William Taylor is discussed at some length, as a model worthy of more study in England than he is likely to receive, at a time when Churchmen and prelates are turning their attention to the spiritual condition of the masses.

Of Hibbard on the Psalms the London Review expresses the highest opinion. We take from its notice the following passages:

"This edition of the Book of Psalms we greatly admire, and cordially recommend it to every student of the Holy Scriptures. It is not a Commentary, in the ordinary sense of the word; it is simply a new edition of the English authorized version; but based on a principle which gives it an immeasurable advantage over every other similar work with which we are acquainted." P. 273.

"He has accomplished his task in the most reverent and humble spirit; simply giving the results of long and patient research in the disposition of the several Psalms, adopting the appropriate metrical form, but retaining the authorized version, with its marginal annotations. Of the value of his running introductions we cannot speak too highly. They are, indeed, the distinctive characteristic and highest recommendation of the volume. The light which they shed upon the preacher's critical study of the text is far more important then any one would suppose who was not used to its aid in his studies; and we are doing good service to all young ministers, when we recommend them to make this edition of the Psalms their working companion." P. 274.

The London Review sustains a high rank among its older competitors, the Quarterlies of England and Scotland. We cannot but regret, however, its complete adoption of their impersonal character, and stiff mechanical form. No reason for this icy reserve exists which is not founded upon notions of spurious dignity, or adherence to a custom surviving its own original causes and reasons.

ART. XII.-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE.

Ir is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are.-MILTON.

I-Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

(1.)" Sermons for the New Life, by HORACE BUSHNELL." (12mo., pp. 456. New-York: Charles Scribner. 1858.) Mr. Bushnell is not a pulpit orator, but a pulpit thinker. His pages and paragraphs furnish the unfoldings of deep, earnest, often recondite religious thought. That thought, through the agency of master mind, invests itself in its own terse, graphic, and most true expression. Sermons more eloquent, in the emotional sense of the word, have often been preached; bolder and more stirring appeals to the popular feeling, or to the common conscience, are sent forth weekly; but our American pulpit has lately furnished no volume presenting so deep a reach of thought in the speaker, or pre-supposing so high a power of moral and intellectual appreciation on the part of the congregation.

We cannot but regret that so much of Mr. Bushnell's thoughts have heretofore been engrossed with dogmatic difficulties with his more orthodox fellowclergy. The discussions thence arising, however intense and marked by ability, were sectional and transitory. Mr. Bushnell ought to address the Christian world on topics of world-wide interest, commanding a world-wide audience. We know no good reason why Isaac Taylor (whom he somewhat resembles) has spread so much broader a wake over the surface of the public mind, other than lies in the greater breadth and more permanent interest of the topics he has treated.

Mr. Bushnell has a deep insight and a searching power of tracing the relations of great truths to each other. The overmastering trait of his productions is cool, stern, slow, moving intellect; yet intellect gently interpenetrated and made malleable by moral feeling. Imagination, too, there is, but none for its own sake. He has no time to spend in mere picture drawing. And yet there is that imagination by the light of which the thought shall stand out in its own true beauty, grandeur, deformity, or terror. In a Butler the grandest truths are brown and dry. You have to unclothe them of their homespun apparel, and behold them in themselves, in order to acknowledge the wonder that is in them. But here the truths in whose vast presence our immortal being is ever traveling, stand in their own power. For truths are in themselves grand, beautiful, terrible, and the reverse; and truth is most truly presented when these attributes are made most visible and impressive to the view. Mr. Bushnell does not, like a Tyng or a Cuyler, approach the popular mind with impulsive appeals to its immediate sensations on exciting but ephemeral topics; nor, like Beecher, thrill and rive the heart of the audience with sudden dartings of intuition felt at once by the common mind as disclosing, by their flash, new depths within its own nature. Hence Mr. Bushnell is not broadly popular. He is too reserved, deliberate, sententious, and aloof. His trains are the still workings of rarer thought. Earnest, but not impulsive; deep, not rapid; independent, yet not erratic; reflective, but not occult, he is the preacher for the thoughtful. Most preachers should limit their efforts to the listening congregations within their church. Mr. Bushnell preaches best to the select but wide-spread congregation of the thoughtful world.

(2.) "Select Discourses, by ADOLPHE MONOD, KRUMMACHER, THOLUCK, and JULIUS MULLER: Translated from the French and German, with Biographical Notices, and Dr. MONOD's celebrated Lecture on the Delivery of Sermons. By Rev. H. C. FISH, and Rev. D. W. POOR, D.D. With a fine steel portrait of MONOD." (12mo., pp. 408. New-York: Sheldon, Blakeman, & Co.; Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1858.) In the matter of publishing selected sermons of eminent masters in homiletics, Mr. Fish has opened a placer which he works with much skill and continued success. The present volume introduces some of the best specimens of foreign preaching to the English and to the American public. As specimens of eminent talent, eloquence, and piety, these sermons will be read with no inferior interest.

Krummacher is the pulpit Luther of living Germany. His vehement, graphic, homely paragraphs, poured forth from a Herculean frame, with a voice

"as when a lion roareth," obviously embrace a power for an instant, overwhelming effect. His illustrations are pictorial, etched with rough and almost coarse power. Like the great Reformer, he makes spiritual realities stalk before you; he can see the live devil plainly enough to fling an inkstand at him.

In Tholuck we recognize the blended gentleness, poetic sentiment, tinging metaphysics, and deep spirituality of the great deep scholar, who lays by his tomes for an hour to indulge his spiritual emotions, or apply to real life the power of Christian truth.

But richest of all, most truly uniting the profound with the spontaneously popular, is Monod. The German seems to be unalterably subtle; and when he leaves his professor's chair and comes into the pulpit, you feel that he is "the schoolmaster abroad" rather than the preacher at home. But the Frenchman is as genuinely popular and rich as he is scholarly and penetrating. He is not abroad in the chair, and he is truly at home in the pulpit.

We presume that the translations are done with sufficient accuracy, and that the English needs no criticism. But we must be allowed to say that there is no such English word as "helpmeet." Hence we regret to notice the plentiful use of that vulgarism in the translation of Monod's "Mission of Woman;” and especially the very inadvertent note in regard to it on page 20: "This is the rendering of the French for helpmeet: Un aide semblable à lui." Now, first, the text of Monod is no "rendering for helpmeet;" for Monod does not render "helpmeet" or any other English or pseudo-English word at all. His work is not a translation from the English. Second, the term helpmeet is a popular agglutination of the two words help and meet in the second chapter of Genesis; where woman is impliedly styled a help suitable or meet for man; for which phrase Monod's French is a sufficient parallel. The French is indeed a precise translation of the Greek Bondòs öμоLos avτy. Third, the Hebrew phrase, a help as before him, expresses the image of a counterpart meeting, fitting, and corresponding to him, and is a most striking conception, given in words of beautiful simplicity. Now the adjective meet like the verb meet, expresses this precise idea; and in the phrase a help meet or meeting for him we have both etymologically and conceptually one of the most exquisite bits of translation on record.

(3.) "Woman: Her Mission and Life, by ADOLPHE MONOD, D.D., late Minister in Paris, France. Translated from the French. With a biographical sketch of the author, and a portrait from steel." (12mo., pp. 82. Sheldon, Blakeman, & Co., 1858.) This elegant volume is a fine specimen of the eloquence and piety of the French Protestant Church. It will be, as it should be, acceptable to the women of America.

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The biographical sketch," though brief, is interesting. Adolphe Monod was the son of Rev. John Monod, of Paris, was graduated as Bachelor of Letters by the University at Paris, and was trained in theology at Geneva. Having embraced evangelical principles, he was obliged to leave a flourishing Church and begin a new religious enterprise on a private foundation in Paris, in which he was eminently successful. Thence he was called to the professorship of Sacred Eloquence in the Theological Seminary at Montau

ban. Finally, returning to Paris, he preached with rare effect to great and delighted audiences for eight years, and was then called, in the midst of his usefulness, in 1856, to the glory of his heavenly Master above. He left three surviving brothers, Frederic, William, and Horace, all ministers, " evangelical, faithful, and most highly esteemed brethren." The following is a pleasing picture of Adolphe :

"As a preacher, it would not be asserting too much to say, that Adolphe Monod occupied the first rank in France. Although not a large man, or a man of commanding appearance, he was nevertheless a prince among preachers. His voice is said to have been melody itself, and ever under perfect control. As to his discourses, those which he delivered in large assemblies were almost invariably prepared with great care, written, and committed to memory. And yet his extemporaneous, or rather his unwritten sermons or lectures were represented as admirable for beauty of style, for clearness of conception, and for adaptation to the occasion.

"Says Dr. Baird, in a letter written several years ago: 'I have no hesitation in saying, that Adolphe Monod is the most finished orator I have heard on the continent. Modest, humble, simple in his appearance and dress, possessing a voice which is music itself, his powerful mind, and vivid but chaste imagination, made their influence felt on the soul of every hearer in a way that is indescribable. The nearest approach to giving a true idea of it would be to say, that his eloquence is of the nature of a charm which steals over one, and yet is so subtle that it is not possible to say in what consists its elemental force. It is an eloquence the very opposite of that of the late Dr. Chalmers, which was like a torrent that carries everything away. I have often heard Ravignan, the great Jesuit preacher, in France; and Bautain, by far the best preacher, in my opinion, in the Roman Catholic Church that I have heard, but they were much inferior to Adolphe Monod. If the late Professor Vinet, of Lausanne,' he adds, 'was the Pascal of the French Protestants in these days (as he certainly was,) Dr. Adolphe Monod was their Bossuet. But Drs. Vinet and Monod were incomparably superior to Pascal and Bossuet as expounders of evangelical truth, which is, after all, the highest glory of the Christian teacher.'

"It is well known that the late Abbé Lacordaire, the Dominican, who was by far the most popular of the Romish priests in France, in his day, remarked to his friends, after hearing him: We are all children in comparison with this man.' Besides a strong and vivid intellect, what the French call onction was the characteristic of Monod's preaching. He was ineffably impressed himself with the truth he preached, and the earnestness of his soul thrilled every tone and every gesture.

"But great as were Dr. Monod's talents, and fascinating as was his eloquence, these qualities were rivaled by his unfeigned piety, his profound humility, his cordial friendship, his simple and truly Christian manners, the purity of his conversation, and the uniform cheerfulness of his life."

(4.) "Hymns of the Church Militant.” (18mo., pp. 640. New-York: Carter & Brothers, 1858.) "Simply a book of hymns for private use." Devotion takes her natural form of melody. Is it a proof that our piety is growing more cheerful and joyous, that it seems to grow more and more hymnic? Genius is constantly increasing the wealth of our religious anthology, and increasing taste and fondness are constantly wreathing it into new collections. The Church, through all her sections, is growing, as it were, happy and vocal, as if with a presentiment that more and more joyous days were before her. And it is just here, in the region of holy emotion whence the jet of sacred song springs up, that Christians of opposing names find a blessed point of union. This is a new thought, perhaps; and yet three independent writers were lately engaged in penning it about the same time. It is contained in the January

number of the Princeton Review, and of the Presbyterian Review, and it is thus finely expressed in the Preface of this work:

"And they [our hymns] tell that the Church is one. In prose, one denomination will war with another-war and strive, as some of the disciples did-for a place above the rest. The Church militant is to outward eyes often a Church divided against itself, every banner attacking every other, forgetful that the great standard of the Prince of peace floats over all.

"Yet this is but a difference of head-look here at their hearts. Read Luther and some old Catholic monk side by side; read Wesley and all he ever opposed, or who ever opposed him. They fight still, but it is with themselves, with sin, with unbelief.”—P. iv.

"And herein again they are one, 'as sorrowing, yet always rejoicing,' as esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.' With one voice they sing:

'Heavenward the waves I'll breast
Till in heaven I am at rest.'

"Heavenward with Christ, after him. His headship over the Church is wonderfully set forth in their songs. They ever say with the old martyr, 'None but Christ!"—P. v.

The collector of this elegant volume-who writes herself Anna Warnerhas made free use of the best hymnologists of our language; as far as possible resuming the unaltered language of the original writer. Her most copious selections are from Charles Wesley, Montgomery, Watts, and Toplady. The lovers of hymnic devotion will prize her volume.

(5.) "Deutsche Zeitschrift für Christliche Wissenchaft und Christliches Leben. Begründet durch Dr. JUL. MULLER, Dr. AUG. NEANDER. Dr. K. J. NITZSCH. Achter Jahrgang." (Berlin, den 26 December. No. 52. 1857.) We have received this single number of the Deutsche Zeitschrift from our friend, W. F. Warren. It consists entire of an essay read by him before Professor Piper's Theological Class, and published, by request of Professor Tholuck, in this paper. The essay is a brief "History of Rationalism in the Theology of New-England." It begins with a picture of the period of high Calvinism prevalent from 1620 to the middle of the eighteenth century. In tracing its decline, first toward rationality, and then toward rationalism, he names Edwards as the starting point. Edwards, he informs his German friends, nearly unknown to Germany as he is, wholly unknown until Professor Stowe uttered his name in Hertzog's Encyclopedia, is a giant; the giant of English-American Calvinian Theology. Yet the true father of New Divinity, he says, is President Dwight. From him it branches down to Beecher and Barnes, to Dr. Taylor and Dr. Park. Collateral double offshoots, reactionary in their character, are Universalism, with no eminent and worthy name, and Unitarianism led on by Channing, aided by Ware and Gannett, as one branch; and later, by Theodore Parker and his followers as another branch. The decline and prospective failure of these heterodox off-shoots are described; and credit is given to the Freewill Baptists and Methodists as furnishing a resource for numbers whose dissatifaction with Puritanism might have otherwise led them into heterodoxy. As the result the writer claims that no country in the world, Scotland perhaps excepted, is so permeated with the healthful influences of evangelical truth.