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tion than those inferior places in the service of government, whose occupants are paid for the sweat of their brow. For the power of the parties, and the relative situation of the members, are founded upon the imagination and the feelings; and the contest in their behalf admits a wider scope of agencies to be brought into play, and under no other limitations than those which each individual genius lays down for itself as being the fittest for its ends. Such a contest is attractive for the nobler class of minds; and they feel no disappointment when, after the summit of their hope is reached, they find it has to be defended by unflagging effort and attention; for it thus becomes an indisputable proof of supremacy, and is the reality of that dominion over human thought, which is the last possible aim of ambition, and of which government itself is only the external emblem. It is true that interest is the natural, perhaps the sole, bond of party; but upon the mass in its entirety, it operates blindly and unconsciously. Unless some higher motive of action can be substituted in the individual mind, out of which to draw at least an occasional support, it is never lifted into the region of heroism. Between government and party, when all the great motives are on one side, and all the little ones on the other, there can be no fair comparison or contest. Their functions are not precisely the same; but we hope and believe, that a government may be so constituted and so administered, as to be served with some part of the zeal and devotion which are now spent in the service of party.

Thus far we have been obliged to use our liberty of faultfinding. That our views may present a proper critical balance, we propose to subjoin a short confession of faith. We fully believe that the government of this country is the best government on the face of the earth, by which any large community is held together. We believe that it best provides for the best purposes which government can accomplish, and for which it ought to be instituted; that is to say, to give protection to the people according to the laws and their natural sense of justice, and an opportunity for their moral elevation. We believe that its freedom promotes manliness of character and expansion of intellect in all ranks of society, in the only way

in which these qualities can be encouraged and educated, by constant exercise and comparison. We believe that the manner in which the business of our government is carried on is such as to give a better chance for reason to prevail than under any other. If the discipline of party is sometimes an obstacle, the discipline of an army is worse; if it is sometimes hard to carry a just measure through legislatures, it is harder still to push it through courts. We believe that our government allows the greatest liberty of thought, expression, and action to the individual, together with the greatest facility of combination in the prosecution of matters of public and pri vate concern; that it adapts itself most readily to the changes of time and the necessities of national existence; that it hangs with least weight upon the movements of society, and lends itself most perfectly to the expression of its natural disposition; so that, after having astonished mankind in the first stage of our national career by marvels of labor which it has enabled the people to perform, it is equally fitted, as in Athens and Florence, for the display, hereafter, of equally unexampled magnificence and refinement. At the same time, we believe it is so much the strongest government in the world, that only one, the English, is worthy to be named in comparison; and that is next to it, because it possesses most of the same popular elements of strength. Our government has a method of dealing with traitors and putting down rebellions, which might be the despair of absolute sovereigns, and is as much beyond their reach as their comprehension. It extinguishes them utterly, leaving not even the seed of discontent; while despotism, in spite of armies and police, is never out of danger from thousands of visible and invisible enemies. Compare the disposable forces of this government with that of countries in which one half of the population is employed in keeping down the other half, which are rent with factions, benumbed with jealousies of rank and caste, and demoralized with hostile pretensions in government, morals, religion, social life, and every subject out of which suffering and injustice can breed madness and despair, and we shall make out of the immensity of their preparation of fleets and armies, the true signs of weakness rather than of strength. That our institu

tions are supple and strong enough to endure forever, would be too much to predict; but we are persuaded that such a fate as the future ensures for us has never yet been written or acted out elsewhere; and that, as our existence has been thus far, it is destined to be still more emphatically, a new chapter in the history of mankind.

ART. III-The Eclipse of Faith; or, A Visit to a Religious Skeptic. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1852. 12mo.

pp. xvi. 452.

THIS book is confessedly the work of Mr. Henry Rogers, a frequent and favorite contributor to the Edinburgh Review. It is a discussion of the Evidences of Christianity, with special reference to the forms and grounds of the skepticism and infidelity of the present day. In our last number, we expressed our conviction that a prominent place among the existing causes of religious unbelief is to be assigned to the overcrowding of the general mind with material interests and pursuits, to such a degree as to render inquiry irksome, and to give a vantage-ground to doubts, and scoffs, and sneers, as assented to with less trouble than it costs to refute them. In this state of things, the writing of a sound book, if dull, would have been of little or no service. Mr. Rogers has wisely made his book attractive and amusing. It is pervaded by a thread of personal narrative; and the skeptic par eminence; the hero of the story, has a history and a character, that enlist the reader's strong sympathy, while the interlocutors are sketched with a bold and skilful pencil. The successive chapters are, for the most part, a series of brisk and earnest conversations, some of them dialogues in the Socratic vein,— others, close and keen discussions, enlivened by brilliant repartee, and by the sharp encounter of wit, banter, and ridicule. But this easy, dashing style, so far from being made the vehicle of superficial or second-hand reasonings, covers thorough analysis, profound thought, weighty argument, and searchingly

solemn appeal. Thus the attempt is made to conciliate classes of readers that would be repelled by the grave aspect of a set treatise on the Christian evidences.

The body of the work is a journal, by F. B., a person of mature Christian belief and experience, in which he records the incidents and conversations of a visit to his nephew Harrington, a young man, who has returned from a three years' residence on the continent of Europe, a professed skeptic as to all religious systems and dogmas. Harrington is, at the same time, visited by a swarm of free-thinkers, of the various schools of Newman, Parker, Gregg, Strauss, et id omne genus. Against these, successively, he turns the weapons of his skepticism, and triumphantly vindicates the simple Christianity of the Gospels as beset by fewer difficulties, objections, and doubts, than any of the ostensibly half-way systems that coquette with the name, and reject the essence, of Christianity. In the essays of intellectual gladiatorship into which he is drawn by his misbelieving friends, he gradually changes his own ground. He becomes suspicious of his doubts, skeptical as to his unbelief, weary of negations. He gravitates more and more toward a positive faith in Christ and the Scriptures, as involving the theory, which, of all possible theories, makes the lowest demand upon credulity, accounts for the greatest number of facts and phenomena, and leaves the fewest unaccounted for.

The book is unique in its kind. To compare it with any other, would be to point out not so much specific resemblances as generic differences. Its aim is identical with that of Butler's Analogy, namely, to demonstrate that positive Christianity is the least improbable hypothesis concerning the facts which it covers. But Butler's alternative was between Deism and Christian orthodoxy; Mr. Rogers is between the latter and utter non-belief on the one hand, and various forms of pseudoChristianity on the other. Butler's work is fitly characterized by that so sadly cockneyized epithet "immortal;" for it is designed to rebut the simple phasis of unbelief, which must perpetually recur until the far-off age of universal faith, and can hardly be of less validity and worth a thousand years

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hence than now. "The Eclipse of Faith," on the other hand, must soon be obsolescent; for the modes of misbelief, with which it grapples, are in their very essence ephemeral, are composed of elements that, like some of the metallic bases in chemistry, vanish so soon as they see the light, and are dissolved in the very process of development. Then, too, the contrast in point of style is the widest possible. "The Eclipse of Faith" yields not one whit to the "Analogy" in keen and vigorous logic; but the latter is thoroughly scientific in its form, while the former is vividly dramatic, and barbs its arguments with innuendo, invective, and sarcasm. The "Analogy" marshals the heaviest artillery, and brings all its guns to bear with faultless aim, against a fortress whose defenders must surrender at discretion when they can stand to their arms no longer; the "Eclipse of Faith" wages a guerilla warfare against enemies in ambush, under covert, perpetually on the wing, or hurling missiles from road-side thickets or momentary lurking places.

The air of levity, in the work before us, may offend some of its more staid and solemn readers, especially those who are not familiar with the so-called theological literature of the modern schools of infidelity. But our author might plead, in his justification, the precept of the Hebrew sage, “Answer a fool according to his folly." It is impossible to offset gibes by homilies, jests by formal stately argument, sneers and scoffs by pious saintly apophthegms. The aim, in many quarters, is not to show Christianity to be irrational, but to render it ridiculous. The challenging party have made their choice of weapons. To decline the weapons is to evade the conflict. To accept them is to demonstrate that religion can stand the test of ridicule, as it has for ages sustained that of reasoning. But while Mr. Rogers has enriched the Christian armory with the implements of the least dignified style of warfare, we cannot detect an instance in which he has suffered them to recoil upon the sacred cause in whose behalf he wields them. preserves inviolate the sanctity of holy things; and there are abundant tokens of his profound personal interest in the doctrines, consolations, and hopes of the Gospel. Indeed, for

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