the voucher. Of that portion of truth which philosophy fails to discover, she is always doubtful and unhappy because of the doubt. Faith must come in for its full authority, either at the beginning or at the end of philosophy, or man's wisdom. Of very many of the Hebrew titles in the Old Testament, the name of God makes one syllable, standing sometimes the first, sometimes the last. But whether that syllable be at the beginning or at the end of the word, the human name is consecrated by the divine. El-ijah was a prophet of God, Gabri-el is an angel of God. God with man, and man with God, mean much the same thing. After this example, philosophy must attach itself to faith, and allow faith to form a part of it, if philosophy would be a consecrated science. SIDNEY SMITH (if we may judge from his indolence, with as much truth as wit) remarked that he never liked to read a book he was going to review, it was so apt to prejudice him. Had we taken this course with regard to the book before us, our notice of it would probably have seemed the more impartial; for though, when it was announced as in press, we could not divest ourselves of prejudice in its favor, that prejudice has been marvellously strengthened by the perusal. Unlike most sermons, Mr. Bartol's gain much by passing through the press. Not that there is any essential obscurity in his style, his sentences are compact, their members arranged, and their rhythm rounded with that nice rhetorical instinct which results from liberal culture, and is in fact art matured into spontaneousness; but they are so full of the details of thought, reasoning, and imagery, that the ear receives more than the mind can digest or the memory retain. We are, therefore, the more ready to welcome the appearance of this volume. It is printed at the right time, while its author retains the vigor and glow of youth un * Discourses on the Christian Spirit and Life. By C. A. BARTOL, Junior Minister of the West Church, Boston. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1850. 12mo. pp. 344. 1850.] Christian Sermons. 111 impaired, yet has seen years enough to harvest rich fruits of patient thought and mature wisdom. The highest praise that we can give these Discourses is, to say that they have all the marks and features of Christian sermons. They are neither essays, nor dissertations, nor declamations. Their rhetoric bears the impress of the Gospel mint. Their logic is that of one who seeks to win souls to Christ. Their eloquence is that of deep religious conviction, and of fervor as calm as it is earnest, as earnest as it is calm. They are eminently Scriptural sermons,-not thickly interlarded, indeed, with texts of holy writ, a style of writing which often savors as much of laziness as of piety; but on exclusively and fundamentally Christian themes, and resting on revelation as the ultimate ground of authority and source of appeal. They are of the class of sermons in which the preacher never sinks his commission, or has any ulterior aim beyond religious instruction and impression. Seldom hortatory in form, they are constantly so in intent and effect; and where I or we takes the place of you, it adds to the truth urged or the duty enjoined the felt weight of the author's personal verification or experience. This volume, in several points of view, unites characteristics that are seldom coupled. The author preaches both himself and Christ. We like neither style of preaching disjoined from the other. The pulpit is no place for a man to sport his own idiosyncrasies, to broach opinions for which a "Thus saith the Lord" is wanting, to make a parade of originality, and display a wisdom "above what is written." The lecture-room is open for such exhibitions, and the lyceum furnishes the fittest audience for him who "comes in his own name." Yet, on the other hand, the preacher should not be a mere tunnel for the conveyance of Divine utterances. The same spirit bestows and sanctifies a wide diversity of excellent gifts. In ancient time it spoke very differently in the epic majesty of Isaiah's style, the threnodies of Jeremiah, and the artless bucolic strains of Amos. It thundered in Paul, and whispered in John. As pure water takes color from the soil through which it flows, and every river has its own hue, so does the simple truth of God become modified, without being corrupted, by the peculiar traits and tendencies of every rich and devout mind that it permeates, and no two preachers ought to resemble one another in their style of argument, illustration, and appeal. Close adherence to a conventional pulpit standard is not a mark of orthodoxy so much as of barrenness. It indicates a mind which has not made itself a reservoir for the truth, but is a mere drawer of water at stated times for sanctuary uses, a Gibeonite, not a priest. Mr. Bartol, while he throws his own mind into his sermons, evinces always close and habitual communion with the mind of Christ, and evidently could say with literal truth, "I have received of the Lord that which I have delivered unto you." He also unites philosophy and faith to a rare degree. He reasons profoundly and powerfully. His analysis of doctrine, principle, and motive is searching and thorough. He omits no proof which his propositions may derive from nature, science, or experience. There is a vein of metaphysical subtilty, fine and keen, running through his whole system of Christian ethics. But his philosophy is never of the skeptical or destructive school. He receives with implicit confidence the elements of truth, the grand principles of duty, as from the lips of Jesus; and then seeks to trace them through their analogies with the unwritten word in universal nature and in the heart of man. The verities made known by him who spake the words of God are with him unquestioned axioms, which need no demonstration and admit of no cavil, but to which he loves to elicit the concurrent testimony of all the Divine works and ways. We find, therefore, in these Discourses, no aimless or fruitless speculation; for though the reverse of superficial, they not infrequently explore unfamiliar and labyrinthine recesses of thought and truth, yet it is always with the clew furnished by faith. We find, also, in this volume, equal justice done to intuition and authority, as media of religious knowledge. Mr. Bartol shuns the common error of underrating and abusing the religion of the soul, in order to magnify the excellence of the Gospel, a process about as pertinent as a Jeremiade on the defects and infirmities of the eye would be in a discourse on sunlight. He is disposed to admit the validity of intuitional testimony on all matters within the legitimate range of consciousness; but the Divine attributes, the external facts in the history of 1850.] Mr. Bartol's Style. 113 religion, and the unexperienced future, all lie necessarily without that range, so that truths with regard to them cannot be substantiated by internal evidence. They may, indeed, derive a certain measure of probability from their accordance with the desires and needs of the soul; but can be made sure only by attestation from without, from above. The discrimination between the provinces of consciousness and revelation, constantly recognized, is distinctly and happily developed in the sermon entitled "Nature, Conscience, and Revelation, declaring God, Duty, and Destiny." In style, as in thought, Mr. Bartol blends characteristics which we are not wont to see combined. No writer sacrifices less to fancy than he. We doubt whether he is ever conscious of a trope, or enamoured of a metaphor. Nothing would seem more out of place in one of his sermons, than a piece of studiedly fine writing, indited for rhetorical effect; and the whole burden of these Discourses is that of profound argument or heart-searching demonstration on themes that seem to exclude most of the ornaments of figurative diction. Yet the language throughout is imaginative to its utmost capacity. The page is as full of pictures as of words. Every idea is suggested by its external symbol,-every sentence paints sensible forms and colors on the retina of the inward eye. It is as if the author had learned to think in a dialect of hieroglyphics, and to conceive of abstract ideas solely through their representative forms in the outward world, and as if in writing he simply gave a literal transcript in vernacular terms of this symbolical language. His figures are not rhetorical embellishments, but logical equivalents for abstract ideas, determinate factors in the products of reasoning, and employed as such with the same facility and precision with which algebraic signs are used to denote numbers or relations. This affluence of apt word-pictures imparts to his style a peculiarly rich brilliancy, though it has absolutely none of those sudden gleams and lambent flashes of thought which we are accustomed to associate with brilliant writing. Indeed, his movement as a writer is slow and measured, though without formal stateliness. His style is heavy in the good sense of the word (if it have a good one, if not we will make one for it), heavy not from dulness, for no writer can be less dull, but because it has so much thought to carry. It gives the reader the impression of great solidity of mind in the author,-of firm intellectual fibre,of the power to make for himself a straight and luminous way through the most obscure and intricate regions of spiritual contemplation. One of the happiest qualities of Mr. Bartol's style of sermon-writing is his skill in presenting the abstract in its concrete forms. His illustrations are affluently drawn from history, Scriptural narrative, personal experience, and passing incidents. The truth thus becomes embodied, and is brought within the range of the hearer's or reader's remembered or imagined consciousness. There are two sermons in this volume, to which we might refer as among the most perfect specimens of this method. One is on Herod's inference from the fame of our Saviour's miracles, that John, whom he had beheaded, had arisen from the dead; the other is on Belshazzar's Feast. They both exhibit, in the most appalling colors, the processes of the guilty conscience, as memory and imagination become its tormentors, create its present hell, and evoke from the depths of the future a still more fearful retribution. In sermons where the tone of the discussion is impersonal, Mr. Bartol passes with wonderful ease to the presentation of some living example, that incarnates the whole doctrine of the discourse with a beauty, vividness, and power far beyond the scope of mere argument or exhortation. As an instance of this, we may quote from the sermon on Autumn a sketch of which many of our readers will recognize the original: "As I walked through the lanes of yonder growing forest, on our beautiful common, the dry leaves crushing under my feet, and the sinking sun taking his last look at the bare boughs of the trees, I met a man on whom the blow of grief had descended as sorely as upon any, and with oft-repeated stroke. A new sorrow had just fallen on his gray head, and long-diseased, emaciated frame. While I approached, he was slowly eyeing the setting sun. As he turned his face towards me, I looked to see the marks of deep, uncomforted sadness wearing mournfully in upon his features. But no: not a trace of trouble in that eye which had so often looked on death in the forms of those he had most loved. His vision gleamed as though a light beyond that of the setting sun had fallen upon it. He spoke; and now, |