BOOK NOTICES.

Deliver

LECTURES ON THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. ed at the University of Virginia, during the Session of 1850-1. New-York: Carters. 1852. Svo. pp. 606.

DIVISION of labor has done much towards the triumphs and advancement of the present age; in fact it is necessary to the accomplishment of the highest results. The principle is applicable to moral and theological, as well as to mathematical and scientific investigations. The present volume is the product of division of labor. In 1850 a course of Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity was determined upon at the University of Virginia, the ancient seat of Jeffersonian infidelity. A schedule of topics was drawn up, the lecturers appointed, the lectures duly delivered, and they are now given to the reading public in a handsome and convenient form. The lecturers were the Rev. Doctors Plumer, Ruffner, McGill, Sampson, J. W. Alexander, Breckenridge, Green, Rice, and the Rev. Messrs. Van Zandt, Hoge, Moore, Miller, Smith and Robinson. The subjects embrace the vital points in the claims of Christianity, and were evidently chosen with an eye to the problems and conflicts of the present age; including the Geological, Ethnological, and Development questions. The Lectures are manifestly prepared with much care, and form a valuable contribution to American theological literature. Perhaps the circumstances which called them forth have given, at least to some of them, too much of a popular cast to be of much service in the severe scrutiny of the study. Lithograph portraits by Ritchie of all the lecturers, except Dr. Alexander, embellish the volume, and afford an interesting group for the physiognomist. The book is prefaced by a short history of the University of Virginia, by Rev. William H.

Ruffner.

C.

THE GOLDEN LEGEND. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Fields. 1852. 12mo. pp. 301. HITHERTO Longfellow has confined himself, in his poetry, principally to short effusions, characterised by lyrical sweetness and delicate sentiment, without attempting a complicated plot. The present volume partakes more of the character of a work: a steady, sustained effort, evolving dramatic and comic elements, which he has heretofore given no signs of possessing. The sub

stratum of the poem is a legend of the Middle Ages, which has an interesting progress and a pleasurable denouement. You meet with some fine touches as you pass along, but feel at its close that the Golden Legend is not a great poem.

We notice a tendency among modern poets, strongly illustrated in this book, which we regard with anything but satisfaction. We mean a fondness for artificial and eccentric versification; often to the neglect of all rhythmical rules. It always strikes us as paltry affectation. We are far from regarding a proper succession of long and short syllables, measured accents and smooth endings, as the essentials of poetry; but we do think they cannot be entirely neglected if we would maintain the distinction between poetry and prose.

C.

LECTURES ON THE LORD'S PRAYER. By William R. Williams. Boston: Gould and Lincoln. 1851. 12mo. pp. 241.

This book is from the pen of one of our favorite American authors. To our mind William R. Williams is seldom surpassed in richness of thought, beauty of imagery, felicitousness of illustration and truthful earnestness of spirit. The present subject is evidently congenial to his mind and he appears to all advantage. It is a book which one may read and feel the better

for it.

C.

NEANDER'S HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AND CHURCH. Vol. IV. Translated by Prof. Torrey. Boston: Crocker and Brewster. 1851. Svo. pp. 650.

THE reader of Neander will be thankful, that the labors of the indefatigable translator enable him to place the fourth volume of the author's great History beside the three previously issued. This volume brings the history down to A. D. 1294. It corresponds, in typography and binding, with the former volAs we placed it in our library, we involuntarily exclaimed, clarum et venerabile nomen!

umes.

C.

Classical

ECLOGAE EX Q. HORATII FLACCI POEMATIBUS. series edited by Drs. Schmitz and Zumpt. Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea. 1852.

This is one of a series of classical publications, which is winning attention and praise in all directions. The recommendations of a large number of the leading scholars and teachers of

our own country, in addition to the wide European reputation of the work, leave no room to doubt of its high excellence and worth. Its general merits indeed lie open to the most common inspection, we may say, in every volume of the series.

N.

ANCIENT HISTORY: from the Dispersion of the Sons of Noe, to the Battle of Actium and change of the Roman Republic into an Empire. By PETER FREDET, D. D., Professor of History in St. Mary's College, Baltimore. Second Edition, revised, enlarged and improved. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1851. Pp. 490. MODERN HISTORY: from the coming of Christ, and the change of the Roman Republic into an Empire, to the Year of our Lord 1850. By PETER FREDET, D. D., Prof. &c. Fifth Edition, enlarged and improved. Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co. 1851. Pp. 552.

The second of these volumes is older than the first, though it comes after it in plan. They are now published together, the two volumes in connection presenting a complete history of the civilized world throughout the whole duration of its existence, from the creation down to the present time, a space of 5850 years. Much care and labor seem to have been bestowed upon the entire work. It is written in clear, chaste style, gives evidence of extensive reading, and forms altogether a well digested compend of universal history. The repeated editions through which it is passing, are a decided proof of its popularity.

N.

THE

MERCERSBURG REVIEW.

MAY, 1852.

VOL. IV.----NO. III.

SYSTEMATIC BENEVOLENCE.'

Lev. xxvii: 30-32-Ex. xxx: 13-16-1 Cor. xvi: 1-2— Act. xx: 35.

Conclusion.

III. Systematic Benevolence in America.

IN the United States of North America, Church and State, as is known, are separated from each other, similarly as in the first three centuries, until Constantine the Great; with this important difference, however, that at that time the State, which was most intimately connected with heathen idolatry, did not at all legally acknowledge the Church, and even bloodily persecuted her, whilst with us both powers exist peaceably side by side of each other, and at least indirectly give to each other mutual protection. For on the one hand our religious corporations en

A Sermon preached by appointment before the Synod of the German Reformed Church of the U. S., at Lancaster, Pa., on the 20th of October, 1851, and published by request of the Synod.

VOL. IV.-NO. III.

14.

joy the protection of the civil law, as it regards person and property, and on the other hand, christianity evidently forms the moral basis and support of our republic, without which it must in a short time be dissolved in complete anarchy. We may lament indeed the religious indifferentism of our State-constitutions, so far as they are the product of the wide-spread infidelity of the last century, and cannot in any way regard the abstract separa · tion as the normal and ultimate condition, which requires rather a harmonious union of religion and morality and the absolute, though free dominion of the christian principle over all the faculties and relations of the individual and national life, or in one word a theocracy, where God shall be all in all, and where Christ shall rule king amongst the nations as He ruleth now king in the church. Still we infinitely prefer the separation and independent position of the secular and spiritual powers, to an absolute hierarchy on the one side, and to the Erastian principle on the other, and that intermeddling of the State with the internal concerns of the church, which we find in most of the Protestant establishments or State-churches of Europe, to the injury of religion and piety; and we have every reason to be thankful to God, that the church here enjoys perfect freedom, and can discharge independently and without interruption all her own peculiar functions. For it is not seemly, that the free-born daughter of heaven, the royal Bride of the God-man and the World Saviour, should be degraded to the maid-servant of earthly power and its temporal interests. The less the church is restricted in the possession and exercise of her innate rights, the more beneficially will she also operate upon civil society; the more she is honored as the servant of Christ, as an immediately divine institution for the salvation of the world, so much the more will she prove herself in the noblest sense, the servant of the people, as Christ Himself, the Lord of heaven, served us in His own free love and offered Himself up for us even unto death.

A natural result of this relation of peaceful neutrality between religion and politics, between Church and State in our country, and that unlimited freedom of conscience necessarily connected with it, is what is called the voluntary system in the support of religion. Here the church must everywhere alone take care of all her concerns, and provide for herself the necessary pecuniary means for the exercise of her duties and the attainment of her benevolent objects. She has indeed by all means the right to require from her members certain contributions for her support, and is in solemn duty bound, to present them earnestly to their