CONTENTS OF VOL. IV., NO. IV.-THIRD SERIES. III. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN IN HIS SPIRITUAL RE- LATIONS, • By Rev. SAMUEL ADAMS, M.D-, Prof. Illinois College. By Prof. TAYLER LEWIS, L.L.D., University of New York. VIII. REVIEW OF FINNEY'S THEOLOGY, IX. CRITICAL NOTICES, 1. Hotchkin's History of Western New York. 2. Power of the Soul over the Body. 10. The Englishman's Greek Concordance of the New Testament. THE BIBLICAL REPOSITORY AND CLASSICAL REVIEW. THIRD SERIES, NO. XIII.—WHOLE NUMBER, XLIX. JANUARY, 1848. ARTICLE I. ECCLESIASTICAL DISCOVERIES OF THE PURITANS. By REV. GEO. B. CHEEVER, D. D., New York. 1. A History of the Work of Redemption, including a Church History in a method entirely new. By JONATHAN EDWARDS, Pastor of a Church in Northampton. 2. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with elucidations. By TнoMAS CARLYLE. New York. Wiley & Putnam. 3. The Protector: A Vindication. By J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE. New York. Robert Carter. 4. Neal's History of the Puritans. Edited by JOHN O. CHOULES, A. M. New York. Harper & Brothers. MEN seeking God earnestly for themselves, always find him for others. This is the case both with individuals and nations. This is one reason why our blessed Lord, when his disciples returned from their novel and difficult mission with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject to us through thy name, simply and solemnly answered, after assuring them that Satan's power was indeed broken, Notwithstanding, in this rejoice not, that the devils are subject to you, but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven. Take heed to your own holiness and salvation, for thus only can you conquer Satan, by conquering yourselves. One of our elder poets has said that "Only he who knows Himself, knows more." It may be added, that only he who saves himself, saves more. God never saves one alone, but others; and the fountain of power is through individual experience, individual baptism of the soul in fire. A man like Henry Martyn, Brainard, Edwards, Payson, THIRD SERIES, VOL. IV. No. 1. 1 setting out in such fire after God, builds, with the flame of his own spirit, a chariot of glory, that takes multitudes to heaven. Just so, a nation, seeking God truly for itself, discovers principles and lays foundations, for the salvation of a world. Almost the whole aim of the Puritans was to find God. In this search, passing almost into the Theocracy of the Hebrews of old, by the consuming energy of the impulse with which they started, they discovered principles, or rather wrought them out into noticeable and practicable form, by reason of the ignorance or perversion of which, the whole world, and even the Christian world, had lain in bondage. Starting for salvation themselves, they worked out liberty for others. It was only by degrees that they began themselves to see what great things God might be doing through them; and it is thus that God has made the record of their history more full of himself, a more unmingled shining light of his providence and grace, than almost any other record, out of the Scriptures, in the history of man. The relation in which the work first named at the head of this article stands to those that follow will be recognised at once. It is like an announcement of the true system of the universe in comparison with after investigations concerning particular planets. The work on the History of Redemption was a very grand conception in the mind of Edwards-simple and grand, a view of God's plan almost as by revelation, so comprehensive, so illimitable. Butler's Analogy and Edwards's History of Redemption are two very different works, and yet in many respects very similar; both of them wonderfully acute and comprehensive reductions of vast systems within the scope of common minds. But if Edwards's work had had the felicity of being completed by himself according to his first great conception of it, and published by himself with his own final, best judgment, long considered, long elaborated, it might have been the greatest of the two productions. The title which Mr. Erskine gave to it was as follows: "A History of the work of Redemption, containing the outlines of a Body of Divinity, including a view of Church History, in a method entirely new." The newest thing in this "method entirely new," was not so much the arrangement, as the design and accomplished fact of letting God be seen and not man, or rather God above man, God directing man, and disposing of him and his affairs for the great end of Redemption. The Divine, and not the human, comes out in such a history, or the human only as subordinate to the Divine, and for its purposes. All history is to be viewed in this light, and in its connexon with the scheme, which the mind of Edwards beheld and delineated as the soul and end of all things. Not only God's providence is to be investigated and displayed, but in every part it is to be connected with the onward progress of the work of Redemption; providences are not only to be marked and acknowledged, but it is to be seen to what great point they converge, what consummation they hasten. The entirely new method of History thus suggested, is in fact the one adopted by D'Aubigné, with a more vivid dramatic arrangement and coloring, but for the same end, the manifestation of the Divine directing the human, in subordination to the cross. The endeavor to find God, gradually discovers all truth; so this method is destined to reveal the depths of history, and as soon as all the facts of history come to be viewed in this significant light, it will appear as a new science. All history is in fact but an adjunct to Church history, and Church history begins with the creation. If there could be anything cut apart from Church history, so that between the two there can be no connexion traced, the gulf would be like that of chaos, separated by a wall of light from Heaven, and filled with nothing better than a conglomeration of wood, hay, and stubble. But all things tend, in one way or another, into the channel of the work of Redemption; they may tend thus by discipline, if in no other way; and events which seem disconnected from that channel for ages, yet come up afterwards, like streams that have run under ground, reappearing, to pour into the great sea. The existence of Homer might seem for centuries an affair having nothing to do with the world's redemption. By and by comes up Plato, then Aristotle, then Alexander, and Homer's mind pours through these channels into the soul of the world's conqueror, and Homer's native Greek is spread over the East by the same impulse that makes Alexander a half incarnation of Homer's Achilles. Then comes the translation of the Septuagint, so that the birth of Homer and the spread of God's Word, though disconnected by an interval of hundreds of years, are linked by no fanciful, but a real, deep, and most remarkable connexion. The poet Goethe said that Aristotle was like a huge Pyramid resting on the earth, and built mathematically for the earth; while Plato shoots upward towards heaven like an obelisk, yea, like a pointed flame. Now there are these two types of character, and only these, in all historical literature. The greater part of history rests upon the earth as its foundation, and has the earth for its end; if it is mathematically correct, and solid as a Pyramid, it is only a mausoleum for dead bones, and even its apex does not mean to shoot towards heaven, any more than one of its four corners. But another, though as yet a very small part of history, shoots like the obelisk to heaven; yea, as a pointed flame, or a chariot of flame, carries the soul up to God. Just so, indeed, in all science; one part has the earth only for its object, and is dead; another part has God for its object, and is alive. The facts of history are living or dead facts, according to the |