke, was his faculty of organization and government. So universal and so deep is the conviction of Dr.Reed's practical wisdom and capacity, that it is impossible to avoid sincerely wishing that the heathen had enjoyed some of those beneficial exertions which have been devoted to the idiots. One of the sermons in this volume, that on the death of the Princess Charlotte, will be read at this moment with profound interest, as pourtraying a state of feeling so similar to our own under the recent national bereavement. May the pious author still be spared many years to enjoy the retrospect of a well-spent life. THE CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR. MARCH, 1862. MR. UNDERHILL'S BOOK ON THE WEST INDIES.* TO MANY the whole West Indian Question is blasé. If it were introduced into Mincing-lane, or on the Liverpool Exchange, the possible and probable polite reply would be somewhat as follows: -Blank the West Indies; they are ruined lock and stock; clean and complete done for; the plauters are bankrupt; the negroes are idle squatters; and the parsons are fanatics; that blessed boon of a straggling philanthropy called emancipation has been the dead ruin of the colonies, and we don't want to hear any platform or pulpit stories about " Pumpkin-Headed-Quashie." Nay more, and we speak from experience, if this West Indian Question turn up in an evening party composed of gentlemen and ladies, who say they believe that God has made of one blood all nations to dwell on the face of the earth,' and who at pious intervals hear with bowed heads that 'God is the Creator and Preserver of all men,' and join in the intoned amen at the close of the solemn and sublime prayer; if even to such a class this question should be introduced, the chances are a thousand to one that the majority present would re-echo in politer phrase the disgusting cant we have quoted above. And we declare we should not be surprised to hear a fast young man, or a smart young lady, avow their belief that the emancipated negroes of the West Indies were the Anthropophagi of Shakespere, 'whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." Just now, however, it appears to us most desirable to re-open the vexed question' of negro emancipation. Nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed since, amid prognostications as gloomy and as false as those of Zadkiel, the Imperial Parliament decreed freedom to 800,000 of our black and coloured fellow subjects in the West Indies, and as if to visit themselves with penalty condign for a long *The West Indies: their Social and Religious Condition.' By EDWARD BEAN UNDERHILL. Jackson & Co., London, 1862. VOL. III.-NEW SERIES. 9 6 complicity in the guilty phantasm that man could hold property in man, and buy what was woman-born, and feel no shame, the people of this country cheerfully voted twenty millions sterling to the slaveholders of the West Indies, for an alleged, but never proven, loss consequent upon emancipation. Looking now at what has come to be called the American crisis,' descrying as a future, though we think remote, possibility, the freedom of the four millions of slaves born and bred for slavery in the rice and cotton plantations of the South, as the result of the present mad, bloody, and fraticidal war between the North and the South; descrying this, it becomes us to study gravely the social and the fiscal questions that are so intertwined with, and inseparable from, the problem of Freedom versus Slavery, or vice versa. We are enabled to do so from the most recent investigation into the 'social and religious condition of the West Indies,' by a gentleman, not in holy orders, who, after a lengthened travel in India, has visited the West Indies, and, during a protracted stay in its principal islands, endeavoured to collect from all parties indiscriminately facts and statistics by which he and his readers might be guided to safe and just conclusions respecting the present condition of these islands. In this paper we will endeavour to let Mr. Underhill speak for himself as much as possible, while we glean from his observations such information as shall enable us to look at the West Indian question with philosophic calmness, as we deduce our inferences from his ably-adjusted facts. Three questions present themselves to our minds, and we will search the book to obtain their answer; the condition of the islands as properties; the causes of the existing good and evil; and the moral and religious condition of the enfranchised population. 1. What is the condition of the West Indian islands as properties. On the voyage out, Mr. Underhill was assured that the Act of 1838 was, with a great want of wisdom, carried into hasty execution. The change was too sudden, and was inevitably followed by the ruin of Jamaica, Grenada, St. Vincent's, and the rest of the English Antilles.' The slave, too, 'was unfit for freedom; he ought to have been placed under salutary restraint for a long term of years' (he had been that for generations back, and yet was 'unfit;' a little longer, yet a little longer, and by West Indian logic, he will be fit for freedom); but the 'fanatical zeal of philanthropists and missionaries defeated every measure of this kind.' Chief amongst these were the 'Baptist missionaries, who were the great obstacle to a sound and fair settlement of those economical questions which emancipation raised for solution.' If this be so, no wonder that Mr. Trollope, who thinks sherry and bitters a very pretty habit in a warm country,' should add, that he hates the Baptists as he hates poison.' ་ ST. KITTS was one of the first islands visited by Mr. Underhill. It is most lovely in its scenery :-the Devonshire of the West Indies. Here he found the 'labourers well paid;' 'the money rate of wages pretty uniform; the produce large and increasing;' so that last year they exported 9,600 hogsheads of sugar, the largest export of sugar for fifty-one years.' That is how St. Kitts is ruined by emancipation! This happy result is 'doubtless owing to the residence on the island of many of the proprietors of the estates, and the wisdom which of late years has characterised the measures of its government. Even Mr. Trollope, who did not visit St. Kitts, admits that he was told' that it was prospering fairly; although 'sugar was not exported in great quantities.' Only more than for 'half a century.' Credat Judæus. GRENADA was the next island visited. It is an irregular heap of volcanic masses piled one on another; the interstices between the rocks and the table lands being the only cultivable parts. These do certainly stand dressed in living green, and present a charming coup d'œil from the sea. It was once a prince among the islands, owing to the vast amount of smuggling that went on there, in consequence of its vicinity to the Spanish main. It is now apparently 'fast going to ruin. The streets and squares were grass-grown; the shops looked bare and dull, and no vehicles broke the silence of the rude paving over which we stumbled.' 'Tropical vegetation chokes up the dismantled fort; climbs, and then crumbles down the empty dwellings; clothes every rock with freshness; even the steep volcanic sides of the mountains are draped with the roots of trees.' Alas! this is too true a picture, but how has it been brought about? Grenada owes its decay to the perverse conduct of the planters at emancipation. A system of summary ejectment was resorted to on the estates, without any regard to age or sex, which drove the people to emigrate to Trinidad or elsewhere.' That is how Grenada was ruined by emancipation; and, although during the intervening years, the negro has sought and found a quiet home of industrious labour in more favoured colonies, according to the high authority of Mr. Trollope, he has made no approach to the civilisation of his white fellow-creature, whom he imitates as a monkey does a man.' Still even Grenada is not in a hopeless condition of collapse. The planters of Barbadoes are buying land cheap there, and a 'portion of the over-crowded population of that island has been induced to transfer its labour' to Grenada. TRINIDAD was the third of the Antilles visited by Mr. Underhill. His chapter on that island is a most valuable addition to the scanty knowledge we possess of it. He arrived there August 23, and remained there till September 25; during which time he travelled nearly its whole length and breadth, visited several estates, and conversed, not only with missionaries, but with the chief justice, |