things, but beating the air when exerted in relation to moral and personal powers. It stands as the sum of all that potentiality which is actualized in the divine agency, the totality of God's creative, sustaining and governmental ability,—the whole energy of a free, moral sovereign, over free, moral subjects, and unfree, material objects.

But, waving this, and the classing of man's will as a coördi nate power with God's will, Dr. Bushnell solidly teaches a practical optimism, on the basis of a real, divine sovereignty, and the subserviency of evil to good, in essential harmony with the earlier and later New England Theology. "In selecting the best possible plan among the millions of possibles, open to his contemplation, and in deciding to set on foot, or actualize that particular universe, he also made certain, all the evils or mischiefs, seen to be connected with it. But they are not from him, because (although?) they are in this indirect manner, made certain, or foreordinated by him. It is hardly right to say they are permitted by him. They come in only as necessary evils that environ the best plan possible. And yet he is not disappointed or frustrated. Still he governs with a plan, a perfect and eternal plan, which comprehends in its exact date and place, everything which every wrong-doing, and revolting spirit will do, even to the end of the world." p. 107. The powers may and do break loose; but "the plan of God is made large enough to include such a breaking loose, and deep enough in council, from the beginning, to handle it in terms of sovereign order." p. 98. "The system will be one that systematizes the caprices and discords of innumerable wills, and works results of order, through endless complications of disorder, having in this fact, its real wisdom and magnificence." p. 97. Upon this broad, catholic view, attested by science and reason, by Christian consciousness and revelation, Dr. Tyler based his doctrine of divine sovereignty.

It commended itself to him as not only rational, but as eminently practical and consolatory, for, it is the conclusion of common sense, and the best philosphy, that, if God be not the world's sovereign, it has none. And if it has no moral ruler, able to restrain evil and evolve good, its present conflicts are

aimless and interminable-an unending repetition of meaningless dynasties, in which good and evil, and all moral distinctions are swallowed up in the vortex of an eternally rotating, revolving materialism. Against such discomforting and gloomy apprehensions, just views of God as a sovereign are a sure defense.

This doctrine is sometimes counted as one of the unlovely, hard features of Calvinism, making God a reasonless and arbitrary tyrant. And uncareful and clumsy modes of presenting the subject, mere dead, dogmatic statements, may have given occasion for such misconceptions. In Dr. Tyler's inculcations, the doctrine stands as harmonious and homocentric with all the other doctrines of the Christian system. It is a sovereignty of wisdom and love, as well as of law and justice. God is equally a sovereign Father and Judge. But the most exact and lifepresentations, will not secure from the carnal mind, delight in God's government. "From my childhood up," says Jonathan Edwards, "my mind had been full of objections against God's sovereignty. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be convinced and fully satisfied as to this sovereignty of God. But I could never give an account how, or by what means, I was thus convinced, not in the least imagining, at the time, that there was any extraordinary influence of God's spirit in it. However, my mind rested in it, and it put an end to all those cavils and objections. But, I have often, since that first conviction, had quite another sense of God's sovereignty, not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God." The doctrine ever after appeared to him exceedingly pleasant, bright, and

sweet.

God's sovereignty an arbitary tyranny! It can seem so only to those who misconceive it, or are in rebellion against it. What is it? Infinite love, guided by infinite wisdom, seeking its ends of good by infinite power. It is genial, generous, and marvelously mellowing to the hard-hearted when it strikes inward. It nourishes in all devout minds those inexorable restraints of justice and that filial confidence in the divine administration, best suited to the tender, but exalted state, in which

men exclaim with Mills, "Glorious sovereignty! glorious sovereignty!"-and like him too, fly to the outermost bounds of human sin and misery, on the wings of divine charity, in Christ-like missions of mitigating love.

Dr. Tyler's reverence for the Scriptures is patent in all he wrote or did. Having settled its theopneustic character, the only remaining question with him was,-what does it mean? This determined, there was no appeal. He did not derogate from the dignity of human reason, but he remembered that in man's fall, it fell; that its decisions, however plausible, can never discredit the written word of the Infinite Reason. If this word opened to him deep mysteries which he could not fathom, so did God's works of nature; and he learned herein that both have the same author-that He is infinite and man finite.

Yet his faith, though implicit and childlike, was not blind. His reason, taxed to its utmost, and his conscience, tutored by the most rigid discipline, both justified it. This is a legitimate effect of the old Bible theology. The most indisputable masters of reason and quickeners of conscience, who have employed both most successfully in combating ignorance, error and sin, are just those who, by the tractors of study, prayer and faith, have drawn this theology out of God's infallible Word, as the vital element of their life of love. Where the Bible, by such an influence, reigns over man most sovereignly, there reason is mightiest, conscience freest, and love purest;-man has most good of the life that now is, and best hopes for that which is

to come.

In this fullness of justifying faith, and of a faith fully justified by the best reason, Dr. Tyler in a moment of perplexity remarked, "I am past being greatly troubled. I have committed myself to God, and wait the guidance of his hand."

"I have not the ravishing views which some have had," he said just as he was passing down into the valley of the shadow of death, "but I have no fear,-I enjoy perfect peace."

"Thou art gone up, victorious saint,
To find the joys for which we faint,
Away from sin and sin's compliant—

My father, O, my father!"

ARTICLE X.-THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, AND THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

WE are sorry to see that this hitherto successful Monthly is running away from its own title, and has begun to meddle with "sectarian Theology." It declares by its title page that it is devoted to Literature, Art, and Politics; but the Professor at the Breakfast Table seems determined to make it in some sort a Theological Journal. To use a figure derived from the profession whence the majority of his illustrations are taken, he has fallen a victim to a theological mania, that has already reached the acute stage, and may be followed by a more serious convulsion. His sensibility on theological subjects seems to be greatly exalted; and there is imminent danger of chronic irritability. The symptoms premonitory may be distinctly traced for several months previous to the severe attack in May. He was obviously laboring with some great internal uneasiness when in January he tells us so emphatically, yet in a sort of incidental way, that "Boston has opened, and kept open more turnpikes that lead straight to free thought, and free speech, and free deeds, than any other city of live men or dead men :" and in answer to the question, 'How high are the Boston steeples?' avers that they are "as high as the first step of the stairs that lead to the New Jerusalem." After discoursing for several pages about the clergy, and the Bible, and Theology, and common sense, and Spiritualism, and the depolarization of scriptural terms, in a somewhat incoherent way, he comes down upon his readers with the following:'

"Parson Channing strolled along this way from Newport, and staid here. Pity old Sam Hopkins hadn't come, too;-we'd have made a man of him,-poor, dear, good old Christian heathen! There he lies, as peaceful as a young baby, in the old burying ground! I've stood on the slab many a time. Meant well,meant well. Juggernaut. Parson Channing put a little oil on one linchpin, and slipped it out so softly, the first thing they knew about it was the wheel of that side was down. T'other fellow's at work now; but he makes more noise about it. When the linchpin comes out on his side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you!

Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,-hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,—always cracking up something." Jan. No., p. 91.

After a relapse for two months, as was to be expected after so violent an attack, the fit returns again in April, and he breaks out thus:

"It is here, Sir! right here!-said the little deformed gentleman,-in this old new city of Boston,-this remote provincial corner of a provincial nation, that the Battle of the Standard is fighting, and was fighting before we were born, and will be fighting when we are dead and gone,—please God! The battle goes on everywhere throughout civilization; but here, here, here! is the broad white flag flying which proclaims, first of all, peace and good-will to men, and, next to that, the absolute, unconditional spiritual liberty of each individual immortal soul! The three-hilled city against the seven-hilled city! That is it, Sir,—nothing less than that; and if you know what that means, I don't think you'll ask for anything more. I swear to you, Sir, I believe that these two centers of civilization are just exactly the two points that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence." p. 493.

And then again :

"Oh, don't talk to me of modesty!-answered Little Boston,-I'm past that! there isn't a thing that was ever said or done in Boston, from pitching the tea overboard to the last ecclesiastical lie it tore in tatters and flung into the dock, that wasn't thought very indelicate by some fool or tyrant or bigot, and all the entrails of commercial and spiritual conservatism are twisted into colics as often as this revolutionary brain of ours has a fit of thinking come over it. No, Sir,show me any other place that is, or was since the megalosaurus has died out, where wealth and social influence are so fairly divided between the stationary and the progressive classes! Show me any other place where every other drawing. room is not a chamber of the Inquisition, with papas and mammas for inquisitors, and the cold shoulder, instead of the dry pan and the gradual fire,' the punishment of heresy'!" pp. 495, 496.

These ebullitions are premonitory of a severe attack in May, in which the patient seems to have dreadful visions of all the horrid theologies that have lived since the year One, and to break out in a maledictory defiance of them all. What has been happening all the while to the Professor in a private way, we are unable to say, as we do not read the Boston newspapers. What comments have been ventured that should provoke the humane Professor to such theological fury; what foes have been raised in his own household by his zeal for truth, through the newspapers teaching his servants to be irreverent and saucy, of all this we are profoundly ignorant, and espe