express what is surely sufficient for the greatest stretch of credulity, the 330,000,000 of deities acknowledged by the Hindoos. In India, indeed, the mystery of a Trinity is neither received as marvellous nor fabulous. "Tarachund Dutt, a native convert (to Christianity), residing at Vansvariya, in one of his publications on Christianity, entitled Inananjun, compared the three persons of the Athanasian Trinity, to the three persons of the Hindoo Triad, and described the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as respectively the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of the world."* Thus, the doctrine of the sacred Trinity, so far from being a peculiar dogma of Revelation only, is, in truth, a distinguishing feature of Paganism.

The same may be affirmed also, of that tenet, which teaches that God the Son, the second person of the blessed Trinity, became incarnate. A God-man, God veiled in a human form, is not peculiar to Christianity, or rather to that mystical system which has assumed the name. The incarnation of Deity is inseparable from the ancient systems. The religions of Greece and Rome swarm with instances: it is a familiar but an indispensable article in their creeds. Hence, the astrologers declared Christ to be Pan, the son of Mercury and Penelopehence, the proposition made by Tiberius to the Roman Senate, to place Christ on their list of deities.

To the natives of the East, it is the most familiar of all theological opinions. According to Dr. Buchanan, "the Hindoos believe, that one of the persons in their Trinity, and that, too, the second person, was manifested in the flesh; hence, their fables of the Avatars, or incarnations of Vishnoo."+ Such being his creed, it is not surprising that the Hindoo should experience no difficulty in embracing the Christian incarnation: this amazing and mysterious peculiarity of Christianity, is not to him even remarkable. He will contend for the "Deity of Christ, in the same sense in which he will contend for the Deity of Krishna, one of the Hindoo incarnations, and admit the incarnation of Christ only as an addition to the incarnations in which he had previously believed."‡

"Correspondence relative to the prospects of Christianity, &c. in India," p. 56. Christian Researches, &c.

Which was avowed by Huridas, a native convert and even preacher in the employment of the Serampore Baptist Missionaries!-Correspondence, &c. p. 25.

2 D

The doctrines of the Trinity, therefore, and of an incarnate God, are not peculiar to Revelation; they are held in common with Idolators. Let the Orthodox professor look to it, that he does not embrace tenets for which he is indebted to the genius of Polytheism; let him prove, if he can, that these his favourite dogmas, have been filched by these Idolators, from his system without acknowledgment that their origin is with the Revelation which he has embraced. If he even succeeds in accomplishing this, the very obvious similarity which his creed manifests with others, which it may please him to stigmatize as fabulous, will render him cautious as to charging Unitarianism with being the half-way house to Infidelity, seeing himself trenches so narrowly on the borders of Paganism; he will hesitate as to the propriety of continuing to accuse the Unitarian of the crime of denying his God, when he recollects, that, in the fundamentals of his own creed, he is so nearly united to the teachings of Polytheism.

S.

"Remarks on the Character of Napoleon Bonaparte, occasioned by the publication of Scott's Life of Napoleon." (Continued from page 279.)

"IN the course of these remarks, our views of the Conqueror, of the First Consul, and of the Emperor, have been given plainly and freely. The subject, however, is so important and interesting, that we have thought it worth our while, though at the hazard of some repetition, to bring together, in a narrower compass, what seem to us the great leading features of the intellectual and moral character of Napoleon Bonaparte.

"His intellect was distinguished by rapidity of thought. He understood by a glance what most men, and superior men, could learn only by study. He darted to a conclusion rather by intuition than reasoning. In war, which was the only subject of which he was master, he seized in an instant on the great points of his own and his enemy's positions; and combined at once the movements, by which an overpowering force might be thrown. with unexpected fury on a vulnerable part of the hostile line, and the fate of an army be decided in a day. He understood war as a science; but his mind was too bold, rapid, and irrepressible, to be enslaved by the technics of his profession. He found the old armies fighting by rule, and he discovered the true characteristic of genius, which, without despising rules, knows when and how to break them. He understood thoroughly the immense moral power, which is gained by originality and rapidity of operation.

He astonished and paralyzed his enemies by his unforeseen and impetuous assaults, by the suddenness with which the storm of battle burst upon them; and, whilst giving to his soldiers the advantages of modern discipline, breathed into them, by his quick and decisive movements, the enthusiasm of ruder ages. This power of disheartening the foe, and of spreading through his own ranks a confidence, and exhilarating courage, which made war a pastime, and seemed to make victory sure, distinguished Napoleon in an age of uncommon military talent, and was one main instrument of his future power.

"The wonderful effects of that rapidity of thought by which Bonaparte was marked, the signal success of his new mode of warfare, and the almost incredible speed with which his fame was spread through nations, had no small influence in fixing his character and determining for a period the fate of empires. These stirring influences infused a new consciousness of his own might. They gave intensity and audacity to his ambition; gave form and substance to his indefinite visions of glory, and raised his fiery hopes to empire. The burst of admiration, which his early career called forth, must in particular have had an influence, in imparting to his ambition that modification by which it was characterized, and which contributed alike to its success and to its fall. He began with astonishing the world, with producing a sudden and universal sensation, such as modern times had not witnessed. To astonish as well as to sway by his energies, became the great aim of his life. Henceforth, to rule was not enough for Bonaparte. He wanted to amaze, to dazzle, to overpower men's souls, by striking, bold, magnificent, and unanticipated results. To govern ever so absolutely would not have satisfied him, if he must have governed silently. He wanted to reign through wonder and awe, by the grandeur and terror of his name, by displays of power which would rivet on him every eye, and make him the theme of every tongue. Power was his supreme object, but a power which should be gazed at as well as felt, which should strike men as a prodigy, which should shake old thrones as an earthquake, and by the suddenness of its new creations should awaken something of the submissive wonder which miraculous agency inspires.

"Such seems to us to have been the distinction, or characteristic modification of his love of fame. It was a diseased passion for a kind of admiration, which, from the principles of our nature, cannot be enduring, and which demands for its support perpetual and more stimulating novelty. Mere esteem he would have scorned. Calm admiration, though universal, and enduring, would have been insipid. He wanted to electrify and overwhelm. He lived for effect. The world was his theatre, and he cared little what part he played, if he might walk the sole hero on the stage, and call forth bursts of applause, which would silence all other fame. In war, the triumphs which he coveted were those, in which he seemed to sweep away his foes like a whirlwind; and the immense and unparalleled sacrifice of his own soldiers, in the rapid marches and daring assaults to which he owed his victories,

in no degree diminished their worth to the victor. In peace, he delighted to hurry through his dominions; to multiply himself by his rapid movements; to gather at a glance the capacities of improvement which every important place possessed; to suggest plans which would startle by their originality and vastness; to project in an instant works which a life could not accomplish, and to leave behind the impression of a superhuman energy.

"Our sketch of Bonaparte would be imperfect indeed, if we did not add, that he was characterized by nothing more strongly than by the spirit of self-exaggeration. The singular energy of his intellect and will, through which he had mastered so many rivals and foes, and overcome what seemed insuperable obstacles, inspired a consciousness of being something more than man. His strong original tendencies to pride and self-exaltation, fed and pampered by strange success and unbounded applause, swelled into an almost insane conviction of superhuman greatness. In his own view, he stood apart from other men. He was not to be measured by the standard of humanity. He was not to be retarded by difficulties to which all others yielded. He was not to be subjected to laws and obligations which all others were expected to obey. Nature and the human will were to bend to his power. He was the child and favourite of fortune, and if not the lord, the chief object of destiny. His history shows a spirit of self-exaggeration, unrivalled in enlightened ages, and which reminds us of an oriental king to whom incense had been burned from his birth as to a deity. This was the chief source of his crimes. He wanted the sentiment of a common nature with his fellow beings. He had no sympathies with his race. That feeling of brotherhood, which is developed in truly great souls with peculiar energy, and through which they give up themselves willing victims, joyful sacrifices, to the interests of mankind, was wholly unknown to him. His heart, amidst all its wild beatings, never had one throb of disinterested love. The ties which bind man to man he broke asunder. The proper happiness of a man, which consists in the victory of moral energy and social affection over the selfish passions, he cast away for the lonely joy of a despot. With powers, which might have made him a glorious representative and minister of the beneficent Divinity, and with natural sensibilities which might have been exalted into sublime virtues, he chose to separate himself from his kind, to forego their love, esteem, and gratitude, that he might become their gaze, their fear, their wonder; and for this selfish, solitary good, parted with peace and imperishable

renown.

"This insolent exaltation of himself above the race to which he belonged, broke out in the beginning of his career. His first success in Italy gave him the tone of a master, and he never laid it aside to his last hour. One can hardly help being struck with the natural manner with which he arrogates supremacy in his conversation and proclamations. We never feel as if he were putting on a lordly air, or borrowing an imperious tone. In his proudest claims, he speaks from his own mind, and in native language. His style is swollen, but never strained, as if he were

conscious of playing a part above his real claims. Even when he was foolish and impious enough to arrogate miraculous powers and a mission from God, his language showed, that he thought there was something in his character and exploits to give a colour to his blasphemous pretensions. The empire of the world seemed to him to be in a measure his due, for nothing short of it corresponded with his conceptions of himself; and he did not use mere verbiage, but spoke a language to which he gave some credit, when he called his successive conquests the fulfilment of his destiny.'

"This spirit of self-exaggeration wrought its own misery, and drew down upon him terrible punishments; and this it did by vitiating and perverting his high powers. First, it diseased his fine intellect, gave imagination the ascendency over judgment, turned the inventiveness and fruitfulness of his mind into rash, impatient, restless energies, and thus precipitated him into projects, which, as the wisdom of his counsellors pronounced, were fraught with ruin. To a man whose vanity took him out of the rank of human beings, no foundation for reasoning was left. All things seemed possible. His genius and his fortune were not to be bounded by the barriers, which experience had assigned to human powers. Ordinary rules did not apply to him. His imagination, disordered by his self-exaggerating spirit and by unbounded flattery, leaped over appalling obstacles to the prize which inflamed his ambition. He even found excitement and motives in obstacles, before which other men would have wavered; for these would enhance the glory of triumph, and give a new thrill to the admiration of the world. Accordingly, he again and again plunged into the depths of an enemy's country, and staked his whole fortune and power on a single battle. To be rash was indeed the necessary result of his self-exalting and self-relying spirit; for to dare what no other man would dare, to accomplish what no other man would attempt, was the very way to display himself as a superior being in his own and other's eye. To be impatient and restless was another necessary issue of the attributes we have described. The calmness of wisdom was denied him. He, who was next to omnipotent in his own eyes, and who delighted to strike and astonish by sudden and conspicuous operations, could not brook delay or wait for the slow operations of time. A work, which was to be gradually matured by the joint agency of various causes, could not suit a man, who wanted to be felt as the great, perhaps only, cause; who wished to stamp his own agency in the most glaring characters on whatever he performed; and who hoped to rival, by a sudden energy, the steady and progressive works of nature. Hence so many of his projects were never completed, or only announced. They swelled however the tide of flattery, which ascribed to him the completion of what was not yet begun, whilst his restless spirit, rushing to new enterprises, forgot its pledges, and left the promised prodigies of his creative genius to exist only in the records of adulation. Thus the rapid and inventive intellect of Bonaparte was depraved, and failed to achieve a growing and durable greatness, through his