honesty, charity, and forgiveness of injuries; and to discuss also the vices and sins opposite to these virtues. It is to go into the scenes of business, and to teach plainly what is to be done and what is to be avoided, — into the scenes of social life, and to show what affections are to be cherished and what to be guarded against,-into the scenes of recreation, and to draw the line between what is healthful and what is noxious and dangerous. It is to go round and round in this track, from month to month and from year to year. This, we say, with many is the only idea they have of practical preaching. If any one leaves this beaten track, if he goes beyond the range of simple and received ideas, though he strikes perhaps to the deepest foundations of the soul, though he flashes the light of some awful and unsuspected truth into its darkest recesses, though he kindles up to the brightest splendor, the whole horizon around them, they say, perhaps, that it is very fine, and very delightful, but they are afraid it is not practical enough. In short, their idea of practical preaching is, that it is something that can be immediately reduced to practice, to definite, visible, tangible practice. - Now we shall not be suspected, surely, of any intention to discredit this kind of public instruction. It is the very staple of preaching. But is this the only kind of practical preaching? What, let us ask, is, from the very nature of the case, the preaching that is practical? And having admitted that the public judgment gives one good answer, let us be permitted to give another of our own. It is that preaching, we answer then, which goes to the deep thoughts, to thoughts that lie deeper than any common-places, or truisms, or ordinary arguments for virtue, are likely to reach. Men want basis thoughts, we must not always be talking about the superstructure, and basis thoughts lie deep in every soul. Men want broad, large, comprehensive thoughts, thoughts that, by their generalization, go through and through with the whole subject of religion and virtue. A mind earnest about religion has profound, unuttered, and anxious inquiries, about the principles of piety and duty, about the laws of Providence, about, not the endurance only, but, so to speak, the very theory of temptations and trials. Why does it suffer? Why is it tempted? Why was it made such as it is? What is its end? These grand inquiries about which the human soul is for ever lingering, must be met. Men want thoughts which are the ultimate reasons of things; they want not only rules to go by, but the principles on which those rules are founded. You may preach about business, for instance, and all the details and discriminations of honesty; and it is very well. But you must sometimes send a thought deeper, that will rise up to the mind amidst the busy cares of life, like an awful admonition, like a solemn memento, like a penetrating tone, from some other world, than the world of merchandise. You may preach about truth, and equity, and justice, and all the dangers to which the soul is exposed in the affairs of trade, and it is very well and very practical. But suppose you should go farther, and advance and unfold the proposition, that the very end, the ultimate end for which God ordained the business of life, is, not acquisition, not supply, but the cultivation of a high moral uprightness: would not that be practical too? And would it not penetrate, too, with awful meaning and with prolific inference, the whole sphere of active life? What then, we still ask, is practical preaching? And still we answer, it is that preaching which arrests the mind and arouses it to moral action, whether by the discussion of duties or of doctrines. It is that preaching which recalls the mind to the deep, long-buried, and almost forgotten knowledge of itself; which penetrates it with the soul-amazing consciousness of its profound, unutterable want, of its transcendent power, of its awful destiny to good or evil; which breathes upon the faded images of moral grandeur and beauty in the soul, and spreads life and freshness through all its dull and desponding affections. It is that preaching which not merely descants upon the wants and vicissitudes of life, but which unfolds the sublime, the Christian philosophy of life, and creates, to the eye of reason and of faith, a new world, and makes it the habitation, not of fear, sorrow, and discontent, but of filial confidence, of pious joy, of cheerful patience, of victorious virtue, of all-conquering love, and immortal hope. It is that preaching which not only sets the feet in the path in which they should go, but which fills that path with winning examples of virtue, with bright and beckoning images of godlike beauty, with good angels, cheering and encouraging, - and bearing on the soul to heaven. It is that preaching which calls to repentance and humility, not with a mournful tone, but with a voice like that of Jesus, full of rebuke and love, full, not of a solitary and reproachful indignation, but of that indignation in which the erring and sinful are invited nobly to take part against themselves; that "preaching of repentance" which is like "the voice of one in the wilderness," saying, "Go forth go, unhappy ones, to the bright and blessed country; travel in the path of humiliation to the seats of glory!" In fine, it is that preaching which speaks of God-how shall we say that it speaks of Him? how shall we "express it unblamed!"--which speaks of God, not familiarly, not presumptuously, not as if that awful name were an expletive to fill up the discourse, or an instrument to enforce terror, not professionally, not in the mere technical phrase of the pulpit, not with the tone of cold decorum or of dread superstition, -- but which speaks of God, with ever fresh and renewed wonder, with holy and all-subduing awe and tenderness in the mind, with the deep intuition of an inexpressible love to him, with filial, but not familiar freedom, with mingled adoration and confidence, with delight, with joy "unspeakable and full of glory." Such to our apprehension is the preaching of which we have an example and a model in the volumes before us. And, to our minds, this preaching is emphatically true, and eminently useful and practical. We cannot take our leave of these volumes, without expressing our hope that they are the first fruits, we will not be so unreasonable as to say concerning such volumes, of many more yet to come, but of as many as it may be given to renewed strength and a long life to produce. -- ART. VI. Remarks on the Unitarian Belief: with a Letter to a Unitarian Friend on the Lord's Supper. By NEHEMIAH ADAMS, Pastor of the First Church of Christ in Cambridge. Boston. Peirce & Parker. 1832. 18mo. Pp. 175. THIS book consists of three parts. The first is a review of a Treatise "On the Formation of the Christian Charac ter; addressed to those who are seeking to lead a religious life. By Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., Professor in the Divinity School, Cambridge." This part is reprinted, with some alterations, from The Spirit of the Pilgrims." The second part consists of Remarks upon a Tract by the same author, called an "Outline of Scripture Testimony against the Trinity"; and the third is a "Letter to a Unitarian Friend on the Lord's Supper." The chapters devoted to the Trinity contain the usual arguments for that doctrine, and need not be examined. If they present any original or unusual views, they are not of a character to require special notice. We take up this volume for the purpose of remarking upon the manner in which the work "On the Formation of the Christian Character" is attacked, -not however with a view to eulogize or defend that work.* If our author had only written a critique on the work he was reviewing, or had suffered his production to repose in that amiable organ of Christian criticism, "The Spirit of the Pilgrims," we probably should not have called the attention of our readers to it. But as he regards and treats Mr. Ware's book as the representation and practical exhibition of Unitarianism, developing its enormities, and disclosing the weakness and corruption of our whole system, and as he, uniting his review with other matters, has raised it into the dignity of an elaborate assault upon the "Unitarian Belief," we shall doubtless hear the old cry that we are again "annihilated," and the requiem will be chanted triumphantly over our grave, if we do not just protest that we yet survive. Mr. Adams, after a somewhat far-fetched, but not inelegant compliment, comparing his author's work with "The Pilgrim's Progress" (except on the points of its piety, interest, and usefulness,) proceeds to state his own reasons for noticing it. "It is intended," he says, "to be placed in the hands of one, at the time when he is interested in the salvation of his soul, and everlasting consequences are depending upon the direction which may then be given to his feelings. Those who have themselves been in such a state, and have seen what awful interests are in suspense during those hours when the soul is susceptible of the slightest influence, and those of us who are conversant with minds in this turning of the tide which *It has received the notice of this Journal. See No. for July, 1831. flows through eternity, can feel that a book for such a purpose should contain nothing but the eternal truth." We are here given to understand that a dangerous book, and one likely to give a fatal direction to the feelings at the crisis described, is finding favor with the community, and that there is reason to fear that serious inquirers will mistake it for a truly Christian work; the reviewer accordingly feels bound in conscience to raise the alarm, expose the real character of the work, and so, with a timely hand, spring the fatal snare which he saw was craftily laid for souls. Another reason why it attracted his attention we have already alluded to. It was because "such a book presents the best possible means of judgment, in regard to the religious system which forms its basis." He proposes, therefore, to show the fallacy of the system by the deficiencies of this book. This one little practical volume is to become, under his hands, a dead weight of sufficient momentum to bear down a whole system. Its alleged heathenism is to seal the doom of Unitarianism. We think it rather hard, to be sure, to be solemnly called upon to renounce the doctrines which we believe were revealed from heaven by Jesus Christ, and which we cherish as the precious truth of God, -to renounce these because a book has proceeded from our ranks, which, in this reviewer's judgment, contains no Saviour," "can never turn an inquirer into the way of life," gives directions which it chills the soul to think of," leads "only to sentimentality, and a cold, lofty, philosophical pride," prescribes a course which gives no rest to the soul, except when conscience has become stupefied with worldliness, and the reasonable fears of a destitution of meetness for heaven are lulled to sleep," "directs the inquirer's eyes away from the sinner's hope," and, finally, was written by one who "spake that which he knew, and testified those things which he had seen; while there are other things, essential to salvation, which, judging from this book, he did not know and had not seen. If the book be indeed so deplorably destitute of all Christian qualities and uses, we will disclaim and renounce it; but we shall not therefore give up the faith which does give us an all-sufficient Saviour, which seems to us to be the way and the life, which does give warmth, humility, and holy rest to the soul that truly embraces it, and which, |