cautious yet ardent, of a subject which, as it sustains the best hopes, touches also the tenderest feelings of the heart. The entire title of the piece is "An Apologetic View of the Sinless Character of Jesus." Would that some mind of kindred sympathies and powers among us would complete the view, and apply this great fact to the doctrines of the Gospel, and show its power over the heart and life of man. In our day and country this discussion is of the highest moment. We need the example of Christ to correct our misinterpretation of his precepts. How many instances of modern fanaticism could have no existence in minds which had known his calm dignity and repose!

One word as to the manner in which the translations are executed. German writers are almost without exception difficult to translate. The language itself presents shades of thought, idiomatic forms of expression, and combinations which it is impossible to render exactly into good English. Its compounds are hardly translatable, except by a circumlocution which materially impairs the force of the sentence. Then the style of German writers is very diverse from what we should call good writing in English. They indulge in interminable sentences, worse than Milton's, twisted and complicated with innumerable parentheses, seeming dislocations. Many, moreover, use a philosophical language which has no adequate expression in our tongue. These and other difficulties, the translators have surmounted with great skill. The translation, while it retains the strength, liveliness and spirit of the original, is thoroughly and purely English. There are no traces of a mere doing into English, which has made translations from the German by scholars in England, heavy and unreadable. The style is easy and idiomatic, and might for the language well pass for original English composition. The notes which have been added by the translators, show great learning, and judgment, and taste, and contain discussions of great value. The same spirit of liberal scholarship which has guided in the selections, has given due proportion and pertinent criticism, and rich illustrations.

We have said that a work is sometimes as valuable for its form as for its thought. This is true not absolutely, but relatively, in respect to the reader. The form contains the writer's method; and it may be that the culture of the reader shall be more aided by a perception of his method, than by a knowledge of his conclusions. This remark is applicable in some extent

to this work. We do not mean to undervalue the truths so ably set forth in it; yet cannot but believe, that a service of hardly less worth has been rendered to our community, by the specimens which it contains of thorough and exact analysis, and of scholarlike investigation.

ARTICLE XIII.

REVIEW OF BACON'S HISTORICAL DISCOURSES.

By Rev. Noah Porter, Jr. New Milford, Conn.

·Thirteen Historical Discourses on the completion of Two Hundred years from the beginning of the First Church in New Haven, with an Appendix. By Leonard Bacon, Pastor of the First Church. New Haven: Durrie & Peck. New York: Gould, Newman and Saxton, 1839. pp. 400.

We are always gratified to see a vindication of the character of the Puritans, and an illustration of their history, undertaken and executed by one of their true-hearted sons. We are pleased to know that one, who is animated with an honest reverence for their principles and aims, and possessed of much of their spirit, has stepped forth as the fair but fearless assertor of their well-grounded claims to the respect and the love of the passing generation, and endeavored to establish in the minds of their descendants a deep and lasting attachment to the honor of their ancestry.

We expect and have a right to demand, that such a man will conduct his inquiries with a reverence for truth, that is higher even than his love for the Puritans, and that he will fearlessly bring to the test of truth, the soundness of their distinctive principles, the wisdom of their measures, and the excusableness of their prejudices. For the men whom he would vindicate, if they gloried in anything, gloried in their attachment to truth, and made it ever their boast that they yielded an implicit deference to her authority, as she speaks in the voice of conscience and by the Word of God. That authority they counted as far more worthy of their homage than that of kings SECOND SERIES, VOL. II. NO. III.

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and prelates, and with inward reverence to her majestic presence, they stood up before a majesty which they deemed far inferior, and their faces were not ashamed. He then, who in the spirit of the Puritans and upon their own principles would scan their history anew, and study their character, must be willing to refer both to the same tribunal and with fearlessness abide the issue of a repeated investigation. We ought not to be surprised, perhaps, if he who by early education, has been used to give half the reverence of his heart to Truth in her severe and simple dignity, and half to the throne of a monarch, begirt with its dazzling cincture of nobles in church and state, should conduct an investigation that is partial, even when he intends to be honest, and rest upon biassed conclusions when he least suspects his own fairness. Nor should we at all wonder, if he who has violently rent himself from his early attachment to the simple forms by which his father worshipped God, and which his mother taught him to love, should manifest an intemperate zeal in attacking the principles and the fame of his Puritan ancestry, and show a too forward eagerness as he pronounces the edifice to be unsound which they reared at so great a cost, and rallies around himself associates to assist in the work of its destruction. But in the professed inheritor of Puritan' principles it would be treason to be otherwise than ready to stand or fall by the truth, and to cast himself upon her award, even when he is summoned to the delicate and difficult task of estimating on fair principles of judgment, the real worth of those whom he has been taught to honor.

It is not for him, however, after he has finished such an examination, to fear to declare with boldness his firmer attachment to their principles; nor is it for him to shun with a fervid spirit, to proclaim anew their private worth and public virtue. The descendant from the non-conformists of the seventeenth century, who has studied their claims to the regard of the present generation, should not be too timid to make them known. He of all other men should be the last to be led by literary associations, or the prevailing current of thinking among fashionable religionists, to present an apology when he ought to stand upon the high ground of triumphant vindication. He should be the last man to rest satisfied with palliating or excusing their peculiarities, when he ought to call up from the past, the voice of indignant rebuke against their degenerate sons. The author of these discourses has fulfilled both of these requi

sitions, in a manner which entitles him to the highest praise. His work is no superficial repetition of familiar facts. It is no glorious declamation upon the Puritan character as a theme of which the writer knoweth nothing accurately, but it presents to us a thorough, an accurate, and candid statement of their excellencies and their faults, uttered in no timid language, and often speaking with a voice of manly reproof.

The true spirit of history is affectionate and reverential. History ought to be impartial indeed, but she should never be heartless. Where she sees occasion to condemn, she should do so, in no doubtful phraseology, and with all needful severity; but the virtue which she finds reason to admire, she should always honor, and should record her honor, in language that is well tempered indeed, but which is warm and fervid still. No man can be an accomplished historian, in whose heart, reverence and admiration, are not prevailing impulses. These alone can animate for those protracted investigations, which otherwise might be wearisome. These alone can minister the patience, which under any other impulse, had given place to a careless and dishonest haste in collecting the needed facts, and in deriving from those facts, the conclusions to which they point. These give to faded and dusty records, a higher and a fresher interest, than partizan bigotry or scoffing unbelief can possibly impart. These cause a bright and beaming beauty to shine out from their repulsive pages. Every work to be done well, should be made a work of love, and there is no love that is purer or more inspiring, than that which a generous mind, yields to that worth which brightens and adorns the records of the past.

We do not need to be told by Mr. Bacon, that this work of his was written in such a spirit as this. We should have known from the volume itself, that there was some cause, which made him feel when be "was yet a boy, that the New England race is sprung of earth's best blood."

We regard it as a favorable circumstance also, that the author of this volume sympathizes with the religious spirit, and the religious principles of the fathers of New England. Many of their eulogists have extolled them too exclusively, as the vindicators of liberty in church and state, and as the founders of improved systems of civil and ecclesiastical polity, rather than as the strenuous defenders of "the faith once delivered to the saints." As far as they have proceeded in their work of

praise, they have done well. We doubt not that the admiration which they have professed, has been sincere, and the honor which they have tendered has been cordially given. But with the views which we cherish, of that truth, which the Puritans counted dearer than life, and of that serious and unmoved faith which is its appropriate fruit, we should count it an unmanly weakness, to conceal our decided preference of a vindication of their fame, in which that which was the very soul of their endurance and their toils is enforced as a matter of the same solemu obligation, as it was held by them.

We need not say, that the doctrines which the Puritans held as truths which "perish never," are made prominent in these discourses. However much zealots for the strictest constructions of the platforms and symbols, which the fathers framed, may argue to the contrary, no one who is familiar with the writings of Howe and Baxter, can doubt but that if theirs is Puritan theology, then Mr. Bacon has not greatly erred from the faith.

The publication of this volume is well-timed. It might seem to be otherwise, to a superficial observer of the times. To such an one it might appear, that the number of "Tributes to the memory of the Pilgrims" which have been already prepared, was even more than sufficient, and that there could be but little occasion for new incitements, to lead a grateful posterity to honor their fathers, and to cherish their distinctive principles. A country like ours he would say, cannot do otherwise, than remember to do honor to those men, who by their sacrifices and toils, laid the foundations of its prosperity so broadly and deeply, and who by their principles have given character to its institutions. But the fact ought not to be disguised, and we certainly do not wish to conceal it, that there exists a class of men among ourselves, who are ready to go as far as they dare, in detracting from the well-earned fame of the fathers of New England, and who are even prepared to intimate to us, that the praise which is bestowed upon them by their grateful sons, is too often excessive. To this unqualified admiration, they feel bound to apply the needed corrections; and so they attempt to show us that civil liberty does not owe to them so great a debt, as is sometimes represented, while the religious liberty for which they strove, was an emancipation from the healthful restraints of a church, which stood unrivalled for the soundness of its doctrines, and the grave and decent