nothing but vacancy there, he can accredit his visions on the ground of his superior insight; he

"Has lights where other eyes are blind, As pigs are said to see the wind."

But really all this is not submitting our selves to the written word, but substituting ourselves for it; not so much consenting to receive, as claiming to originate a religion. When people thus erect themselves above Revelation, we may be assured that they are so far from being elevated, that they have not risen high enough to see what is above them; that instead of having attained to superior light, they are altogether below the region of light. Equally ignorant of all, such men of course think themselves equally masters of all; conceive that they know the whole, for the simple reason that they know nothing. He who presumes to oversee Revelation, shows that he has not seen, and cannot, or will not, see anything of it whatever; that he has not even the eye to see it with, or if he has, will not use it. In thus perpetually deferring to the god within them, and declaring themselves independent of external guides and sources, these men simply publish their own arrogance and insolence. We care not what appearance of modesty and humility they may put on, at heart they are as proud, selfish, conceited, and impudent, as Satan himself; or, if there be none of the devil, then there is much of the donkey in them; for the stupidest brutes and the most enlightened demons agree in equally lacking docility and reverence. Their appealing from all acknowledged and accredited standards of truth and good, to their own reason and conscience, only proves that the voice of reason and conscience is utterly stifled within them; that they are but clearing up the ground to let loose their own will and pleasure; and that the freedom they preach is but for a license to riot in the luxuries of selfassertion. Assuredly, if men cannot find anything this side of heaven to reverence, they will find nothing to reverence there; if they have any docility, they can learn from the powers that be; if they have no docility, they will not learn from the Power that ordained them, but will only use His name to accredit their own abominable conceits. To seditious, refractory spirits all authority of course seems tyranny; and the only condition upon

which they will consent to be governed. even by the Almighty, is, that He will be their humble servant, and let them do precisely as they have a mind to. Thus, the same principle which instructs men to appeal from all earthly tribunals to God, will instruct them to appeal from God to their own reason.

We know of nothing more offensive, not only to religion, but even to good taste, than the habit these men have of eulogizing the Scriptures. This habit they seem to have caught from Rousseau. that great high-priest of the synagogue of Antichrist. With them, as with him. it springs, not from reverence, but from the intensest vanity; not because they regard the Scriptures, but because they wish for the votes of such as do regard them; for no one who properly regards them will dare to eulogize them. Men seldom pronounce funeral orations until they have buried the subjects of them. In like manner, the worst husbands, for example, are generally loudest in praising their wives; their praises are but the fig-leaves to their infidelity; and of course their fig-leaves only serve to betray them. Why, the greatest ruffians and murderers that ever polluted the earth have sought impunity for their butcheries in sounding the praises of their victims! Eulogy implies some equality between the author and the object; and the author is generally understood to share the honor he confers. Where the eulogy is volunteered, we take for granted the author is but seeking to distinguish himself-making capital out of the virtues he celebrates. It is not so much an acknowledgment as an appropriation of merit. The truth is, the puffs which these men inflict on the Scriptures are but the offspring of a supercilious patronage; eulogy is the price they pay for impunity in sacrilege; they glorify the Bible merely to compound for their desecration of it. By gratuitous endorsement and laudation of the Scriptures, they seem to acquire a right to nullify as much of them as they please; by adding their sanction to what God has revealed, they seek to purchase the prerogative of adding God's sanction to their own inventions. Their aim is, not so much to exalt as to partake the supremacy of Revelation. In this way they can keep up the show of modesty while indulging their impudence and audacity, and thus gratify their vanity both ways at once. The self-same spirit which prompts them

to eulogize, also prompts them to criticise, since each of these serves alike, in its place, to approve their keenness of appreciation; indeed, the right to eulogize involves, in some sort, the right to criticise. In short, their raptures and rhapsodies over the Scriptures are designed merely to coordinate their own inspiration; they spring not from love of what is revealed, but from lust of the authority that revealed it; they extol its wisdom but to establish their own; laud the Apostles, not so much to confirm, as to usurp, their commission; commend the Prophets, merely to accredit their own prophesyings. Having mastered Revelation, having climbed to where they can overlook, and endorse, and patronize it, they are of course qualified to discriminate, and select, and winnow, and bolt, and improve, and complete it, or even to supersede it, and substitute revelations of their own in its stead. They would not depreciate the authors of the Bible;-by no means. They only aspire to an equality with them. From the example of Him who spoke as never man spake, they merely infer their own right and duty to enter into competition with Him;-that's all.

This intense subjectiveness in religion of course involves an equally intense individualism. Christianity has always been accounted a religion of means and media; it supposes that man has strayed away from his Maker, and that some mediation is required to bring him back; that he is somewhat fallen from his first estate, and has to climb up over many steps, in order to recover it; that, in short, it needs a ladder with several rounds to aid his ascent. That it might come to us in the form of a practical discipline, Christianity organized itself into a Church, on the ground that many men have to grow up together in order for any one to grow; as law and order are brought home to us, and reincorporated with the substance of our minds, by being embodied in the state. This social organization evidently supposes that each individual is to be subordinate to the whole, and that in and through this subordination he is to find the life which the whole is appointed to preserve and impart. Whatever now passes for Holy Scripture, has been transmitted to us by and through the organs of this consecrated body: has been adjudged to the place it holds by human, or rather, by ecclesiastical authority. Here we have a somewhat complex

mediatorial system, such as seems adapted to the state of fallen man. But to men who have not fallen, this scheme of religious polity is obviously useless. No such means are required to purify those who are already pure; and the pure in heart can see divine truth better perhaps without any media than with them; men who are already in heaven need no ladder to help them thither. Accordingly, unfallen men--and they are becoming rather plenty just now-manifest their perfection by revolting from this organization and setting up for themselves, and professing allegiance only to God and their own reason. What other men gladly accept as media, these men justly reject as obstructions to the wisdom that cometh from above. This, then, is what we mean by religious individualism. Such is the ground virtually assumed by that saint and apostle, the Rev. Mr. alluded to above. The scope of his theology is: God and I are enough; there is no occasion for anything to mediate between us; I will offer all my worship immediately to Him, and receive whatever blessings I want immediately from Him; I need no Church, no Bible, no Saviour, and I declare myself independent of them; to be sure, they may have been necessary once, before the dawn of modern illumination, and may be so still to some whom the day-spring from on high hath not visited: but I have reached a point of view where they may profitably be dispensed with; God and I are enough; and in my case the rays of heavenly light would only be intercepted by all such channels of communication. Well, the Rev. Mr. —, after all, is but the representative of a class; he is just like many others, only "rather more so;" and perhaps the astonishing beauty of his conclusions will throw them back upon a reconsideration of the principles which they hold in common with him.

These subjective, transcendental philanthropists and theologians seem to have been commissioned expressly to prepare the way for "Festus." We confess we like not the style of denunciation which we have adopted towards them. In using it we have but followed their example; but their example, in whatever aspect viewed, is one which no sane man can desire to emulate. We have done it merely to show them that they are as vulnerable as they are violent; that they are as open to denunciation as they are given to denouncing. It is for their sake,

not for the book's, that this article is written; that the work concentrates and embodies all the wisdom diffused among them, is our sole reason for noticing it; but for them the book never would have troubled us, and we never should have troubled our readers with this review. Well, the book, as was to have been expected, has had a great run; the author has got his notoriety, the publishers have got their money, the public have got what they have paid for, and we have got our article written. Incorrigible transcendentalists and hopeful young men and maidens, literary freshmen and coxcombs and dotards, those who are too hard to

admit, and those who are too soft to exclude anything that offers itself, those who have transcendental eyes and those who have no eyes at all, those who can see everything where there is nothing to be seen, and those who can see nothing where there is everything to be seen,in short, all who are above and all who are below appreciating what is sober, and solid, and judicious, and spontaneously take to whatever is grotesque, and mawkish, and monstrous, and extravagant, have devoured the book with all imaginable greediness, and have doubtless become the emptier for what they have swallowed.

THE recent departure of this gallant soldier for new scenes of war, lends additional interest to the narrative of his past life and services, and we shall be doing good service to those-and they are almost the whole people-who are looking with anxious yet not apprehensive interest to his reappearance on the field of battle, heretofore so signally fields of triumph for his country and himself.

The volume in which this biography is embodied was published several months ago, and has already attained a large circulation; this is as it should be, for it is a modest, well-digested narrative, in a vivid, yet not ambitious style, of some of the most interesting chapters in our past history-chapters in which Winfield Scott is facile princeps, for he it was who gave their direction and fortunate issue to most of the great events commemorated in these chapters.

General Scott was born in Petersburg, Virginia, in June, 1786, and is coeval, therefore, so to speak, with the Constitution of the United States, which has ever been with him an object of such reverence, that no exigencies of war, or other extremities, have tempted, or could, we firmly believe, tempt him to any act in violation of its letter or spirit. Éducated with a mother's vigilant and affectionate care for his father died when he was only four years old-his mind and disposition were early trained to gentleness

and truth, in the fear and the love of God his Heavenly Father, who had no longer a father upon earth. Scott was designed for the profession of the law, and in 1806, having completed his course of study, he was admitted to the bar of Virginia, and rode the circuit during two terms. He then determined to pursue his profession in Charleston, S. C.-for now he was wholly an orphan, his mother, too, being dead-but finding that a year's previous residence in the State was required, Scott returned to Virginia, but not to the pursuits of the law. The aggressions of the European powers upon our rich and defenceless commerce, and especially the attack upon the U. S. frigate Chesapeake, had roused the ardent spirits of the land and turned their hopes and aspirations to the career of arms. A bill to increase the army was passed by Congress in the winter of 1807-8, and Scott was appointed a captain of light artillery. But the rumor of war passed off-albeit Scott, who was warmly in feeling with that party headed by Jefferson and Madison, believed and openly maintained that the dignity and honor, not less than the true interests, of the nation, required resistance by arms to the aggressions of England. Such, however, was not the decision of the country or the government, and Scott was, in 1809, ordered to Louisiana, where Gen. Wilkinson then held command. For this commander of whose