Love and faith like theirs can never die; refined and sanctified, it lives in the heart, purifying the soul, and shaping the daily life.

Thackeray has portrayed in Madame de Florac“ the perfect lady; ” and where in the pages of fiction can we find a finer model of the “gentleman” than in Colonel Newcome ? So brave, yet so meek, - so dignified, yet so gentle, - truthful and courteous, generous and confiding, simple-hearted and chivalrous, — his is the true nobility of soul, which poverty cannot degrade. Cruel reproaches may cast him down, but they cannot humiliate him. Colonel Newcome in his pensioner's robe is more an object of reverence than of pity, and, like the Leonore whose name is last on his lips, he inspires the highest veneration and love.

The Madam Esmond of “The Virginians” is a finely-conceived and well-executed character, and Fanny Mountain and Lord Castlewood's rich American wife are very clever sketches ; but the limits of a single article will not allow us further to particularize. Examples enough have been given, we trust, to prove conclusively that Mr. Thackeray not only recognizes, but portrays, “the sweet divineness of womanhood ;” and in defence of his Becky Sharps and Blanche Amorys what better argument do we need than the one employed by Mr. Hudson in his lecture on the alleged want of taste of Shakespeare? “It is not always easy for people to distinguish between the faults of a character represented, and the faults of the representation itself. Of course Shakespeare was not always bound to conceive good characters, but only to give good delineations of those he did conceive, in the relations in which he conceived them."

The novelist who has painted women as they are, cannot be charged with wanting respect for the sex, when we read his beautiful tribute called forth by the memory of poor “ Stella’s ” wrongs, that hapless victim of a selfish man's heartlessness. 6. Only a woman's hair.' - Did you ever hear or read four words more pathetic ? Only a woman's hair, only love, only fidelity, only purity, innocence, beauty ; only the tenderest in the world stricken and wounded, and passed away now out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, love insulted, and pitiless desertion ; - only that lock of hair left; and memory and

remorse for the guilty, lonely wretch, shuddering over the grave of his victim."

ART. III. – DR. HUNTINGTON'S INTRODUCTION TO

BICKERSTETH.

The Rock of Ages ; or, Scripture Testimony to the One Eternal. God

head of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. By EdWARD HENRY BICKERSTETH, M. A., Incumbent of Christ Church, Hampstead. With an Introduction, by the Rev. F. D. HUNTINGTON, D.D., Late Preacher to the University, and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in Harvard College, Rector of Emanuel Church, Boston. Boston: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1860. 12mo. pp. 214.

OF Mr. Bickersteth's volume we have not much to say. Its tone is modest, in this respect contrasting favorably with the tone of the “ Introduction." Its spirit is good. The author is evidently in earnest, believes what he says, and sincerely desires to convert Unitarians to what seems to him the revealed truth of God. But the method which he has chosen is not the best. The time has gone by when an array of proof-texts, however ingeniously marshalled and combined, will be found sufficient in theological discussion. The sound of Scripture cannot now be made to stand for its sense, nor can any mosaic of the letter of the Bible pass as the picture of its spirit. Mr. Bickersteth is a devoted literalist in his reading of the “Word.” He treats all parts of the record, every book, chapter, verse, and letter, as of alike divine authority, and quotes indiscriminately from the Old Testament and the New, from the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse, as alike clear, definite, positive, and decisive. He neglects altogether any peculiarities of the different books; but wherever in the Scripture he can find the word which he would employ, he takes it, without regard to its connection or to its purpose in that place. This method will fatally vitiate his argument to those who distinguish between the books of Scripture, and to those who refuse to found their faith on coincidences of sound. To accept Mr. Bickersteth's style of pleading, one must ignore the results of criticism which the labors not only of liberal but of orthodox inquirers have wrought out.

We acquit Mr. Bickersteth of any intention to deceive; yet we are compelled to say that the form which he has chosen for

a

his argument, of texts in parallel columns, is sophistical, in bewildering the mind of the reader by fancied resemblances. If the issue be assent, it is assent which comes rather from confusion than conviction of the intellect. Nine tenths of these coupled passages, when singly examined, will be found to be improperly joined, to relate to different subjects, and to hold different meanings. Indeed, this is one of those arguments which are made up from the Concordance, rather than from the independent study of the Scriptures themselves; and we are not surprised that the author has fallen into the contradictions inevitable with such a method, – that he is constrained to make admissions, both concerning Christ and the Holy Spirit, which quite neutralize his assertions. He has to allow that the Spirit of God is sometimes spoken of in the Scriptures as not a person, but an influence; and he very candidly mentions many passages (in Chap. V.) which may seem to oppose his view of Jesus as God. He has failed, as we think, to set aside the force of these passages; and we are grateful to him for furnishing here such a restorative to the weak eyes which the glitter of his previous chapters may have blinded.

As strange a perversion as any in the book is that by which Mr. Bickersteth is pleased to confound the seven spirits of the Apocalypse with the third person of the Trinity. He assumes, without a particle of proof, that seven here are one. indeed, the mathematical solecism of the Triune God has been accepted, the human mind is ready for any numerical distortion. We can as well believe that seven are one, as that three are one. But that literalness of interpretation which Mr. Bickersteth uses elsewhere in the Scriptures is here signally outraged. If anything be clear in the vision of the Apocalyptic writer, it is that he saw these seven spirits of God as distinct and individual as the seven vials or the seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, “which are the seven spirits of God." In attempting to explain the terms he uses, Mr. Bickersteth, indeed, frequently involves himself in serious difficulties. The reasons which he gives for the neglect of Jesus to frame any form of a creed may satisfy his own mind, but will not satisfy those to whom he applies his argument. It will be difficult to make one believe that salvation depends upon inferences from doubtful expressions.

When,

Another remarkable peculiarity of this Scripture argument for the Trinity is, that it disarranges the order of work, the various offices, which have usually been assigned to the several persons of the Divine Triad. The Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, are each shown to us as God, but their several parts in the ordering of Creation, Redemption, and Sanctification are strangely confounded. If the argument proves anything, it proves that the Father could do all without the Son, the Son all without the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost all without either of the other parties; in fact, that the work of all is the same. The texts are so multiplied, the evidence is so cumulative, that it makes the several persons of the Trinity useless, It virtually gives us three Gods, of equal power not only, but of identical work. And by the same style of textual argument, it might be shown that the Jewish Jehovah, of whom the same attributes are predicated as of these three persons, is a fourth person in the Trinity. In fact, Mr. Bickersteth, in arguing the doctrine that the Holy Ghost and Jesus are gods, shows that their Deity is needless. He shows that the one original God is adequate to all the work assigned to the three, and that Scripture represents this God as doing all the work. We will not call his argument “a verbal pastime," but it is certainly no better than a manipulation of words.

It may be that what Mr. Bickersteth would call 66 a rebellious heart” hinders us from seeing the force of his reasoning; but it is certain that a second careful examination of his pleas, with the comparison of his six propositions, and the redistribution of his texts to their original places, has only the more fortified our conviction of the single personal unity of God. The swelling words of encomium which the American editor applies to this argument seem to us just only so far as they praise the honest purpose and the probable piety of one who pleads so earnestly for a dogma which he has been taught to believe. There is nothing really new in the volume, unless some will consider as new the explanation of the answer of Jesus to the young man, “Why callest thou me good?"

” that the emphasis was laid on “ why," and not on the final words of the question; or the pleasant fact that some of the disputed texts which Griesbach rejects are not pressed into the VOL. LXIX. 5TH S. VOL. VII. NO. II.

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argument. The method is faulty, and, even with the help of the rhetorical and oracular American Preface, we venture to doubt if many Unitarians will be induced by this book to relinquish their faith, or go back to the darkness and contradictions which their fathers left. Such a work is not adapted to this age or this meridian.

But our special concern here is with the “Introduction,” one of the most melancholy and discreditable exhibitions we have ever met with in a theological work. The very title-page disgusts with its pompous assurance.

While to the name of Mr. Bickersteth, the real incumbent of a parish, no prefix of “Rev.” is given, we learn not only what “the Rev. F. D. Huntington, D.D.” was, but what he expects to be, — “Rec

. tor of Emanuel Church, Boston." The assumption of this title is an anticipation which has no warrant but Dr. Huntington's own impatient conceit. No man can be the “Rector" of a church until he is an ordained minister of that church. Dr. Huntington had not even, when using this title, received Deacon's orders. He assumes here a rectorship which he did not occupy at the time of this writing, and which in the uncertainty of human things he might never occupy in time to come. This may seem a small thing to criticise. It is a small thing in itself, but, considered as an indication of character, it is a very significant thing. The conceit which could adopt this style cannot but impair, with all sensible people, the weight of the author's word. The entire essay, which we now proceed very briefly to examine, proves especially two things;first, that a man may be religious, so far as devout feeling goes, and yet apparently be deficient in the first elements of Christian morality; and secondly, that a man may be a very popular preacher and yet very ignorant of theology.

At the outset of his “Introduction," Dr. Huntington deprecates discussion of the Trinity, and intimates that it is properly learned by prayer and by special illumination, and not by any force of reasoning. “Those,” he says, “on whom this supreme light has risen can forbear even with injustice, with flippancy, and with bitterness in those from whom it is still hid.” It would be well if they could forbear sinning in this way them