blood. To all, this he adds the inveteracy and profoundness of human depravity, the utterly perverted state of every heart. "It is here," says he, speaking to a dear and most amiable young friend, "that we need pardoning mercy to remove the guilt, and operations of the Divine Spirit to transform our nature and reverse its tendencies. It is thus alone that we can be made fit for the community and felicity of heaven." And to all this he is wont to add the emphatic pressure of the danger of delay, lest the opportunity be passed by, and the immortal spirit be "driven away in its wickedness," unprepared to meet its Judge.

What is there behind all this? what does it indicate? A deep, unfathomable conviction of the danger of eternal retribution, a conviction which sinks Foster's sentences into the conscience as with the point of a diamond; a conviction which goes beforehand with the reader, and prepares the mind to receive the impression from Foster's solemnity of appeal, stamped as with the weight of a mountain. The conviction in Foster's mind was indeed habitually wrestling with doubt; but whenever he addressed himself to the work of warning an immortal being, the instinctive energy of the conviction, quickened by anxiety for another, seemed to thrust the doubt down, and the tide of solemn thought pressed unimpeded onward. Such declarations of Foster's belief as this, that it is only by the scriptural view of the Mediator that "all our guilt can be removed from the soul, and dissevered from its destiny in the life to come," indicate a reef of thought on this subject over which the anxieties of his mind were thundering incessantly. The student in theology, or young minister to whom he addressed a letter so palpably inconsistent with the practical tenor of his writings, might have answered him with the question, "What mean the breakers on that reef? What is that destiny in the life to come, from which guilt cannot be dissevered?”

And he may be answered now, in Foster's own language, taken from his earlier work, on the "Importance of Religion," with a positive answer in the shape of a returning question: "The question comes to you, Whether you can deliberately judge it better to carry forward a corrupt nature, uncorrected, untransformed, unreclaimed to God, into the future state, WHERE IT MUST BE MISERABLE, than to undergo whatever severity is indispensable in the process of true religion, which would prepare you for a happy eternity. Reflect that you are every day practically answering the question. Can it be that you are answering it in the affirmative? Do I really see before me the rational being who in effect avows,-I cannot, will not, submit to such a discipline, though in refusing it and resisting it, I renounce an infinite and eternal good, and consign myself to PERDITION?"

He may be answered with another sentence, taken from the same powerful work of Mr Foster, and applied by Foster himself, as the final answer to those who question the truth of that "appalling estimate of future ruin," presented by the evangelical religious doctrine-an answer which the writer himself would have done well to put up in characters of fire over his own entrance to the consideration of the subject: "We have only to reply, that, as he has not yet seen the world of retribution, HE IS TO TAKE HIS ESTIMATE OF ITS AWARDS FROM THE DECLARATION OF HIM WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE, AND THAT IT IS AT HIS PERIL HE ASSUMES TO ENTERTAIN ANY OTHER."

Here we rest. This single sentence contains a wisdom that quite sets aside Mr Foster's whole letter on the subject of Divine penalty. God only knows the retributions of eternity, and it is at our peril that we assume to entertain any other estimate of them than that which his words distinctly reveal.

We cannot better close our notices of this subject, and of these intensely interesting volumes, than by quoting two of the remarks in Mr Foster's Journal, numbered 321 and 323:

"We are, as to the grand system and series of God's government, like a man who, confined in a dark room, should observe through a chink in the wall, some large animal passing by;-he sees but an extremely small strip of the animal at once as it passes by, and is utterly unable to form an idea of the size, proportions, or shape of it."

The

"How dangerous to defer those momentous reformations, which conscience is solemnly preaching to the heart. If they are neglected, the difficulty and indisposition are increasing every month. mind is receding, degree after degree, from the warm and hopeful zone, till at last it will enter the arctic circle, and become fixed in relentless and eternal ice."

Out of the first three hundred articles in this Journal, prepared with great care by Mr Foster's own hand, only twentyeight have been published; of the others, likewise, many are omitted. We cannot conceive the reason for this procedure. It would seem proper to have published the whole of the Journal; it will be strange, indeed, if it be not demanded by the earnest desire to know all that can be known of the mental and spiritual processes of so remarkable a mind. Appended to these volumes are some deeply interesting notices of Mr Foster, as a preacher and companion, by John Sheppard, author of "Thoughts on Devotion," and other productions.

We have spoken of that delightful trait in Mr Foster's noble nature-his childlike ingenuousness. There was in him. a striking combination of simplicity of purpose, independence, originality, and fearlessness of human opinion. Now, if he had possessed, along with these qualities, a greater degree of

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wisdom in practical judgment, we believe we should have seen in the memorials of his biography more of positive faith and less of the workings of anxious, disquieting, and sometimes agonizing doubt. There are seasons of doubt and darkness in Christian experience which man should keep from man and carry only to God. He should keep them, not because he fears the tribunal of human opinion, but fears to add what may be the wrongfulness of his own state of mind to the sum of error and unbelief in the world. He should cease from man and wait patiently upon God for light, because he loves his fellow-beings, and is unwilling by his own uncertainties, which may spring from he knows not how many evil influences, to run the hazard of balancing their uncertainty on the wrong side. It is no part of a childlike ingenuousness to give utterance always to whatever may perplex the soul in its conflicts with the powers of darkness.

The admirable constitution of the mind of Robert Hall in reference to this subject has been developed by Mr Foster himself in his own original and forcible style. In that part of his remarks on Mr Hall's character as a preacher he has alluded to the peculiar tendency in some minds to brood over the shaded frontier of awful darkness on the borders of our field of knowledge. "There are certain mysterious phenomena," says he, "in the moral economy of our world, which compel and will not release the attention of a thoughtful mind, especially if of a gloomy constitutional tendency. Wherever it turns it still encounters their portentous aspect, often feels arrested and fixed by them as under some potent spell, making an effort, still renewed and still unavailing, to escape from the appalling presence of the vision." Mr Foster is here evidently disclosing something of the habit of his own experience. He was longing to have the oppression upon his mind alleviated, and he thought that the strenuous, deliberate exertion of a power of thought like Mr Hall's, after he had been so deeply conversant with important and difficult speculations, might perhaps have contributed something towards such an alleviation. But even Mr Hall could have effected nothing of this nature for a mind which would not exercise a childlike faith. Carry our knowledge up to the last point to which the strongest mind ever created could advance it, and there is still the same need of faith-contented, quiet, submissive faith. And how is faith ever to be tried, how can it be proved that it is the faith of an humble and submissive mind, except in the midst or on the border of great difficulties?

Mr Foster speaks, almost with a feeling of disappointment, of that peculiarity in Mr Hall's mental character by which

he appeared" disinclined to pursue any inquiries beyond the point where substantial evidence fails. He seemed content to let it remain a terra incognita till the hour that puts an end to conjecture." We confess we see a deep wisdom and beauty in this trait of character. It was wrought into Mr. Hall's constitution, not by nature only, but by the power of divine grace. And the more the soul is absorbed with the known realities of our being, and the overwhelming importance of what is clearly revealed of our destiny in the world to come, the more anxious it will be to press that knowledge, the more unwilling to distract the attention from it by the pursuit of doubt and inquisitive speculation, and the more content to leave the obscure and the mysterious to the hour when we shall see as we are seen, and know as we are known. My efforts," said Mr Foster, in his Journal, "to enter into possession of the vast world of moral and metaphysical truth are like those of a mouse attempting to gnaw through the door of a granary." It was also a curious remark which he made, that "one object of life should be to accumulate a great number of grand questions to be asked and resolved in eternity." Inquisitive wonderer in the presence of mysterious and incomprehensible truth! Art thou now in a world where faith is no longer needed? Or do the answers that, in the light of eternity, the light of Heaven, have burst upon thy redeemed spirit, only render necessary a still higher faith, and prepare thee for its undoubting, beatific, everlasting exercise?

ART. II.-Ecolampade le Reformateur de Basle: par J. J. Herzog, Docteur en Theologie et Professeur a l'Universitè de Halle: traduit de l'Allemand par A. De Maestrel, Ministre de l'Eglise Libre du Canton de Vaud. Neufchatel, 1849.

THIS is a valuable addition to the biography of the Reformation. It is one of the issues of a book society at Neufchatel, formed a few years ago, for the purpose of translating and circulating through French Switzerland the choicest productions of the evangelical writers of Germany. The present volume purports to be only a translation; but the fact is, that the materials of the original work have been recast in a French mould, and under the immediate eye of the biographer himself. As a native of Basle, Dr Herzog would naturally feel an interest in her Reformer, while his cordial love for the principles

of the Reformation, and the nature of his professional studies, qualify him for the task of writing his history. For ten years he held the chair of Church History in the Academy of Lausanne; but at the call of God he abandoned his dignified status and comfortable salary as professor, and cast in his lot with the demissionary pastors of the Canton de Vaud, who, like their brethren in Scotland (though amid severer trials), gave so impressive a testimony to the spiritual independence of the church of Christ. After his secession from the national establishment, Dr Herzog superintended the studies of the few theological students who adhered to the infant Free Church of the Canton, until he was called by the King of Prussia to occupy the position which he now holds in the University of Halle.

In preparing the present volume, Dr Herzog first of all engaged in a thorough study of the various publications of the Reformer-consisting of translations from the fathers, doctrinal, liturgical, and expository treatises and sermons-with a view to trace the successive phases of his spiritual experience. Of these materials he has made a much more satisfactory use than any previous biographer. He has also largely availed himself of the Reformer's correspondence, a considerable portion of which has been brought to light by his own researches. At Basle, Strasburg, and Schaffhausen, it appears that a great many letters of Ecolampadius have been preserved, which not only reveal the character of the man in his public and private relations, but also cast much light upon the events of those stirring times. But for the labours of Dr Herzog, these precious documents, as valuable to the historian as to the biographer, would probably have remained undisturbed in their dusty repositories. Besides these sources of information, Dr Herzog had access to two important MS. chronicles of the times, which he was also the means of drawing from obscurity -one by the chartulary George, who adhered to Rome, and saw things from the Romish standpoint, the other by Fredolin Ryff, a zealous friend of the Reformation.

Machiavelli is said to have expressed the belief, that from amid the Alpine fastnesses a race of conquerors would issue, at no very distant day, who would succeed in overturning the existing kingdoms of Europe, and found a new empire of the West. His anticipation, suggested in part, perhaps, by his republican sympathies, though based mainly on the military character of the Swiss, and on the position of their romantic land, like a vast natural fortress, in the very heart of the continent, has been realised, but in a widely different and far nobler sense than he imagined. If the Saxon Reformer had not appeared, the glad tidings of a pure gospel, which Zuingle