author's fervid conjectures and assumptions, one or two considerations will suggest themselves.

In the first place, there seems to be some inadvertency, common to him with many divines and pious men, in expressing the mode of apprehending the interposition of Deity, as manifested in the person of the Messiah. He sometimes falls into language which would do little less than imply that the Divine Nature, as subsisting in that mysterious connexion with the human, subjected itself to a temporary limitation, and, if we may apply such a term, monopoly, to that one purpose and agency of human redemption; as if Deity, so combined, contracted, and depressed itself from the state of Deity in the abstract, sustaining some suspension of the exercise of those infinite attributes which can be limited to no one object, or op. eration, or world, for one instant.-Not that any such limitation is intended so to be implied; but, under the defective effect of a language which bears a semblance of such an import, the argument in question (that from the pre-eminent marvellousness and benevolence of the expedient for redemption) is carried to an exaggerated conclusion. Of this deceptive character, we think, is the parallel which begins in page 150, between this great act of Divine interposition, and the supposed instance of a monarch of an extensive empire, who should, for a brief space of time, a few hours, or a day, (which would, as the author remarks, be infinitely longer in proportion to the whole time of his reign, than the duration of the mediatorial period on earth as compared with the eternity of the divine government,) lay aside the majesty and the concerns of his general government, to make a visit of compassion to the humble cottage of some distressed or guilty family. It is obvious that this illustration should imply (or the virtue of the parallel is lost) that "in turning him to our humble habitations," (page 152) "the King, Eternal, Immortal, and Invisible," (in these absolute terms of Divinity, the visitant is designated,) did in some manner withdraw and descend from the full amplitude of the glory and exercise of the unalienable attributes of Deity. But surely, whatever was the mode of that mysterious combination of the divine with an inferior nature, we are required religiously to beware of all approach toward such an idea as that of a modification of the Supreme nature, and to preserve the solemn idea of a Being, absolute, unalterable, and necessarily always in entire possession and excercise of all that consti

tutes its supremacy and perfection. But the divine nature "manifested" in the human, in the person of the Messiah, continued then and ever in such an unlimited state of glory and action, that it might be then, and at every moment of the mediatorial dispensation, making innumerable other manifestations of itself, and performing infinite wonders of grace and power altogether foreign, are the remote scenes of their display, from this world and the interposition for its redemption; an interposition, which could in no manner interfere with any other interpositions, of a kind indefinitely dissimilar from it and one other, which the Sovereign Agent might will to effect in other regions.

Since, therefore, the inexplicable indwelling in the person of the Mediator, could in no manner affect the plenary presence and energy of the divine Nature, as while so indwelling, pervading also all the other realms of the universe; and since, while that mighty essence imparted immeasurable virtue to the mediatorial work and sacrifice, it yet could not sustain any difficulty, degradation, or injury;-as the griefs, the dreadful inflictions for the sin of the world, fell exclusively upon a subordinate being, belonging to our own economy;-there would not seem to be an imperious reason for the universality of the inhabitants of the creation to be occupied with a paramount interest in the transaction, though so illustrious a display of the Almighty's justice and mercy toward one section of his domin

ion.

In the next place, we would notice a still more striking inadvertency in our excellent author's representations. In maintaining the probability of the knowledge and celebration of the wonderful expedient for the redemption of man, far through the numberless abodes of intellectual existence, he indulges habitually a strain of descriptive sentiment which would be precisely applicable, if that economy were designed to be, or were in fact, redeemingly comprehensive of the whole world of men. But then, is it applicable, as the awful truth stands displayed before us? He keeps quite out of view what that divine intervention was not designed to accomplish, as made evident in the actual state in life, and after death, of a dread proportion of the human race; and forms his conceptions of the manner of interest with which innumerable pure and happy tribes of the universe may be imagined to contemplate our world, as if this reality of things should not be apparent to them.

It is too obvious how deeply this reality affects the ground of his sanguine and exulting presumptions of such an immensely extended interest and gratulation.

We should advert to those passages of Scripture which he has collected in page 147.

"And while we, whose prospect reaches not beyond the narrow limits of the corner we occupy, look on the dealings of God in the world, as carrying in them all the insignificancy of a provincial transaction; God himself, whose eye reaches to places which our eye hath not seen, nor our ear heard of, neither hath it entered into our imagination to conceive, stamps a universality on the whole matter of the Christian salvation, by such revelations as the following:-That he is to gather together, in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are in earth, even in him ;—and that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth ;-and that by him God reconciled all things unto himself, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven."

We do not know where to seek a rule of interpretation for these passages, the most essential expressions of which—“ all things" and " things in heaven"-are among the most indefinite phrases in the Bible. It cannot be proved that their meaning does not comprehend more than such a portion of superhuman beings as may be placed within a circumscribed economy appropriate to our world-as some of the angels evidently are. But the circumstance which is fatal to every ambitious interpretation of them in their higher reference, is, the necessity of putting an exceedingly restricted one on them in their lower. How greatly less must be intended than the literal import of the expression," all things in earth," is shown in the history and the actual and prospective state of the earth's inhabitants.

We must not prolong a course of remarks in which we are sensible of having been unpardonably prolix, by commenting on the Discourse, "On the contest for an ascendancy over man, among the higher orders of intelligence. The first part

of it is employed, at rather perhaps too great a length for a printed work, in repetition and recapitulation; but this might be highly proper in the discourse as delivered, at a considerable distance of time from the former ones in the series. The exhibition of the warfare is in a high tone of martial energy. And what cause we have to wish, as Dr. Chalmers did in an able sermon, published a few years since, that the spirit and splendour of oratory and poetry might, through a heaven-in

flicted fatally, desert, henceforward, all attempted celebrations of any other warfare than that between the cause of God and the power of evil, as put forth in infernal or in human agency.

We have no disposition to accompany this portion of our ardent speculator's career, with exceptions to what we may deem its excesses of sentiment, and imagery, and confident conjecture. What we are most tempted to remark upon, in the description of the great contest carrying on between the intelligent powers of light and darkness, for domination over the destiny of man, is a something too much like an implication that this destiny can really be, in any possible measure, a depending question between created antagonists, or that it can appear to them, on either side, to be so, while both of them must be aware of the absolute certainty that the will of the Almighty is infinitely sovereign over all things. Indeed, this consideration renders it profoundly mysterious that there can be any contest at all. And to say that the existence of the contest is mysterious, is saying in effect, that it is impossible to attain a probable conception how the parties are actuated. The sense of this has always, with us, interfered with the interest of the former part of the Paradise Lost. There appears

an enormous absurdity in the presumptions and calculations on which the delinquent spirits adopt and prosecute their enterprise; an absurdity, we mean, on the part of the poet, in making them to act from calculations, which it was absolutely impossible their enlarged understandings could entertain.

Nevertheless, we have the testimony, express and by diversified implications, of the Holy Scriptures, for the fact of a formidable moral dissension among the higher order of intelligences, in which the condition of the human race has been awfully involved.

The concluding Discourse is on a topic of very serious and melancholy interest,-the possibility to minds of feeling, and taste, and imagination, of being elated to noble contempla. tions, and affected by fine emotions, of a nature that shall seem to be intimately related to genuine piety, and may easily be mistaken for it, while yet the heart is destitute of all that is essential in the experience of religion. Nothing could be better judged than the placing of this subject in broad and prominent view at the close of such a train of contemplations. How possible is it that hundreds of readers may have expatiated in thought with emotions of sublime and delightful solemnity, on

the scene of astronomical magnificence displayed in the introductory Discourses; and inasmuch as the glory of that scene is the glory of the Almighty Creator, may have deemed their emotions to partake of, or be identical with, religious devotion, a sentiment and a state to which there were tests existing to convict them of being strangers. The preacher has forcibly illustrated, in many other forms, this treacherous semblance of religious vitality. And the feeling awakened at the view of so many interesting emotions, still useless, and by their deceptive influence, worse than useless, to the subjects of them, is so mournful, that the reader is almost impelled to relieve himself by seeking cause to think that some of the representations are over-wrought, and some of the decisions too severe; and he is tempted to be gratified at obtaining an alleviation of the painful effect of some of the stern adjudgments, at the expense of the judge, whose occasional violences of oratory, and negligences of discrimination, afford a hint that his sentence cannot be without appeal. Much important and alarming truth, however, there is in this Discourse. It contains the elements of an eminently useful and warning instruction. But the subject requires a much more elaborate and definite discussion; and we wish Dr. Chalmers may take another opportunity of treating it formally with the deliberate, best exertion of his mind.

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On the merely literary character of his composition we shall content ourselves with a very few words. We cannot dissemble that we wish he would put his style under a strongly alterative discipline. No readers can be more sensible to its glow and richness of colouring, and its not unfrequent happy combinations of words; but there is no denying that it is guilty of a rhetorical march, a sonorous pomp, a showy sameness;" a want, therefore, of simplicity and flexibility; withal, a perverse and provoking grotesqueness, a frequent descent, strikingly incongruous with the prevailing elatedness of tone, to the lowest colloquialism, and altogether an unpardonable license of strange phraseology. The number of uncouth, and fantastic, and we may fairly say barbarous phrases, that might be transcribed, is most unconscionable. Such a style needs a strong hand of reform; and the writer may be assured it contains life and soul enough to endure the most unrelenting process of correction, the most cumpulsory trials to change its form, without hazard of extinguishing its spirit.