demnation. As a judge of men and manners, and a careful observer of human life, South deserves the highest praise. He seldom attempts the subtleties of metaphysical disquisition, in which he did not excel; his business was with the broad realities of life. To show that the low and contemptible things of the earth often govern the great and exalted-to teach man reasonable diffidence and modesty-to discourage unbounded hopes and aspirations-to cherish noble and honourable expectations, and to make his fellow-creatures better; to do this was the useful and honourable object of this excellent teacher. He thought, no doubt, he had said a witty thing, who called South's discourses, 'not Sunday, but week-day Sermons'; his meaning was, we presume, if he had any, that they were written too much for worldly every-day affairs; a charge, which a very numerous class of sermon makers have no cause to fear, who write for no day at all. South's sermons are adapted to all readers and to all days; they contain innumerable thoughts and reflections, which are true and striking, though not always the most obvious to a common thinker; and this is an unequivocal mark of a good writer. From him we might form a collection of useful maxims, in which sentiments the most profound and just are delivered in language the most expressive and correct."

We have spoken of South's witty abuse of the Puritans. The following are a specimen of his utterances concerning them. "Who that had beheld such a bankrupt, beggarly fellow as Cromwell, first entering the Parliament-house with a thread-bare, torn cloak, and a greasy hat, (and, perhaps, neither of them paid for) could have suspected that in the space of a few years he should, by the murder of one king, and the banishment of another, ascend the throne; be invested in the royal robes, and want nothing of the state of a king, but the changing of his hat into a crown?' The sermon from which this sentence is taken, was preached before the Merry Monarch. Charles burst into a fit of laughter at South's notion of old Noll, and turning to Lord

66

Rochester exclaimed, "Ods fish, Lory, your chaplain must be a bishop; therefore, put me in mind of him at the next death." The following is a witty caricature of the style of many of the Puritan preachers. First of all they seize upon some text, from whence they draw something which they call doctrine; and well may it be said to be drawn from the words, forasmuch as it seldom naturally flows or results from them. In the next place, they branch it into several heads, perhaps twenty or thirty, or upwards. Whereupon, for the prosecution of these, they repair to some trusty concordance, which never fails them, and, by the help of that, they range six or seven scriptures under each head; which scriptures they prosecute one by one-first amplifying and enlarging upon one till they have spoiled it, then, that being done, they pass to another, which each in its turn suffers accordingly. And these impertinent and unpremeditated enlargements they look upon as the motions, effects, and breathings, of the Spirit, and therefore, much beyond those carnal ordinances of sense and reason, supported by industry and study; and this they call a saving way of preaching, as it must be confessed to be a way to save much labour, and nothing else that I know of." We have only room for one other sentence of the same sarcastic sort. 66 Among those of the late reforming age, all learning was utterly cried down;" (by Dr. Owen and John Howe, to wit!) "so, that with them, their best preachers were such as could not read, and the ablest divines such as could hardly spell the letter. To be blind was, with them, the proper qualification of a spiritual guide, and to be booklearned, as they called it, and to be irreligious, were almost terms controvertible. None were thought fit for the ministry but tradesmen and mechanics, because none else were allowed to have the spirit. Those only were accounted like Saint Paul, who could work with their hands, and, in a literal sense, drive the nail home, and be able to make a pulpit before they preached in it."

We conclude this brief notice of South with the quotation of a famous, but far different, paragraph. It is from his

sermon upon "The creation of man in the image of God." This discourse is certainly a wonderful production; full of striking thoughts, expressed in the most appropriate and powerful language; a sermon, which John Foster considered one of the noblest pieces of uninspired composition, whether of ancient or modern times.

"In this chapter, (Genesis i.) we have God surveying the works of the creation, and leaving this general impress or character upon them, that they were exceeding good. What an omnipotence wrought, we have an omniscience to approve. But as it is reasonable to imagine that there is more of design, and consequently more of perfection in the last work, we have God here giving his last stroke and summing up into man, the whole into a part; the universe into an individual; so that, whereas, in other creatures, we have but the trace of his footsteps, in man we have the draught of his hand. In him were united all the scattered perfections of the creature; all the graces and ornaments, all the airs and features of being, were abridged into this small, yet full, system of nature and divinity; as we might well imagine that the great artificer would be more than ordinarily exact in drawing his own picture. He came into the world a philosopher, which sufficiently appeared by his writing the nature of things upon their names; he could view essences in themselves, and read forms without the comment of their respective properties: he could see consequents yet dormant in their principles, and effects yet unborn, and in the womb of their causes: his understanding could almost pierce into future contingents, his conjectures improving even to prophecy, or the certainties of prediction; till his fall, he was ignorant of nothing but sin. Like a better Archimedes, the issue of all his inquiries was an εὕρηκα, an Epnka, the offspring of his brain without the sweat of his brow. Study was not then a duty, night-watchings were needless; the light of reason wanted not the assistance of a candle

I confess, it is as difficult for us,

who date our ignorance from our first being, and were still bred up with the same infirmities about us with which we were born, to raise our thoughts and imaginations to those intellectual perfections that attended our nature in the time of innocence, as it is for a peasant bred up in the obscurities of a cottage, to fancy in his mind the unseen splendours of a court. But by rating positives by their privatives, and other arts of reason, by which discourse supplies the want of the reports of sense, we may collect the excellency of the understanding then, by the glorious remainders of it now, and guess at the stateliness of the building, by the magnificence of its ruins. All those arts, rarities, and inventions, which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but reliques of an intellect defaced with sin and time. We admire it now, only as antiquaries do a piece of old coin, for the stamp it once bore, and not for those vanishing lineaments and disappearing draughts that remain upon it at present. And certainly, that must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely when old and decrepit, surely was very beautiful when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise,"

J. H.

LITERARY NOTICES.

[WE hold it to be the duty of an Editor either to give an early notice of the books sent to him for remark, or to return them at once to the Publisher. unjust to praise worthless books; it is robbery to retain unnoticed ones.]

It is

BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL GLEANINGS; a collection of Comments, Criticisms, and Remarks, explanatory or illustrative of nearly two thousand seven hundred passages on the Old and New Testament, especially those that are considered difficult. By WILLIAM O'NEILL. London: Ward and Co., Paternoster Row.

We have not written half the title of this ponderous volume. The work is not a new creation, it is a compilation. Here are extracts from no less than six hundred authors. A few of these writers we do not think much of, as expounders of the Bible; they have neither the philological attainments, nor the philosophical insight necessary to the eduction of those great general truths which are often hid under the obscure terms of a dead language, or the drapery of Oriental modes of thought and habits of life. The introduction of so much of the common-place remarks of these men, and the omission of the names of some of the profoundest Biblical scholars, both of England and the continent, we consider the greatest defect of this volume. Albeit, the work, being "designed principally for village scripture students," is a truly valuable production. Clouds are swept from many occult passages, and they are made to radiate in new light. There is no monotony in it-six hundred men! of various mould, ages, attainments, and churches speak through its pages, and though in different keys and compass of voice, all harmonious in spiritual feeling and theological doctrine. The Editor, whose own articles are sensible and devout, and whose labour in the production of the work has been great, has our hearty thanks and best wishes.

THE HAND-BOOK: an Introduction to the Study of Sacred Scripture. By JOSEPH ANGUS, D. D. London: The Religious Tract Society, Paternoster Row.

This book is designed to be, as its title imports, an Introduction to