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clean life, in which he seems to believe all morality to consist (as if the plagues of the soul were not infinitely worse than the diseases of the body), and has led to life "without hope and without God in the world." And without laying all the blame of this--and it has been the experience of hundreds-upon Emerson himself, we do advisedly lay it upon the back of his heartless and hopeless creed.

After all this, to speak of Emerson's genius seems mere impertinence. It is little to the point, and, besides, has often been largely descanted on by us and others. It is undoubtedly of a high order. If he cannot interpret, he can paint, nature as few else can. He has watched and followed all her motions like a friendly spy. He has the deepest egotistic interest in her. He appropriates her to himself, and because he loves. and clasps, imagines that he has made her. His better writ

ings seem shaken, sifted, and cooled in the winds of the American autumn. The flush on his style is like the red hue of the Indian summer inscribed upon the leaf. One of the most inconsistent and hopelessly wrong of American thinkers, he is the greatest of American poets. We refer not to his verse --which is, in general, woven mist, involving little-but to the beautiful and abrupt utterances about nature in his prose. No finer things about the outward features, and the transient meanings of creation, have been said, since the Hebrews, than are to be found in some of his books. But he has never, like them, pierced to the grand doctrine of the Divine Personality and Fatherhood.

NO. III-NEALE AND BUNYAN.*

WHAT is it, it has often been asked, which gives us the strong. est and liveliest idea of the infinite? Is it the multitudinous ocean, or the abyss of stars, or the incomputable sand-grains

* The Pilgrim's Progress of John Bunyan, for the Use of Children in the English Church. Edited by the Rev. J. M. NEALE, M.A., Warden of Sackville College.

upon the sea-shore? No: these, if not numerable by human arithmetic, are taken up by imagination as "but a little thing." She engulfs them easily, and continues to cry," More, more;" "Give, give." We, of course, can only speak for ourselves, but certain it is that our liveliest notion of bottomless depth and boundless extent, is derived from our observation of the infinity of human impudence. That is a breadth without a bound, an elevation without a summit, a circumference without a centre, a length without a limit. We are perpetually, indeed, led to imagine that we are nearing its bottom, when lo! some new adventurous genius takes another plunge, and discovers a lower deep beyond the lowest, and we feel that the insolence, bigotry, and folly of a Neale, leave all former absurdity floundering far behind.

This edition of the "Pilgrim's Progress" is unquestionably the most impudent book we ever read. In the infinite of impudence, its author has earned a place similar to that of Sir William Herschel in the universe of stars: like him, he has outstripped all competitors; his folly, like the other's genius, is of a firmamental magnitude, and becomes magnificent from its very originality and daring. Mr. Neale has accomplished the poetical paradox: he has "gilded refined gold, painted the lily, and thrown a perfume on the violet." He has deliberately sat down to improve upon John Bunyan-to add and eke to the "Pilgrim's Progress;" he has converted honest John into a Puseyite, and changed his immortal allegory into a vade-mecum for the babes and sucklings of the Tractarian school. We advise him, when he has leisure, to carry out his plan as follows:-Let him proceed to make Milton, in his "Paradise Lost," teach passive obedience and non-resistance; let him, as a slight change, insert the syllable "in" before the title of Locke on "Toleration;" let him add a book to Cowper's "Task," advocating the damnation of unbaptised infants; let him show us Young, in his "Night Thoughts," defending transubstantiation; let him alter Don Juan to St. Juan, and turn Byron into a devout Methodist; or let him re-write "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and show Eva, on her death-bed, converted to a belief in the divinity of the cart-whip and the auction-block! Not one of these would be a grosser insult to the respective author, or to the public, than is this miserable.

emasculation of Bunyan's allegory. Men who poison wells do so generally by night, and by stealth; but this poor creature sheds his small venom in open day, and raises a complacent cry over it, as if he had done some good and noble action!— Next to the absurdity and positive impiety of the attempt he makes on the life of Bunyan's glorious book, is the silly and consequential insolence with which he avows and defends it.

We say "impiety," for whatever affects the integrity of one of the great classics of the world, especially if that classic be a religious book, amounts to impiety and sacrilege. What should we think of one who should thus practise on the Bible, who should intermeddle with the sublime argument of Job, so as to give it a different turn or termination; who should add his own moral to Jotham's fable; intermingle his own platitudes with Isaiah's divine minstrelsy; and annex his own ap pendix to the abrupt and crag-like close of Ezekiel's prophecy? We are far enough from placing John Bunyan or his work on the same level with the Scriptures. But his "Pilgrim" has long been to millions a minor Bible-a moon circulating round that elder orb. It has lain on the same shelf with the Scriptures, and truly been supposed to breathe the same spirit.Any attempt to underrate it, or to trifle with it, or to mangle and doctor it, is sure to be resented almost as keenly as an attempt to add to or diminish from the full and rounded glory of the Book of God.

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Mr. Neale does, indeed, begin his consummately foolish and impertinent preface, by confessing that he issues "the present edition of the Pilgrim's Progress' with some degree of anxiety" a feeling which, we trust, on reflection, will be exchanged for a large measure of remorse and shame. He proceeds to answer, anticipatively, some objections to his unheard-of procedure; but, ere doing this, he takes care to inform us, that he "has nothing to say to those professing members of the English Church who would make the theology of Bunyan their own," and that "more than one English priest has, before now, honored this, his great work, with a commentary." Honored! A good idea! A country parson, never perhaps heard of beyond his own parish, or a glib city-lecturer, or a stolid, sleepy-headed bishop, honoring one of the holiest, truest, and most imaginative books in literature with

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a commentary! Let us next hear of the honor Caryl has conferred on Job, Todd on Milton, poor Taafe on Dante, and Rymer on Shakspeare. The English churchman has yet to be born who can be compared, in native genius, in spiritual experience, and in profound piety, with the Baptist tinker, or who could, as from a height above, accord him honor. The highest honor the Rev. J. M. Neale could ever confer on him, he has conferred-namely, detraction and defilement; for, in value to a man of genius, next to the applause of a demi-god, is the censure or the insolent patronage of a dunce.

There are, it seems, some well-meaning members of the English Church, who "look upon the Pilgrim' as a religious classic, cannot bear the idea of its being pulled about!" and who ask, "Is its doctrine so very false? May not a child read it, without noticing the implied errors? Is not its general end and aim so excellent that minor defects may very well be forgiven?" But no! Mr. Neale has some grave objections to Bunyan's theology. Although the "Pilgrim's Progress" is characterised by Coleridge-that zealous churchman -as the best system of divinity extant, it appears to Mr. Neale to swarm with damnable heresies, and sins both of omission and commission. And what, pray, inquires the alarmed reader, are these? Has Bunyan denied the Trinity, or the divinity of Christ, or the atonement, or the necessity of divine grace? Has he questioned original sin, or justification by faith, or eternal punishment? No! but he is not perfectly orthodox, according to the Anglican standard, about baptism, confirmation, and the Lord's Supper! He does not believe that the Holy Ghost is given at baptism to every child; that it is renewed by the imposition of the bishop's hands at confirmation; and that the "blessed Eucharist is the chief means by which the life thus implanted, and thus strengthened is supported and perfected." Bunyan-wicked man!--has said nothing about baptism or confirmation, and allows one of his most eminent pilgrims-Faithful, namely-to pass the house Beautiful without entering in! Moreover, the reader will find "the beginning of the Christian life set forth again and again as Conversion." Many other parts of the story and of the dialogue are exceedingly heterodox, and, to crown all, Bunyan has never heard of the Council of Chalcedon!

How, then, is Mr. Neale to deal with this dangerous book, which lays so little stress upon outward observances, and so much upon inward change; which is so heinously charitable to those who cannot sit down with others at the Lord's table, so fond of repeating the paradox-"except a man be convert ed, and become as a little child, he shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven"—and which a great many excellent persons will not even "allow in their houses ?" Shall he not put it at once into an Oxford Index Expurgatorius? or agitate for the entire suppression of all but its Sanscrit translation? or hire the thunders of the Vatican to crush and quell it? Not he! He will act a more generous and liberal part. He will show himself to be a lover of literature and genius, and will sacrifice some of his very serious scruples of conscience to that love. That has been, indeed, so strong and discriminating, that it has enabled him to see very considerable merit in this heretical work. It certainly "exerts a fascination over the minds of children." Some of its "particular passages" are "beautiful," one is "worthy (!!!) of St. Bernard," and therefore he is "thankful that such a book exists." And then, what a glorious plan he has for putting it all right, and turning the heterodox tinker into a St. Bunyan. It is quite quick and magical. "Presto! begone the Baptist, and enter the Bishop." "One or two insertions, a few transpositions, and a good many omissions," and the thing is done. Suppose we should proceed, according to Mr. Neale's principle, to operate on the Lord's Prayer, how easily we could prove it to be a prayer to the pope, ay, or to the devil! The printer who should omit the "not" in the seventh commandment, and insert it in the fourth, and should so transpose the ninth and the tenth verses of the 20th Exodus, as to enjoin men to rest six days and to labor one, would be but a type of thee, O! J. M. Neale, thou miserable ninny and bigot of the first magnitude!

He is a little sore, however, at the prospect of the ridicule he is rather sure he will meet. He anticipates that his undertaking will be compared to Bentley's edition of Milton. We can assure him that his fears on this point are quite unnecessary. Bentley's book is a "folly of the wise," and shows learning and talent which only the wise could either possess or pervert. Neale's book is the folly of one who, in Touch

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