of wicked men, we are quite sure Napoleon was not orthodox. His chief attendant, Baussuett, informs us that he stoutly maintained in a dispute with an ecclesiastic, that there was no hell; and said afterwards "that he fought like a devil against the notion of a hell"-though one would think from the tenor of his talk, that he thought there ought to be one for such sinners as Pitt, Wellington, and the Cossacks. His disbelief in future punishment he more elegantly expressed to Montholon at St. Helena. "I should," he said, "escape from you more easily by suicide, since my religious principles do not at all trouble me. I am one of those who believe that the punishments of the other world have only been imagined as an addition to the insufficient at. tractions we are promised."

The theological opinions of Napoleon are connected by his biographer with some interesting exhibitions of a devout spirit. Mr. Abbott informs us, though, that he "was not a Christian"that he was "not taught in the school of Christ;" and he says, "Our Saviour was entirely regardless of self in his endeavors to bless mankind. Even Washington, who, though one of the best of mortals, must be contemplated at an infinite distance from the Son of God, seems to have lost himself in his love of country. That absence of regard to self, cannot be so distinctly seen in Napoleon." "*** Indeed! "Had Christian motives impelled him he might have been a saint, now he is but a hero." But we learn that he was always a serious man religiously inclined," and that "the religious element by nature predominated in the bosom of Napoleon;" and some anecdotes are so related as to pass for instances of real devotion. For example: "When but twentyfour years of age he encouraged his brother Louis, who was then a lad but about fifteen years old, but conscientious and devout, to partake of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Says Louis, I was then but a child. It was in consequence of his advice and care that I partook of my first communion. He selected a worthy ecclesiastic to give me the necessary instructions and preparations.'' Again. When the schedule of Madame Campan's female school was presented him, he found as one regulation-the young ladies shall attend prayers twice a week. He immediataly erased with his pen, the words twice a week, and substituted every day.

Though Napoleon is not represented as being led by his religious feelings to pray at his bivouac as Washington did, we are furnished under the auspices of the prescriber of prayers for Madame Campan's school with a prayer-meeting-almost. "When at St. Helena one evening, he called for the New Tes tament and read to his friends the address of Jesus to his disci

ples on the Mount, and expressed himself as having been ever struck with the highest admiration in view of the purity, the sublimity, and the beauty of the morality which it contained." It is also told that on ship-board, at the time of the conversion to which we have referred, "he read again and again Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and called his companions from their card-tables to read it to them, that they might also appreciate its moral beauty and eloquence." It would have been in keeping with the incongruous scene, had it been added, that Napoleon called upon one of those hopeful warriors, Murat or Lannes, "to lead in prayer." We mean to be serious with serious things; but really when a writer has exposed himself to the charge of such folly as is evinced by a grave attempt to throw a religious interest around such a character as Napoleon Bonaparte, to make him out to have been, if not almost a Christian, only by a small mistake a hero instead of a saint, he should be answered according to his folly.

The real opinions of remarkable men on all subjects are proper matters of history as characteristics, or, when they accord with religion, as testimonials in its favor; if those opinions are fairly recorded in connection with their prevailing sentiments. It is not so with these transient conceits and parade thoughts, thrown out for effect to excite wonder or conceal baseness, especially when presented in interesting phases and false lights, with mirrored magnificence and perspective glare, against the whole dark background of a man's life and character. In the present instance they are of no account in themselves, being for the most part, so far as we have been able to trace them to their source, scattered expressions of their author, taken from those adjuncts which often either confound their meaning or destroy their force, and wrought into paragraphs to eke out connected statements. Coming from such a lofty tumbler on every stage, as it is conceded Napoleon was, they are ridiculous. And thus represented, they lead to extravagant and false views of the most sacred subjects. By and by we shall have a book on the religious experience of Napoleon Bonaparte, as compared with that of St. Paul. By no great stretch of our author's fancy, he who was by turns a Christian, a Turk, a Catholic, a Jew, might be compared to the Apostle who became all things to all men, that he might win With what grace can mock sentiments be made to palliate the habitual impiety of Napoleon, or his Heaven-daring course? What is his belief in the sublimity of the New Testament, or in its intellectuality, or what is his recommendation of prayers and the sacrament, in contrast with his unholy ambition,

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his selfishness, his profaneness, his impurity, his unbridled passions, his dark deeds of perfidy and revenge and contempt of God's word? Shall the mere freaks of a great mind be mentioned to relieve the deformity of such a character? To do this, is to do violence to our religious associations and historic truth. It is to force the most depraved characters into unlawful communion with the excellent men who have shone in all ages of the world to bless mankind. The ground which these men occupy in history is chosen ground. Into this sacred enclosure let not Napoleon be thrust with his profane companions. Let them hold their orgies apart-without the pale of consecrated places. Above all, let them not be forced into the company of just men made perfect in Heaven, where our author, in the following remarkable paragraph, supposes they may be now. On the same day and at nearly the same hour in which the fatal bullet pierced the heart of Desaix, an assassin plunged a dagger into the bosom of Kleber. The spirits of these illustrious men, these blood-stained warriors, thus unexpectedly met in the spirit-land. There they wander now. How impenetrable the veil which shuts their destiny from our view! The soul longs for clearer visions of that far-distant world, peopled by the innumerable hosts of the mighty dead. There Napoleon now dwells. Does he retain his intellectual supremacy? Does his generals gather around him in love and homage? Has his pensive spirit sunk down into gloom and despair, or has it soared into cloudless regions of purity and peace? The mystery of death! Death alone can solve it. Christianity with its lofty revealings, sheds but dim twilight upon the world of departed spirits." This revelation of what may be the companionship of the future life is to be considered a befitting continuation of the history of that afflicted prince who suffered greatly in this world for his devotion to the cause of bleeding humanity. These apocryphal scenes-Napoleon now in a group of his marshals, who gather around him with "love and homage," and now soaring away into cloudless regions of purity and peace, are necessary for the preservation of the writer's consistency and for the completion of his story, since every tale should have a moral. They accord, too, with the dying testimony of the saint himself. Antommarchi, his physician, relates that Napoleon said, when he felt that his end was approaching, "I shall join my brave companions in Elysian Fields. Yes," added he, raising his voice," Kleber, Desaix, Bessiers, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Massena, Berthier, will come to meet me they will speak to me of what we have done together, and I will relate to them the last events of my life. On seeing me again, they will all become once more mad with enthusiasm

and glory, and we will talk of our wars with the Scipios, Hannibal, Cæsar, Frederick. There will be pleasure in that, unless," added he, laughing, "it should create an alarm in the next world to see so many warriors together." Such scenes, whether portrayed by Napoleon or his biographer, shock the religious feelings and faith of those who do not believe that the veil is wholly "impenetrable" which "shuts from our view" the "destiny" of wicked men. If Christianity "sheds but dim twilight upon the world of departed spirits," it is sufficient to reveal the nature of those "cloudless regions of purity and peace," and the character and employments of their inhabitants. It has spoken of the holiness of heaven, resplendent with the glory of God, and of the holy temple and holy worship of those who surround the throne of God and of the Lamb, "with love and homage." "Its lofty revealings" will afford but little consolation to the good, if these celestial abodes are not separated by a great gulf fixed from the dwelling place of those who expect to "talk of their wars" and to "become mad with enthusiasm and glory." True, there is forgiveness of sins with God and plenteous redemption in the blood of his Son for the chief of sinners; but granted only on conditions-upon signs of an humble and repenting spirit, such as never marked the experience of that high criminal, one of whose last acts was to grant by his will ten thousand francs to the wretch who had attempted to assassinate the Duke of Wellington, and who, in the same instrument, justified his share of the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, and who said in his last instructions to Antomarchi, that he bequeathed with his dying breath to all the reigning families in Europe the horror and opprobrium of his last moments. last words breathe no prayer for mercy, no accents of praise, no triumph of a good fight. Head army," break from his lips, his thoughts following in death, not the army of martyrs rejoicing to meet him, but the charging columns of the grand army of France. After the utterance of these last words, we have upon the testimony of his physician some significant signs. "There were heard deep sighs, piteous moans, convulsive movements which ended by a loud and dismal shriek." Soon after the spirit of Napoleon passed the barriers of time-to "cloudless regions of purity and peace" or to "gloom and despair ?"

VOL. XI.

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His

ART. II.-IS THE SOUL IMMORTAL?

On the Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishment. An Argument. In two parts. By H. H. DOBNEY, Baptist Minister. First American, from the second London edition. New York published by an Association of Gentlemen. 1849. Bible Examiner. Edited and published by George Storrs. New York: May and June, 1852. Contents: the Generations gathered and gathering; or, the Scripture doctrine concerning Man in death. By J. PANTON, Home Missionary of Cooper's Hall Congregational Church, England. New York, 1852.

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THE doctrine of these works is essentially the same. It may be denominated Christian materialism. They profess the profoundest regard for the instructions of the Bible, and claim that their sentiments are eminently promotive of evangelical piety; but though propounding the same doctrine, they are very unlike in the style of argumentation with which they advocate that doctrine. The Bible Examiner" reminds us of a spy examining the fortifications of an enemy, which he hopes by one device or another to undermine and destroy. He seems to have decreed in his heart, that the Bible must and shall support his doctrine, however horrible the tortures he may inflict upon it to extort the confession he requires; and when he meets with passages diametrically opposed to the sentiment he inculcates, it is even amusing to notice how valorously and pertinaciously he can bite a file.

Mr. Dobney writes in a very different style. He reasons with ingenuity, with much seriousness and apparent candor, and in some of his positions with no contemptible degree of force. After weighing his criticisms, his readers will find it not so easy as some of them may have imagined, to vindicate the generally received interpretation of some of the quoted passages of the Bible; and the air of devoutness and sincerity which pervades his whole work is fitted to win his way to the confidence of his readers, and prepare in the hearts of the incautious a hotbed for the seeds of poisonous errors which he is sowing. Nor is the probability of the spread of such errors much diminished by the consideration of their inherent unreasonableness and extravagance. At its first announcement this doctrine of ma