with his own most precious blood;"" depict to them the annihilation of the Divinity, under the fragile form of human nature." On matters of such high import as the God-man, a little bombast may, however, be allowed. But to whom or what do our readers think the following quotation applicable: "But what do I behold? What prodigy is this? I see in the horizon a little cloud arise from the sea; a star, like to the morning star, appears at a distance, and approaching, dissipates the darkness and horrors of the tempestuous night, and announces the luminary of day! I see upon the waters a noble virgin; the silver moon forms her footstool, the sun gilds the mantle which falls from her majestic shoulders, the stars surround her head as a diadem of light!" This, readers, this prodigy, this cloud, this star, this noble virgin with majestic shoulders, with all the retinue of heaven for her suite, is the harmless, powerless girl, daughter to Don Pedro. Thus the orator proceeds: "She touches at Gibraltar, she listens and hears, sentiments of indignation at every sound animate her delicate cheeks; the standard of Alfonso Henriques is unfurled! Rejoice, Portuguese! Rejoice, ye proscribed! it is our Queen who comes; it is the tender mother who comes in search of her children! The Usurper totters on his throne; his infamous satellites, confused and panic-struck, like a vessel beaten by the storm, without rudder or pilot, already feel the bitter remorses of treachery. Rejoice, Portugese! the daughter of the Cæsars is arrived. Let us exult in the Lord, brethren; our sufferings are at an end." Notwithstanding the pompous nothingness of much of this sermon, it may, we doubt not, be considered as at least an average specimen of the style of preaching which prevails in Portugal. The preacher has been disciplined in his mind by affliction, by contact with men of utterly opposite taste, by that reflection which the adoption of liberal ideas in political matters necessarily implies, and may therefore be expected to exhibit the style of his countrymen in rather a subdued than an exaggerated form. In spite of the bombast of the discourse, it cannot be read without a melancholy pleasure, arising from the sentiments in favour of liberty and true to nature with which it is interspersed, mingled with the recollection that he who utters them is one of many who have given up all for a good and holy cause, and are wanderers in strange lands, and far from their families, destitute and almost hopeless. The sermon contains descriptions of the state of affairs in Portugal which we know from private sources to be too true. "Perjured priests," says the preacher, "profane thy altars; the roofs of thy sanctuary re-echo the sanguinary supplications of a corrupt clergy." "Our virgins violated, our wives persecuted, our orphans abandoned, justice sold, the blood of the just man put up in public auction." The present misery of Portugal is owing chiefly to the clergy. They are the chief supporters of the existing tyranny. They are the implacable enemies of all improvement. With them all crimes are pardonable but one-offences against religion. What a solemn and fearful thought it is that the professed ministers of the religion of peace, and of the holy and benevolent Jesus, should be amongst the chief enemies of mankind, and the cruelest and wickedest of our race! The following quotation from a letter lately received from an English correspondent will serve to illustrate our remarks: "Situated as we are in Lisbon, religion is the last subject to converse on with the natives; and for this reason the greater part are falling into the error committed at the beginning of the French revolution. The priests will not allow their flocks to think for themselves, and force them to attend mass; the consequence is, they turn Atheists. The parish priests have orders to take an account of all their parishioners, and to notice all those who do not attend mass regularly. Num bers who formerly absented themselves are now obliged to conform; otherwise they would be informed against as belonging to the clubs of Freemasons. The clergy are straining every nerve to throw odium on the Constitutionalists and Freemasons, whom they class together; and no crime is committed that is not laid to their charge. Two men were lately ordered for execution who had lain in prison for years on a charge of murder. There they might still have remained, or even have escaped justice altogether, though they had committed many murders, had it not been discovered that they had been guilty of some sacrilegious robberies. This, in the present state of church excitement, could not be pardoned, and they were doomed to expiate their crimes on the gallows. The place of execution is situated full a mile and a half from the prison, and the criminals are conducted by a heavy guard of horse and foot police; a number of friars, the company of Mercy; the senate, and the judges who passed sentence. The criminals are clothed in a white vest, the halter round their necks, and a small crucifix in their hands with the image of our Saviour. As they pass many churches on their way, it is customary to say prayers at each, though the criminals are supported on each side by a friar who gives them spiritual advice as they proceed. On the passage of the two criminals mentioned before by the Magdalen church, a Royalist preacher got upon the steps and held forth for about twenty minutes, casting every reproach upon the Constitution and Freemasonry, saying, that the criminals present were specimens of their sect, nothing but robbery and murder being their aim. Thus were the poor wretches detained trailing through the streets more than three hours. An excommunication was recently fulminated from the Patriarchal church against all Freemasons and those connected with them. The patriarch had had it in his possession some time, but was unwilling to publish it. Some partisan of Miguel, however, got to know of this, and soon found means to force its publication." We have, in a preceding number, intimated that the "Revivals" that now engage the chief attention of the Evangelicals in this country, were first set a going in America. We also expressed a hope that the shameful scenes which had been connected with them there, would not be reproduced here. To detail these would occupy more space than we can spare for one subject. But as we find the orthodox periodicals lauding the manner in which "the work" has been effected in the United States, it may be well to exhibit a small specimen. The account we are about to give is expressed in the very words of the orthodox, and is indirectly conveyed in a convention, lately held in America, to consult on certain differences of opinion in respect to revivals of religion. In this convention, convoked by two leading Revivalists, a number of votes was passed to serve as rules in the further prosecution of "those exhibitions of hypocrisy, profaneness, and folly, which lately occurred in the western part of New York."* From these votes, the grave determinations of an ecclesiastical convention, we learn the following facts. In America, and in connexion with Revivals, it has been thought that God works independently of human instrumentality, and without any reference to the adaptation of means to ends; much human infirmity, indiscretion, and wickedness, have been mingled with the exertions made; females have engaged in prayer in mixed assemblies; measures have been introduced into congregations to promote and to conduct Revivals without the approbation of the ministers; meetings for social worship have been held, in which all spoke according to their own inclination, without a moderator or Christian Examiner for July. president; persons have been called on by name in prayer, both private and public, and this was voted by the convention to be proper in small social circles; there have been audible groaning, violent gestures, and boisterous tones, and unusual postures, in prayer; ministers have been spoken against as cold, stupid, dead-as unconverted, or enemies to revivals of religion; as heretics or disorganizers, as deranged or mad; persons have been received as converted merely on the ground of their own judgment, without examination and time to afford evidence of real conversion. This last allegation reminds us of the words of Butler: Whate'er men speak by this new light, Still they are sure to be i' th' right; Which none see by but those who bear it; For spiritual trades to cozen by. Both in prayer and preaching, language has been used adapted to irritate on account of its manifest personality, such as describing the character, designating the place, or any thing which will point out an individual or individuals before the assembly as the subjects of invidious remarks.—Irreverent familiarity with God has been indulged in, such as men use towards their equals.-Young men have been introduced as preachers whose sole recommendation was their ardour, and the value of education has been depreciated; things not true have been stated, or not supported by evidence, (this we knew-now it is acknowledged by the orthodox themselves,) for the purpose of awakening sinners; the condition of sinners has been represented as more hopeless than it really is; acknowledged errors have been connived at for fear that enemies should take advantage of them.-Unkindness and disrespect have been shewn to superiors in age and station-proceedings have been adopted which those who have followed them are unwilling to have published-nay, which are not proper to be published to the world.-Evening meetings have been prolonged to an unseasonable hour-accounts of Revivals have been exaggerated. Such are some of the acknowledged evils that have attended revivals in America. Yet, notwithstanding the blameable character of most of the particulars adduced above, and the numerous pious frauds there recorded, the Rev. Mr. Beman, one of the contending revivalists in the convention, had the impudence to move, among other motions calculated to encourage rather than to check these acknowledged enormities, the following: "Attempts to remedy evils existing in revivals of religion, may, through the infirmity and indiscretion and wickedness of man, do more injury, and ruin more souls, than those evils which such attempts are intended to correct." Thus frauds are committed, tolerated, justified, and that, too, by professors of religion! Yet this audacious justification of acknowledged "Evils" was passed in the convention, nine persons-notice, reader, nine religious teachers-teachers of his religion who said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life"-nine ministers of the gospel voting in favour of the motion, and eight merely declining to vote. What a state of things, in which all the virtue found in a convention of divines consisted in declining to vote in reference to a measure that went to justify falsehood! Why, they ought to have moved heaven and earth in opposition to such a dereliction of duty-appealing from the convention to the people, and calling on every enlightened and honest man to reprobate such delinquency. Yet these meetings of this dishonest convention were opened and interspersed with singing and prayer, as if in solemn mockery of the most sacred engagements and the most imperative obligations. CRITICAL NOTICES. MR. PIPER has, in this discourse, paid a worthy tribute to the memory of a most worthy individual. The subject of it is the character of the just man (from Prov. iv. 18), and the delineation is as able and beautiful as the theme was appropriate. It well deserves attentive perusal beyond the circle, and that must be a large one, of those to whom it is recommended by the occasion which called it forth. Justice is at the very foundation of moral excellence, and can alone secure the permanence and the value of more shining qualities. And although it may not, to common and superficial observation, seem so lovely and desirable as they are, yet it blends with them harmoniously, and naturally tends to generate them, and by guiding their exercise renders them efficient to the production of individual and social happiness. This is well illustrated by the author in the following passage: "Strict and inflexible in its obedience to the dictates of an enlightened mind, it may be thought that justice is of a stern and forbidding character; that it may form an integrity which you are bound to respect, but will never constitute a moral and intellectual being that you can at once admire and love. Not more beneficial to the earth which it enlightens and warms, not more grateful to the eye which it enables to see all the beauty of form and colour, is the sun, the source of light and heat, than benign and affectionate and benevolent is the influence of justice in its unlimited operation upon the whole character of the upright man. It does not subdue and eradicate the affections; it is the duty of justice to urge and direct their most amiable exhibition in all that is animating, kind, and endearing. Do we possess the power to soften the cares of life, to open new and perpetual sources of grateful emotion, to make domestic and social intercourse cheering and refreshing, to calm mental anxiety, and to sooth bodily suffering and affliction, by the display of love and kindness aud sympathy and compassion and tenderness; what more indisputably just than that we should exercise this power and diffuse as widely as we can the grateful agency of these winning affections? Can it be just to shut up our bowels of compassion' when misery implores-to preserve a cold indifference when circumstances call for warmer feelings-to stifle the dictates of benevolence and affection by the repelling selfishness of pride and disdain?" Can we doubt whether it is just to be, if we are able, the source of pleasure and happiness to others as well as to ourselves, or to be carelessly negligent of our power to please and to increase the sum of social enjoyment? And as nature has wisely furnished us with the power of inflicting pain, can we regard the dictates of justice and not check this power so as to create no unnecessary suffering, so as not to exercise it injuriously, so as to confine it to its sole proper province, to be the discouragement of evil and the check upon the lawless aggression of those who can be restrained by severity and fear and punishment alone? If the just man will be cautious as to the purity and correctness of his sentiments, careful of the conformity of his life to their dictates, as observant of the rights and claims of others as of his own, he must be equally anxious to govern his affections, which are the motives to many of the actions of his life; nor can he comply with the best and fairest claim upon his power to do good if he withhold his heart and all its sacred treasure from those who are so placed in relation to him as to be entitled to this gift, and able, by a like return, to repay the kindness which a just sense of duty has prompted him to show. So powerful is the influence of justice over the best affections of our nature, that if they are exercised without any regard to its dictates, they are often misplaced, and almost always transient in their existence, and productive of misery instead of happiness: while just affections are like just actions-the permanent source of grateful enjoyment, the foundation of a placid retrospect, and of hopeful expectation in what lies before us of action, feeling, and life.-Pp. 17-19. ART. II.—An Earnest but Temperate Appeal to the Bishops and Clergy of the Church of England in behalf of Apostolical Christianity. By a Christian of no other Denomination. Pp. 32. This pamphlet is an original and rather singular production. It is an impeachment of the church upon the four following articles:-1. The exclusive subscription of her clergy to the Thirty-nine Articles. 2. The retention of the creed commonly called that of St. Athanasius, in her Book of Common Prayer. 3. Some initiatory invocations in her Litany. And 4. The want of uniformity in her morning and evening ritual of devotion. It is declamatory rather than argumentative, and, as a composition, very defective, though ambitious of effect; but it contains some home truths on the inconsistency of the professions of Protestantism, whose main principle is "the Bible and the Bible only," with the articles and creeds which characterize and constitute Church-of-Englandism. And if the clergy are not utterly insensible to such" appeals," it must make them feel "there's something rotten" in their state. But what renders the pamphlet worthy of observation is, that it is an attack upou the church from one of its own members, at least from one who belongs to no other denomination, who professes great veneration and attachment for the members of the establishment, who has all his life been connected with her, and who, though he honours conscientious dissent, is neither in principle or feeling a Dis. senter. He speaks of himself as "the son of a clergyman who only scorned more than he dreaded or hated dissent; a patron of more than one living of this church; au élève of her schools, a graduate of one of the universities, the companion and the friend in earlier and later life, and almost exclusively so through a long period of years, of one or other of her fraternity; an attendant, and (to my shame, perhaps, be it spoken) never but an attendant, at her places of worship; all the accumulated associations of the infant, boyish, and adult mind are awakened in ine at the very sound of her name, and I lament over her infirmities almost with the storge of the child." It is from such an one that we hear, and with no slight pleasure, as he identifies himself with the church, the following language: "Unitarianism, my Lords, is notori ously making rapid advances in this island, on the continent of Europe, in America, and well it may; for to what is it generally opposed? To every form and complexion of religion but the Christian, in its own naked majesty of symmetry and hue. These disputants against a common Saviour's divinity meet us fairly with the words of Christ; we reply to them dis ingenuously in those of Tertullian or Athanasius. They press us manlily with an undisputed text; we turn round upon them knavishly as weakly with an au thoritative comment. They exhibit in its uniform shape an inspired phrase a hundred times repeated; we twist it topsy-turvey, and then with calm effrontery ask them what it means. They stand undismayed in the terra firma of Scripture; we seem to dread it as a heap of sand, unless consolidated by the 'hay and stubble' of a supplementary theology. Well may the world think us unequally matched on Protestant ground, when evasion, quibble, stratagem, and subterfuge, are our most approved auxiliaries. My Lords, these are hard words; but a pusillanimity so penal, a treachery that thus recoils, wounds one to the heart." There is much more in this pamphlet that we could quote with pleasure. We are happy to understand that the Appeal has been heard and heeded by the members of the church, and that "the warning song" has not been altogether "sung in vain." ART. III.-The Catholic Epistle of St. Jude, with a Paraphrase and Notes. London, Keating and Brown. Pp. 34. 6d. THE introduction to this pamphlet briefly, as may be supposed, defends the genuineness of the Epistle of Jude against Luther and Michaelis. The precise year when it was written is uncertain. From verse 17 it appears that few of the apostles were then living, perhaps only St. John. The mention of the prophecy of Enoch leads to the subject of traditions, the admission of which constitutes a chief feature in the system of Romauism. Our annotator has probably over-rated the admission of Macknight, which he thus describes : "It is reasonable to think, as Macknight justly observes, that at the time the ancient revelations were made, somewhat of their meaning was also given, whereby posterity was led to agree in their interpretation of these very obscure oracles. On any other supposition |