gossamer, we would fain know by what subtle discrimination our author has arrived at this convenient distinction between Calvinists and Calvinism. "We ask not what Calvinists have done;" "we ask (such is the apodosis needful to the sense) what has Calvinism done?" Bunyan, indeed, by a happy afterthought, is included in a special exception; perhaps if it had suited the trimness of the period the author's pen might have added COWPER. But of these "individuals," acknowledged even "among them" (nempe Calvinists) to have "genius and accomplishments," by what principle does he so adroitly exclude their Calvinism from all share in the product? And when the multitudinous array-doubtless known to the author, but not yet revealed to us--of immortal bards among Socinians shall be drawn out before our wondering eyes, why, we demand, may we not in like manner claim "that the tone of religious thought and sentiment introduced" by them has not been Socinianism? We have said not a word of John Milton, because while the Paradise Lost is claimed by Antitrinitarians, it may be equally claimed by Materialists, Anthropomorphites, and Polygamists, as all may equally found their demands on the posthumous "Treatise of Christian Doctrine." There is a class we would believe that Dr Dewey does not write down to their capacities, who by literature understand a certain something, too feeble to grow into science, and too nebulous to consolidate into system. It is the ambrosia of the boarding-school, the magazine, and (sit venia verbo) sometimes the sermon. Dear, delightful literature! as necessary in the soiree as the latest moustache from abroad, or the most exquisite confections and music. It is now all Italian, now all German. It immortalises itself in the fugitive verses set forth in certain latitudes, with and without pictures, and lacquered or gilt covers, "thick as leaves in Vallombrosa." Of such literature, we own, Calvinism claims no paternity; but in that larger, nobler, older sense, in which the bonæ literæ were allowed to comprise the high argument of Plato and Tully, or even the soaring imaginations of Jeremy Taylor and John Howe, we challenge for Calvinism a glory which shall stand as long as the last pyramid. For the great and awful lineaments of Hall, of Chalmers, of Saurin, of Claude, of Edwards, of Owen, yea, of the sad but unterrified and unequalled John Calvin, look down upon us from the panels of our time-honoured castle, not (as Dr Dewey sneers) like a "dark and antiquated hatchment on the wall, the emblem of a life passed away, but as portraitures of those whose life is still vigorous in the thoughts of men, and whose invincible armour still triumphs by means of the very logic they forged for the conflict which we wage in their stead. Perhaps we speak warmly; but is there not a cause? Let it be considered in what terms that system is derided and maligned, by which our fathers lived and in which they died, as we also would live and die: a system "which wears no form of beauty that ever art or imagination devised;" "a system whose frowning features the world cannot and will not endure; whose theoretical inhumanity and inhospitality few of its advocates can ever learn; whose tenets are not, as all tenets should be, better but worse, a thousand times worse, than the men who embrace them; whose principles falsify all history and all experience, and throw dishonour upon all earthly heroism and magnanimity!" Hear it, ye mighty shades of those who manned the walls of Calvinistic Geneva! ye who dyed the fields of France with martyrs' blood! ye men of the Covenant who fell at Bothwell Bridge! ye slaughtered saints, whose bones lay "scattered on the Alpine mountains cold," "Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled Nay, hear it, ye living freemen of Scotland, urging your way onward against a torrent of rebuke and opposition, that the Calvinism for which you suffer these things, falsifies all history and all experience, and throws dishonour upon all earthly heroism and magnanimity! But we have dwelt too long on the ungracious task of exposing what is, after all, the unreasoning clamour of a fanatical misrepresentation. After charges so grave and criminations so harsh, we claim the right of examining what has been the energy of the Antitrinitarian faith to produce a progressive and heroic Christianity. Has its preaching, more than that of all others, filled and warmed and expanded the souls of hearers, and urged them forward to any semblance of aggressive philanthropy! Have its preachers been so inspired with the greatness of their theme, as above others to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus? It is too well known, that in a number of instances some of its most eloquent champions have found it necessary to transcend even the demarcations between religion and politics, to find excitements for their auditors. It is not two months since we read in a Unitarian journal of the performances of a great preacher in our national metropolis. He ventured, so we read, "to comment upon a wasted and corrupt franchise as one of the greatest of evils." This is one out of many instances which together show that the genuine interests of the public are in decay. The fact is instructive as part of their history, that several of their greatest ornaments have not found in the Unitarian ministry fuel for their excitement, or scope for their powers. We know them as statesmen, as philosophers, and as scholars, and claim them as adding glory to the American name; but where are Everett, Sparks, Bancroft, and Palfrey? It was the unusual glow of Buckminster and Channing, which, forming an exception to the common style, raised them above their coevals. In reference to a sermon of the latter, the amiable and accomplished Henry Ware was led to say, in a letter to his father: "It appears to be powerful and impressive beyond example. It must be a treasure to young preachers, and ought to stop effectually the cold sermonising of your rationalists, who maintain the strange contradiction of religion without feeling. If such a thing were possible, it would be scarcely worth having, I think."* It is not too much to say, that there is an anxious sense of something like languor and inefficiency in the midst of the Unitarian body itself. The attempt to inject into the enfeebled circulation some of the hot blood of German pantheism, has wellnigh brought on a crisis, if not that worst of monsters, a CREED. They who have long considered themselves as standing in the very Thermopyla of religious freedom, are fain to declare of Mr Parker, that in the judgment of most Unitarians, he "has proclaimed opinions which not only cut him off from our sympathy and body, but from Christianity itself."+ Yet this yearning for the transcendental is but a reaction against the coldness and ennui of a lifeless religion. How far the spirit of progress is animating the mass, especially to propagate their opinions among men, may be fairly gathered from the remarks made at the regular autumnal Convention of the Unitarian denomination, held last October in Philadelphia. We do not augur great consciousness of vitality from blandishments which passed so profusely at the opening of that convention, between its members and the heterodox portion of the Society of Friends, any more than from the previous and analogous invitations toward union with the Christian body. In the course of the proceedings, we meet with more unequivocal tokens of a persuasion that something is wrong, and with such marks of healthful Christianity set forth, as cannot be applied to their churches with any complacency. "Such a thing," said the Rev. Mr Briggs, "as a church having no interest in missions was an anomaly in the apostles' days. Every prayer is a mockery in those who are not solicitous to spread the gospel." He thought "that we had not given that attention to the subject that it required." "We have not sent our missionaries to the waste places of Zion." The Rev. Mr Bellows, a man of unusual learning, candour, and dignity, is reported to have said:" We are * Memoir of Henry Ware, Jr., vol. i. p. 52. Ib. p. 11. called as a denomination to exert ourselves for the spread of the gospel in its reality, simplicity, and practical power. The world will judge us, as it has full right to do, by our fidelity to this test. But Mr Hill of Worcester admitted that they "had not done much for the conversion of the heathen."+ Of the character and spirit of religion in the churches, the testimony was not more cheering. Lest we may have misapprehended the singular remarks of Mr Hedge of Bangor, we shall give a portion of them in extenso. "Rev. Mr Hedge of Bangor said, that brother Lathrop had remarked, that it was easier to procure money for political purposes than for religious ones. Why is it so? Is it not because men see a reality in politics, a present, living, and life-warm reality in the objects for which their contributions are sought; and because they do not see this in religion? Mr H. thought we erred very much in taking Christianity and religion out of the sphere of common life. We thus take all blood out of it. When Jesus, after his resurrection, appeared as a spirit to his disciples, they were all afraid of him. Men are still affrighted for the same reason, because Christ is presented to them as a ghost. Religion has none of the blood of daily life in it. It is not of a piece with great nature. Our theology and religious action, how unreal and hollow they are! We use phraseology which once had a meaning, but which no longer has. The reality has gone out of the words and forms which we insist on still using. Thus the phrase, the saving of souls,' which his brother from St Louis had used, was so indefinite and misguiding a phrase, as to be responsible for much of the ignorance that prevailed relative to the aims and purposes of the gospel towards man. What an indefinite, hollow, and unmeaning phrase it is! and how much is the real truth once contained in it lost sight of, for those very words' sake! How ghastly is the view of Christ presented by our preaching! he is not a man, but a spectre." It would be a hypocritical affectation if we were to say that we lament these symptoms of decay in a system which we religiously esteem to be both antiscriptural and dangerous: yet would not insult over the miscarriages even of a cause which we do not approve. From such indications, the argument is good against all claims of sole propriety in that which is fruitful, heroic, and magnanimous; and the evil is inherent. The vital principles have been eliminated. Separate American Unitarianism from certain adventitious aids,-from the diverted endowments of Cambridge, from the scholarship of its sons, and from the prestige of elegant society and social rank, and it becomes a stationary and deliquescent mass. Upon the common mind of the nation it has not made, nor will it ever make, * The Christian Inquirer, vol. i. p. 10. + Ib. p. 10. an impression. The more its banner is unfurled, the less does its phalanx press onward. Its day of strength was when it was not revealed; "when the Unitarianism of New England (we use the words of Mr Furness) was in its extreme infancy; when it was too tender to be brought out into the open air; before it had been baptised, when it was afraid of its name." It has a Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania; but how many churches? Wealth and art may give noble architecture and subduing music; but architecture and music cannot fill the vaulted house with ardent worshippers. Having thrown away that which draws and melts the heart of the people, it needs beyond all religious bodies upon earth, the succedaneum of vestments, incense, processions, statuary, and painting. In default of these, the easy grace and balanced melody of classical essays, though read with every intonation of art, will not cheer the dulness of an afternoon-service. The elements of Christian eloquence have been alienated. The fervour even of their noblest preachers is rather moonlight than day. Dread of systematic discussion has excluded the great source of intellectual excitement, even as felt by common minds, which love the ardency of argumentation. Similar causes have led their writers to sacrifice science to what is called literature, and energy to correctness. Great as is our abhorrence of certain errors in the Church of Rome, we never recur to the pages of Bourdaloue, Massillon, or Bossuet, without some elevation and perhaps some transport. But who can thus feel under the most symmetrical and faultless of Unitarian discourses? And with what hope can the system be expected ever to produce, in respect to pathos, fire, and sacred urgency, a Chalmers, a Tholuck, or a Monod? These observations we do not apply in their strictness to the work before us, which in character is didactic, and therefore subdued in its tone. Yet several, if not most, of these discourses were pronounced from the pulpit. Perhaps we should do no injustice to the author, if we should take them as specimens of his public ministrations. They are, to an extraordinary degree, exempt from every vulgar fault; classic in the purity of the English diction, and alike free from harshness and obscurity. They abound in passages which evince a taste cultivated even to fastidiousness. But these, after all, are negative virtues. There is a marked absence as well of rapid, trenchant, irresistible ratiocination, as of vehement and passionate entrance to the strongholds of the heart. It is the reigning and characteristic evil of the system itself. It is high time for us to remember that we have sat down to write a critique, and not a book. Several portions of the * The Christian Inquirer, vol. i. p. 9. |