concerning conversion. The author asserts that he holds to the supernatural doctrine on that subject. He is of course entitled to the benefit of that declaration. All we can say is, that he seems to use the terms in a different sense from that in which they are commonly employed, and that there is enough. of a rationalistic cast about it to account for all the disapprobation it has excited, and to justify the course of the Massachusetts Committee. For although it contains much important truth powerfully presented, and although it inculcates principles, considering the source whence they come, of no little significance and value, yet a book which, in its apparent sense, denies every thing supernatural in religion, could hardly be expected to circulate with the approbation of any orthodox society.

Having presented what we consider the true ground of the admitted connection between believing parents and their children, and considered Dr Bushnell's views on the subject, it was our purpose to call attention to the church or ritual doctrine. This, however, we can barely state. The church doctrine admits original sin, and the insufficiency of nature, or of any power operating in nature, for the regeneration of men. This power is found in the church. As all men partake of the life of Adam by their natural birth, so they are made partakers of the life of Christ by their spiritual birth. He by his incarnation has introduced a new principle of life, which continues in the church, which is his body. And as baptism makes us members of the church, and therefore members of the body of Christ, it thus makes us partakers of his life. Just as a twig engrafted into a tree partakes of its life, so a child engrafted by baptism into the church partakes of the life of Christ. It is this life thus supernaturally communicated, which is to be developed by Christian nurture, and not any thing in the soul which it has by nature. This doctrine is presented in various forms more or less gross or philosophical, according to the character and training of its advocates. It is, however, everywhere essentially the same, whether propounded at Rome, Oxford, or Berlin. The German philosophical form of the doctrine bids fair to be the popular one in this country, and is advanced with the contemptuous confidence which characterises the school whence it emanates. Every thing which is not ritual and magical is pronounced rationalistic. Nothing is regarded as spiritual but grace communicated by external acts and contacts. The true doctrine of Protestants which makes faith necessary to the efficacy of the sacraments is denounced as Puritan, which is rapidly becoming a term of reproach. This doctrine rests on a false view of the church. The external body of professors is not the body of Christ, which consists

NO. VII.

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only of believers. Transferring to the former the attributes and prerogatives which belong to the latter is the radical error of Romanism, the source at once of its corruption and power. It rests also on a false view of the sacraments, attributing to them an efficacy independent of faith in the recipient. It assumes a false theory of religion. Instead of the free unimpeded access of the soul to Christ, we are referred to the external church as the only medium of approach. Instead of the life of God in the soul by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, it is the human nature of Christ, the second Adam, of which we must partake. The whole doctrine is nothing but a form of the physical theory of religion. It is a new anthropology palmed upon men as the gospel. We are constantly reminded of the remark of Julius Müller, that all attempts to spiritualise nature end in materialising spirit,-a remark which finds a striking illustration in the new philosophy in its dealings with religion. Its most spiritual theories serve only to reduce the principle of divine life to the same category with animal life, something transmissible from parent to child, or from priest to people. There is great reason to fear that religion, under such teaching, will either sink into the formal ritualism of Rome, or be evaporated into the mystic Rationalism of Germany. Schleiermacher, whose views are so zealously reproduced, and between which and his own Dr Bushnell seems often at a loss to choose, taught that Christ introduced a new life-principle into the world. Human nature, corrupted in Adam, was restored to perfection in him. That life still continues in the church, just as the life of Adam continues in the race. Christianity is the perfection of nature, as Christ was the perfection of manhood. It is not with the historical personal Christ that we have communion, any more than it is with Adam as an individual man with whom we have to do. Both are reduced to a mere power or principle. Christ as the Son of God is lost. So also in his system the Holy Ghost is not a divine person, but the " common spirit," or common sentiment of the church. The Holy Spirit has no existence out of the church, and in it is but a principle. In this way all the precious truths of the Bible are sublimated into unsubstantial philosophical vagaries, and every man pronounced a Rationalist, or what is thought to be the same thing, a Puritan, who does not adopt them.

Though we have placed the title of Dr Tyler's Letter to Dr. Bushnell at the head of this article, the course of our remarks has not led us into a particular consideration of it. This is not to be referred to any want of respect. The subject unfolded itself to us in the manner in which we have presented it, and we should have found it inconvenient to turn aside to consider the particular form in which Dr Tyler has exhibited

substantially the same objections to Dr Bushnell's book. Dr T., however, seems to make less of the promise of God to parents than we do, and to have less reliance on Christian nurture as a means of conversion. We are deeply impressed with the conviction that as to both of these points there is much too low a doctrine now generally prevailing. And it is because Dr B. urges the fact of the connection between parents and children with so much power, that we feel so great an interest in his book. His philosophy of that fact we hope may soon find its way to the place where so much philosophy has already

gone.

ART. III.-Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Leben, beschrieben durch KARL ROSENKRANZ. Berlin. 8vo. Pp. 566.

LITTLE addicted as we are to swear to the words of Hegel, we own we have read this memoir, by one of his most enthusiastic followers, with uncommon interest. The portrait at the beginning detained us long; it is a head not to be soon forgotten, suggesting as it does a sternness of profound thought which is almost oppressive. It is impossible to contemplate the character of one who has given form to the chaos of pantheistic error in our day, without a curiosity to know something about its development. Dr Rosenkranz has afforded us the means of gratifying this desire.

George William Frederick Hegel was born at Stuttgart in Wurtemburg, August 27, 1770, and was the eldest son of George Lewis Hegel. His boyish days passed by without any thing very remarkable. He loved the peculiarities of his native country, and in all his works indulges in Swabian provincialisms. He was a promising school-boy, and at eight years of age received from his preceptor as a prize Wieland's translation of Shakspeare. The first work which seems to have made a lively impression on him was the Merry Wives of Windsor. We shall not follow him through all the gradations of his youthful curriculum. It was regular and complete, especially in all that relates to the ancient classics. Greek tragedy engaged much of his attention, and as long as he lived he retained his admiration for the sublimity and pathos of the Antigone. The deep love of Grecian beauty with which he was smitten abode with him, and perpetually reappears in his works. His biographer speaks of the numerous commonplace books and epitomes produced during this period, and still extant among his papers. In philosophy he already began to read Locke, Hume, and Kant. But the

The

first decided tendency towards this field of research is observable in a little manuscript of 1785, filled with definitions of philosophical terms.

From his earliest years, and throughout his life, Hegel bestowed great pains on transcribing. It is wonderful how he found time for this: in later years his books are laden with excerpts from the Morning Chronicle, the Reviews, the Courier, the Constitutionel, the Journal des Debats, the Jena Literaturzeitung, and the like. The ease and fluency of his style was greater in his earlier than his later years; though, like Bentham, he required a perspicuous interpreter for his theories. We are, however, among those who admire his gnarled, oaken diction. His oral delivery is admitted to have been always bad; he superabounded in gesticulations, which were out of harmony with what he was saying, and his enunciation was such as drew ridicule from those who could not cope with him in argument. Hegel was eminently social: Rosenkranz tells that he took snuff, and was very fond of chess and of cards, in which points he was like Kant. In his study arrangements, he abhorred every thing that savoured of niceness and coxcombry: his simple writing-table having become famous for the picturesque disorder of papers, letters, and snuff box.

Hegel went to the University of Tübingen, expecting to devote himself to the ministry. He heard lectures from Schnurrer and Storr on Exegesis, and from Flatt on Philosophy. Flatt was an acute but liberal opponent of the Kantian system. The Stift, or theological seminary connected with the university, was not agreeable to the young theologian, and he complained of its conventual seclusion. There is reason to think that nothing displeased him more than certain remains of evangelical strictness. The students had to preach, and Hegel took his turn, in 1792, exercising his gifts on Isaiah vi. 7, 8. Few particulars are accessible respecting Hegel's student-life. He was a jovial companion, and sometimes visited scenes of conviviality. In consequence of being visited with something like an academical censure for his irregularity in study, he suddenly made a complete change in his way of life, turned into application with extraordinary zeal, and for weeks together slept upon the sofa. During this period he was a liberal in politics, and even a revolu tionist. It is a fact worth noticing, that on a certain Sunday morning in spring, Hegel and Schelling marched out of Tübingen, with some friends, to a neighbouring meadow, for the purpose of planting a tree of liberty. He gave, however, few tokens of greatness. When he subsequently attained to high distinction, his old college comrades were amazed, and

would exclaim-"Well, this is what we never expected of Hegel!" He was not addicted to the company of ladies, and was nowise remarkable in knightly exercises. Indeed, he seemed older than he was, so as to be nicknamed the Old Man. Yet he was beloved, both in town and seminary, for his uprightness, heartiness, and frankness. He sometimes visited the neighbouring towns with his friends, and not always with the necessary permission of superiors.

This was the epoch of the first French Revolution, which produced an extraordinary awakening of mind in young Germans, many of whom saw in it tokens of the regeneration of Europe. A political club was formed in the Tübingen Stift or seminary; but this was betrayed, and the Duke Charles broke it up. Hegel's father was a decided aristocrat, and earnest controversies took place between him and the young man. The latter, a diligent student of Rousseau, was a leading orator in the club. Great as was the change of his opinions in after life, he never lost a warm sympathy for all that was genuine in the French liberalism of that day. His album attests his youthful zeal, in such watch-words as In tyrannos! Vive la liberté! Vive Jean Jacques! Fatherland and Freedom!

In 1790 he took his Master's degree, under the protectorate of Storr. His dissertation was, De limite officiorum humanorum, seposita animorum immortalitate. His two com

panions most worthy of note at Tübingen were Hölderlin and Schelling. În Hölderlin, Hegel found the love of Hellenism concentrated, and he was ardent in his wish to transport some of the beautiful enthusiasm of Greece into the dry religion of Germany. Hölderlin also was a Swabian. He commenced his romance, Hyperion, at the Seminary. In 1791 he wrote in Hegel's album, as his symbolum, "Ev zai av. These young men, with Fink, Renz, and some others, gave themselves to the study of Plato with high enthusiasm: they also read Kant and Spinoza. Schelling joined their group in the autumn of 1790. His father was a dignified clergyman at Bebenhausen and afterwards at Maulbram. When he brought his son to the Stift at Tübingen, he designated him as præcox ingenium. Hegel was five years older than his precocious friend; but a common zeal for freedom and philosophy drew them together in the club.

After returning home from the university in 1793, Hegel took a place as private tutor in Bern. It may be remarked that Kant, Fichte, and Herbart were all private tutors. It was Hegel's lot to reside in a number of interesting towns, long enough to become intimate with all their great peculiarities-Stuttgart, Tübingen, Bern, Frankfort, Jena, Bamberg,