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For ourselves we do not participate in these terrors. Awfully wicked as the system of Romanism is, and terrible as have been its workings, we believe it is on the wane. Struggles there may yet be, sharp and bloody. But we are persuaded that they will be the spasms of a dying monster, mighty perhaps, but brief and in vain. The foes of Protestantism are within. The pride, the time-serving, the lust of gold, the love of power, the practice of oppression, the silent sanction or open defence of wicked legislation, which have made Rome the detestation of the world, are rankling in the veins of American Protestantism at this hour. On the dung hill of a putrid Romanism, luxuriated the poisonous mushroom of French Atheism. On the dung hill of a putrescent Protestantism is springing up in Europe and America an equally poisonous infidelity, an infidelity the more to be dreaded because, in some form practical or metaphysical, it preaches from christian pulpits and is clad in the habiliments of heaven. If Romanism were as formidable now as it was three centuries ago, Protestantism is unfit to take the field against it. A living faith, a pure life, a resistance unto blood if need be, striving against sin national as well as personal, alone can restore to the Protestant church her lost power. With many of the foulest crimes which she truly imputes to Romanism, as truly and more criminally embosomed in her own communion, what can she effect against her foes? She may hurl her javelins at Rome, and they will be hurled back dipped in Romish malignity to pierce her own bosom. We repeat it, the foes of Protestantism are within. Unless the poison is purged from her own veins, the spears of her warriors must be broken and the shields of her mighty men must be vilely cast away.

But we have wandered far from our subject. We will own, heretical though it may seem, that we think this One Ideaism of our authoress a great excellence. We mean of course that characteristic of mind which prompts one to seize on some one great object and pursue it as one's great work, while life lasts, or till the object be achieved. We know it will be said in reply, that such a tendency degenerates into bigotry, sometimes into fanaticism—that it leads to narrowness of mind-that it destroys symmetry of character, and weakens the bond of sympathy that should unite all true laborers for man's improvement in one great band of reciprocal confidence and love. We admit the liability to all these unfavorable consequences. But we rejoin by saying that One Ideaism in the sense in which we use the phrase is

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the sole condition of improvement in any department of thought, of art, or of reform. Without it neither printing press, nor steamboat, nor railroad, nor magnetic telegraph, without it neither the telescope which brings the centres of ten thousand "solar systems," within our view, nor the microscope which peoples a drop of dew with millions of living creatures, would have been given to man. It is the parent of all discovery from the calculation of the first eclipse to the location of the orbit of Le Verrier. It has given to us every invention from the rude loom of Arabia to the complicated machinery of the modern factory. In the world of thought, One Ideaism has been quite as potent as in the world of art. Every truth which Philosophy has added to her casket of jewelry is the result of powerful and long continued concentration of thought. Men have pursued a single idea to all its hiding places-they have dragged it forth from its retirement, they have held it in the focus of the most powerful lenses, they have subjected it to the most searching scrutiny for years, perhaps for ages, before it has passed into the list of acknowledged truths, and received from mankind the stamp which has given it currency as an intellectual standard of value, as part of the circulating medium for the mental commerce of the world. From the infancy of human society, One Ideaism has dictated to men the division of labor, giving to each one calling, or some fraction of a calling. And successive centuries have only confirmed the conviction that this principle is the sole condition not only of discovering what is new, but of retaining what the dead generations have left to us. Let One Ideaism in this department abate one jot of its old demands, and civilized society would sink back to barbarism. Science would be forgotten, government would crumble into anarchy, and the fourth generation, a meagre horde of naked savages, would see the last ray of enlightenment expire. The race would lose in a century what it has taken nearly six thousand years to gain.

How slow we are to apply to social improvement the principles which have been the sole condition of man's physical comfort from time immemorial. We never think of charging with One Ideaism the man who spends his life, it may be, in making the fourteenth part* of a pin. But let a man devote his whole soul to some one great department of reform,-let him attempt to mold society to the shape which some great truth or

The business of making pins is divided into fourteen different departments carried on by as many different classes of persons.

some great right demands, and we straightway hear the cry, "A man of one Idea! a monomaniac! What narrow-mindedness! What bigotry!" To all this the reformer might well reply, "You charge me with One Ideaism as a crime. I accept it as my highest eulogy. You seek to make it the badge of my disgrace. It is at once my impenetrable armor and my all-conquering sword. You would tie it like a millstone about my principles, and with it plunge them into the depths of the sea. On it as on the wings of an angel shall they fly in triumph, scattering blessings under the whole heaven."

We have room only to state another excellence-the crowning one of all her writings. It is her fervent and mature piety. Very few, even among the clergy, seem to breathe the spirit of entire devotion or evince the profound practical knowledge of the heart, natural or regenerate, which are every where apparent in her works. How many a sermon really powerful and touching does she draw from the commonest objects, with a skill and naturalness which, while they surprise, prompt the exclamation, "She has been with Jesus." Her piety, we know, has the stern and solemn bearing of the high Calvinism belonging to the Evangelical portion of the Established Church. Her theology is the theology of Geneva grafted on the English stock. Yet while we meet now and then on her pages a doctrinal statement to which we never expect to subscribe, we find in her christian experience a large development of those graces in which the ripe believer of every sect traces the work of the Spirit. The great doctrines of total depravity-justification by faith-atonement by the blood of Christ-sanctification by the Holy Spirit—of the Trinity in Unity of the Godhead are among the grand features of her religious belief, and give shape alike to her speculations and her character. Among the features which her piety developed in her character, the following are prominent: a deep and abiding sense of the nothingness of human strength, a joyous confidence in all God's dealings with his children, whether joyous or afflic tive, a firm conviction that the most trivial event in regard to them is shaped and directed by a Father's hand, for their everlasting good, a strong, and at times most touching, feeling of the love of Christ as shown in the atonement, and an overwhelming longing to see the triumph of his cause in her own country. All her powers are laid as offerings on the altar of her Savior. Her rich fancy seems but to render her

strong religious appeals more impressive. If she finds a revelation in the universe around her,it bends her in a more humble prostration before her God. Her strong practical sense is a swift minister to her christian love. Her mastery over language, and the commanding dignity with which she wields it, are never so effectively employed as when she announces almost in thunder notes, some solemn religious truths. Her sympathy with suffering of every kind, is strong and deep. But her tears never flow so readily as when she deplores the wastes of Zion, or the fearful destiny of the soul rushing on to destruction. Her hatred of Romanism amounting to an almost omnipresent indignation, is only the sterner aspect of her reverence for the word of God, and of her overcoming desire to place his message of love in the hands of even the humblest human being. In short all her endowments of whatever sort seem only ministers to her fervent, active piety. Who will not be glad to see such gifts devoted to such an end?

Some of our critical friends will ask why we have not commented more freely on the obvious imperfections of our authoress. Were this the proper time, and were we writing for British readers we would do so, for there her errors may do harm. But we deem such an office needless for American readers. Not because an American public is more discerning than an English one, but because her imperfections are exotics and will not flourish on foreign soil, while her noble qualities may, we trust, become denizens of each hemisphere and every zone.

ARTICLE LV.

The Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church. AN EXPOSITION OF THE CONFESSION OF FAITH OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES. BY THE REV. ROBERT SHAW. REVISED BY THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION. PHILADELPHIA: PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION:

1847.

BY PRES. A. MAHAN.

[CONTINUED.]

THE doctrines of Imputation of Adam's sin to all his posterity, of Physical or Constitutional Depravity, as set forth in our preceding article, together with the dogma, that all the determinations of the human Will, with the exception of those of man before the Fall, are in necessary conformity to the prior state of the propensities, may very properly be regarded, and we believe, universally are regarded by all its orthodox expounders, as embracing the fundamental principles of the Confession of Faith; principles from which the entire system of doctrine therein developed receives its characteristic features, form, and dimensions. No one of its doctrines can be understood and appreciated, as set forth in the instrument itself, unless it is contemplated in the light of, and in its relations to these doctrines. From these admitted leading positions, we proceed in our exposition of the system of doctrine set forth in the instrument before us. The doctrines which next claims our attention, are those of ELECTION, and REPROBATION.

All evangelical christians believe in election and reprobation both, in some form. If the doctrines of Free Will, General Atonement, and other kindred doctrines be admitted, then men are elected or reprobated according to their foreseen acceptance or rejection of the provisions of grace for their redemption. "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father." This, did our limits permit, and this view

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