"O Thou from whom all goodness flows, I lift my soul to Thee In all my sorrows, conflicts, woes, "When in the solemn hour of death Be this the prayer of my last breath,— "And when before thy throne I stand, And lift my soul to Thee, Then, with the saints at thy right hand, O Lord, remember me." After the reading of these impressive petitions, his nephew withdrew as he was requested to do, and Mr. Herrick was left alone for the night. He can hardly have realized fully, how very appropriate were the selections he had made,-how near to him was "the solemn hour of death." And yet, when a friend entered his room about an hour before noon the next day, he said to him, with the manner of one who wished to attend to a matter of business first, "There is a letter in my pocket addressed to you in case I die." But he had still the same cheerful and even playful manner, and, to some extent, he directed what should be given him for nourishment or medicine. His countenance indicated alarming disease, and yet his symptoms did not seem to threaten any immediate. danger. Three or four hours later the unexpected blow fell. When it was announced in his hearing that death was doing its work, he turned on a friend standing near an inquiring and somewhat surprised look, and then, without a word, fell into the calm of death. The letter to which he had referred was found in his pocket, and with it was the one written when he was apprehending sudden death, the preceding October. The one is nearly a repetition of the other. They are characteristic of the man. Who but he would, in the moment of impending death, have hastened to record these last requests! We give our readers the one of the earlier date, omitting only the expressions of personal regard at the end: "Should I die suddenly, as a sudden heart palpitation this morning warns me I may, I have to request "1. That no post-mortem examination of my body be made. "2. That my funeral may be as simple and unostentatious as possible. "3. That a plain stone, not costing more than $40 or $50, be placed at my grave; and that the inscription be very brief, and without eulogy. "Oct. 30, 1861, 9 a. m." The other was written "in haste and pain" on the 10th of June, the day before his death. It adds to the former the following directions:-that his funeral be "from his house"that "all biographical notices be as brief as possible ❞—and that his body be buried "in his mother's burial lot." It also reduces the cost of the monument to the limit of $30. His requests were carefully respected. His body rested undisturbed in the safe guardianship of watchful love, until, at the time appointed for the burial, friends gathered at his dwelling-the lowly and despised being not excluded—and, after simple but appropriate services, followed him in silent procession, without the noise or pomp of carriages, to his restingplace at the feet of his mother. Then under the pleasant sunlight and verdure of June, after a few words of remembrance and consolation uttered in simplicity and godly sincerity by the President of the college, followed by the sweet harmonies of a sacred song, we gave him to the earth and to the care of Him who is able to keep that which is committed unto Him against that day. After the throng had dispersed, those who had been his friends for many years cast the light earth over him and reared his mound. "Now of a lasting home possest, He goes to seek a deeper rest. Good night! the day was sultry here Good night! the night is cool and clear." And here we end, without eulogy, the record of his unique life. We know how inadequate it is to set forth the man whom we would commemorate, but it consoles us to reflect how many persons there are who have in their own hearts a nobler image of him than our skill can create. ARTICLE IX.-NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. THEOLOGY. LES PERSPECTIVES DU TEMPS PRESENT.*-Count de Gasparin is known to Americans chiefly through those admirable works in defense of our national cause-" The Uprising of a great People," and "America before Europe." Christians who have taken a special interest in the progress of evangelical religion in France and throughout the continent of Europe, have also been familiar with his services and writings in behalf of religious liberty, especially in the cause of the independent or dissenting Protestants of France and the Free Church of the Canton de Vaud. His Chistianisme et Paganisme,-Le Christianisme aux Quatrième Siècle,― Le Christianisme au Moyen Age,-are able and timely contributions to the discussion of the question of Church and State-now of the gravest import for European Christendom. Some of these, indeed, are treatises of permanent value in the philosophy of church history. But the volume whose title is given above, introduces Count de Gasparin to us, not as a disputant upon political ethics or ecclesiastical polemics-in both of which departments he has proved his pen-but as a writer for Christian edification upon themes of practical theology and of religious experience. It belongs to a series of discourses pronounced at Geneva from time to time, as lay-sermons upon truths of present interest. The first of this series embraced three discourses, upon the Law and Grace; the second was entitled "la Verité, la Foi, la Vie," the subject of the third was "le Bonheur," which has passed to a fourth edition, and been adopted into Levy's Bibliothéque Contemporaine; and the fourth deals mainly with rationalism and the Bible, with reference to the future of the Christian faith. Of these, the last two are perhaps the best speci * Les Perspectives du Temps Present, par Le Comte Agénor de Gasparin. Paris: Ch. Meyrueis et Ce. New York: F. W. Christern. mens of De Gasparin's style and skill in questions of theology and of personal religious experience. Les Perspectives treats of the prospects of evangelical religion, under the heads of Perils, Forces, and Hopes. "Sensualism, rationalism, and finally absolute skepticism, was the formidable series of negations in the eighteenth century. A god-destiny, a man-machine, a monotonous reign of the laws of nature, all this was not only the opinion of a few extreme minds, it was the doctrine which little by little penetrated all the strata of society. It happened then as always;-the masses did not adopt the systems, but yielded to these influences." From these almost extinct forms of unbelief, he passes to its type in the present generation— a devout rationalism. "Commonly this does not deny God, after the manner of the Baron d' Holbach; nor relegate him to heaven, after the example of Rousseau; nor curtail the supernatural, and publish an expurgated gospel, after the manner of Lessing; it only declares that the truth which is without us must be measured by the truth that is within us. We overturn nothing, we sit as supreme judges. Man repels the notion of authority; that which he approves, is divine; the revelation is within himself, and this inner revelation must determine the outer. Thus one may preserve the appearance of everything, without preserving the reality of anything." After showing how this species of rationalism displaces parts of the Bible at will, he points out its insidious influence upon society. "Some entire classes absent themselves systematically from churches. They no more condescend to hate Divine revelation; they respect it as they respect the other weaknesses of humanity, knowing that the multitude cannot advance at the same pace with the wise, but knowing, also, that they will advance, and by and by come to the same end. "There are no longer the vain mockings nor the passionate outbursts at Christianity, of other days; but the cool annunciation of axioms by which Christians are declared not only without the pale of truth, but without the pale of common sense; these sceptics no longer discuss the supernatural, they pronounce it absurd, and pass on." The central question of the times, De Gasparin conceives to be the authority of the Bible. "The Bible is assailed by those who pretend to revise its canon; it is assailed by those who pretend to cite its doctrines before the tribunal of their consciences; by those who pretend to complete it and develop it, by means of their theological systems. According to some it contains truths indif ferent, about which one may do as he likes; according to others, some of its truths have become inapplicable since Apostolic times; according to these, doctrine is always in process of formation; according to those, the principal facts of the Gospel are true, but its details may be false, and the conceptions of the apostles cannot be law for us; according to all, we are called upon to appreciate the distinction between that which is true and that which is false in the Bible, between what we feel to be obligatory, and that which causes an opposite impression." The prevalence of infidelity, and especially of that Hegelian pantheism which is properly humanism, he traces in its effect upon language. "Observe the care with which in ordinary language our generation avoid the mention of a personal God. They speak either of the Absolute, or of the Infinite, or of the Necessary motion of matter, or, at best, of the First Cause, of Providence, of Nature,-yes-especially Nature, that neuter term which, better than all others, allows one to suppress the Deity, by reducing him to nothing but a principle and a force." This Pantheism, he proceeds to show, wrests from us not only the Gospel, but the immortality of the soul, liberty, responsibility, and therefore it takes away from us duty. As if with Mr. Buckle's theory especially in mind, he adds, that "in presence of a forced development, of that algebraic series of terms that constitutes history, everything is determined, in us as in God, if we may yet be allowed to use that name." He pays special attention to the views of Messrs. Salvador and Renan, touching the development of religion as one of the manifestations of human nature. According to these writers, "the law of development explains the successive origins of religions, including the Gospel; pagan religions appear no longer under the head of degradation and infamy, but under that of preparation and progress. Moses and Mohammed figure side by side, and so to speak in the same rank, as Semitic revelators; for the rest there remains no question of revelation properly so called, for prophecy is nothing but a presentiment, and inspiration is nothing but that keen perception of truth which presents itself to higher intelligences and to pious souls." The rejection of the supernatural, our author next proceeds to |