hand always wrought in the work and with the other held a weapon; and John is as particular to warn against false Christs as to commend the love and grace and mercy of the true one. It seems to us that the same law, which in a theological system, would exclude polemics from the sphere of positive teaching, would remit, in a moral system, the consideration of vices to a different part of the system from that which treats of virtues. The science of contraries is one. We suspect that Dr. B. will find, from experience, that his third part will be the part in which he is most successful in making skilful theologians. He may edify more in the first, he will teach more in the third. The first part may be more impressive, the third will be more precise and accurate. The first may strike by the grandeur of the whole, the third will interest by the clearness of the details. The first will be more subservient to devotion, the third to intellectual apprehension. Still we cannot regret that Dr. B. has produced the book under review. The qualities of his mind have ensured to his method a success in his hands which it were vain to expect from an humbler source. None of the disciples can imitate the master, and if our Seminaries should undertake to introduce this mode of teaching, as the general plan, the result would soon show, that we must either have a Dr. Breckinridge in each one of them, or send out any thing but accurate Divines.

As to the principle upon which Dr. B. has concatenated the various topics of theology, it is a natural corollary from the total exclusion of polemics. We can conceive of no order in which the doctrines of spiritual religion, considered in their positive aspects, could be more impressively presented. It is the order of the development of the Divine life. But if theology is to be reduced to the forms of a reflective science, and the truth to be unfolded in its contrasts with error, it is very desirable that some method should be adopted-a thing that has never been done yet, not even by those who have made the most confident pretensions to it-that shall reduce to unity all the doctrines of religion. There must be a ground of unity somewhere, for truth is one as well as connected. This unity must be sought in the doctrines themselves, and not in their accidents and adjuncts. It is easy to connect Divine truths by the idea of the Covenants; by the correlation of disease and remedy, the fall and redemption; or by the order of the Divine decrees as manifested in creation and providence; or by the idea of the Mediator, or the incarnation; but to connect them is not to unite them. We want a corner stone which holds the whole building together. We want some central principle which embraces equally the religion of nature and the religion of grace. Until some such central principle is developed in its all-comprehensive relations, we are obliged to have a two-fold

theology, as we have a two-fold religion-a Covenant of Works and a Covenant of Grace-with no bridge between them.

It seems to us-and we make the suggestion with all proper diffidence that such a principle is found in the great doctrine of justification, which, in more respects than one deserves the commendation of Calvin, "præcipuum esse sustinendæ religionis cardinem. [Inst. Lib. 3. Cap. 11, §1.] The only systems of religion which God has ever revealed to man consist of the answers which Divine Wisdom has given to the question, How shall a subject of moral government be justified? When that subject is considered simply as a creature, in a state of innocence, and blessed with the image of God, the answer is the religion of nature; if that subject is considered as a fallen being, as a sinner, the answer is the religion of grace. All the provisions of either covenant are subordinated to the idea of justification. They are directed to it as their immediate end, and find their respective places in the system according to their tendency to contribute to its accomplishment. This is the centre around which every other doctrine revolves, and none can be understood fully and adequately apart from their relations to it. Let us consider this matter a little more distinctly.

Justification, it should first be remarked, is not an original or essential principle of moral government. That implies nothing more than the relations of a ruler and a subject through the medium of moral law. It contemplates no change of state and proposes no alternative but uniform obedience or death. Each man is looked upon simply as an individual, a moral unit, whose responsibility terminates upon himself alone, and whose trial is coextensive with the whole career of the immortality of his being. The law, as such, can never raise him beyond the condition of a servant. It can never relax the contingency of his life. It can never put him beyond the reach of death. Do, and while you do, and as long as you do, you live, is the only language which it can employ. It knows no state of final rewards. Under it there may be perpetual innocence, but there never can be justification. If the relations of law are the only ones which are essential to moral government-and that is obviously the case-it is clear that justification is a superadded element, a provision of infinite goodness and love, which modifies essentially the condition and prospects of man. The case seems to be this: God has never been willing to sustain only legal relations to His moral and intelligent creatures. While the very law of their being, as creatures absolutely dependent upon His will, puts them necessarily in this state, His love has always proposed to raise them higher, to bring them nearer to Himself, to make them children and heirs. He has always proposed a fundamental change in their attitude towards Him, and that change has consisted in the adoption of

sons in the substitution of filial for legal ties. Instead of an empire of subjects, Infinite Goodness has aimed at a vast family of holy, loving, obedient children. To be admitted into God's family is to be confirmed in holiness, to have life put beyond the reach of contingency, to be forever like the Lord. It is to be entitled to higher and richer and more glorious joys than any legal obedience could ever aspire to obtain. The doctrine of justification has been engrafted upon the fundamental principles of moral goverment, in order to provide the way by which a being that exists necessarily at first in a legal, may be promoted to a filial relation. It is the expedient of heaven for making a servant a son. Now that there may be justification, probation must be limited as to time. Probation must be ended before the subject can be pronounced righteous, or entitled to the reward. What an act of goodness is this! Each man might have been put on an endless trial. Life might, forever, have been at hazard. In the actual provisions for justification which God has applied to our race, the trial has not only been limited as to time, but concentrated as to persons. One stood for all -- another provision, rightly understood, of infinite goodness. Hence Federal Headship; and those who cavil at the representative character of Adam, would do well to remember,that they had no right to any limited trial at all, and if God chose to limit it in one respect, He not only had a right to limit it in any other, but that the probability is that if it had not been limited in both respects, all would have fallen, and fallen without hope forever. Every provision of the Covenant of Works is, therefore, a provision of spontaneous grace. But it is equally obvious that all these arrangeinents have been instituted to realize the idea of justification.

The same result takes place in reference to the religion of grace. The question now is, How shall a sinner be just with God? And the answer to that question in consistency with the essential principles of moral government and the requisitions of the broken Covenant of Works, necessitates all the provisions of the Covenant of Grace. They are all directed to this as their immediate end, that God may be just, and at the same time, justify those who are without works. Hence the incarnation; hence the mysterious and wonderful person of the Saviour; hence his amazing humiliation, his life of poverty, sorrow and selfdenial, his death of agony and shame; hence his glorious resurrection and ascension, and his coming at the last day to judge the quick and the dead. All the facts of his history and mediation depend upon God's purpose to justify sinners through his name. And as justification is the ground or basis of adoption, the sinner who is justified becomes at once a son, and is entitled to the blessing of indefectible holiness, He becomes an heir, and has an indefeasible right to the heavenly inheritance. His life, that is,

his holiness, becomes as certain to him as Adam's life would have been to his posterity, if he had kept his first estate. Hence justification necessitates the whole work of the Spirit in the renovation and sanctification of the heart-converts the present life into a discipline in which our sins are treated as faults to be corrected, and not as crimes to be punished-and ensures the perseverance of the Saints, the resurrection of the body from the grave at the last day, and the full and complete preparation of the whole man for his eternal weight of glory. Well, therefore, may justification be called the article of a standing or falling church-it is the key to all of God's dealings with man!

This rapid sketch sufficiently indicates the grounds on which we regard justification as the dogmatic principle which reduces to scientific unity the whole doctrine of religion. It is common to both covenants, and it is evidently the regulative idea of both. It presupposes the fundamental conceptions of moral government, of law, of personal and individual responsibility. It implies that the legal cannot give way to the filial relation without a trial of the creature. To establish such a trial it modifies probation, imposes limitations both as to time and persons, and introduces the notion of Federal Representation. After the fall it presides over the economy of grace and determines the nature and extent of every provision which this stupendous scheme involves. It is the bow which spans the whole hemisphere of grace. As the law of method in theological treatises, it certainly seems to be exhaustive and complete. It has also the advantage of cutting up by the roots false systems of Divinity. They cannot be reduced upon it. It throws off Arminianism, Pelagianism and every theology which leaves life contingent and resolves acceptance into mere pardon. It throws off all such schemes as foreign to its own spirit. It plants the feet of the saints upon a rock, and in itself and its adjuncts it may well be styled the glorious Gospel of the blessed God.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

1. Sermons by the Rev. C. H. SPURGEON, of London. First Series. Twentieth Edition. With Additional Discourses an Introduction and Biographical Sketch by E. L. MAGOON, D. D. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co. 1857. 2. Do. do. Second Series. Charleston: Smith & Whildon. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co. 1857.

3. Do. do. Third Series.

4. The Saint and his Saviour, or the Progress of the Soul in the Knowledge of Jesus, by Rev. C. H. SPURGEON. Christ is all. Col. III, 11. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co. 1857.

It must be admitted even by those who find fault with the preaching of this youth of twenty-three, that nevertheless he is the most remarkable preacher of the 19th century. Wherein does his power lie? The source of it is, of course, the pleasure of that Sovereign God (whom Spurgeon so constantly preaches) to bless to this remarkable degree the preaching of the cross. But there are features of his preaching which may be lessons to all ministers and to all candidates for the sacred office. Of these, one is his zeal. Spurgeon's ministry is an earnest ministry. To him religion is every thing, and in religion to him "Christ is all." Loving his Lord, he loves men's souls. That love sends him not only among the influential but the outcast and the poor. Willing to follow the Savior, he is not ashamed to be called the poor man's preacher. This is the true spirit. The people see he is in earnest; and earnestness will persuade. Here is a man, though lauded far and wide-able to attract the Lords of the realm, yet ever willing to preach to the collier and the weaver; never ashamed to weep with the poor that weep. A second remarkable feature of Spurgeon's character is his industry. He is not afraid of hurting himself by too much work. It is said he averages a sermon to each day. Not yet twenty-five years old he has published three volumes of sermons besides his practical work, "The Saint and his Saviour." He is always busy-as every vinedresser of the Lord should be. Although he preaches extempore, it cannot be said that he is not a student. His sermons evince too much knowledge of the Bible, the classics and the old divinity to warrant any such conclusion. In them, it is true, we find few rounded periods or lengthened arguments long