allotted portion of time; but who has truly lived; sharing its most vivid existence, and in contact with its most brilliant points, and himself impressing a new form on some of its highest interests; who had gathered most of its wisdom, and experienced all its severities; who consecrated himself to the pure service of truth, and the untiring quest of the living God, with the singleness of a great purpose, and the dignity of a high faith; and in his fidelity to this vow, passed from exile to honour, and from honour back into neglect, with the courage of a martyr, and the simplicity of Christ. His part is over; his work remains. The meditations of wisdom, and the sanctities of conscience cannot perish under the providence of God; and he has left us many a deep and sacred thought,many an image from his own true soul, for which the world will be happier yet, and the pure light of devout and Christian reason, wherein he lived, open over us a deeper heaven than the storm-clouds of fear and superstition now permit us to behold. While the labours of his mind still survive, to share the noble strife through which all things great and good must pass to their triumph in this world, he is gone where no error can mislead, no falsehood prevail, no tempest of deluded passion beat upon the good. Our departed friend here lays down a life of thought and suffering rather than of action. Such a life we instinctively conceive to be in spiritual sympathy with heaven; and the belief attests the natural feeling of all men, that the inward spirit has a divine ascendancy over the outward forms of existence. We part from one who dwelt indeed within our days, but was not limited to their range; who had collected the thoughts of every age, and lived in communion with all generations of the wise. Belonging to no time, he comes before our conceptions as ripe for eternity:-the wisdom from above does but return home, when it goes thither. He has but joined the great and holy with whom he has long been familiar, and entered the mild converse with immortals, long studied in exile here. He is gone to that Messiah whose mind he so well understood, and so simply obeyed; gone to the closer embrace of that Infinite Spirit, within whose Fatherhood he reposed like a suffering and trustful child. And though his mortal remains rest not in the tombs of his fathers, but in a foreign clime; yet all lands are near alike to heaven, and the pure spirit is nowhere alien in the universe of God. Let us then consign these relics with faith and reverence to the earth; in hope to meet their departed spirit, when we shall have crossed the gulf of silence, and reached the sphere where doubts shall be resolved, and the mystic secret opened, and the tears of mortal grief for ever wiped away. SONNET. BY JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE. Night and Death. Mysterious Night! when our first Parent knew Yet 'neath a Curtain of translucent Dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting Flame, And lo! Creation widened in Man's view. Who could have thought such Darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, oh Sun! or who could find, Whilst Fly, and Leaf, and Insect stood revealed, That to such Countless Orbs thou mad'st us blind! Why do we, then, shun Death with anxious Strife? If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life? ART. III.-THE SPIRIT OF PAUL'S CHRISTIANITY EXTRACTED FROM ITS DOCTRINAL FORMS. Spiritus intus alit.-VIRG. THERE are probably few reflecting persons at the present day, who would not, if they were quite sincere, acknowledge themselves to be frequently embarrassed by doubts and difficulties on the most interesting and momentous subjects of human thought and inquiry. Could they speak out their minds, and share their perplexities with others who may be secretly experiencing the same uneasiness-they would at once be relieved, and openhearted conference might work out a practical result of satisfaction and peace. But the terror of public opinion is held out against all such indiscreet revelations; the inward misery of the soul must be nursed in secret; and the prohibition to be strictly honest cherishes the worst and most consuming scepticism. It is a great misfortune in the present constitution of English society, that every man, unless he is content to become a mere cypher in existence, is almost compelled to attach himself to some sect or party, marked off by a sharp and definite limit from the rest of the community-and that so little neutral ground is left him, which he would gladly occupy as a free searcher after truth, anxious to maintain a friendly and candid intercourse with all the various associations of his fellow-men, but bound, in the actual state of his opinions, to identify himself absolutely with none. The consequence is, that men are forced to a premature fixation of their views; and that questions of speculative difficulty, which still continue to rankle in the depths of the mind, are abruptly foreclosed, before any opportunity is afforded of bringing them to a satisfactory termination. Our earliest imbibed feelings and sentiments, which have become a part of our moral nature, and which contribute so essentially to the comfort and right ordering of our existence-and the convictions which reason obtrudes upon us-seem oftentimes painfully at variance. We do not doubt, they may be reconciled; and we can even fancy we discern the way; but public opinion fulminates its intolerant protest against the only course by which the reconciliation might be effected. How many a man, for example, is in this situation! The character of Christ and the spirit of his religion-its transforming influence on civilization-its ever-spreading agency-its effect on the hearts and consciences of those who sincerely imbibe it carry with them completely not only the sympathy of the moral feelings, but the approval of the reason and the inward sense of an overruling providence. On the other hand, the difficulties of the Scripture, the apparent disagreement of some of its statements with the established truths of science and the known laws of nature, the uncertain and fluctuating principles applied to its interpretation, the opposite doctrinal systems deduced from it by different sects who equally claim for their own its express sanction and authority, and the irreconcileable hostility of theologians of different schools-excite doubt, perplexity and hesitation, from which, in the usual way of viewing these subjects, it is impossible for the candid and truthful mind wholly to free itself. Is a man who experiences these embarrassments necessarily reduced to one of two alternatives? Must he embrace the cold negations of Deism with which he has no sympathy, and forego the genial, cheering influences of Christian communion? or must he, retaining his Christianity, be responsible for all the inconsistencies which a rigid doctrinal construction of its letter entails?-This is the question at issue. All good men acknowledge the benignant power of Christianity on the heart and life; but what Christianity is essentially, as distinct from the dogmatic forms in which we see it everywhere embodied and how we must evolve its spirit by a self-consistent principle of interpretation from the written record-it is not so easy to determine. This is the great problem which theology has henceforth to solve; and its satisfactory solution, we may without any undue confidence predict, will open a new era of Christianity, bringing its great principles into closer union with the present wants and tendencies of society, and not inferior, in the extent and importance of the change it must introduce, to the Reformation itself. In the eye of those who look a little below the surface of things-there are already not a few indications of a general movement in this direction. In all sects and parties we find individuals dissatisfied with what exists, and convinced that things cannot remain where they are; searching after a central truth which lies somewhere in the midst of them; quitting a dogmatic for an eclectic spirit; and preparing for the adoption of a genuine catholicity of principle, by freely accepting the elements of truth and good wherever they are found. If we are not mistaken, the way towards this new construction of Christianity-if we may so without presumption call it must be found in a clearer conception than seems yet to prevail, of the distinction between the form and the spirit of a religion. We dislike the use of such technical terms, could they be avoided; but if we can once seize the idea which they express, they will conveniently serve as the signs of a distinction, which it is very important to keep in mind. Feelings and tendencies exist in the depths of the mind, which do not shape themselves into any very distinct ideas, but which have nevertheless the strongest influence on action and happiness, and clothe with a peculiar character the life of an individual. Such tendencies appear to belong to the original organization of the mind. When peculiarly marked and decisive, they constitute what may be not unaptly called the instinct of genius; and, when less powerfully developed, still furnish the latent distinctions of character among men, forming their habitual associations of ideas, and secretly impelling their course of action. Of this nature are all the feelings and tendencies which relate to the infinite and the spiritual: these are at once the strongest in their influence, and the most indistinct in their object, of any we experience. No ideas that we can form, adequately embrace the great eternal truths to which we are still conscious all such feelings and tendencies must relate; no language can convey any conception of the power which accompanies them; and any attempt to realize them must be figurative and symbolical-a remote approximation-assuming its form from the character and condition of the conceiving mind. Religion then, in its simple essence, as distinct from morality and metaphysics, is a feeling-a sentiment-the consciousness that we live in the presence of a Supreme Power, that all we have proceeds from him—that our moral life has an indissoluble connection with him independent of all the changes of a material existence, and that in the progress of moral development we attain to a more intimate communion with him.-This is the spirit of Theism in its most general sense. Even in positive religions, such as Judaism, Parsism, Mohammedanism and Christianity, we may discern a spirit distinct from the forms in which they are expressed; in other words, we may perceive the feelings and tendencies which they most powerfully call into exercise, apart from the dogmas or intellectual conceptions and the outward acts of worship, in which they are realized and embodied. Of all positive religions, Christianity in its earliest annunciation was the most independent of outward forms. It came to the heart of man, like a spirit and a power; and breathed a re-animating influence over society. One Father, supreme in power and in glory-one messenger of grace and truth from him, the exemplar of human duty and the perfection of human virtue-men's filial relation to God, and their fraternal relation to each other and to Christ-union with |